well.. that escalated quickly.

Yesterday, before I hit 'publish', I asked the husband if he thought anyone would read the blog. I figured a few friends might visit this blog, and that maybe if people really liked it, I would get about 30 page views?

But within something like one hour, this blog had hit around 700 page views, and when I woke up this morning, the page had been viewed over 1000 times. Now, I know some of that is just people revisiting the blog, but still. ONE FREAKING THOUSAND times in the span of a few hours!

That. Is. Just. Cray.

At first I was all like,

And then I was all like,

And then I thought to myself:

Wednesday Thursday Friday.

A bajillion people just visited this blog and saw me in a sports bra and witnessed my off-center belly button. 

Zomg.

Insecurity.

It is the worst.

It brought me back to some of the first times I went to the gym. Those times of insecurity, when I felt like everyone was staring at me. 

Those times of approaching a machine and not being sure where my arms were supposed to go and how my legs were supposed to move, and walking away feeling like, "Everyone knows I have no clue what I am doing."  

...

Pulling my pants up and thinking, "Why is everyone at this gym so fit? How can I hide my muffin top?" 

...

And then pulling them way too high and thinking, "Firstly, I have a major wedgie and secondly, if I want to hide my muffin top, my pants give me major CT. There's just no winning."

...

I wish that someone back then had just told me, "Chill, Lydia. No one is looking at you. Everyone is doing their own thing. Most people use the machines incorrectly anyways."

Like this lady:

Or this dude:

But most of all, I wish someone had just told me how much my insecurities reflected my own heart towards others. If I was worried other people would judge me because of my muffin top, was it because, secretly, deep down in my heart, I actually judged other women because of their even bigger muffin tops?  Because I'll admit it, I totally did do that, and still do sometimes.

Whenever I saw a woman who was smaller than me, I'd feel really insecure, thinking, "Wow, she must look at me and think I have just let myself go."

All the pressure and judgement I put on other people weighed down my own heart as well. I saw myself like I saw other people, and I didn't like who I saw. 

When I started losing weight, that insecurity started to shift to boastfulness. Because really, insecurity and boasting are just two sides of coin of pride. I would think to myself, "If person X just worked as hard as I did, they could get rid of that muffin top," or, "I work so hard and I still have cellulite. Those perfect-bodied women at the gym must have no life except for the gym."

Welcome to my messed up head, ladies.

The thing is, I don't think I'm alone in these sentiments (or maybe I am..because I'm pretty ridiculous). As women HUMANS, aren't we always comparing? Adam was all like, "Yeah, I did something wrong, but Eve was worse than me!" But God. He's so different, it's wack. Unlike us, He was completely unblemished. Completely spotless. Rife with reason to judge us and perfect in His ability to do so. And yet, He traded in his perfection for an unremarkable body (Is 53:2) and loved us with unrelenting love. And when God should have judged us and compared us to His perfect standard, the judgement instead fell on His Son.

This changes so much about how we, as ladies, can approach the gym and each other. It means we can step out into the gym with confidence because the only one who matters ALREADY loves us. ALREADY accepts us. He is ALREADY in the process of changing us to make us more like him.

It means that when we look at each other, we don't need to miss out on the opportunities to encourage each other and love each other, because we were first loved by Someone so much greater.

And. It means that we can stop striving. To look a certain way. To be a certain way. To appear like we have it all together. 

When we experience this kind of security, this kind of freedom from shame and insecurity, it frees us from the judgements we make on other women. Instead of saying, "You don't measure up to the ideal," we can say together, "Hey. None of us measure up to the ideal and that's why we need a Greater Hope than any human being can offer."

"True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less." - C.S. Lewis

 True words, Clive. True words.

the plan for this blog.

Oh gosh. I have so many things I want to share with you. Here are a few things you can look forward to in the coming weeks.

PRACTICAL STUFF LIKE:
- what I eat for breakfast
- exercises I do at the gym
- the most ghettofab armband-for-iphone DIY
- how I changed my diet

THOUGHTS ON HEALTH & SPIRITUALITY LIKE:
- what going to the gym has taught me about discipline
- fitness culture and pride
- insecurity
- leggings! (jay kay. i don't want to step into that minefield.)

RANDOM STUFF LIKE:

In the meantime, if you're curious as to why this blog, read the post below.
Looking forward to it, ladies!

introductions and those kinds of formalities

Here's how I used to live life. Boxes. Mental health--one box. Spiritual health--another box. Physical health--box no.3. I don't know what I was thinking, because it all sounds so dumb in retrospect, but I essentially thought that what only mattered was that I was spiritually healthy. I ate like crap, felt like crap, and looked like crap. But none of that mattered because I was doing things like reading my bible every day and working in a 'spiritual' job. And in God's economy, that was all that mattered.

Looking back, I'm all like, WHY THE FACE.

I listened to lies like:

- you only live once. eat that sh*t because that's how you'll really enjoy life.

- other people might go to the gym and exercise, but I'm spending my time how it really matters: __(insert "christian" activity here)___ 

- health nuts are all boring people who can't eat wheat, dairy, meat...basically anything fun. no way I want to become boring and whiny and all, like, "my stomach hurts because I ate one bite of half a mcdonalds fry."

- I don't have time to exercise, but that's okay, because I sometimes walk places.

And in that time that I listened to those lies, a few things happened. I slipped into a great depression. I was tired all the time, I was moody all the time. Even while this was happening, I was in denial. No way this could be because I ate mcdonalds 3x/day (seriously) and drank my weight in sugar. This was purely a mental thing. And it could all be solved with some nice, little, oval pills. I blamed my depression on situational factors (where I was living, the people I was surrounded by, my genetics) but there was no way it could be more. I compartmentalized. 

The pills helped. They truly did. (I'm all for modern medicine, ladies). 

And I told myself, "See, mental health= back in order! Check!"

But then we had a miscarriage. And it flipped my world upside down. Here's the reality: in the Christian world, we tend to try to parse our health into boxes. There's physical health, spiritual health, mental health, etc. We tend to focus on keeping spiritually healthy and mentally healthy, at the expense of our physical health. At least, I definitely did. The reality is, though, that life isn't really parsable, now is it?

The miscarriage was physically painful. It was mentally painful. It was spiritually painful. This physiological, biological, physical process impacted so much more than just my physical health. And it made me really think about how my cavalier attitude towards my physical health not only impacted me, but the people around me: it impacted my relationship with my husband; it impacted my relationship with God; it impacted my relationships with my friends; and it would impact my relationship with my possible future children.

That was a year ago. In that time, I've made some significant changes in my life. The first change started with seeing that the life God has given me is a holistic life. It started with seeing that He doesn't only care about our spiritual life, but that He cares about the whole of us. This journey hasn't been as much about weight loss as it has been about ridding myself of all the lies I believed before. It's brought about a significant change in how I look at myself and others.

When I look at myself in these pictures from the past year, I don't just see a physical transformation, but a spiritual one as well. A holistic one. There's a change in my eyes and in the way I carry my body that has ricocheted to everything else I do in life. I mean, I'm still insecure and judgey and legalistic most of the time, but thankfully, God is on the mission of fully transforming my heart to become more like His.

Maybe as you're reading this blog, you're a bit like me. Believing in lies about yourself, or about the way you live life. Maybe you're tired of eating like crap and feeling like crap. Or maybe, you're super healthy and are excited about health. Wherever you're at, I would love for you to join me on this journey towards a holistic, image-bearing, beloved life.

Yay!