Learning to Take a Compliment

This whole post may come across as vain, I hope not, but it might. I have gotten a lot of comments from people since I've been back at work about how I don't look like I was just pregnant. It's weird because although I haven't had the time to devote to real exercise I have made a concerted effort to make my meal and snack choices more healthy, so there has been some work involved. Still, I find myself making silly excuses so as not to seem like I'm one of those people who loses weight with little or no effort or who just doesn't gain regardless of what I do, because that certainly isn't the case. If that was the case I wouldn't have been at least 10 pounds over what I should have been when I got pregnant in the first place. Still I find myself saying things like "Oh it was a lot of water weight" and "The baby was so big and so there was a lot of fluid etc.". These things are also sort of true but it was a combination of that and my healthy eating that has gotten me back into all my clothes 3 months post-pregnancy. What I need to learn to do is not get flustered when people say these things and just thank them politely for their kind comment.

I have always struggled a bit with body-image. I'm not really sure where this came from because my wonderful mother was always a very positive influence on me and made me feel beautiful no matter what. I know that it was somewhat exacerbated by an unhealthy relationship during which I was the smallest weight of my entire adult life thus far and was still made to feel like I wasn't perfect enough. I believe the word "chunky" was used once as well as the suggestion "If you wanted a goal for your workouts this (pointing to a photo of a model) is a nice butt." For someone who was maybe 125 pounds at 5' 7" in her mid-twenties to hear is just crazy-talk. I wish I could go back to that moment, smack him upside the head and scream "I HAVE HIPS, GET OVER IT!" And although I have gotten over it to a certain extent I still have issues. This is a small part of why I am nervous about the prospect of raising a daughter should the next dip in the gene pool produce one. Being pregnant has made me really appreciate what my body can do. I gained around 45 pounds during my pregnancy and I know it wasn't all just baby and water weight. If that was true my hips and thighs wouldn't have outgrown some of my pants so easily. I didn't think I would be able to get back into a lot of my work clothes after 12 weeks of leave based solely on diet but I did and I have my careful thinking and willpower to thank for it. Subconsciously I think part of me still feels like I don't deserve the compliments for whatever reason and because of that I know my work is far from over. And I'm not referring to work on my exterior but my interior, because I deserve better than how hard I am on myself.