Pretzels for Lunch: Heading Back to the School Cafeteria
originally published April 2017
That phase when I had pretzels for lunch. Every. Single. Day.
National Pretzel Day took me back to high school. More specifically it took me back to the high school cafeteria. I don’t remember it to be a necessarily “bad” time, but I know it was not a happy stage. Overall, I spent my high school years feeling insecure and struggling with body image.
I became consumed with my weight when I was fairly young…upper elementary and beyond. Eating lettuce with salt on it and dipping carrot sticks in mustard (don’t even ask!) was my norm. And in high school I’d eat pretzels for lunch and have a bag of milk…remember those days – when milk came in a bag??? Anyway…
For those years and 20 + years more, I was obsessed with my weight – that number on the scale. I was ALWAYS trying to lose weight, skimping on food, over-exercising, feeling self-conscious, and always worried that people were looking at me and saying to themselves “she looks like she’s put on weight.”
#NationalPretzelDay had me recalling when I had pretzels for lunch everyday in high school. Click To Tweet
Even though the days of pretzels for lunch with a bag milk are years behind me, when my son told me that National Pretzel Day was April 26, it took me back to the lonely table in high school (I was quite a loner) eating my pretzels for lunch and drinking my milk.
However it doesn’t make me sad. It makes me grateful for how far I’ve come. It took a long time. Thank goodness for the Lord’s loving patience with me that I’ve come through that desert time.
And now my passion and my mission is that no girl, no woman, spends all of her energy worrying about numbers on a scale and feeling self-conscious and letting negative thoughts about her body bombard her mind.
How pretzels for lunch led me to building a community of #faithandfitness for women. Click To Tweet
It’s why I’ve created a community where women can find support and encouragement on her fitness journey. The first step is to build this fit life on a foundation of faith. We must begin to see ourselves as these wonderful creations that God intended us to be.
Yes, we need to be healthy and we need to live fit, but that doesn’t look the same on everyone. Living a healthy life doesn’t require you to live a life of no’s, restriction, and body shaming.
You see, I had this idea in my head of what that number on the scale should be and what I needed to look like. I obsessed over it. I felt that if I could just lose five pounds, I’d be happy and feel good about myself. But that wasn’t the answer.
It started with my belief system and changing my thinking. I had to like my own reflection. Most of all, I had to find confidence in who I was and in who I was created to be. I gained that confidence by believing what the Bible says about me. You can too, because His Word applies to all of us.
You and I are “fearfully and wonderfully made” ( see Psalm 139:14).
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