Remember when you weighed less?

I do.

Ever stumble across a pic of yourself from a time you were CERTAIN that your body was awful and you felt like a work in progress, only to look at it now and think “fuck. What was I thinking?! Look how much smaller I used to be!”

And if we’re being honest, we know what happens next.

You think: “what would it take it take to look like that again?”

You consider going back.

Here is what you need to know:

Whatever you were doing back then, you’ll have to do even more of that now. If you have a history of intentionally manipulating your body size and shape- your body remembers.

Your body is primed to resist more famine-like states now.

“But Christina, I wasn’t starving myself! My body will be fine.”

Even THINKING about eating less can trigger your primal brain to become hyper focused on food. Your brain does not care that you “just want to look good in a bikini”- your brain thinks you’re a uncivilized human, hunting and gathering for food.

EVEN IF you didn’t have to do “more” today than back then, do you want to have to do all that again?

You want to track your food and agonize over an extra handful of grapes?

You want to force yourself to get in extra cardio to earn a slice of pizza?

You want to play that torturous game of “weigh yourself every morning to see if it’s working” & stomp around the kitchen first thing in the morning when the scale hasn’t budged? Or worse, cry when it’s up .2 even though you’re “trying so hard”?

Know that you’ll have to do that AND MORE forever to maintain it. And more and more overtime.

As you eat less, metabolism slows. So you’ll have to eat less. GOOD TIMES.

Your body will adapt to the cardio and the weights- so you’ll have to do more. Faster, heavier, longer, more.

Eating less and moving more is both a diet culture blow horn AND a metabolic disaster- and still, the mindfuck of it all is even worse than the subsequent damaged metabolism.

I know you sometimes want to go back, but only when you look at a picture. Don’t forget how it felt to live it. You’re more than an old photo anyway.