Just the Way You Are

I want to show you something. 

Recognize this? 

Yeah it's the BMI chart. 

It's that blasted thing that doctors use to tell us if we are "fat" or "healthy"

According to this chart At 5'4'' and 190ish lbs I am well into to obese range. Why do I put my weight out there for all the world to see? Well because I want to point out how unrealistic the expectations are.

This is me. They say that I am "obese" 

This is my engagement photo. It was taken 4 years ago. I was 20 years old.

According to the BMI chart, 

even in this picture, at 160lbs I was still "overweight"

Mhmmmmm.....

And...this picture was taken just 2 years ago at my best friend's wedding. Guess what? 

175lbs means I'm obese. 

yeah....

That's ridiculous.

According to the BMI chart, 

 I should still be 15

But you know what? I don't want to be 15. I want to be 24. I have several pounds I'd like to lose, but I always have. Who doesn't? Eventually, I will lose the weight I want to lose, but the number on the scale doesn't define the person that I am. I am me, and I am not obese, despite what the BMI chart claims to know. Losing weight is like earning money. Enough is never enough, and if you are not truly happy with where you are and what you have, 

you will never be happy with anything else. 

So, although I am doing my best to take care of myself, and lose some pounds I have accumulated, I'm not trying to lose weight so that I can feel good about myself. I already feel good about myself. I just want to stay healthy and get healthier. I want to be a good steward of the body I have been given.  I believe that God has given us each 1 body to care for in our lives, and we should be good stewards of it, but being healthy is a body AND mind issue. Measuring your self against an unrealistic and arbitrary standard and berating yourself for not meeting it, 

is not being a good steward of your mind. 

The world tells girls and women that they must meet a certain standard in order to be beautiful. For some people  it's about hair and makeup or clothes. Others feel like in order to be attractive and beautiful they must be athletic or smart. People starve themselves to stay thin or have silicone implanted in strategic areas to make themselves more curvy. Society has set a standard very high for the way beautiful people look, and her people worship it. If we don't meet the standard. We are ugly, unattractive, and undesirable.

It's a lie. 

A hurtful, ugly, mean, and simply disrespectful lie.

Women are beautiful. You are beautiful, and so am I just the way we are. God made us, and to call something ugly that God made beautiful is really disrespectful.  I would be lying if I said that this wasn't a struggle for me, but  with age comes wisdom they say. And as time has passed a clothing sizes have grown, I can honestly say that I am happier now in my own skin than I ever have been.

I am happy because I know, despite what the world says, despite what some chart with numbers on it says, God made me awesome. 

I am beautiful, and so are you...

...just the way you are.