Sitting here watching the olympic trials I was flabbergasted to see a commercial for a certain unnamed breakfast cereal whose advertising campaign consisted of women (women ONLY - at least in this one) standing on a scale in times square to weigh themselves and seeing the word “CONFIDENCE!” “PIZAZZ!” appear on the scale. I am sure this is supposed to be encouraging, but what the hell is going on here? This commercial basically says that the only way you will achieve personal emotional satisfaction is through eating their cereal and losing weight (in a very unhealthy manner I must say). Why is there such self hatred among people about their size? And why do they need a cereal commercial to perpetuate that? Now - before you get all uppity about how I am always on a diet - which I am - I would hope that if you ask the people that know me, I have never had a lack of self confidence because of my size. My desire to lose weight purely has to do with wanting to be a better athlete and to be a healthier person. Never because I hated the way that I looked. I don’t. I want to be able to climb and ride fast and win little trophies on strava. To get off my bike and not hurt in every joint. I know that my weight holds me back, but I also know what got me here was me. Yes, I have genetics and health issues to deal with, but I also like cupcakes more than I should. I have given up many things for my bike - time, money, vodka - to name a few. But if I didn’t ride, would I record my weight every morning? Probably not. The hubby was reading this to me the other day http://blog.okcupid.com Scroll down to charts 7&8. What you will find is that the sex drive and confidence levels of “curvy” women is is higher than that of women that called themselves “skinny”. (Curvy is a word that cracks me up - women not being able to say Fat is a whole other blog post). All of the women in that commercial were far from “curvy”. Average to thin in reality. But what that commercial really tells us is that we can’t be happy until we lose weight. And THAT is where we go wrong. I am not advocating obesity. At all. I know how differently your body feels when you are overweight. How your weight can physically hold you back. Never settle for not feeling good, but please don’t hate yourself. It’s a vicious cycle. Lose weight because you want to feel better, but not because you believe it will make you a better person, find a job, a husband or the dream life you imagine. That’s just what the media tells us.