Tag Archives: fitbloggin’

On Dancing

This post is totally appropriate for a Friday.

Back when I was in college, I hated dancing unless I had enough drinks in me where I didn’t really care what was going on. Which sort of defeated the purpose, and I would imagine didn’t make me such a great dancer. (Even though the liquid courage sure made me feel like I was a great dancer.)

I hated the feeling that my jiggly body was jiggling all over the dance floor and thought everyone was staring at me. When you’re single, part of the fun of dancing is to find a cute guy to dance with, and let’s face it, not many cute guys were coming up to me.

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I really wish I had been more confident when I was heavier, and I hope if you’re unhappy with your weight, you can find confidence in yourself and your body–even when it’s not where you want to be.

But as I was walking to the subway to pick up my race bib, I reached for my iPhone to find some songs to rock out to. Some songs that would make me excited about this weekend and all of the possibilities ahead of me.

My taste in music usually tends towards the fairly chill, but lately I’ve been in love with all those cheesy pop songs you can sing your head off and dance to.

And I realized…it’s because I kinda love to dance now.

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I rocked out with Ashley in Vegas.

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(Photo via Gabriela)

And I danced with my blogging buddies at Fitbloggin’–many of whom I’d just met. It’s awesome to finally have the confidence about my body to want to get out there and shake my booty!

And I feel like I have years to make up for.

The Best Compliment I Got This Weekend

I’m terrified of public speaking. That included speaking on my first panel and that also includes asking questions of those speaking on a panel.

Once I get a question in mind, my heart starts pounding and my palms start sweating. (This made things very difficult as a reporter at press conferences. I usually went up to the person after the press conference if I really had to ask something.)

This weekend, I attended a session on blogger responsibility at Fitbloggin’. (My recap here, transcript here.) I have a lot more to say about blogger responsibility that I’ll be posting about later in the week, but during the panel, I asked this:

“Hi! My name is Theodora and I blog at Losing Weight in the City. I lost 50 pounds and changed my life, and I get a lot of questions from readers who want to know how they can do the same. I’m always afraid to answer the question, because I know everyone’s different, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing–but I still want to help them. How should I answer this?”

I wiped my sweaty palms on my dress and sat back down. The panelists answered that I should answer with what I did and say that it worked for me but might not for everyone else.

At the end of the session, a woman walked over to me and said:

“I never would have guessed that you lost 50 pounds. You just look like a young, blond, skinny girl.”

With my weight loss being so recent and Losing Weight in the City being such a big part of my identity these days, I forget that it’s not obvious that I lost 50 pounds. That I don’t wear it on my sleeve or on my face. If you just look at me, I guess I do just look like a fit (sorry, I’ll never call myself skinny), young blond girl.

You don’t see the years I struggled with my weight. The blood, sweat and tears I put into losing 50 pounds. How I still think a lot about my food and exercise so that I can maintain the weight I’m at now. I almost wish it is something I could wear on my face–as needed. I’d turn it on for those who needed it, who needed to know that I had struggled too, but I did it, and they could too, and I’d turn it off when a cute guy was talking to me. He doesn’t need to know I once weighed 50 pounds more than I do now, right?

Either way, it was a really nice compliment, and I’m still smiling thinking of it.