The journey begins.

Every morning begins the same: you wake up and swear to yourself that today is, somehow, magically, going to be different.  You're going to be "good."  You're going to make the most of your workout.  You're going to pass up sweets and genuinely enjoy your 1200 calories of raw veggies.  And you're going to keep this up until you reach that magic number on the scale, the one at which life can really begin.  The one at which you're somehow, magically, going to be happy.

And then at some point during the day, inevitably, it begins to unravel.  Maybe your favorite jeans are still a bit too snug. Maybe you can't run as far as you want to at the gym.  Maybe someone brought your favorite doughnuts to work.  Whatever the reason, a few bites here and sip there turn into much more than the fruit salad you were planning on eating for lunch.

By the end of the day, you've completely given up: it's clear you've been "bad" that day, and, of course, no progress can follow from bad behavior, right?  Might as well throw in the towel and eat whatever you want (and can) tonight, because tomorrow, surely this time, your diet really begins.

It is this vicious cycle of dieting and binging, self-loathing and body hatred that I have been caught up in once again.  Every girl has been through it at some point in her life, but the fact of the matter is, we don't have to live like this.  This is a choice, not a necessity.  There is no rule saying that you can't be happy unless you're skinny.  People weighing much more than you are living their lives to the fullest because they've realized that life doesn't start at your goal weight.  Life has been going on all around you for days, months, years, and all that energy you've been putting into hating yourself, into compulsive exercise, into depriving yourself, means you've been missing out on a whole lot of wonderful things.

Every day as women we are bombarded with rules for how we are expected to live: not currently dieting? Not good enough.  Don't look good in your bikini yet? Try harder.  The season's latest styles don't flatter you?  There must be something wrong with you, because there is clearly nothing amiss with a fashion industry based on a size 2 when the average American woman is (wait for it) a size 14.  It's no wonder we come home at the end of the day degraded and debased, still struggling to uphold an impossible ideal and killing ourselves, literally and figuratively, in the process.

But what if, instead of buying into the notion that you can't possibly be beautiful with what the scale read this morning, we decided to start a revolution?  What if every morning we woke up and looked in the mirror, and instead of slowly identifying every pocket of fat, every patch of cellulite, every scar and stretch mark and wrinkle, we simply looked ourselves in the eyes and reassured ourselves that we are unequivocally beautiful?  We are more beautiful and powerful than we could ever imagine.  We are dynamic, strong, fierce, resilient, determined, alluring, charming, delightful, sexy, elegant, gorgeous, magnificent women. Can you imagine what we could accomplish, us girls, if we stopped trying to live up to the standards society has defined for us and started trying to live up to our own potential?

I recently read about the very feminist suggestion of what some are calling a "diet detox:" a process of giving up our perpetual feeling of needing to diet (and thus binge) and instead replacing it with something much more reasonable and much more natural, simply eating consciously.  The fact that becoming conscious of our hunger and eating accordingly is even a moderate change just goes to show how out of touch women have become with their own bodies, replacing consciousness and acceptance with the unending and impossible pursuit for perfection.

It is with this realization that I have decided to start down a long journey of finally learning to love and accept myself, "extra 10 pounds" included, once and for all.  I start this blog with the intention of using the energy I usually direct into dieting, deprivation and self-hatred and instead channeling all of it (ALL of it) into realizing that I, just like all of you, am a wonderful human being deserving of love, respect, and acceptance, from everybody in the world but, most importantly, from myself.  I am starting this journey because I want to change my life, and I hope that my journey will inspire you to realize how truly amazing you really are.

It is time we women remember that our bodies, just the way they are, are beautiful and incredible and immeasurably more wonderful than we could ever imagine.  We can, without any change to our weight or our waist measurement, breathe in a cool sea breeze, walk down a beach and feel the sand squish between our toes, leap off a dock into the cold lake water below, run and jump and fly and do so many thousands of things that we take for granted. 

It is at Day 1, the beginning of my journey, that I propose we reclaim our bodies for ourselves once and for all, for our own pleasure and enjoyment and satisfaction, and finally say "To Hell" with anyone who wants to bring us down. #