For this Thoughtful Thursday, I'm sharing with you a picture of a member from the deer family that kept visiting this summer. The two fawns are growing up now, spots faded but playfulness fully intact. Gosh... couldn't that be used as a metaphor for growing older? For some of us, anyway.

But what I really want to talk about this week-- Thoughtful Thursday is where I get personal, y'all-- is my own journey. I shared a bit about my struggle with my weight in my Guide to Shopping for Big, Beautiful Babes and I plan to make a post about it at a later date because body image and body positivity is something I feel should be discussed more. Today, though, I'm discussing my journey to better health.

It's not complicated... I've always been a healthy tip-toer, which is to say I've always gone through spells of eating super clean and healthy foods alternated with episodes of less than healthy eating patterns. But lately something has switched in me; I blame it on the few friends on my Facebook feed who post pictures of themselves eating great looking, healthy food and workout videos. Thank you, because you are motivating as hell.

So far, I've lost sixteen pounds which, yes, is part of the goal here. But I also want to take a stand and say that, if I didn't want to lose weight, that would be fine also. Each person is on their own journey, and it is not up to me or anyone else to dictate that journey. Period. End of story. That's all folks.

But when a body positive plus size gal says she's going to be more careful about what she eats, start working out, or just be generally more health-minded, there are a lot of assumptions that people jump to. She's not really happy with her body, she was lying or Obviously that means she wasn't trying to be healthy before just to name a couple. To combat the first assumption, I contend that you have to love your body before you can truly decide to make these types of changes. And I do love my body. I have loved my body more since I gained weight, maybe in part because I had to learn to. No one else in society was going to love my plus sized body for me, it seemed.

For the second assumption... Whatever. There are a lot of arguments that could be made against that and, with Nicole Arbour's video being discussed so widely, I'm sure you've heard a lot of them.

Assumptions aside, I'm on this journey... and so many others. And I will be sharing updates and tips and stories (and failures) along the way. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Wait... was that last sentence cheesy? I feel like it was. Oops.