Stand UP.

Stop standing like that!

I heard that one day from my very favorite physiotherapist during our warm up at the gym.

I slouch.
All the time.

It's a terrible habit and I started to say, "I can't help it...", before she cut me off with, "Yes.  You can."
And she's right.

A lifetime of being a chubby girl has trained my body to have a permanent hunch.
I am trying to concentrate on proper posture and standing tall, but I have to think about it all the time because I've been slouching for 30+ years.

Why have I always rounded my shoulders?  I don't think I would be the first fat person who wanted to fold themselves in, trying to be smaller by bringing my sides closer together.
Stick my chest out?!  WTF?!?!  Do you see how big these things are while I'm slouching?!?!  If I pop them out, they're going to take out a swath of people!!
If I stand tall, I will take up more space.
And I do did not want to do that when I was a larger person.
I'm still learning to live in this body.
I don't recognize myself in pictures and I'm quite sure the vision I have in my head of myself is different from how I actually look.

I should have stood tall and proud then, but now that there are three little peoples' eyes watching me, I feel I need to be especially careful to have good posture - which exudes self confidence through body language.
(Fake it 'til 'ya make it, right?!)
How can I tell them to be proud of themselves, while my body seems to be curling in on itself, in an unnatural looking way?
I'm careful not to criticize my body, which strangely, I never did as a larger person, but now I have to stifle it.
When you gain 5 or 10 pounds, and you weigh 210, it's not really a huge deal and most certainly will go unnoticed.
Gain 5 on a 150lb body?  Your clothes will remind you that it's too much!  Ta-RUST me!

It's important, though.
It's important that I lead by example, and although my kids will only ever remember this version of me, this, size, of me, I lived in a very different meat suit for a much longer period of time than this current one, and it's important, that they know to be confident, at any size.

More importantly, I think they need to know that their body is nowhere near as important as their heart, and that the person they are on the inside is what people remember.  What counts.
So be kind, and hopefully I can teach them that their body is just something they live in.
In a world that tells us to be always conscious of our body, our beauty, I think it's so important to try and show them that without it ever being something they have to think about, they can be confident.

I myself struggle with trying not to think so much about my physical self.
I've been focused, laser-beam focused on changing my body, but I need to now just be, so that I can raise two girls, and a little boy, who are not body conscious, but just, conscious.

So, stand tall, just be confident, and you may have to do what I'm going to do.
Fake it 'til I make it.