like my body again

Learned it in a day, filled me with pure joy once I got going, and keeps me vertical, mostly. On the one occasion it didn’t keep me vertical, it still got me off the concrete in one piece. It makes me feel amazing and totally peaced out after yoga and it delivered me and my baby safely through childbirth. It allows me to eat food so spicy that other people sweat just watching. And this week I’m going to love it even more when my new bike gets here. I’m so excited, I can’t wait! My body is making me deeply happy lately.

I’ve been experiencing this fear off and on since I started losing weight that I’d finish and be so disappointed, that after all the improvements in my eating and exercising, I’d hate my body. At one point I had almost convinced myself I would need plastic surgery. I was afraid my skin wouldn’t recover, especially after a pregnancy where I gained fifty pounds and then twenty more afterward. But. My body looks much better after a sixty-pound weight loss than before. It will never be like it was before pregnancy, though. My breasts and tummy aren’t as firm, obviously, and I have stretch marks, though they are light and don’t bother me. The two websites I am going to post made me feel much better about it. Unflawed bodies are not normal. Imperfect bodies are. We just don’t get to see the imperfect ones as much! Well, here they are, ladies. And mommies.

breast gallery and
The shape of a mother

I have discovered the beauty of backlighting. Don’t turn on those bright lights first thing in the morning before stepping into the shower. Just let the soft morning light come in from the frosted window behind you and things start to look pretty again. Also, have shed over 60 pounds now. Yeah, sixty!

Probably because I have to go to the doctor tomorrow, and I’m sure he’s going to say something about my weight loss. I’ve done really well with that and I really do feel much more comfortable with my body than I did before, and I’m sure am much healthier, but I still have work to do. So . . . I got in front of the mirror today and got the camera out. Yikes, I know. But . . . it wasn’t that bad. I’m going to go ahead and put some of them on my flickr. (I didn’t get very far down so they’re not in the least bit pornographic :D)