57 days to go...

Today was tough. We got up fairly late (11:30am) and so I made my toast/avocado/salsa/egg concoction for the bf and he loved it. He also had half a package of Quaker Blueberry Muffin mix that he likes and asked me to make for him. I obliged, and ate a few muffins (oops.)

That took us until mid-afternoon when I had a blood orange (yummy) for snack before we went downtown for our workout. We did 20 minutes cardio + arms + abs. Dinner was chicken and spinach enchiladas. I made the sauce way too spicy to there's my accidental/unfortunate method of eating less! Dessert was cookies again.

It's tough to write a blog about food and workouts when you have body image issues (ie. are a normal woman). Even writing this out now is emotional. Every woman knows this. The whole reason for doing a bootcamp is so I can look good in a bathing suit. The definition of "good" is what troubles me. It goes without saying that we are surrounded by women that we feel, after years of being punched in the face with notions of beauty in music, movies and elsewhere, are better than us. Most of the time I can yank myself out of thinking I should look like that by remembering that most celebrities have trainers and nutritionists on call 24/7, have the money to buy clothes that are always flattering, pay a hefty sum for a round-the-clock makeup and hair team, and if all of that fails, are in the hands of Photoshop pros. Us normal women don't have all of that. We have amateur versions of these things: a friend or inner voice telling us to work out more and eat less, we buy the clothes we hope we can squeeze into and pull off, we might pay a little for our hair and makeup and obsess over it all, and we edit the crap out of our Facebook accounts to mask any hint of unflattering photos of us anywhere. What's worse is that we know these women look amazing and somehow we forget about the orchestration it takes to put it all together. Sometimes others forget too, and compliments towards those women can deeply wound even the most confident woman.

For the first time today, I felt really silly about this bootcamp, so much so that I felt like sobbing into a giant plate of poutine. The pressure women face to look good is enormous. I weighed myself before the gym (138lbs). It's amazing what numbers can do to you. I automatically felt strong, fit, toned and pretty. I was walking into my workout feeling like a rock star! Look how amazing I look, how much tighter my muscles look, and how nice my skin is, PLUS I lost 5 lbs? YES!! But, later in our workout my boyfriend did something pretty natural which was to comment on what a babe a tall blonde celebrity was. He's entitled to this and thinking other women are beautiful doesn't really bother me because deep down I realize that this is absolutely not a threat to me in any way. But for some reason, today, I turned this benign comment into an avalanche. Here I am, struggling with what I eat, and busting my ass at the gym to feel good about myself, and I still oddly feel like I have to compare myself to other people that my boyfriend finds attractive. Suddenly I didn't feel so hot and so strong, I felt stupid and cheap. I felt like I was 16 again, trying desperately to look like the pretty popular blonde girl so the cute boy would like me too. My boyfriend tells me every day how beautiful he thinks I am, and he already loves me the way I am. I know he'll love me in the Maldives too. So why am I doing this? Am I trying to please myself? Him? I can't magically grow taller to become the tall woman my man thinks is a babe, and I'll never have tight skin and look airbrushed and polished all the time. Instead I'll be imperfect, I'll eat fried chicken sometimes and I'll always be 5'5". Yet a simple harmless comment absolutely obliterated my self esteem. It all suddenly felt really stupid to be trying to firm, tighten and shed.

And yet before going to bed, I have packed my spinach salad, yogurt with strawberries, and veggies with hummus for lunch. I feel like a loser, even though I know I'm being reasonable and healthy. I've upset my boyfriend and worried him since I've been incapable of saying anything real in the last 8 hours for fear of bursting into tears. All over a stupid comment that means nothing and that he is totally entitled to. I think normal women need a head adjustment to silence the screaming inner voice that destroys us over something so meaningless. We all know her, that voice telling us that we better shape up and look like that tall model otherwise our men won't find us pretty anymore. That voice is a bitch. The book I'm reading (May I Be Happy by Cyndi Lee) is discussing just that: tapping into your feminine power and owning what you look like and your body. Time to go read more of it and absorb, absorb, absorb. This is a not a problem with what our men say, it's a problem with ourselves and fixing it comes from within.