BEFORE MY TRANSFORMATION
All of my life I have struggled with food, my weight and my body image. I can remember feeling self-conscious about my body as early as third grade, and I can remember binge-eating and emotional eating habits as far back as 11 or 12 years old. I’ve cycled through diets and exercise plans, self-love and happy-as-I-am mindsets, and back again more times than I can count. I measured food in my mind as “bad” or “good,” and I measured my health by my weight and clothes size. Both mindsets often left me feeling defeated and unhappy.
WHAT I DID
About two years ago my mindset was altered through an awesome book called “THINspired” by Mara Schiavocampo. I encountered the book at a particularly low point in my fitness life. I was the heaviest I have ever been and I felt terrible both physically and emotionally. I saw Schiavocampo do an interview on TV about her book and her health journey, and everything she talked about in the interview sounded just like my story. I devoured her book (no pun intended) within a few hours. For the first time I felt like someone else truly understood my struggle and had gained victory over it. Schiavocampo’s story inspired me to take my life and my health into my own hands, and she shared the tools for me to be able to do that.
HOW IT WORKED
The most important mindset shift that I experienced was about the nature of food. I realized that food is amoral — it is neither good nor bad. It’s just food. As I experienced that shift in my mindset, I found it was so much easier to make healthy food choices because I was no longer just deciding what I wanted to eat. The other element of health that I learned to reconsider was exercise. Before, I thought of exercise as a type of punishment — a penance done to atone for the food sins of the day. However, I came to understand exercise as a celebration of my body’s abilities.
I am happier and healthier than I have ever been because I finally understand that I am not defined by a number on the scale or on the tag of my clothes. – Kelsie Dove
HOW I FEEL ABOUT MYSELF TODAY
Now, almost two years into this journey, with several setbacks and roadblocks under my belt, I am happier and healthier than I have ever been because I finally understand that I am not defined by a number on the scale or on the tag of my clothes. I am defined by all of my dreams, goals, accomplishments, and relationships, and food and exercise simply help me to be the best me possible.