how do you keep on loving your body when it's not loving you back

Here's a tragic short story

I went on a trip to Texas, happy as can be with my body and picking myself up everyday through the general insecurities, a healthy weight.

Came back after just one week, ONE WEEK.

I had gained 10 pounds.

The end.

What the hell, man?!

There is a difference between loving your body for what it is a keeping it healthy. They are two separate issues. The first morning I was there they fed me a hot dog wrapped in a donut and deep fried with powdered sugar on it. After a taste of that washed down with the a cup of sugar and a hint of coffee, it was all down hill from there.

Coming home was hard. I had to overcome my obsessing over the way I looked and had to focus on the way I felt.

It was tricky and I'm still working on it. You can gain weight 10 times faster than you can lose it.
But here is what I learned. What you put on the inside effects your outside. Obviously I had heard this before and I had understood and processed it but never truly experienced it. So tell me, how do you keep on loving your body when it's not loving you back?  

You treat it as a temple. Ya, ya I know it sounds super Christianese, but its the truth.

Through my little challenge I've been dealing with having to learn how to love my body at every state.

Through each step of getting my health back and feeling good I have to take each day as a gift. A step closer to returning to, not necessarily to how much I used to weigh, but, to how I used to feel.

I'm 5"2. On someone genetically as stout as I am, 10 lbs makes a big difference. I instinctively went for a run the day I returned and found myself unbearably out of shape.

Like any young girl, I looked for the quickest diet or exercise to help myself out. Flipping through magazines I was told by the media to believe in certain tricks and tips on how to be healthy, but to be honest, it's all crap.

Heath is not a weight or a size or a shape. Health is the functions inside working rhythmically and it showing on the outside.

And with the pursuit of health comes a confidence. When you treat your body right it treats you right. Take care of it and it will take care of you. Love it and it will love you.

And with every individual body comes a specific health. The way you take care of your body to keep healthy may be completely different from the way I keep my body healthy, and that's ok.

You are unique. Every inch of you. And with your uniqueness comes a responsibility to love yourself and love on yourself. There's no perfect equation to keeping your body healthy. For some it's eating right and exercising occasionally for others they have to work a little harder. Whatever it may be in your practice of health we must all remember one very important thing.

If you wait to love yourself until after you've reached your goal or what-not, you'll quickly learn that no matter how many crunches you do or how much celery you eat, you will never be good enough for your own expectations.

So stop comparing and expecting your body to become something it's not. Start loving yourself today, don't wait, start today, start now.