Category: Be Your Own Beautiful

I hate to move it move it

On By MezzoSherriIn Be Your Own Beautiful, Don't you want to be thin?, Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

So I mentioned that I had a less-than-wonderful endocrinologist appointment near the end of January. Basically, my A1C level is elevated after however-long of being stable.

And it could be a post-2020 dumpster fire kind of anomaly. After all, my stress has been through the roof since last fall, what with a very COVID Christmas, the presidential transition (and insurrection) and coming up on the first anniversary of this COVID life.* And to be honest, I paid just about ZERO attention to monitoring my carbs or sugar intake during the latter months of the year. Plus the fact that I’ve been sedentary as fuck since this COVID thing started. Most of my activity in recent years has been of the “functional fitness” variety: walking from the parking garage to the office building, being on my feet at work, airport and city walking during my almost-monthly business trips, plus the recreational activities of play rehearsals and dance choreography. And none of that has been happening for the last 11 months.

Two potatoes with cartoon faces drawn on them, sitting side by side on a dollhouse-sized couch.

So, the spike in my A1C level could be temporary. Or it could be a progression in whatever level of pre-diabetes/insulin resistance/whatever ethical doctors really call it I currently have.

Jury’s still out on that—more observation and follow-up testing over the next few months to see what’s what.

But regardless of what the diagnostic outcome is, feels like a good time to get my butt off the couch.

Which, alas, isn’t anywhere near as easy a task as that sounds.

Because this past week, I’ve come face to face with the depths of how diet culture has completely destroyed my relationship with healthful bodily movement.**

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Shine on, you crazy diamond

On By MezzoSherriIn Be Your Own Beautiful, Memoir, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

I’m gonna be a little bit emotionally honest tonight.

One of the main reasons I posted my reading challenge list last night is ‘cos I was still too embarrassed to share my word for 2021.

[Quick catch-up for anyone who needs it: I’ve chosen focus words for a few years now, which is something a number of folks in the self-development world do. And, as I mentioned in the run-up to New Year’s Eve, my word organically came to me somewhere early-to-mid-December.]

Now, that unbidden emergence is the way all my successful word-of-the-year experiments happened,* so odds are that unbidden word is the right choice for me in 2021. And I have enough trust in my intuition that I haven’t been actively seeking a different option. But, alas, I also have enough self-judgement that I’ve not been willing to share this word with anyone.

And what is this super-embarrassing term that has me in such a tizzy?

Shine.

A close-up picture of a sparkler.

(Kinda silly, right?)

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Keeping a tight grip

On By MezzoSherriIn Be Your Own Beautiful, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

I’ve written before about sometimes using home manicures as a small gesture of self-care—both during COVID and in the before-times.

Though let’s be really real: my skill level, as far as the application of nail polish is concerned, is low enough that calling my efforts a “manicure” is giving myself WAY too much credit.

Nonetheless, I have, in other times, enjoyed painting my nails. It helps me feel pretty and expressive. And it helps me keep from biting my nails—a lifelong habit.

Key modifier here: in other times. Nowadays, I have begrudgingly made peace with the idea that I am not likely to paint my nails until after we have election results.

So: December some time.

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