Thanks, Mom!

I’ve been trying to tone my arms for years. Pushups, chest presses, tricep dips, etc – it’s all in my repertoire. And every few months or so I get depressed that I’m not seeing any changes, give up, and come back to it a week or two later, ready to try again, with more weight or less weight and more reps or just more of something that will give me some sort of definition – anything! But nothing seems to work.

And then one day this summer, I realized why. I was sitting there with my mom, and her sister (my aunt), and their mother (my grandmother) as we all worked on plans for my upcoming wedding. I will filled with so much love and excitement, and I sat looking at them, three generations of women (myself included). All with flabby arms. And that’s when it hit me – the four of us, we are all built them same. We all carry our weight on one place – our arms (well, other places too, but the arms seem to get a disproportionate amount). Oh, I wish I had some further down around my hips, or higher up around my chest, but nope – I don’t, and neither do they.

I can do all the strength training I want, and I have been, but it probably won’t make me look much different. It will be good for my body, sure, and I do try to include it for that reason. But what an insight to look around and realize how connected we are by genetics. It actually kind of helps with body image, too, I find – to think of myself as looking like these three strong women I love so much, rather than focusing on what I hate (my arms, my big teeth). (And I do have rather large teeth.)

It’s always easy to look in the mirror and find things that we wished looked different or “better,” but I’m trying to look in the mirror and find things I can respect or enjoy. It helps to accept that there are things we cannot change, and things we can. I’m trying to remember that.

And honestly, there's no one I'd rather look like than my family.