Love Your Body Day

“Love Your Body Day” is today! Who knew? Well, apparently some people did, but I only just now discovered it. I feel we should all celebrate.

This seems like a kickass sort of thing to celebrate, particularly when it is so easy to say negative things about your body instead of positive. Too often a girl is viewed as conceited if she says something positive about her body, but we can all list off things we hate about ourselves. Sure, every woman has fat days or ugly days or “I just want to stay in bed with a pint of ice cream” days, but today should not be any of those!

I wish I weren’t guilty of thinking negatively about my body at times, but I totally am. I’m human, I have days when the scale annoys me or I’m cranky or I have no clean laundry and am left to wear the strangest outfit possible. The strange thing is that it is SO easy to tell others why they are so awesome, so why is it so hard to tell yourself that? One of my best friends and I got into a habit of e-mailing and saying things like, “I feel fat today” or listing things that we felt were wrong, so instead we started saying one thing we liked about ourselves that day or telling each other one good thing about the other person. (We waste a lot of time at work sending silly e-mails to each other. Don’t tell my boss.) And I never notice the flaws that people point out about themselves—usually I just notice how much they rock! That’s the way women should interact both with others and with themselves—instead of focusing on the negative, why not focus on the positive?

Here are five things I love about my body today, in no particular order:
1. It does what I tell it to do. I never thought I would be capable of running even a mile, let alone the 13.1 that I’m preparing to run in a few weeks. Nor did I think I could do a correct pushup or bend in funny ways during yoga. Turns out my body will do what I need; it just has to be properly trained. Kind of like a puppy

2. My curves. I may not be stick thin or even at a healthy body weight, but I like the figure that I have. It’s one that I’ve worked hard to shape and it reminds me that I’m strong. Also, it gives me extra reason to dance around and sing “Bootylicious.” Don’t lie, you’ve all done it.

3. My eyes. They are a feature that people compliment me on the most, for one, and for another they do cool things like sort of change shades of blue depending on what color shirt I’m wearing.

4. My body’s ability to bounce. I’m a very bouncy person. I dance around a lot, I sing, I bump into walls and trip and it doesn’t hurt very badly. Just a few minutes ago I found myself dancing around in my desk chair and singing “Bootylicious.” If I had the type of body that liked to be sedentary, it would be a tragedy. I like that I have energy and my limbs tend to agree.

5. My legs. Hot damn, is running ever good for sculpting your legs. Not only do they look good, but also I like feeling all of the muscles working to propel me forward. When I ran the 10k last month I had the most glorious moment while approaching the finish line—I pushed myself to sprint the last tiny bit of the race and could feel my legs working. Feeling all the muscles contracting and knowing that I was responsible for making them be able to do so was a good moment.

So that’s what I love about my body! I think everyone should leave me a comment describing five things they love about their body. Dooooo it…… You know you’re all sexy beasts, just admit it.