“Why does she keep saying she’s fat?” my 11-year-old asked incredulously. “She’s not fat!”

This, my friends, will go down in my extremely short, but treasured, parenting win column.

I was binging on the TV show “American Housewife” the other night with my son. It’s cute, witty, and intentionally ridiculous.

The premise is an average family moves to a wealthy city to better their children’s education. With that move comes size-0 women drinking green juice and practicing hot yoga all day.  It feels vaguely familiar to my suburban life. The beautiful main character, Kate, is not a size-0 and feels equally intimidated and put-out by their thigh gaps and smooth foreheads (and she’s not afraid to say it).

(photo credit ABC.com)

I don’t know if the actress, Katy Mixon, is healthy in real life. I don’t know what she eats and I don’t know if she exercises.

But I do know this: We cannot judge her health by her size.

I’d like to introduce you to Mirna Valerio. Her blog, Fat Girl Running, exploded in 2015 when the Wall Street Journal and Runner’s World posted in-depth articles on her.  Several other news outlets followed suit and she was on Nicole DeBoom’s Run This World podcast in late 2016. Since then she’s appear four more times.

Her first book, A Beautiful Work in Progress, released in 2016 and she’s been lighting up the athletic world since. She was even named one of National Geographic’s Athlete of the Year in 2018.  

She’s kind of a stud.

Mirna isn’t just a big girl who runs. She is a big girl who has completed marathons, ultras (50+ miles), Tough Mudders, and so much more.   

I’ve spent time with her at a couple Skirt Sports ambassador retreats. She’s a pretty cool cat.

The answer to the question you may be thinking

Before you start wondering why she’s not a smaller size despite her activity, check out this passage from Mirna’s article in Runner’s World:

Dr. Steven Blair, P.E.D., the lead author of the Cooper Clinic studies who is now a professor in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, agrees. “If you fashioned a hypothetical world in which every person ran 10 miles a day and subsisted on the same daily ration of carrots, you would still have a full range of body types, from svelte to stout.”

“Instead of wondering, If she runs so much, how come she’s not skinny? we could be wondering, How heavy would she be if she didn’t run?” says Blair. “Is she a good person? Is she active, healthy, and contributing to the world? Those questions are far more pertinent and interesting than asking what she weighs.”

Mirna has more motivation wrapped up in her accomplishments than anything you can find in an Instagram meme.  She lives and breathes a healthy lifestyle.  She makes right-sized nutritious choices and moves her body in all kinds of ways.

We must stop equating big with unhealthy, and thin with healthy.

We must stop anticipating our personal health to look like the magazines in the checkout line.  

We must stop expecting our unique bodies to fit into some kind of ludicrous mold that erroneously validates our nutritious choices and exercise.  

We must stop tapping into our inner American Housewife and comparing ourselves to our neighbors.

Just.  Stop.

Seriously. Stop it.

Friends, we can turn the page on this.  We can show our children healthy eating habits and exercise. We can share our struggles and find support from others.  We can ask ourselves if we are honoring our body’s nutritional and physical needs.  Is it equipped to do what God has planned for it?

I can’t speak to Mirna’s faith, but I do wonder if God is using her as motivation to all the non-traditional-sized women.   Maybe He wants to use her to show others that they too can move, regardless of their size.  It’s ok to exercise outside and find joy in the simplicity of moving among nature’s beauty.  And if you get funny looks among your size-0, green-juice drinking neighbors, all the better.  It means you’re doing something right.   

Need a little help with appreciating your body?  Sign up here for a FREE 7-day scripture-based journal to release the pursuit of physical perfection and grasp on to the beauty God created in us … all with a lot of grace and little chocolate.

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