"Thanks. It hides my stomach rolls."

While with some of my girlfriends this weekend I made a comment about how I didn't like a picture we were looking at because I "looked fat". To this my friend Kate challenged me to go an entire week without saying something bad about my body. I thought this would be easy. I was wrong.

It's only Tuesday and I am already dumbstruck about how easily I put myself down. Last night a friend paid me a complement on the vest I was wearing. I replied by saying, "Thanks! It hides my stomach rolls." I didn't even flinch when I replied. It all came spilling out of my mouth so fast I had no clue what I was saying until I said it. Really stopping and hearing myself made me realize the complete idiocy of my own statement. The struggles with staying positive don’t stop here.

I told my roommate about "Positive Week". She jumped on the idea and right away. She insisted that I change my body type on my Myspace from "some extra baggage" to "average". According to my roommate "extra baggage" is only what really fat people put on their page. This sparked a great deal of thought...and confusion. I always thought I was being honest about my body by saying that I do have “extra baggage”. I consider myself a bigger girl, not fat necessarily but bigger. I ran this issue by a few of my friends. Some were surprised…one said she was “horrified” about what I said. I see the need to stop putting myself down but I also think it’s important to be honest about your body. However, I’m stuck now with wondering if my vision of myself has is distorted. If I can’t see myself the way everyone else sees me am I then lying to myself?

I’ve haven’t really reached a conclusion in all of this. All I can say is that changing your actions is easy. Changing your thinking is really... REALLY hard. In the end I took this statement about my body type off Myspace all together. I figured it was no ones business anyway what my body type is.