I've always been the tall one. Big-boned (Thanks, Mother Nature), Thick. Imagine a six foot tall 13-year-old. Yeah, that was the age I finally stopped my growth spurt. You probably think I was super awesome and popular right? Uh, sure in my dreams.
If you don't know already, I am six feet tall. My calves are thick and muscular from 13 years of horseback riding. My thighs thick from my love of cheese. All around just in-yo-face height and woman.
If you're reading this blog, you're close to my personality. We could probably be really good friends. That being said, you would probably agree with me that an athletic looking body is perhaps, eh, a little more attractive than a sack o' bones? If you're reading this blog, I'm assuming you're into fitness and making yourself a better surfer. You're also, uh, a female and you don't mind showing others you are in fact a girl.
Aren't you wanting to do whatever it takes to make yourself succeed at the sport that makes you so happy? Then you have not choice but to take care of yourself! To the girls who are on the thin side naturally, lucky you. But to the rest (majority?) of ladies... we have to work a little harder to maintain a good healthy look.
Now some of you might actually be scrunching up your nose and thinking, "Ugh, muscle? Women look so WEIRD with actual biceps! Sick! They look like men!" Okay, seriously, throw out that mentality because it's honestly for the birds. I'm not talking about the Olympian sized women. There is no physical way you, A LADY, can bulk up that much as a woman without taking a little something called TESTOSTERONE. or STEROIDS. Glad, we cleared that up. The women that grace REAL fitness magazine like my fave, Oxygen, have their bodies because of hard work, clean eating, and just plain determination. There was one woman in the ads I decided to look up because she said she discovered surfing in her 30's and wanted to become better at it. So she joined a gym and cut out all the crap from her diet. Does she look like a runway model now? No! But she looks fit, healthy, and happy. And from what I've read, she can actually rip now. I'd rather have that than be
skinny fat any day.
This is one of the concentrations I want to see in DAVY's posts. Clean eating, healthy recipes, self love, and perserverance in fitness. Fitness and health is natural. Processed junk and calories and thru-window meals are not. Last year, the first three months I was part of a gym and wrote down EVERYTHING I ate. Even the cheating I wrote down because the only person I have to keep accountable is myself. My body knew what went inside even if I did not want to admit it. Through going to the gym, healthy eating, & determination I lost 20 POUNDS.
Twenty!!
Anything is possible if I am able to get myself to do it. A lot of body confidence issues comes from wanting approval from other people, no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise. I used to have an eating disorder and while a lot of the times it was because I over ate and was clinically depressed, I also longed to look like the girls the guys were fawning over and like the ones the catalogues were sending me. It was such an unhealthy relationship with food. My relationship with my diet has been more turbulent than any human relationship I've ever had. I still look at pictures of thin girls and the little green-eyed monster starts scuttling out. But instead of beating myself up, I put on my headphones and take a walk. Or I take my board and get out into the water. Or I run the stairs. BECAUSE SITTING ON YOUR ASS DOES NOT DO ANYTHING BENEFICIAL FOR YOU. Become enemies with your chair and try to stay away from it as much as possible! A lot of ladies look at these photos and wish, hope, and dream and not do anything to promote a beautiful body.
We've all wished we were there at some point in our life. Whether we are looking back at our "younger days" when we fit into a size 00 jean size (HA), looking at a Vogue issue, or trying on a new pair of jeans in the TJ MAXX dressing room (can I get an AMEN?) I've wished for my thighs to be just a tad smaller so I could fit into skinny jeans. I've wished for many different things for my body. I sometimes still dislike my height (damn you, standard jean sizes!!) but I know that a lot of people wish they were my height. How do I know? Well, they tell me. My height made me an incredible asset to my rowing team in college, I don't need help reaching things, I can clear a path in a crowd like Moses, and when I wear nude-colored sexy minx heels... my legs. go. for.
miles. Can I get a '
Holla!' from all my tall ladies?!
Strength is so much better than just looking like I need help lifting everything. I can take care of my own damn self. I've accepted the fact that even though I am tall, my body was just not built to be rail thin. It was built to be able to handle whatever comes it's way and all the crap I try to push it through. It was built to benefit from a run, all day paddling, pushing through a bicycle ride.
I am a Glamazon, a beautiful woman that turns heads because of how I already look and not how I wish to be. I turn heads with my personality, my demeanor, and my aura. And that already feels better than skinny (fat) would ever would.
