Love Yourself First.

The Best Tips, Tricks, and
Advice I have received on
Getting & Staying Fit & Healthy.


It happened around 6th grade. I realized that I didn’t fit into many of my clothes, and I was gaining weight in places that I hated—a cruel awakening for a pre-teen who had Barbie doll friends who ate whatever they wanted and looked picture-perfect all the time. Looking back now, I wish I could sit down and have a realistic conversation with 13-year old Claire, to tell her all of the things I have typed for you to read. As I grew past 6th grade, I was extremely harsh on my body, demanding that it look better by taking all of the wrong steps to get there, resulting, time and time again, in disgust and disappointment. I hope that you benefit from this post, because, as I have grown older, I have realized just how important it is to view yourself as beautiful—and healthy—and strong. Now, I’m no nutritionist, but what I am writing below are things that I have heard from some people who are, or from doctors or nurses—people whom I fully trust. Please know that I would not type something that is harmful, but instead want to write something that will benefit you and your health, and I hope it does just that for you. Enjoy.

1.   Cut the Sodas, especially the Diet Ones.

You can’t get much worse than soda. In middle school, I drank Dr. Peppers because I loved the taste, but it resulted in my breaking out constantly on my face and having a nice sugar gut. By high school, I drank four Diet Mountain Dews a day instead of lunch, also using them to quench my sugar tooth. This resulted in my inability to remember many things that happened daily (I later found out how much diet sodas affect short-term memory), often becoming dehydrated, then sometimes even passing out. I had cut back by college but would still have a Coke Zero about once a week. It wasn’t until I heard a story about how pouring a Diet Coke on blood eats it up, that I decided “no more.” I couldn’t fathom what a diet soda would do inside my body if it ate blood, so I decided to send sodas and diet sodas out the door. I can’t tell you how much this changed my body. I rarely have breakouts or get shaky from dehydration, and I lost a good deal of weight after kicking them to the curb.

2.    Drink Water…like, a lot of water.

When I cut out soft drinks, I decided to calculate how much water I should drink a day. This is the formula to figure out how many ounces you should consume daily:

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1. Your weight: The first step to knowing how much water to drink every day is to know your weight. The amount of water a person should drink varies based on their weight, which makes sense because the more someone weighs, the more water they need to drink. A 200 pound man and 100 pound woman require different amounts of water every day.
2. Multiply by 2/3: Next you want to multiple your weight by 2/3 (or 67%) to determine how much water to drink daily. For example, if you weighed 175 pounds you would multiple that by 2/3 and learn you should be drinking about 117 ounces of water every day.
3. Activity Level: Finally you will want to adjust that number based on how often you work out, since you are expelling water when you sweat. You should add 12 ounces of water to your daily total for every 30 minutes that you work out. So if you work out for 45 minutes daily, you would add 18 ounces of water to your daily intake.


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After I realized how much water I should be drinking, I ordered a reusable water bottle (actually more like a jug) t0 measure how many ounces I drink a day and help me keep track. The difference in my body since I began keeping up with my water intake is unreal. My skin is so much brighter, and I feel so much cleaner. I rarely get bloated or feel disturbed by food.


3. Tell Your Doctor Everything.

Whether you’re 13 reading this, or 75, it is so important to tell your doctor everything about how you’re feeling. I didn’t know until recently that this even means your frustration with your weight. I thought for a long time that my issues with weight were just hereditary. However, sometimes it might be something else. For me, it was an out-of-whack thyroid. Even though I may never be able to make up for what my thyroid can’t do, I at least have the ease of knowing that there is a reason I have to work a little harder. Also, doctors are just wonderful. I go to an amazing nurse practitioner named Shelly Whitney, here in Huntsville, Alabama, and I talk her ears off every time I go. I ask her everything under the sun, but it is so much better to ask a professional for health advice than trying to figure it out yourself. Oh, how I wish 13-year old Claire had opened up to her doctor at the start of her problems with health and weight. Let me tell you, it would have saved a lot of hurt on my health and in my heart.


4. Find a Work-Out that Works for You & Go…Regularly. 

I used to be a runner, but with one too many injuries, I had to put up the running shoes. I enjoyed it because it was free, and I could tell a difference in my body when I ran. It took me a long time to actually enjoy running, and I’m not sure that I ever really did.  I just knew that my work resulted in my being stronger and better, so I came to want to go for a jog. However, halfway through college and after my injury, I couldn't run anymore. I had to explore different options for workouts. It was so hard for me to justify paying to work out; it just seemed outrageous after not paying to run all those years, but, let me tell you, now it’s at the top of my financial needs. A friend asked me to try Pure Barre with her, and I went to my first free week of classes and fell in love. My physical results were much better than from running, and it took a much shorter time block (better for my crazy college schedule). All this to say, it is SO important that you find a work out you love. I am a firm believer that your mental health is just as important as your physical. By finding a workout I love, I am nursing both. My 50 minutes at Pure Barre are just as much a stress reliever as a physical body builder. Take the time to explore gyms and programs to find something that you find fun and beneficial. Working out makes me proud and confident of my body, something that I never had before. It is absolutely worth your time and your money.

5. 80% and 20%

Jenna Bush Hager once said in an interview that she has learned to eat healthy 80% of the time so she can cheat 20% of the time. Now, I don’t log my calories or write what I eat in a journal to those exact percents, but I am aware that I have to make healthy choices most of the time or I will reap the consequences. Sometimes it’s obeying the bread/dessert rule: if you had bread during your meal, no dessert. Other times, it’s choosing a salad because I had birthday cake at a party the night before. It truly is about the balance of what you eat, and not just for your weight, but for your health. There hung a poster in my elementary school lunchroom that said, “Everything you eat is either aiding disease or fighting it.” That has always stuck with me. One of my uncles is a doctor, and he believes that cancer is caused in some part by high sugar intake. Now, he has yet to prove that, but I think I will listen to him. Speaking of sweets…

6. Ugh, My Sweet Tooth.

I have always had a sweet tooth. Actually, I have about four sweet molars. I want dessert 24/7, and I’ve had to learn some smart tactics to fill the urge. One of them is subbing dark chocolate almonds for dessert, or maybe a Cliff Z Bar (Chocolate Brownie, duh). I also eat fruit with honey for dessert sometimes. I learned in Israel that while Jesus walked the Earth, he would have eaten apples with honey for dessert. How cool is that? Healthy options are out there, and not so hard to find.

7. You Have to Eat.

In middle school and high school, I would starve myself often. The sad part is, I would see little results here and there—a flatter stomach, no water weight in my hips and thighs, which was the perfect remedy for my cheer and dance performances. Seeing the little results, unfortunately, encouraged me to continue the practice. However, it always, always resulted in my cramming my face with food and gaining back the weight, probably double. I am the smallest I have ever been right now, and I eat. A lot. However, the foods I eat are healthy and good, and I make conscious decisions every day as to the foods I eat. As I talked about earlier, the 80% to 20% idea is so, so true. Live by it, and it will benefit you big time.


8. Find Clothes That Accentuate Your Body.

I learned a long time ago that low-rise jeans and booty-anything are not exactly helping me in the self image department. The number one thing I love most about my body is my waist, and the parts I dislike most about my body are my thighs. Therefore, I buy things that accentuate the parts I love and shy away from showing off the areas I don’t love as much. This will help you feel more confident in your every day life. Many stores, such as Anthropologie, employ personal stylists. Stylists aren’t just there to tell you what to buy.  They are also wonderful beacons of knowledge when it comes to what you need to wear for your body type. After working at Anthro and talking with their stylist, I learned that just because I love something in a magazine or on the hangar does not mean I will look great in it. It is important to know what to look for in clothing so that you will feel beautiful in not just your skin, but also in what you have on.


Finally, and by far most importantly, there is a God up above who created you, from the hairs on your head to the shape of your toenails. He believes in all that you are, and He thinks you are beautiful. It hurts Him deeply when you tell your body that it isn’t good enough. He made you are so much stronger than you think, and in His image. I pray that my words are also His words to you, and that you hear Him asking you to be the best that you can be for His glory. His desire is that you love yourself deeply, so that your eyes may shift outward to love those around you.




Infinite X’s and O’s,
Claire 

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A C C O M P A N I E D

My Favorite Lesson from Israel

    The first night after moving away from home is truly the worst. The first night of college was different. I remember that even though I felt so strange and out of place, there was some bizarre comfort knowing that the girl sleeping five feet away from me was having the same anxious thoughts I was (not to mention the 500+ other nineteen year old females who inhabited Vail Hall, the freshman girls’ dorm at Samford). The first night you move away by yourself is not only different, but it is extremely painful. This past summer, I decided it was my destiny to intern in Atlanta for a designer whom I adored. It was all big, beautiful dreams until I was tucking myself in, in a house I didn’t know, in an unfamiliar metropolis, feeling like a five year old girl who wanted to go wake up her mom and crawl into her parents’ bed. I remember lying there thinking, “What the heck have I done? This is terrifying….I am terrified. I will never get used to this. Why didn’t I just stay in Birmingham?” Of course, I did get used to it, and I am actually going back. I am now enthralled with my life there, but I hate thinking back to having that feeling the first night. And, unfortunately, it is not an unfamiliar one. At the worst times in my life, I had the same thoughts but magnified ten times—complete loneliness. And the reason behind the loneliness—fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of problems that have yet to even bear the tip of their noses into reality. Loneliness is that feeling of evil when fear asks you, “Are you sure that this will work out? I don’t know. It seems like God doesn’t have a plan this time. No one is here but you.” And even though we know full well that God has always given us yet another stepping stone to move forward from the past, we suddenly refuse to even stick out our foot, betting that there’s no stone ahead. Fear of loneliness: it’s the root of the root of all that is evil on this Earth. It is scary and unknown, but the hope in the midst of the darkness is that Jesus felt it full well, too. Just like me. Just like you. He was there.
     I’ve grown up in the church, so I like to think that I know my Bible pretty well. I had read and heard the story of Jesus in the garden multiple times. I could recite it for you in my own way, but there was a huge part of Jesus’ story that I had completely missed until I was sitting in the actual Garden of Gethsemane, alone on a bench in the back, reading Matthew 26:36-39.

Matthew 26:36-39 The Message (MSG)

    36-38 Then Jesus went with them to a garden called Gethsemane and told his disciples, “Stay here while I go over there and pray.” Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he plunged into an agonizing sorrow. Then he said, “This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with me.”
    39 Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, “My Father, if there is any way, get me             out of this. But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”


    Somehow in twenty-one years I had missed the one line that changed everything: “My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this.” Jesus, fully human, and in my opinion, the closest to sin He ever was, pleading with God that there had to be another way than this immensely painful one. I used to think that those tears of blood were the start of Him taking on the sins of the world, but now I believe that they were tears of the utmost human emotional pain. Can you imagine how alone Jesus felt? Even with his closest friends with Him, they couldn’t stop falling asleep, leaving him with no comforting words that it was going to be okay, but probably with more doubts than before. He sees the temple fall in His visions, he sees His people who to this day do not believe He is the son of God, and all at once—it’s too much. He felt it all, and He broke. In some Biblical versions, the text even reads that He said, “This sorrow alone is going to kill me.” Honestly, I’ve never read anything more beautiful.
    I used to roll my eyes when people would say, “Jesus has felt everything you’re going through.” I always thought to myself, “But Jesus never sinned? There’s no way He knows.” Now, however, I have the most beautiful picture of Jesus’ human understanding. Of all the times I’ve broken because it’s been too much, and said things to God that I should not have said, or questioned His sovereignty, I now know it looks much different than a Father disappointed in His daughter—because of Jesus dying on the cross for me, taking my place. I now picture Jesus at God’s right hand, looking down, agonizing with me, crying those same tears as in the garden, remembering Earthly pain and loneliness, saying to God, “That’s our girl. She needs us. That really hurts. I remember.” And He does the same for you. The accompany of a lifetime.


Infinite X’s and O’s,

Claire