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"Hi, guys! Some of you followed my journey on the shape-up blog, where I documented my weight-loss journey for over a year, before passing the torch to Karina. I wrote about my anxiety over being a bridesmaid--I lived in such fear of attention on my body that I actually said no to a friend who&amp;#x27;d asked me to be in her wedding a few years ago, when I was at my heaviest. So the wedding I was in this Saturday marked a milestone for me--actually, a few of them... 1.) I didn&amp;#x27;t hide from photos. Plus, it&amp;#x27;s pretty difficult to go unnoticed in an electric-blue bridesmaid&amp;#x27;s dress. 2.) I chose a strapless dress because simply because it was the one I liked the most--and didn&amp;#x27;t tell myself I had to &amp;quot;wait till I&amp;#x27;m thinner&amp;quot; to be able to wear it, like I would&amp;#x27;ve done in the past. 3.) I didn&amp;#x27;t wear a bra--for the first time ever! When you lose a third of your body weight, your boobs are the first to go. (Mine got smaller by more than 2 cup sizes.) As a friend of mine says, though, &amp;quot;Anything more than a handful is a wasteful&amp;quot;--so I&amp;#x27;m OK with it! But I have to admit, there are still plenty of body-image issues I struggle with. They don&amp;#x27;t consume my every thought any longer (my energy was, for the most part, focused on my friend, the bride, and her day) but I had moments that reminded me that I continue to have work to do, emotionally, to recover from the land of body hatred I lived in for so long. For example... 1.) I still compared myself to everyone around me. It&amp;#x27;s a plain fact: I was the &amp;quot;biggest&amp;quot; bridesmaid. And it&amp;#x27;s a challenge to love my body when I&amp;#x27;m often the largest girl in all my circles of friends. 2.) By the time I hit the dance floor, I worried so much about my arms jiggling in photos that I put on a little jacket I&amp;#x27;d brought with me and refused to take it off, even thought it got HOT. 3.) I found myself judging other people&amp;#x27;s bodies, too. I guess it makes sense that I&amp;#x27;m a tough critic, considering how hard I am on myself, but I&amp;#x27;m really not proud of this character trait. I am so the girl who thinks, &amp;quot;Hmm, those jeans are too tight for her thighs&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;She should&amp;#x27;ve chosen a longer dress.&amp;quot; Do any of you find that you&amp;#x27;re as critical of other people&amp;#x27;s bodies as you are of your own? As I continue to work on accepting myself just the way I am, I need to consciously erase those judgments I have about other people, too. I know that it&amp;#x27;s terribly hypocritical to be angry at the way our society places (negative) value judgments on bodies that are not &amp;quot;perfect,&amp;quot; yet I often do the same! Operation get-over-myself is in effect, starting now! Can any of you relate? Do you catch yourself sizing up other people&amp;#x27;s bodies? How do you retrain your brain?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2009/07/the-body-diaries-im-not-proud>