Average is the New Awesome by Samantha Matt

Author:Samantha Matt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

A FEW WEEKS ago, I was getting a pedicure, and the woman cleaning off my feet looked up at me and said “Baby?” as she pointed to my stomach.

Shocked, I looked down at her, down at my stomach, and laughed. “No, no. Not in there.”

She awkwardly went back to cleaning off my feet, and I went back to scrolling through Instagram on my phone. I wondered why this woman thought I was pregnant. My cotton dress was clinging to my stomach, so my belly fat was noticeable a bit. Compared to my toned arms, shoulders, and legs, my stomach pooch may have looked a bit disproportional. After all, I was a petite, 5′2″ woman with a stomach that wasn’t flat, wearing a cotton dress.

After I got home, I looked at my husband Dan, and asked him, “Do I look pregnant to you?” while turning to the side and holding my arms up.

“No,” he replied. “Why?”

I pulled up my dress and asked him again, “Okay, what about now? Doesn’t my stomach look like a baby could be in there?”

“No,” he said again.

But I insisted as I pulled the dress back down and pulled the cotton to the side to make it tight on my stomach. “What about now?”

“This is a trap,” he responded. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“Ah ha! So I do look pregnant.”

“You don’t look pregnant. You look fine. Can you stop?”

I stopped asking him questions. But I wasn’t done. I walked over to my full-length mirror to examine myself. Maybe I needed to start going to barre class more? Maybe I needed to start really doing Weight Watchers again instead of half-assing it? Maybe I needed to stop drinking wine? Ha, yeah right. Or maybe I actually was pregnant? But in all seriousness, there’s no way I would only gain weight in my stomach if I were pregnant. That weight would be everywhere, let me tell you.

I started down the rabbit hole of panic.

But then I stopped myself.

When the cashier at the pizza place asked me when I was due twelve years ago, I was a different person. I was self-conscious. I didn’t know how to love myself. I let one comment from a stranger make me sick for years, but I wasn’t going to do that again. I didn’t need to. As a confident, smart woman who rocks curves, muscles, and strong thighs, I love my average body. Why would I want to change it?

If you’re still struggling with embracing your average body, let me help. Remind yourself of the following in order to accept your average body for the awesome body that it is:

Your average body literally has nothing to do with anything going on in your life. It’s not why certain things are or are not happening in your romantic life. It’s not why your career is going a certain way. It’s not why you have a certain number of friends. How you feel about your average body affects these things. If you feel like shit,

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