Tag Archives: reflections

22-Year-Old Theodora Is Laughing

It’s Saturday night at 9:18, and I’m in my pajamas, because I’m running 20 miles tomorrow morning. I’m doing the NYRR Marathon Tune-Up, which is technically an 18-mile race disguised as a long run. Since my marathon is in three weeks, I need to add 2 miles to that FOR MY LAST LONG RUN. After tomorrow, I’ll be tapering! (Thank the lord.)

22-year-old Theodora would have probably already been at least 3-4 drinks in, or getting ready to meet her friends out. She needed a drink or two just to get dressed, because she hated how she looked. She’d go out, be unhappy, drink too much, and feel like crap the next day, slinking in her car to the nearest drive-through McDonald’s for hangover food (even though there was one 3 blocks from her apartment, she didn’t want to be the fat chick seen in McDonald’s.)

27-year-old Theodora definitely still drinks, and sometimes still drinks too much, but she’s happier. She walks with confidence and doesn’t need liquid confidence to get dressed any more. (Despite knowing how nasty it is, she still wants McDonald’s when she’s hungover, sometimes.) 

So, my 22-year-old self may be laughing at my 27-year-old self for staying in on a Saturday night to wake up early to run tomorrow, but my 27-year-old self will have the last laugh at the finish line in Chicago in 20 days. (My 27-year-old self will also party like a rockstar that Friday night because she will have no run to wake up for!)

Lunch was a whole-wheat wrap with turkey and avocado and some sweet potato fries. I’d met my mom in Hoboken because I forgot to ask for my laptop when she brought Bailey back the other night, so we met “halfway.” (It’s actually way closer to me than it is to her, but when I have to take two trains on the weekends to get there, it works out to be about the same.) This bothered my stomach. I have no idea why. My stomach was fine in Hawaii, so I might just go back.

For dinner, I had my standard my-tummy-is-bothering-me fare, pastina. I tried putting some coconut butter in it, and I finally found something that coconut butter doesn’t make better.

*Oh! And since 94monkeys asked, the headband in the last post is a Bondi Band.

Most of the time I love my body…

…but sometimes I don’t like it.

I gotta admit, I really liked Rachel’s post this morning. As you know, I’m a big fan of Caitlin and her Operation Beautiful. (I even went to cheer her on when she was on The Today Show.)

The positive, uplifting messages can really help when you’re not feeling so great about yourself. When you need to be reminded that you are a great, strong person.

But it can definitely feel a little confusing to hear these self-love messages when you know something needs to change. “So wait? Is it okay to love myself but to change myself?”

It’s okay to be unhappy sometimes—even with yourself—it’s actually totally normal. Because none of us are perfect, and we do make mistakes, and mistakes are what we learn from. It would be great to be happy all of the time, but unfortunately, that’s not life. But the lows are what make us appreciate the highs so much more.

Personally, I love my body. I worked my ass off (literally!) for it. My body is helping me train for a marathon right now and has helped me run two half-marathons and hundreds of miles in training for these and other races. But I don’t always like it. I still have fat days sometimes. (Dude, nobody told me that fat days never go away, no matter how much weight you lose.) I still want to tone up my abs. But I try to love my body and myself more often than not, just like I try to eat more healthy than not.

I wish I had found something like Operation Beautiful when I was overweight; there’s definitely a lot of shame you feel when you’re overweight, but I 100% agree with Rachel—it’s okay to love your body but not always like it and want to change it.