Scales and tape measurers have never been my faves. Anytime I’ve had to deal with either, it’s always with a small sense of dread. Am I measuring up?
So often, I believe, that the impulse to measure up is rooted in an unacknowledged inadequacy. Being “too big”, “too hippy”, “too busty”, not busty enough, et al masks a certain perpetual dissatisfaction. Instead of focusing on how we’re not the perfect measurements in the perfect ratios, it might be time to heal the much deeper issue of the ways we feel inadequate.
I can’t tell you how many times, even at my thinnest, I heard, “You’d be perfect if you lost another 15 lbs,” or “You’re pretty, but you’d be gorgeous if you’d lose a size or two.” What’s most disheartening is this criticism never came from men. It came from women, women I considered friends, well-meaning perhaps, but nonetheless, hurtful.
Dealing with chronic feelings of inadequacy is a terrible thing. It’s like there’s a hole in your heart. Sometimes you don’t want to even try because you’re best is never good enough, even when you’re giving a 150% to a diet or a votaress of the latest exercise craze. There’s a fixation on personal responsibility and I’m all for personal responsibility, but there comes a point when you have to also acknowledge what you’re NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR, including other people’s toxicity, other people’s baggage, other people’s harmful behavior.
Today, I am having the courage to admit that for most of my life, I’ve been over-responsible. Make me in charge of something and it will get done, even if it nearly kills me. I’ve taken on a lot of shitty situations mostly because I believed that I was the only person who would or could do them, not because they were what I really wanted. 
My own growth challenge is that I’m learning to pursue what I really want instead of trying to measure up for someone else, real or imagined.
It’s time to tell yourself that you are enough, just as you are right now. It’s time to stop trying to measure up. You are not you’re measurements; you’re more than numbers on a scale or a few extra inches. It’s amazing what opens up when you open your heart and your mind to who you are now, instead of who others want you to be.
Kristin West 