You are Worth More than a Number on a Scale

I recently posted this photo on Instagram and it quickly become my most liked photo that I've ever posted. It's really just a sign with a simple truth, but I wonder how many times we buy into the lies.

The lies that says,

I'm not...

good enough

skinny enough

smart enough

pretty enough...and on and on.

We wholeheartedly believe that others are beautiful. But ourselves, no way. We feel stuck in some sort of ugly duckling waiting for our swam transformation to happen. We keep thinking my time will come for this amazing transformation if I could just lose those five pounds, or get a nose job, or fill in the blank.

Maybe you are like me. The girl who stands in front the mirror in target pulling on a pair of skinny jeans unsatisfied with the end result. So I do what makes the most sense, and I call myself fat. A silly pair of $19.99 pants that frankly I don't need to own, and my gut reaction is to hurler insults at myself. Maybe I'm not alone. In fact, I know I'm not alone. I see and hear you do it to. I see the college girls in the locker room at the gym pinch their size 2 bodies trying to find a silver of fat to justify the excessive exercise and diets. I hear the new moms at the pool stress about the baby weight they are battling to lose. I watch the endless teenagers post selfies on Instagram adding to the almost 5 million hashtags of the word diet.

It's about time we stopped calling ourselves fat. Yes, I'm talking to you. When did we become a culture where a compliment is found in, "you look so skinny"? There is nothing glamorous in living for a compliment that comes at a cost of diet pills, starvation, and self-hate. Maybe you were like me and spent part of your childhood hoping and wishing you'd grow up to look like Barbie only to be disappointed when the reality that it would never happen set in. And the truth is, we were never made to look like Barbie.

I spent part of my teenage years waging a war against the scale. It was like my best friend and worst enemy all wrapped into one. My feet would slowly creep onto it, and for a split second before the numbers appeared I would hope and wish to see a certain number. And every day, I failed to measure up. The second I got anywhere close to reaching my goal, I would just lower it to another unreachable number.

And don't even get me started on the mirror. I felt like the evil stepmother in Snow White wanting to know who was the fairest of them all. And every day it robbed me of ever seeing my inner beauty because I was so caught up in the comparison game of seeing how I fell short compared to the outward beauty of others around me.

But its about time we made a change. 

We are worth so much more than the self-hate we put ourselves through.

It's time we started embracing ourselves a little lot more.

Love yourself like your mama did the first time she saw your teeny tiny toes.

Remember that you are just as valuable as a size 16 as you are a size 2. 

Speak truth over yourself like you would to your dearest friend.

Don't forget that a number on a scale will never define you.

Learn to embrace your imperfections, your scars, and your battle wounds. They are a road map of how you got to where you are today.

and lastly, 

hey you. yes YOU. You reading this....you are beautiful!