Free Book Excerpts

An inspirational invitation to accept and embrace yourself and your body.

EUREKA!

As I stood in line at the grocery store casually scanning the headlines on all of the gossip magazines I read, REVENGE DIETS: How Reese, Jessica, and Drew got skinny to get back at their exes and are looking better than ever! I pondered these words for a moment. I thought about how I would have reacted as a young impressionable girl reading this headline. It’s really not the fact that these celebrities are skinny and beautiful that bothered me. What really got to me was the fact that the headline suggested that the skinnier they are the better they are. I stared at the pictures that accompanied this disturbing headline. I became entranced by a photo of one extra skeletal Hollywood actress in her swimsuit frolicking on the beach. For a moment I let my self slip back into my seventeen year old mentality. Would I have believed that these women looked better than ever? Would I have held myself to this radical standard? Of course! That is what had been engraved in to my brain by society since I can remember. I probably would have gone home and starved myself simply because I did not look like I had just left a concentration camp.
I turned to my infant daughter Olivia in her carrier. She gave me that heart melting gummy grin and I suddenly felt an uninhibited calling to change the way women’s bodies are viewed. I wondered what I could do to keep her from falling prey to these unachievable standards forced upon young women by the media and even their own peers. A phrase popped into my head, I am good enough for me! EUREKA! I could see it now. A revolution of young women overcoming these absurd beliefs that they aren’t good enough for the world when all that really matters is that they are good enough for themselves. Not a new diet, but a new way of thinking. I never wanted Olivia to feel like the person that God made her was not okay no matter what size she is.  I went home, made a cup of coffee, and sat down at my computer. I began brainstorming about moments in my life that had somewhere along the way caused me to form a distorted view about my own body image. Things that had seemed so insignificant before came flooding out unexpectedly. I quickly realized that the moments I remembered about my child hood were the things that very early on affected the way I valued my body.
I remembered the woman who fitted my cheerleading uniform in seventh grade   so vividly even after more than ten years. She told me that since I had a bubble butt she would have to order my skirts one inch longer in the back. That moment was crucial, from that day on I hated my big butt!  Then when I was a junior in high school I came down with a vicious case of mono that laid me up for six weeks. I returned to school an emaciated shell of my former self. All anyone could talk about was how wonderful I looked! As if the one hundred fifteen pounds I weighed before was not skinny enough, I now felt pressure to stay at the ninety five pound bag of bones I had become.
A lifetime of similar memories that had been suppressed for so many years were released and I knew that other women had to be going through the same thing. I could finally put my finger on the reason I had been on a diet for the last ten years. The thought of saving Olivia and the rest of the next generation could not escape my mind. If I could do one small thing to empower women this would be it. Thus began my journey achieve just that.
No sooner than I had this life changing revelation that I could save future generations of women from a tainted self esteem and negative body image, I realized something. I was no doctor of psychology. I had no credentials to prove that what I said really mattered. Who in the heck would listen to me?  I was a twenty five year old stay at home mom. Wait just one second! Had I so quickly abandoned my newfound philosophy? Then it hit me, I am good enough for me! It didn’t just apply to body image, but to all of the evil thoughts that tell you that you are not meant for greatness. After all, I am a woman who has struggled with these issues. I have lived it. You don’t need a PhD. to gather research on that subject. SAVED by my own philosophy! If I believed that what I had experienced could help other women I had a responsibility to do so. I would put my heart on the line. If it helped just one girl, even if that girl was me and no one else ever took another look at it I would have accomplished something great. I would love me…. and why not? After all, I am good enough and so are you!

MY JOURNEY

The little voice inside me that always told me I wasn’t good enough began chipping away at my self esteem as far back as the fifth grade. I went through what I like to call an “awkward phase”. I was short, a little chubby, and had a huge gap between my two front teeth. I wore big red glasses that actually sat perfectly atop my little round cheeks. My best friend was a very mature girl who looked like she was eighteen. One day on the playground we were trying to get the boys attention by playfully interrupting their soccer game. I had a major crush on one of the boys. This was my first real crush. As every girl knows, the manner in which your first crush reacts to you can forever change life as a fifth grader knows it. Even though there was very obviously no competition between my prematurely voluptuous friend and me when it came to who the boys would rather pay attention to, she decided to make up a nickname for me. “Pudgy pig!” she yelled across the soccer field. “Get the ball pudgy pig!” When the boys realized that she was calling me that name they laughed hysterically. I was mortified. I went home and stared at my naked body in the mirror and cried. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me…. what a croc!
My mom sat with me at the kitchen table. It took her a while to coax it out of me. I was too embarrassed even for her to know what happened.  I was ashamed because in my mind I felt that if everyone at school thought I was a pudgy pig then she must see it too. I was convinced that this must have been common knowledge and I had just been let in on what everyone else had known all along. She kept telling me that when I smiled I lit up a room. Instead of taking it as a compliment I wondered why she didn’t just tell me I wasn’t fat. What a fool I had been to not see it before. I decided that instead of crying to her about it I would set out to change it.
The ball was rolling. I began sneaking Dexatrim out of the medicine cabinet after everyone was asleep. I hated my body. That summer I was even ashamed to wear a swimsuit in front of my family. I remember reading in a magazine that if you chew your food one hundred times per bite your body will not absorb as much fat. A week before we had plans to go swimming at the KOA campground with my grandparents I chewed every bite one hundred times. I did sit-ups in my room at night so I would not be fat in my swimsuit. I was eleven years old.
If I could go back in time I would spend less time worrying about my body and more time enjoying being young and carefree. A seed had been planted in my young mind. As the years went by that seed was watered and nurtured by society, my peers, and by my own self hate until it its roots were firmly planted in my head. I went through the rest of my adolescent life reminding myself everyday that I was not good enough. In high school I wore a size four. I had what I look back on as the perfect figure, yet I was never happy with the way I looked.  When I graduated and went off to college the gymnastics and cheerleading that had been such a part of my life in high school came to a screeching halt.  I replaced those activities with school and work. It was my first taste of the real world and instead of carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders… it soon showed up on my rear!
I am sure you have heard of the “freshman fifteen”.  Well, when I moved home after just one semester I had put on twenty pounds! When you are five foot four, twenty pounds might as well be fifty. I had a hard enough time accepting my body before, but now I was totally disgusted with myself. Even though I was ashamed of my body I put on that smile that my mother always bragged on and I faced all of the people I had not seen since graduation. I acted as if nothing had changed, but inside it was a different story. I was so ashamed that I was the only one out of all my friends to have packed on the dreaded college weight.
Why is it that when we put on a few pounds all of a sudden we feel like the absolute scum of the earth? My personal favorite is when people point it out as if you don’t have a mirror. I just want to look at them and say, “Thank you for that enlightening bit of information. I actually had no idea that I had gained weight until you said something!” At Christmas that year my grandpa patted my arm and said to me, “You look like you’ve beefed up!” Beefed up? What am I a cow? I fought back tears. The voice inside me grew louder and louder.
Many crucial changes began happening in my life and I pretty much linked them directly to the changes in my body. My first real relationship began to fizzle and at one point he actually used the words, “You’re getting fat and I can’t handle it.” After many similar heart breaking conversations we broke up for good. We had begun dating when I was in high school and still very thin. Although my heart was broken, deep down inside I didn’t blame him. I felt worthless. How could anyone love me this way?
I opted not go back to school the next semester and I got my own apartment. It was to be the beginning of many character building experiences in my young life.  I have since then learned that the phrase “character building” usually translated to “gut wrenching”. For me it was the realization that my life may not turn out the way I had once planned.
I spent the next few years believing that because I was never going to be a size four again that I would never be worthy of great things. I let those thoughts dictate the way I lived my life for a long time. I lost respect for myself and made some terrible decisions. The problem was not that I was slightly overweight. It was that I believed that because I was overweight that I did not deserve my self respect. My confidence was lost in the midst of it all.
Starting from the time I was about nineteen, I became the queen of crazy diets. Initially I started off with the no carb diet. For six months I did not put one carbohydrate in my body. I was determined to get those twenty pounds off. The hilarity of it all was that I actually believed that a diet of bacon, hamburger meat, and cheese was actually going to be a long term weight loss success. The weight came off, but in the meantime I was an unpredictable carbohydrate deprived monster! My success was short lived. The second I began to eat bread again my body went into shock. It held on to every french fry, hamburger bun, and doughnut as if I was a hungry bear going into hibernation for the winter. In two months that is exactly what I looked like. I gained back every pound plus two!
My mom told me that her friend’s daughter had lost weight on a forty eight hour miracle diet. My first clue should have been that I had to stay up until three AM when the infomercial came on so I could order it.  I paid for expedited shipping so I could get started as soon as possible. I did become a bit skeptical when I received nothing more than what looked like a bottle of Gatorade. For two days I drank four ounces of this mystery juice every few hours. I ate nothing and spent the better part of the two days in the bathroom. At the end of it I had lost only seven pounds and I did not even have the energy to celebrate. Needless to say it only took me forty eight more hours for the “miracle” weight loss to return.  I was on this crazy dieting roller coaster for over a year. When all else failed I went back to the no carb thing only to see my weight yo-yo with no real solution in sight.
Next, I decided to put myself on the Slim Fast plan. I drank one for breakfast and lunch, and then ate a light dinner. Eventually I began jogging everyday after work. For once I felt like I was actually accomplishing something. I was totally avoiding scales, but my clothes were getting looser and other people began to notice that I was thinner. I decided that I could step it up a notch with a little help from a powerful fat burner I picked up at the vitamin store. This was before ephedrine was taken off the market. It wasn’t long before I noticed some strange things happening to my body. My hands shook, my heart pounded, I began to sweat profusely at all times, and I could hardly sit still for more than a few minutes. Did I stop taking it? Absolutely not! I was getting skinny, why would I go and do a crazy thing like that?  It seemed a small sacrifice for the results I was seeing. Instead of jogging one mile, I could jog three. The pills totally killed my appetite so I cut out the one meal a day that I was eating before. I had so much energy I began staying out all night dancing with my friends.  I was on a downward spiral emotionally but the desire to be thin consumed me.
It was not until I met my husband Scott and an entirely new group of friends that I began to realize that what I had to offer was much more than a cute figure. Even though I still had issues with my body, it became easier to feel comfortable in my own skin. I eventually took myself off of the pills. My weight fluctuated throughout our relationship and continues to do so, yet Scott’s love was consistent even when my love for myself was under scrutiny.  When I had my daughter I realized there is so much more to life than having the perfect body. My whole perspective on life changed. In the hospital after I gave birth I was heavier than I had ever been….. and happier. I felt a sense of power in being a woman. My body created this amazing little person, how could I possibly be bothered with a few extra pounds!
I have learned most of the lessons in my life the hard way. Learning to love and accept my body has been the hardest. I hope somewhere between these covers that women of all ages can learn from my mistakes.  I finally figured out that self worth starts on the inside. Young girls today are trying to live up to what society views as perfection. This is unfair and likely unachievable. The truth is that we are perfect if we say we are. Speak it and you will believe it. I tell myself at least once a day, “I am good enough fore me!”, and you know what? I feel more confident than I ever have. Of course we should strive to be healthy and take pride in ourselves, but whether you are healthy a size two or a healthy size fourteen does not determine whether you are worthy of happiness in other aspects of your life. Confidence is your best accessory. Don’t leave home without it.
On my journey I have developed some of my own weapons against my battle with body image. In the following pages I am going to explain how you can use them too. I give you permission to laugh, if you promise to learn something!

Read more about I’m Good Enough For Me! and McCarley Slater HERE.

Copyright 2008 McCarley Slater. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.