What I Think About Me

My bathroom scale has bluetooth that connects to an app on my phone that records my weight data every day.  

The other day, I stepped on the scale and my app flashed a question: "April, is this you?"

Apparently the data was so different than what it usually is, the app was unsure if it was recording data for the right person.

Yes, it is me. (There's nothing quite as humiliating as when the inanimate objects in your life start to pass judgement on your current results, right?)

Of course, my scale and my app cannot pass judgement.  Technically, they can't think for themselves.  Which is what judgement is.  Judgement is just thinking.

And only I could do that in that moment.

Only I could judge my current result because I was the only one in the room that was thinking.  And my thoughts were not positive.  My thoughts were creating the humiliation I felt.

When my app asked if that was really me, I had all kinds of judgement about what that meant about me:  I was failing.  I was backsliding.  I was undoing all my hard work.  And all of that meant there was seriously something wrong with me. 

And it doesn't matter if it's the scale or the app or my mother or my sister-in-law asking the question, the humiliation and negative emotion I felt was completely created by my own brain by my own thoughts.  

I didn't like the number.  I didn't like the question.  And I made them mean terrible things about me.

But these thoughts, like any others are always optional.

I have to decide if they are really serving me and if I want to keep thinking them.

Shame and humiliation make me want to hide.  They don't invite me to get curious about how I am eating and why.  They only encourage me to give up and ignore the problem.  As useful as my brain thinks they are, they will never help me get the results I want.

In order to change how I am eating (in order to change my actions), I will need to be fueled by love, joy, motivation, curiosity, compassion, determination, and confidence.  Not humiliation.

These feelings, contrary to popular opinion, only come from my thoughts and not from my results.  And, I can feel them any time I want, regardless of the number on the scale.  

Feelings are always created by our thoughts not our results.  Knowing that changes everything.  All the work I ever do on my body has to start in my mind.

So, yes, it is me.  

This part is me.  And nothing has gone wrong.  I am just as amazing and flawed and awesome and troubled and powerful and weak and remarkable and broken as always. This is me.  All of me.  And I love all of it.  

How do I do that?  

Always and only, by the thoughts I choose to think about me.