Fit Not Skinny

It's time for a dose of honesty, gentle readers.

I have always, always wanted to be skinny.

I know, I knoooow, I'm supposed to say this is about my health, and happiness, and feeling comfortable in my own skin, and finding inner peace, and beating my disordered eating behaviors, and yes, it is about all those things. Truly it is, more so than anything else.

But it's also about my inner bespectacled tubby twelve year old self, who really really really wanted to be skinny and hot like all the chicks in my stack of Seventeen and TM magazines. I'm not going to lie to you about that cliche fact. I had my aspirations of Victoria Secret modeldom, I had my walls plastered with "thinspo", I had unhealthy ideas of what I could eventually look like, if only I tried hard enough, wished hard enough.

Oh yeah, I could
totally have an entirely
different body type!

Recently, though, I truly have started to want something different. Need something different, actually. Something more tangible, a little less superficial. Something I can hold onto, something with meaning. The newest cliche, taking over Pinterest motivation boards far and wide, fitspiration instead of thinspiration...I want to be fit, not skinny.

Skinny is surface, skinny is impermanent, skinny is something you're probably born with, or maybe not but it doesn't really sound healthy, does it? Skinny is weightless like a feather, a child's dream, something I shouldn't aspire to.

Fit is solid. Fit is a goal you can work towards always, not something to suffer for. Fit is healthy, fit is strength and speed and soul and success. Fit looks different on everyone, and fit is something you can hold on to.

It's so cool to me now that I'm back to going to yoga regularly and am able to see progress class to class, week to week. I'm getting better. I'm getting stronger. I can feel change, see change, and that's what I want to chase, this feeling inside of me instead of some ideal in the mirror. This feeling of fitness, of health and control and power and serenity, THIS is the goal. This is what twelve year old me really wanted when I stared at the pages of my magazine over a decade ago, when I saw glowing beaming smiling models who looked so secure in their own skin.

Fit is what I want. Fit is what I seek.

And sure, a hot, toned ass might come along with that.

But that's just a perk.

Badumdumchh.

Get it? PERKY?

And we're done.