I espouse wholeness. Connecting our spirits and our bodies creates harmony and builds a complete soul. To this end I ask readers to try this exercise: Identify your top ten best physical features, and then rank your top ten worst features. This exercise has a point. Please do it now. Scribble your lists on a napkin, notepad, or even better, write them in the comments section of this blog. Don’t think or censor, just write 10 best features and 10 worst.
How many items actually made it onto your “best feature” list? Did you strain your brain to find more than five? This exercise often reveals the second list to be much longer than the first. Sadly, we tend to rehearse our flaws in our own minds as well as discussing them with others. But, rarely do we shout to the world that we have beautiful hands and an elegant nose. When was the last time you told someone, out loud, about your best features?
Identify which items on your “worst” list are not remedied with greater health and balance. (Put a star or doodle by these.) For instance, height won’t change no matter how healthy we get. Put a star by it. If I am short-waisted and have a weak chin, all the weight control in the world won’t give me a longer torso and a stronger jawline. Do not put a star by the things you can fix with surgery—no surgery will ever help you make peace with the body you have been given. Even with a boob job, there will be other traits you despair over.
Universally, we easily identify flaws but we are thoroughly unaccustomed to acknowledging attributes. Was your design a mistake? If you believe in God you know, “He don’t make no junk.” So, what could possibly make us hold ourselves up to a fantasy standard that is unachievable (height, torso, chin) and therefore, by definition, inadequate?
The answer is gratitude. When I criticize myself I just plain forget to lose myself in gratitude. It is easier to knock my skinny lips and wide hips than it is to feel grateful for those hips ability to safely birth my glorious children. When I grumble about my thin hair I forget I got it from my beloved Grandma—no thin hair also means no Grandma. It is easier to hate my love handles than to recognize I go to bed without hunger. In India millions of orphaned street children live with hunger in crushing poverty and desperation, day-in-day-out, yet my compassion for those in need stops when all I can focus on is my own jelly belly. Gratitude is the answer. Gratitude is also the paradigm out of which true harmony with my body is achieved. I cannot properly “hear” my body’s messages if I am engaged in self-criticism, and it is by connecting to my body in a healthy way that I get prompts of what to eat and when to stop eating. Psychological warfare with myself won’t help me become permanently thin and healthy. Gratitude is the foundation for thinking thin.
For all those items above marked with a star or doodle, make peace with each one of them by identifying how they are a blessing in your life. Say aloud the following sentence:
Without (insert feature here) I would __________________________________________.
Personally, I am grateful for my muscular thighs. They weren’t designed for modeling skinny jeans but they were endowed with the strength to hike Angel’s Landing at Zion’s National Park with my children. My German thighs can dig dirt and squat in the yard, allowing me to grow herbs, vegetables, and flowers. My legs can dance West Coast Swing all night long and can do endless squats in a Zumba class. My thighs power big jumps in volleyball and help me lift heavy bags of flour and sugar for baking. I can waterski and snow ski without injury or exhaustion. On this lap I held all three of my babies. Most important, I can walk. I can run. How fantastic! These are thighs worthy of my gratitude. Never again will I disrespect my design by imagining I need legs different than the ones I have.
Tres Hatch is the author of Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy.
