No Such Thing As A Mistake

While we are on the topic of perfection, there is another topic I feel compelled to talk about. It's something that almost no one even knows about me, because I was... ashamed?... to speak about it.

For about the past 15 years, give or take a few, I have had body issues. This stemmed from being mildly chunky in my adolescence. I wasn't very athletic, so I didn't stay very trim and toned like a lot of the other guys in my class. Even though I was never obese, I was slightly overweight - and when you're in 6th grade and everyone is trying to be cool, they tend to pick on someone who is a bit heavy.

When everyone else is getting taller and thinner while you're staying about the same height, but getting a little wider, you easily become the butt of a lot of jokes. That's what happened to me all through middle school, and part of high school.

Eventually, it got to the point where I would skip breakfast (though, I was never a big breakfast eater anyway), refuse to eat lunch at school, opting to eat a snack when I got home, then eat dinner. I'd skip two meals, trying to see if it would help.

Let me tell you - it didn't. If anything, it slowed down my metabolism and made me gain even more weight.

Finally, I got a little taller and my weight stretched with me. I got slimmer. I was doing better with my self-image, not all that concerned with it - but only because I had slimmed down, and was now mostly proportionate for my weight.

And then came college.

Every freshman is scared of the freshman 15, but I was only mildly worried about it. True, I didn't want to gain the freshman 15 and relive middle- and high-school, but I also didn't want to miss out on anything. If there were snow-cones at school, I got two. If the ice cream truck came by, you can bet I had at least one. On chicken nugget Monday, I was definitely in that line.

And, because of this, I did gain a little weight - not a ton, but some. And my obsession with my body image came back. I began comparing myself to athletic guys at school. I started trying to go to the gym more often, even though I didn't know how half of the equipment worked - I mostly just did the treadmill. I cut back on my ice cream and snow-cone intake.

I was doing whatever I could in order to have the perfect body. But, nothing seemed to work. So, I gave up. I resigned myself to being a bit chunky - even though, if we're being perfectly honest, I wasn't really all that chunky. I had a little stomach flab, but who doesn't? Unless you have 0% body fat, which is NOT healthy, you are going to have a little flab somewhere.

If only I could tell that to my adolescent, teenage, and college self.

Well, then I got in a long-term relationship. Even though she never complained about how I looked, I began worrying that she was going to leave me for some 'hotter' guy. Because, as far as I knew, that's all that mattered to her - looks.

I began going to the gym again, learning the different machines, figuring out what worked and what didn't. I would try to find healthy recipes so that I could eat what I love, but learn to make a healthy alternative.

As I was doing this, she was not doing anything, and was slowly gaining weight. She tried to come to the gym with me multiple times, but always made some excuse as to why she couldn't. Her shoulder hurt this week. Her knee the next. She was too tired. She had too much to do.

That's fine - I was happy to go to the gym by myself. I'd been doing so for about 6 months already.

But then came the comments:
"You're looking a little pudgy."
"Have you even worked your arms in the past month?"
"You clearly skipped leg day."
"You shouldn't eat that."
"What's the point of going to the gym? It's not working. You're just wasting money."

As sad as it is, these were coming from my (now ex) wife. And because I valued (see the past tense?) her opinion, I took her comments to heart.

And I was back in middle school.

I've struggled to get my mind right to where I don't worry about how I look for a very long time. It's not the easiest thing to do, especially when tabloids are showing the 'hottest' new actors or singers or whatever, and they're showing off their six-packs or their bulging biceps. Or when people you know fawn over said celebrities, because of how they look.

Or when you're at the gym, and you see other guys about your size who are ripped, and you wonder: "how did they do that? Are they using steroids? Am I missing something?"

So, I began putting in 2 hours of work at the gym a day, eating as much salad as I could, making apples and oranges and grapes my snack of choice. And it seemed to work for a little bit, but I still wasn't happy. I was still comparing myself to all these other people, whom I didn't even know.

How sad is that?

I'm tired of comparing myself to other guys. I'm me. God made me who I am, and as my girlfriend reminded me when I mentioned this to her, He doesn't make mistakes.

I went to a pool party yesterday, and almost didn't remove my shirt because I was 'ashamed' of the small amount of flab on my stomach, and because I don't have pecs. But then two of my best guy friends removed their shirts, and they had flab on their stomachs and didn't have pecs either. And they didn't care. They were just having a good time at the pool.

That got me thinking, if they can do it, why can't I? So, I took a chance, and removed my shirt.

And you know what their reactions were? They didn't comment on my flab. They didn't make fun of me because I didn't have pecs.

They told me they were glad they brought sunglasses because I was blinding them with how pale I was.

Yeah. They didn't even mention my stomach or my chest. They didn't make fun or jab or criticize or tell me I needed to eat better or go to the gym more. They literally only joked about how pale I was, asking if I was Irish.

Then, last night as I was browsing the internet, one of my Facebook friends had shared a picture from Tumblr. I tried to find it, but no dice.

It read: "The next person you see, go tell them they're ugly. Point out their flaws. Tell them they need to fix their imperfections. Criticize them until they cry.... That's hard, isn't it? So, why do we do that to ourselves?"

And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was doing exactly that. I was pointing out my flaws instead of focusing on anything else that's good about how I look.

Then, another friend shared this picture from a fitness model on Facebook:

Her caption says: "You girls requested for me to share this after posting on snap last week :) Picture on the left was taken one day before the wedding and the picture on the right was taken... 2 minutes after! Someone recently said to me that we all have our good angles and we all have our bad angles, so why do we let our bad angles carry so much more weight than our good angles? If you focus on how bad you look in the bad angles, at least focus on how good you look in the good ones too!!"

That is SO true. And it was another slap in the face to me, because I realized that I was only focused on my bad angles, and wasn't highlighting my good ones.

So, let me just say this: I have decided not to obsess over my body image anymore. It's going to be a struggle, but I know it's one that's worth it. Yes, I'll still try and eat healthy, but I'm not going to be super upset if there's not a salad or an apple or something. And yes, I'll still go to the gym, but instead of doing 2 hour work-outs and killing myself, I'm going to do shorter work-outs just to keep myself in a healthy state.

As Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) says: "For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago."

There are so many other great things that we are called to do than focus on our body image. We are called to so much more. We are called to do His will - and chances are good, we don't have to have the perfect body in order to do that.

God can work with us however with are.