Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

This postcard from PostSecret showed up today and it made me think.

It reads:

I think one of the reasons I like you is because you’re not insanely thin, like the rest of my friends.

Honestly, thoughts like these make me scared to lose weight. What if I lose weight and no one likes me anymore? I’d have to change my lifestyle quite a bit in order to be thin. What if it changes me so much that I lose all my old friends?

I’m sure many of us have fears like this and they don’t all have to do with weight. Going to college, getting a promotion, getting married (or divorced) or even having children can bring up all these same fears. There is only ONE thought that makes me feel better when I start thinking like this:

Things are going to change anyway.

There is NOTHING I can do to stop things from changing. I can’t predict HOW they are going to change, but the one thing I can count on is that my life will be different in five years whether I lose the weight or not.

I might as well have a different life AND a healthy body.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.