You know what? What the fly fuck does it matter what people think of how you look? You have talent, and the ability to share and teach others those talents. You have a man so proud of you and that loves you so much he wanted to capture pictures of what he sees in you... a stunning woman that oozes beauty and ability. Did those kids judge you in the way you think others are? Nope! They just saw the fabulous moves you can do and wanted you to share them with them. The Children are seeing the true you and people worth knowing will see you for who you are.

Don't you dare go and hide at midnight in the Gym. You keep on being amazing and who you are!

Well said, Skully.

G-Nee - it is fantastic that you are hooping after all you have been through and that you are sharing your skills with others.
Health fluctuates, weight comes and goes, but your generous heart and loving nature will help you transcend your health and body image issues.

The great thing about hooping is that there are hoopers in all shapes, sizes, colours and denominations - and none of those things matter in a hoop!

More power to you for persevering despite your problems.

well i am glad you are feeling better and everything Skully and Diana said is true...but I just wanted to tell you that I have these times where I think things like this...it's hard.

I grew up dancing and having a dancer's body. I ate anything I wanted and didn't start gaining weight til I was 25...now at 32, my metabolism has really caught up with me and I have gained 30 pounds in the past 4 or 5 years. It's hard to deal with it...I don't have the excuse of being sick (just the laziness and poor eating habits), but it is still hard.

Hooping is becoming my way to be healthy again and I have started eating way better since I have been doing it...but I just hate it when I videotape or photograph myself and later on realize that I look so fat while hooping...and I think to myself "wow, i think i would look like a better, more graceful hooper if I was thinner"...i mean it's a good motivator, but it also makes me sad too

although it is inspiring to see each other's pictures and videos, sometimes it is depressing for me too...me wishing i had these women's bodies and my old one back again...or the fact that I didn't post a video the other day because the outfit i wore in it was way too unflattering. But on the same note, I am totally motivated to be more fit because I will be a better hooper because of it.

Anyway, I don't really have a point I guess, except that I understand where you are coming from and know that hooping is taking us on the right path...it's a wonderful way to get and stay healthy! Keep it up and thanking for being so honest...I really appreciate people being so open in this world...I think more people should be like that because we can share and learn so much from each other!

jen

I wish I could reach through the screen and give you a huge hug, g-nee. I think this is something a lot of women relate to, regardless of how they might look to others - our own self-criticism is often worse... I will say that I noticed something about what you said and how you said it in your post. You started out describing how you felt - good, great, even, and proud! Happy to be moving, happy to be teaching, excited to see others inspired by you! All of these kids looked at you and thought "wow, I want to do what she's doing! I want to look like her!" Your husband was proudly taking picutres and it sounds like you are also proud of yourself for how much you have accomplished.

It was not until you talked about seeing the pictures that it sounded like all the things you thought were pushed onto other people - saying that people recoil and think bad things about you... I wonder if they really are? It sounds like you shared a powerful and bright light with people and it was responded to beautifully! A person who never hooped was happily spinning after you helped him. It may have even allowed people to feel more at ease about themselves seeing you be comfortable with yourself. I just hope that you see how much you give right now, just the way you are, and the joy that you spread...even if you don't feel good about your physical self, it is a gift that you shared with so many at that BBQ. Those people were blessed for it.

I wish I knew what to say about feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. I am no stranger to that self-hatred and harsh standard. I think that hooping, with time, has allowed me to relax and accept my physical self more. It allowed me to take some pride and joy in what it was able to do in a concrete manner - I could be of value in how I moved and not just in that societal way of how I looked... I started caring less about how I looked, in a way, as I started caring more about how I felt. It is a very slow and slippery climb to self-acceptance (let alone self love), but I really think that with time and patience, it will come. I hope that you keep hooping where lots of people can see you and appreciate your beauty. You have so much to give - don't hide! No one else can share what you can, in the way that you can. Be gentle with you.....all things in time, love.

Thank you, all of you for your wonderful, kind words. I know I'm my harshest critic and it's something I have to work on. Hooping is helping a lot but there are still days that get me down. They are getting less and less, which is an improvement.

Again, Thank you,
With much Gratitude and Appreciation,
G-Nee

G-Nee, you hold your head up. When you were feeling your spirit self, the self that just inhabits this body right now, you felt beautiful and supple and free. In this state, you affected others and taught them both with lessons and by your actions. You gave others permission to feel free and go for it also. In that time, you were living in the Now.

Once you got home and looked back and started judging your past self, you were no longer living in the Now. You were living in the past. Even worse, you were comparing yourself. Comparision is only good for us when it inspires us, and even then, being in the Now precludes it. In yoga they talk about cultivating non-comparision -- not comparing yourself to anyone else, not seeing yourself as better or worse than anyone, not comparing yourself to the future self you think you could be one day or the past self that you have already been. That is the ultimate reflection of Being Here Now.

In the Here and Now, you have a strong healthy body that not only supports you it supports and teaches and loves others. That is a powerful gift and one to be celebrated.

I think it might be helpful for you to grasp that this whole conversation is happening in your head. It's not happening in real life. You are attributing all your fears to "unseen others". You're saying, "What will others say about me doing this?" and "These others, they don't know that I've been sick..." And stuff like that. In real life these others, if they really exist, are probably more caught up in what you are thinking about them than what they are thinking about you. More importanly, when you start recounting what these "unseen others" see when they see you, you are really speaking what YOU see when you see you. You're projecting. Now many people think projecting is bad. I happen to think, when done with awareness, it's actually pretty good. It gives you an idea what's going on deep in your subconscious and unconcscious so you can clear that trash away and create a reality that feels good to you.

So know that "others" are not judging you. You are judging you.

Once you get your mind around that, set about setting your Self free. Do it for you but also do it for your husband, your kids, all the young women around you and everyone who models themselves after you as a role model. But mostly do it for you. Because you deserve to love yourself at every shape, at every age and at every point in your life. Do not put off til tomorrow loving you can do today.

I want to recommend a book that I found very helpful many years ago when I was struggling with an eating disorder that had ravaged my life for over a decade. It's called, "You Can Heal Your Life" and it's by Louise Haye. It's all about releasing the patterns that create illness in the body and being okay with where you are now. That book profoundly influenced my life. I highly recommend it. It's short and a quick read (over half of it is a reference section) but the things you learn in it will stay with you forever. You can get it at the library or buy it very cheap (sometimes less than $1) at half.com. Here's a listing: search.half.ebay.com/you-can...QmZbooks

Finally, I want you to read this quote by Marianne Williamson and meditate upon it. Be comforted by it. Be inspired by it. Use it to set yourself free. Because the world needs your energy and your enthusiasm and the world doesn't care what kinda package it comes in. So give yourself a break. You'll be giving all of us a break at the same time.

Here's that quote (From her book, On A Return to Love):

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

___

Be proud of yourself. Your husband is proud of you for a reason ... because you deserve it. So take his gift of encouragement, add it to your own courage and have the courage to be who you really are. Know that by doing so, you are giving others, including me and all of us here, permission to be who we really are also. And that is a huge gift to you, to your husband, to your kids and family, to us and to the entire world. So you hold your head high. You're beautiful. And don't you forget it!

Sending you love and respect and blessings of patience and comfort, strength and wisdom, courage and persistence, Caroleeena

p.s. You'll be glad to have those pictures one day. Let them be your "Before" set...

A very timely post this. I feel for you because I've been there too. These days I feel it less and less, but every now and then I have a relapse and I've had one today. What caused it? I saw a few photos and a bit of video of me hooping at the weekend. There are times I wish cameras hadn't been invented. But then we'd not be hoopers, so probably better that they have been in the end. I just can't reconcile the stiff, bulky and graceless person (I was going to say lump, but I stopped myself!) that I see in photos with the me I see in my head. But the odd thing is that one year into hooping I am a much better shape than I was before I started and I don't mind the way I see myself in a mirror now. I actually don't think I look too bad. But a photo.... what is it with the damn things.

You have been given great and strengthening guidance from others here, and Caroleeena's advice is always excellent and has helped me a great deal. However, my message to you is a more practical one. As one sufferer to another, keep away from the damn photo things! Take the batteries out of the camera and just work on the way you feel inside your hoop. The pleasure it gives you, the way it makes you feel and think and the way your husband watches you with pride. That's the reality. That's where we each need to be.

Keep hooping, keep spinning, and don't do it at midnight, do it in the daylight and let others see that you are having fun.

Sweet heat, you can't beat yourself up about that sort of thing.
Well, OK, you can, and I just posted about how incredibly cruel we can be to ourselves.
Just keep telling yourself that you are beautiful. You are. This obsession with thinness or with some image of perfection (tall, blond, whatever) is not healthy. Try to let it go.
Work on being as healthy as you can be at whatever weight you happen to be.
And for people who don't understand or don't realize that you work as hard as you do? Screw them.
I've had doctors tell me to my face that I was lying to them when I told them that I work out for between 6 to 8 hours a day.
Or they tell me that I must obviously be eating more than I think.
No, I don't. And I don't need to see someone who would treat me that way. I tell them that they are being offensive, and I walk out of their office and never see them again.

You do not need to hoop in a burkha. Hoop in whatever makes you comfortable.
Better, go and get something pretty for yourself if you can.
Maybe find a nice, flowing skirt, something that swirls when you twirl.
And relax in the joy of the movement. It's not about how you look when you hoop (although you're beautiful), it's about how the hooping makes you feel.

Work on health and happiness. Pre-diabetes and even early type-II diabetes can be overcome. Work on getting your health back on track, work on getting your mental well being back on track, and hang in there! It may take years, but you can do it.

Please believe me.
It's taken me more than two years but I have gone from nearly crippled to not too bad. I'm working on that, and hope to eventually make it 100% happy and healthy. And sometimes it sucks, and I often want to give up, but I won't let myself.
And in the end, it will be worth it.
Already people are telling me that my demeanor and appearance have changed for the better.
The other day someone looked at my 5 year old driver's license and told me I looked like that woman's daughter.

Hang in there, and big hugs from NC!
Patricia

I am sorry that you are hurting. Keep hooping and know that you are beautiful and strong and brave. Know that you are blessed to have womanly curves and to haave food to eat and time to play hula hoop and a loving husband who is so proud of you and your skill and beauty that he wants to take pictures of you so he can remember how beautiful you were to him in those moments.

Who decided that thin is the only standard of beautiful? Real women have curves.