When I was in first grade, I remember noticing that my legs and arms were larger than some other girls in my class. I couldn't do anything about this, but already "knew" at that age that bigger wasn't better. My tummy was round, too, not protrusive or abnormal for that age, but it wasn't flat. Sometimes it would touch my shirts. It didn't look like the kids or women on tv, so even in first grade, I began to suck in my little 6 year old belly so I'd look thinner. Six. Years. Old. I had already internalized the message that my body in its natural state wasn't right, wasn't good enough. I kept at it, too, holding in my stomach as hard as I could as often as I could remember for most of my childhood, in public. (It surely strengthened my abs, I'll say that, but what did it do to my self-esteem?)I remember vividly, when I was 13, at summer camp, a girl told me she envied how flat my stomach was. I felt so proud, that my little trick had worked. She thought I was thin! (The heartbreaking part of that moment is that I was never a fat child, or teen. I was never even pudgy. I was strong, but my mental image of myself was so drastically distorted that I saw myself as a fat girl, when in fact, I was lean, see me at that age on the right.)
Without delving into the social and media implications of these statements, I think it's fair to say these statements affect many of us, and I do not claim to be an exception. It is incredibly difficult to see ourselves honestly, let alone share ourselves with others. I still struggle to stand naked in front of a mirror without sucking in my stomach, or flexing some part of my body to maintain the image I like to have of myself.
Imagine then, the struggle I had against my own insecurities, as I was asked by my coaches to take "before" pictures, of my body in its current natural state, without sucking in, or manipulative posing, or any tricks to appear "better" than I am. I trust my coaches. I trust their confidence, I trust their expertise, and I trusted them to take me to a different physical place. NOT giving them the honest me would have been a disservice to them, and to myself as part of my journey. A clear and honest starting point is essential to my development, and I knew that, so I sucked it up, and let it out, and stood in full lighting without a tan, or sucking in, or anything, in my littlest bikini to show my coaches what they were working with.
Okay, so I did it. I sent out honest pictures to my coaches. I even took more and posted them publicly as part of a BSN Summer Shred contest, telling myself it's OKAY to look "crappy" in my before photos, that's the whole point, so you can improve heartily from that point.
The next big mental challenge was my check-in photos. One part of me was totally confident in my coaching, and my own dedication to the plan I was given, and that progress would happen naturally as my coaches ran my program they way the know best. Another part of me was scared. Is scared. Will continue to be scared that my progress is slower than my peers. That my body isn't changing the way it should be, at the speed my coaches (or others!) would expect. Every time I send out a progress update, I quake inside, fearing that even by the end of my 12 week period, I won't have made the kind of progress I've seen in others' progress photos.
Some of my coaches' clients have posted progress pictures, and they're AMAZING. Waists have been whittled, thighs have shrunk, and butts have become beautiful, round little melons of awesomeness. I do not see these changes in myself. Even more intimidating, these described changes have happened QUICKLY for others, and I don't see the same rate of change in me. This is scary. This is intimidating. This makes the insecure little 6 year old in me want to suck in that belly, flex those ab muscles, tan my hide and tweak my poses in my photos to try to achieve the visual differences I see in others.
I won't do it, though. I'd be cheating. I'd be cheating ONLY myself. My coaches aren't dumb. They know their sh*t. They can tell differences in lighting, in posing. They know what sucking in looks like. They know all the tricks, because if *I* know them, I know they know them. WE ALL know what a sucking-in-photo-manipulation looks like, because we've ALL done stuff like that to make our facebooks better, to improve our myspaces, or our avatars on whatever social media we give a damn about. We've untagged ourselves in candids that showed our unflattering angles. We may not know the extent of photoshop retouching done on any given magazine cover or ad, but we sure as hell know how to tweak ourselves to make ourselves look "our best," and those tricks are easy to spot when any other amateur is workin' 'em.
So I won't cheat. I'll keep on progressing at my little snail pace. The point is I'm progressing, and I'm being honest with myself and my coaches, because anything else will hinder my progress more than a momentary ego boost of "Hey, lookit THIS progress pic compared to week 1! It's AMAZING!!!" I want to be AMAZING for real, not AMAZING at manipulation. I want to be able to walk around a beach in my tiny bikini, and NOT be sucking in, ever again. I want to focus on the beauty around me, not how I look at any given moment.
Earnest change, honest change, is the real change I want to see in myself, for myself. Being cheated on is one of the worst feelings in the world, and I won't do that to myself. I'm focused on overcoming my insecurities, rather than hiding them, and that will make all the difference.
