View Your Body As If You Were 80

ahadj

Great article from Adios Barbie. Copy-pasted below for your convenience, but here's the link... they have a lot of great body image stuff on this site.
http://www.adiosbarbie.com/2010/11/view-your-body-as-if-you-were-80/

View Your Body As If You Were 80
By Sharon Haywood

“What would your 80-year-old self say if she saw you right now?” I love this question. I thank Julie M. Green for posing it in her piece at Real Zest. Do you believe when you reach 80 that you’ll look back of photos of yourself at 20, 30, 40 or even 50 and think:

“Look at that paunch! I really should have done more sit-ups.”
“Why didn’t I get a breast lift?”
“What was I thinking? I should have never gone out in public wearing a bikini!”

Or do you think your inner dialogue at 80 would probably sound something more like:

“Why did I obsess so much over my belly? I could have eaten more chocolate.”
“I didn’t realize I looked so good.”
“I really should have gone to the beach more.”

Today at 40-something, when I look at pictures of myself in my teens and twenties I can’t help but be saddened. My self-image was so distorted. I looked in the mirror and saw a young woman who was obese, when in fact I was nowhere near it. And even when I was at my highest weight, I can now look at my plus-size photos and see beauty. When I find myself reverting back to hating on my body, I call on what Green refers to as my “inner octogenarian” to shake me back to reality. In 40 years when I’m in my 80s, I have little doubt I will care how wide my backside is or how much my underarms jiggle.

How about you?

thetrishwarp

I think that's a great way to look at things

Even now I'm finding I think I look thinner in photos than in the mirror. I don't want to live my whole life thinking I'm fat! I'm sure when I'm 80 I'm gonna look back and think "Wow. 19-year-old Trish knew what was up." - I wanna look back and know I lived my life to the fullest without always feeling like a whale. That's why my big goal is to reach my weight goal before my 20th birthday, so that (as long as I maintain) I'm not always freaking out as I start having to be in wedding pics and vacation photos and what not that will go on in my 20s.

cornfritter22

Thanks, Anna, I need this and I bet a bunch of other people do too.