Love your body, love yourself

I weigh more than I should. Seriously. Like 15 pounds. My BMI is too high. However, my blood pressure is low and my good cholesterol so high it balances out the bad. In a normal week, I exercise for at least an hour 5 different times. Sometimes I take double tae kwon do classes and it's 2 hours or I walk at the lake for 30 minutes. At any rate, I am probably in the best shape of my life, cardio- and muscle-wise. Still, I'm flabby. It's been almost a year, but the baby weight is not completely gone. I have this thing sitting around my middle that hangs out over my jeans. And I weigh more than I should. I have excuses. I had 2 babies in 2 years. And what some of you probably don't know is, I had another "kind of" pregnancy in 2004 that was really just a blighted ovum, but made me feel pregnant nonetheless and I gained 15 pounds in 2 months. 15 pounds that I am still carrying around. Then I gained 60 (60!) pounds with each (each!) of my next 2 "for-real" pregnancies. I guess one way to look at it is that I've lost 55+ pounds in less than a year, twice. I wouldn't say I struggle with my weight, it's more that I struggle with my outlook on my weight. Yesterday I was at kickboxing class and I was looking at myself in the mirror while I was working out and instead of using the mirror as motivation like, "Oh, you're such a fatass, you better kick higher and faster to burn off those fat thighs," I tried to look at myself and like what I saw. Sure, I have a spare tire around the middle. And yes, I have large thighs and a big butt. But (haha - butt) again, I tried to like what I saw. Not that the spare tire can't vanish or the thighs get more toned and less cellulite-y, but I need to do those things for my health, not for what I see in the mirror. Yesterday I also did something strange (for me) while I was eating lunch. I ate until I was full and then...I stopped eating. I threw the rest away. Today after lunch I was still hungry, so I ate some more. I'm trying to change my outlook. Why do I kickbox, walk at the lake with my boys, and do tae kwon do? Because it's fun and good for my body, not to thin out. Why do I eat? To give my body fuel, to have energy, to feel good, not to look like someone else. No longer am I not going to eat when I'm hungry because I think by doing that the scale will say something different in the morning. And I'm going to try the eat-till-you're-full-then-stop thing more often. Maybe if I do this, I will lose those extra 15 pounds. Then again, maybe I won't. But my body and, more importantly, my mind and my outlook on myself will be healthy and that's more important than what the scale says in the morning.