Beauty matters

When we think that we want to lose 10 pounds (or 5 or 15 or 500), often what we are really thinking is “If I lose weight, I will feel beautiful.”

So here’s my suggestion to you: If you want to feel beautiful, why don’t you focus on feeling beautiful? 

And not on feeling beautiful three weeks from now after your juice cleanse, or eight weeks from now after you’ve gone to boot camp classes and finally have defined arms, but feeling beautiful right now, today, this very second.

Let’s cut to the chase.
Let’s cut out the middleman.
Feeling beautiful is available to you today.

So get out your pen and paper, and spend five minutes answering this question: “What do I need to do to feel beautiful as possible today?”

When I really sit with that question, the answers that come up kind of shock me. Right now, to feel as beautiful as possible, I’d love to:

  • Put on “real people clothes” that feel soft on my body, and that I think are fashionable (I may or may not be writing this post to you in my pajamas).
  • Wash my face, brush my teeth, and put on some moisturizer and some lip gloss.
  • Do something with my currently frizzy hair, so it feels smoother and softer and elegant.
  • Get out of the house and buy a cappuccino and do some work in a coffee shop.
  • Get a massage.

First, let’s talk about how bizarrely easy most of this list is to accomplish. I need to…brush my teeth and stop wearing pajamas? Do my hair?

Those last two points, in particular, kind of blow my mind. To feel beautiful…I need to get a massage or leave the house and sit in a coffee shop? What do those things have to do with beauty at all?

Yet, it becomes clear to me that when I really ask the question, “beauty” is about feeling good and radiant.

That point is so powerful that I think it is worth repeating: feeling beautiful is about making myself feel good.

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I’d really love to hear what’s on your beauty list. Is what you need to feel beautiful as surprising as mine? Let me know in the comments.

Bad news and good news

I’ve got good news and bad news.

The bad news: your life is going to be painful.
The good news: you can choose what pain to experience.

If you want to close this page, I get it. I don’t blame you. I like sprinkles and rainbows, too.

But we’ve also got to face the gosh-darn-terrible truth: life is painful.

I don’t mean just in those big ways: that there is terrible suffering and people living in hunger and poverty and atrociously unsafe conditions around the world. That people you deeply love can die.

I mean in those small, tiny, annoyingly painful ways that you—as an evolved, emotionally mature person—don’t even think you are “allowed” to consider painful.

Like that you work all day and the only break you take is for lunch.
Like you wish that people around you would appreciate you more.
Like you are exhausted and just want a break and to close out the world for three days.

You might not even explicitly experience these situations as “pain.” Most of the women I work with don’t. They think that they aren’t allowed to acknowledge that they are feeling pain unless their organs are falling out of their body.  

But you know how I know that they are feeling pain in these situations?

Because they are eating.

Because they are eating food that they don’t really want, food that doesn’t make them feel good.

Or because they are eating friggin’ delicious or even healthy food, but not even enjoying it because they are sneaking or not paying attention to it.

Because when I suggest to them that they might perhaps consider not eating food they don’t even want in those moments, they look stricken: how would I deal with that crazy-feeling if I wasn’t eating?

And that, my friends, is the point of it all: your dysfunctional eating is a bright neon arrow pointing to your pain.

If you can’t bear to not eat while you study, or while you work, or while you meet with friends, there is something painful—something that is uncomfortable or awkward or weird or painful—in that moment.

So here’s the deal, friends: you can’t avoid the pain.

Let’s face it, you’ve been trying to avoid the pain. You’ve been eating to avoid the pain. I’ve done it, too. If I eat a cookie while forcing myself to do everything on my to-do list, I won’t hate it so much.

But the problem is, in trying to avoid this life-pain, you’ve created an entirely new kind of pain: food pain.

The pain of kicking yourself for eating an entire slice of cake you didn’t even want.
The pain of your pants not fitting.
The pain of looking back on that meal out with friends and wondering what demon possessed your body.
The pain of feeling gross and full but like you’d still eat six pints of ice cream if given the chance.

It’s one pain or another.
The pain of your life, or the pain you create by covering up your life with food.

You get to choose.

Did I mention? You get to choose.

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If you’re feeling brave, here’s my challenge to you: Think about the last time you were unhappy with your eating. What “pain” were you feeling or trying to avoid?

And if you’re feeling especially brave, let me know what you find in the comments.