Here’s what the gal wrote me:
“Ok I'm writing this because I seriously think you might be the only person on the planet that might "get
it"...
My skinny beautiful neighbor comes bouncing over tonight showing off what looks to be an overnight 20 lb weight loss. I turn green with envy; tell her she looks great. She starts chirping about this new workout she’s doing, 30 min/7 days per week and these shakes she’d taking, etc.
She looks at my flab (sure I'm a good 40 lbs over weight) and she says I COULD be the next 21-day fix success story! I explain that I'm
rocking my weight lifting gig and walking 10,000-20,000 steps a day and I really am trying to only do things that I can sustain.
She's 32 and I'm 40. She lifts up her shirt and shows me her stomach and tells me by summer people are going to wonder how 3 babies came out of there!
Oh I fight so hard against the craziness of the binge. I was there 6 years ago...size 0 for a whole 4 months before everything fought back against me
and I gained EVERYTHING back plus 15 lbs. I've never worked out as consistently as I do now. I never eaten as reasonably as I do now. Am I dropping weight? No. But am I bloated and swollen? Definitely not! I haven't food binged since holiday cookies 5 months ago, which is huge.
Why did she get under my skin and help me hate myself?"
Isn’t this the best?
In a weird, super juicy way, I live for these kinds of
interactions because a) they happen to all of us at one point or another and b) they are the EXACT situations we need in order to grow in our own process.
Think about it: how perfect is it that everything you have decided is not for you shows up in an irresistible package promising fast results with zero effort?
Call it the universe or kismet or the Law of Attraction, whatever. This story could not be more perfect to challenge not only our eating
and training approach, but our self-worth.
In my mind, there are two things to address here:
- The perpetuation of the “fast fix” mentality and why, if we want sustainable results, to quit the yo-yo and do things sanely, we are going to have to do things differently. And let other people have their process.
- How to circumvent the feelings of not-good-enough that get brought to the surface in the face of something that triggers them.
This has to do with confidence, conviction, self-worth and abundance.
First off, having this response is completely normal and common. There is nothing wrong with having a response out of insecurity, jealousy, envy, etc.—we all do it, we’re human.
But the key is … ready for it? … not blaming the other person (the “button-pusher” if you will) but instead using it as an opportunity to reaffirm our own goals and figure out why we got to darn insecure
because of it!
Insecurities are normal and it’s the job of others to push our buttons so that we can investigate them if we want to:
- Why did that comment hit me that way?
- What am I feeling inside that is making me feel insecure?
- Why am I taking this other person’s experience to mean that I am less-than?
- What am I not confident in that is opening me up to feel insecure about what I’m doing?
- What’s the
lesson here?
We can go down the rabbit hole of introspection, and I encourage you to, because whenever we have such a powerful response as, “why did she help me hate myself?” we have some work to do!
When we tend toward insecurity (and we all do at times!), that neighbor could be anyone. We interact with others precisely so we can get our buttons pushed, see our insecurities and work through them.
To me, this is a self-worth and
confidence issue.
I remember feeling the same way early on with my #moderation365 journey.
I was just coming out of the all-or-nothing competition prep world, and I still had many friends and acquaintances who were “leaning out” for shows and photo shoots. I remember seeing their progress photos on Facebook. I remember seeing them at a gym and feeling jealous because I wanted to look like that. And I had before. Ugh!
It
felt like missing out.
It felt like because they were lean, I was fat.
It felt like giving up.
It felt like I was less than.
It felt like I wasn’t being “seen” anymore. Not relevant.
All ways to summarize feelings of insecurity, unworthiness and scarcity.
Why would someone getting leaner mean I am getting fatter? Or I'm less worthy? Is success a limited
resource?
And what would I be missing out on? Yo-yo dieting YET AGAIN? Losing 20 lbs only to gain it all back AGAIN, plus some? I tried that. I did that. And as much as I wished I could lose it all and keep it off forever (stay at 10% BF forever, lmao!), I saw over and over that I couldn’t. And not only that, but that I hated life, I was a miserable person, I was STILL not satisfied.
And here’s the kicker: no one else was able to get
super lean and keep it off either :)
I had to access that truth in my times of insecurity.
I had to access and reaffirm the truth of yo-yo dieting as I knew it (not only from my experience but from the dozens of women I had seen do it too).
I had to reaffirm my goals to myself: balance, sustainability, joy, ease, social life, abundance, happiness, flow.
I had to remove myself from someone else’s
experience by putting my head down and focusing on my own goal set. And allowing other people to have their experience, while being unapologetically confident in mine.
That’s hard to do!
But I’ll even give you one mental strategy that I used—and I am not super comfy sharing this because it’s not “evolved” and it makes me feel really vulnerable, ha!—but it was pretty effective at the beginning of my journey:
I kind of had
to start pitying people who were doing the fast fixes and yo-yo tactics. To get myself to a place of not feeling insecure every time I saw someone leaner than me, I had to start actually feeling bad that I knew they’d be struggling for just that much longer.
It’s not the most spiritual of practices, but reaffirming my own goals through seeing what I was doing as the level 2.0 helped me to stay the course when I viewed what everyone else was doing as level 1.0 (they were
just doing what I did for so long!).
It’s not that anyone is “better than” or worse-than, it’s just a journey. And we all deserve the full experience. So this obviously isn't a forever-strategy. We are all fine and perfect, really. But it helped me at the beginning feel more confident in my new approach.
I hope her neighbor keeps the weight off. Of course I do. But in order for me to find peace, I have to know what is
for me, and what is not. And that discernment can only happen inside ourselves.
Through my experience, I know that fast fixes and unsustainable approaches don’t do me right. They just don't. And this gal who emailed me knows it, too.
So, the tools?
- Introspection and doing some work on our own self-confidence, conviction about our approach and reaffirming our own goals, regardless of what others are
doing.
- When we get that insecurity hit, asking, why am I feeling this way? What button is this scenario pushing for me, and what story am I telling myself of not feeling good enough? It’s BS.
- And realizing that everyone deserves the full experience and no two experiences will ever be the same, or are even related. Success comes in all different forms, and there is no limit to how much we can all have. We define what it means to be successful for
us. And then pursue THAT relentlessly.
I loved this email, and I am grateful to be able to have this conversation. Thank YOU for being here and being open to these messages!
Respond and let me know: did this hit you, too? Have you experienced something similar? How did you handle it? What are your go-to tools?
Know that I’m loving
you.
Xo,
Jill
P.S. WE ARE 7 DAYS OUT FROM THE
TREADLIFT LAUNCH! Please get May 3
rd on your mental calendar, I cannot wait to share this brand spankin’ new fitness program with you, next
week!