Hi Gorgeous,

For the past few weeks I’ve been busy guiding 9 women in my Gorgeous Summer Ready private FB group.  And man does the shiz get real in there.  First of all, it’s a posse of trailblazing women who aren’t afraid to speak their truth when it comes to their relationship with food and their bodies.   And even if they have fears and insecurities about revealing their struggles around food, they still remain radically honest and raw about those struggles within the group.

So often when we connect to and are drawn to leaders in our life, we want to know their soft and vulnerable spots so they feel relatable to us.  We want to know we’re not alone in our struggles and our journey to love our bodies.  And we want to feel supported in the process.  So I’m crazy proud of these women who didn’t know each other yet have formed a collective and supportive tribe, cheering each other on when the chips are down and celebrating each others’ successes. Each of them is a leader in their own right.

The biggest struggle these women (and most of my clients have) is sliding along the spectrum between self-loving and self-loathing.  We bounce between loving our bodies on our “good” days, when our clothes look good, we’ve taken the perfect selfie, and the numbers on the scale look prett-y good.  Then on our “bad” days when we can’t button up our pants, we get weighed at the doctor’s office and are depressed for days afterwards, and our bodies just aren’t responding to diet and exercise as quickly as we’d like, we feel hopeless and lost.

It’s something I’ve lived with since high school, when I began eating my feelings while my brother’s drug addiction wreaked havoc on our family.  I’d come home every day after school and binge out on cereal or Pop Tarts and then fall asleep in front of the tv.  Back then I had zero awareness or understanding that my feelings were connected to my eating.  But what I did understand was how my weight gain was attached to my own self-worth.

It took me years (and a good therapist) to untie the knots in my psyche and detach my physical body from my sense of value and personal power.

Take these pictures, for example. Taken 13 years and 13 pounds apart. The left one on my honeymoon in 2003, the right one last summer in 2016. I don’t think I look dramatically different between the two photos, but I can tell you my mind told me about a hundred other stories while the numbers shifted over the years and I felt deeply ashamed while my physique changed and gained weight. It brought me right back to being that teenage girl, when the self-loathing ran deep.

Last week I came across my honeymoon photos during a closet purge.  I started smiling and shaking my head and thought, “Seriously? You made yourself crazy all these years because you thought you looked radically different than your honeymoon photos? You look almost the same now as you did then!” Clearly the joke was on me!

It was a pivotal moment of release and joy because I realized that I can either spend time holding myself back with my perception of reality, or get with the program, understand my true reality, and honor the journey that got me here.

Most of us tend to have this belief that the grass is always greener when we have a smaller waistline and that our lives will magically be perfect when we are thin, have the “perfect” body, and weigh the perfect number. But really those thoughts are just an illusion. (And if you don’t believe me here, go back to the time in your life when you were that number on the scale–you probably felt fat back then, too!). A smaller waistline may buy you smaller jeans, but aside from that it guarantees nothing about the life you lead. And it will never reflect just how powerful you truly are.

As we continue this journey, I am looking forward to powerfully serving those of you who want to close the gap between self-love and self-loathing so that you can feel amazing about yourself regardless of how your jeans fit you that day. So if you feel your time is now to do some mighty work on your mind, body and spirit and learn what foods, workouts, and lifestyle serve you best, respond back to this email with the word Menu in the subject line and I will send you a menu of my offerings.  I have revamped how I work with clients so you have plenty of ways to decide exactly how you’d like to partner together. Buckle up, Gorgeous!

Live Gorgeously,
Esther