This Crushed My Dream of Becoming a Solid Gold Dancer...

In my tween years, I loved to watch Solid Gold. I’d leap around my family room mimicking the dancers’ provocative moves. I fantasized about becoming one of them, until…

…I heard that Solid Gold dancers couldn’t weigh more than 100 pounds.

I don’t recall where this rumor came from, but I’ll never forget it. It crushed my dream and instilled in me the belief that to be a hot, sexy female, I needed to keep the scale from tipping past 100 pounds. With a naturally pudgy belly, I had a feeling this would be tough for me.

Faulty Formulas
In my teenage years, I learned a new “formula” for calculating a woman’s ideal weight: 100 pounds for the first 5 feet of height, and then an additional 5 pounds for every inch over 5 feet.

At 5’ 5”, this meant that if I weighed more than 125 pounds, I would be considered overweight.

I’m pretty amazed at how deeply ingrained in my brain this calculation became. And how much unnecessary suffering it caused me. And I’m not alone. Many other women often recite this same formula when I ask them how they determine how much they should weigh.

It’s sad that so many of us bought into such a simplistic formula that doesn’t take into consideration so many key factors, such as genetics, race, age, bone density, muscle-fat ratio and your state of health.

Just because someone is thin, it doesn’t mean they are healthy. When I was at my lowest weight and living on dry toast and fruit (while bingeing on cookies), I was anything but healthy.

Don’t even get me started on the BMI.

Finding Your Natural Weight
No formula or person can or should dictate your weight. Healthy, beautiful bodies come in all shapes and sizes and all bodies deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and care.

I no longer rely on an external tool, formula or myth that discounts the incredible uniqueness of my body to tell me what I should weigh. 

Instead, I’ve discovered that by trusting my innate body wisdom, including honoring its needs and desires for food, rest, movement and more, my body will settle at its natural weight—one that I can maintain without struggle, deprivation, rigid rules or hypervigilance.

I will never meet the rumored criteria for becoming a Solid Gold dancer or our society’s standards for the perfect body, but that’s okay. I’d rather love, accept and care for the body I’ve been blessed with than waste one more minute trying to shape shift it into something it was never meant to be.

I wish the same for you.