It's funny how inspiration can come from the strangest of places..and as I learned today, sometimes salvation can too.
I've had a really tumultuous relationship with food since I was about 13. Sometimes I would restrict myself to eating 1 piece of fruit a day, other times would binge when no one was looking. I never told anyone about my issues with food but they were clearly there, and kept resurfacing every couple of years. My fears of being inadequate always did a really good job at triggering my destructive behavior. The simplest of things would send me on a downward spiral. Shopping got to be torture, and I couldn't even go on a date unless I had "prep time", which involved starving myself 2 wks prior to. Needless to say I was a mess.
The last time I went on one of those downward spirals was about two yrs ago, and somehow I hadn't had any issues since...until a few wks ago. I was still eating healthy and not starving myself, but I felt those negative nagging thoughts grow stronger every day. And today was the hardest day of all, I felt myself giving in to those thoughts. I spent most of the day debating whether or not to eat, and as the day went on I was honestly leaning towards no. I even found myself looking at pictures and videos as "thinspiration" the way I used to. And I'm actually really glad I did because I came across a video that helped pull me out of that destructive mindset. It's an odd thing to say, but today youtube saved me.
I know you can find a lot of stuff on youtube, but it never crossed my mind that I'd be able to find that sense of hope I'd lost only a few short days ago. The best part is this wasn't a video of someone's inspirational vlog where they talk about the importance of loving yourself. This was a video that clearly demonstrated what it LOOKS like when someone loves themselves. The video showed a woman bellydancing, and she wasn't your typical thin dancer but you could tell the crowd loved her and better yet you could tell she really loved herself! She danced with such freedom, there was no shame on her face, just joy and that's exactly what I needed to see in order to snap back to reality. The reality is that we're always beautiful... on a level that's much deeper than your outward appearence. She reminded me that my beauty comes from your soul, not my thighs.
So here's the video, and I hope you get something as amazing as I did from it...
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