Skinny Versus Fit

Every once in a while, because I am kind of pathetic, I glance back at my "skinny pictures."  When I was 19, I lost about twenty pounds.  It was not from being healthy and I lost it super fast.  I was constantly freaking out about what I ate and I would have a breakdown if I missed a day at the gym.  I would spend hours just running on a treadmill and only doing strength training on an occasional, haphazard basis.  Compared to being a super unhealthy chubster squeezing into her pants like a busted can of biscuits, I guess I looked better then.  But now I'm looking at them in a new light.

I had lost a lot of weight, true, but I was what I like to call fat-skinny.  You know what I'm talking about.  Just because a person is thin doesn't mean he or she is fit.  At the time, I was all flab.  Fewer pounds of flab, but flab nonetheless (not to mention I was tired all the time and harassed myself for not being thin enough).  I was squishy in all the wrong places and my body was fairly gawky and awkward.  And man, I just had no butt back then.  Exhibit A:

PS I was totally sucking in.

I was just thinking about the definition I'm starting to see now.  Even with how far I have to go, I'm showing more muscle and definition than I ever did back then.  I have never seen my abs.  It's tragic. Until NOW.  It's easy to not get the results you want even when you're killing yourself--because it's easy to be disorganized.  My eating and workout habits have been completely transformed through Shakeology and the 21 Day Fix.  I know I posted this picture last week, but seriously...

I have LINES IN MY BELLY! LINES OF GOODNESS!

I think the reason I feel so much more confident now than I did then is that I am losing weight the right way and my body is different.  It's not a smaller version of the same thing.  And I'm not starving all the time or running on the treadmill until I collapse.  Which is a plus.

Skinny, for people who aren't naturally so, doesn't last.  Eventually you'll lose that desperation or you'll make yourself sick with the obsession.  You just can't maintain that straight mentally ill approach to looking "better."  Eventually you will need to eat some food or you will have a life and not be able to commit yourself to 3 hours at the gym every day.  Or you won't be able to afford a gym anymore.  Or you'll exhaust yourself to the point where your fatigue takes over.  But when you get in a lifestyle of fitness, everything changes.  That's what I love about Beach Body.  It's about living a healthy lifestyle, not dieting, not punishing, not obsessing.  It seriously changes everything.