Stronger Than the Scale: You Were Always Enough!

For years, Stephanie Parks believed a number on the scale had the power to define her worth.

In this deeply personal episode of Champagne Smiles & Magical Miles, Stephanie shares the honest story behind her lifelong relationship with body image. From childhood comments and relentless dieting to the quiet struggles with disordered eating, she opens up about the years spent trying to fix a body that was never actually broken.

Like so many women, Stephanie believed that if she could just reach the “right” number, everything would finally feel better. But through personal growth, community, and her running journey, she slowly discovered something powerful: our bodies are not ornaments meant to be judged — they are instruments meant to carry us through life with strength and resilience.

In this episode, Stephanie talks about:
 • The early comments that planted seeds of insecurity
 • The exhausting cycle of dieting and scale obsession
 • Learning to see movement as love instead of punishment
 • Why worth has nothing to do with a number
 • A powerful resource for healing body shame: More Than a Body

If you’ve ever felt like your value was tied to a number, this episode is a reminder of a truth we all need to hear:

You were always enough.

 body image, self-worth, confidence for women, scale obsession, women and weight, body positivity mindset, overcoming body shame, self-acceptance, personal growth, women empowerment 

Champagne Smiles & Magical Miles is a podcast about living with grace, choosing joy, and celebrating the moments — big and small — that make life meaningful.

Hosted by Stephanie Parks, each episode blends mindset, self-care, family traditions, and everyday intention with a touch of Disney magic and real-life reflection. From the words we use and the habits we build to the kindness we extend to ourselves and others, this podcast is an invitation to slow down, show up, and live on purpose.

You’ll hear favorite segments like Words Matter, Magical Miles, Sparkle & Glow Up, and Sip of the Week — each designed to inspire, encourage, and help you leave every episode with simple, practical takeaways you can easily implement in daily life.

Whether you’re in a season of growth, rest, or celebration, this space is for you.

Because every mile matters, every word counts, and life is meant to be lived with grace, joy, and a whole lot of celebrating. ✨🥂

🎙️ New episodes weekly. Follow along and join the celebration.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Then shares. It's been a minute since we've done this. Let's start this episode with one goal to make your day better than it was five minutes ago. This is Champagne Smiles and Magical Miles, and I'm your host, Stephanie Parks. If you're new here, welcome. I'm really glad you're here. And if you're returning, then welcome home. Whether you're a Disney adult, a runner chasing magical miles, a busy parent juggling all the things, or simply someone looking for a little more joy, confidence, and intention in life, you're in the right place. Hello, friends. I'm Stephanie Parks, and today's this episode is one of the most personal I've ever shared. Honestly, it took me a long time to decide if I was ready to talk about it. That's probably why there's such a gap between episodes. And here we are. Today we're talking about body image, the expectations we grow up with, the standards we try to meet, the quiet voice that sometimes whispers were not quiet enough. For me, that story started when I was really young. Growing up, I heard comments about being curvy. It wasn't intentional or meant to be hurtful, but when you're a young girl and you're told you're too thick or too curvy or just that you're built different, those words are uh taken seriously and they were observations. You you take them as instructions. And somewhere along the way, I internalized the idea that something about my body needed to change. And I was I was always active as a young girl. I played softball, I was cheerleader, gymnast, played tennis, but you can't help the genetics you're given. And quite honestly, I have grown to appreciate that young woman, and I appreciate the words that I was given that taught me that I always was enough. So I'm here today to help you guys with the same. I've tried to be very intentional in raising, love to hear their feedback because say you're beautiful, you're perfect, you're uniquely you. God made you exactly the way you were intended to be. But sometimes my actions, even as an adult, may say something different. So it's very important that we think about that as well, being moms. So that was high school and you know, going through all the changes of your body. Fast forward to college, I was a college cheerleader competitively, worked out every single day, lifted weights in the gym, constantly training is about discipline, strength, hard work. It was a lot of fun. But every single week, we weighed in. Probably not indifferent than most competitive sports, but as a cheerleader and you weigh in, if you weigh too much, you don't cheer. Now, I don't know if it's still that way. I know things have changed a lot, but it makes sense that you know you're being, especially as a flyer, being lifted in the air, you're turning your body to the air, you need to be cognizant, but to be weighed every week, and then sometimes you may or may not make the cut, it continues that thought of am I is my body to whatever fill in the blank, curvy, thick. So although very muscular, very healthy, still carrying with me the thought of is something wrong with my body? So I remember waiting, standing there waiting for those numbers to appear every time and who was in a cheer, who who got to cheer and who didn't each time. It was almost as if were you acceptable? So I followed me for years, and I hate to I have admitted this, but at some point it became what now we would consider an eating disorder to the point where try to make myself then. I would try to make myself go to the bathroom, drink casserole, Ipecac. I don't know if you guys know what Ipecac is, but it's a syrup that you can get for, I guess, back in the day, a couple of dollars, and it makes you makes you vomit. So I worked at a pharmacy and it was over the counter, did a little bottle, a couple of dollars in college, like a shot of Ipecac, and you get sick and you weigh less. Not healthy. I don't recommend it. I can't believe this is the first time I'm actually saying these things out loud, but I'm glad that I have this supportive female community, and I hope I hope these words help someone somewhere along the way. And I hope that one of the pieces of feedback I've gotten recently is that when I'm authentic in my brand in my social media on the podcast, that it's better received than when I try to not not ever be not authentic, but just be a little more sterile and a little more guarded, if you will. So I'm gonna try to do that and try to be who I am. Think that that's best serving the community. I uh definitely never promote something I don't believe in. I try to promote a lot of female-owned businesses. I try to be thoughtful about what that is. Obviously, sometimes the big boxes are there for, you know, things, but mostly the things I try to promote and talk about and are things that I love and brands that love. So, but the authenticity when I ask for feedback has really come through strong. So I appreciate that as I try to learn and grow. And I love the fact that you guys give me grace as I go through this process, which is why I'm putting myself out there with this one on a topic that I've never talked about before, at least not publicly. And the struggle of the skill has been a reality for me since I can remember, probably since the time I was 12 or 13, and what I look like and how I compare to others, and you know, humans on this earth, given our own unique shapes and sizes, and I hope that my children have learned to love and embrace who they are. But for me, I, you know, with what I now admit as an eating disorder, was an eating disorder, did weigh myself every single day, and I still weigh myself every single day. I get up a scale every single day, and I have for as long as I can remember. So I know that it's not recommended and that the fluctuations are initially due to water, not to actual pounds that are gonna stay with you, but it is something that it's to be aware of. And it's something that I know my children watch and see every single day. It's oh, I'm up two pounds, oh, I'm down two pounds. Is that good or bad? You know, are you dehydrated? You know, did you have a good did you go in the bathroom? Did y'all go to the bathroom? You know, all the things that the human body does. Oh, from back in the day of fin fin, and which is a scary thing. I can't believe I, you know, was able to even in my early 20s to get on fin fin, but took fin fin for a while. Even to the point of, you know, trying to get it, at least the fenteromine part of it. You know, even as an older adult, like I'd wanted to find something that would just give me that little, you know, lose the 10 pounds. Then, you know, the journey of I went two years as a vegan and felt great. I would on the weekends allow myself to have whatever I wanted. And then got pregnant with first. She's now 23 and then quills off first pregnancy. I was very healthy. I did all the organic, healthy things, but occasionally a fried chicken slipped in here and there. That's okay. And it is okay. You have to allow yourself, your body's craving something for a reason when you're going through pregnancy. So saying and putting myself out there to say that it has been a struggle. It's always my struggle. I've recently went through an interesting journey of this thing called perimenopause. And we'll talk about that on another episode. This one's about body image and being positive about your body. But it's interesting now talking to my friends about, you know, back in the day, you could just change what you eat, exercise, and drop some pounds and doing menopause. I mean, I I started riding and running and running and running, as you guys know, which is now one of my favorite things to do. It's something I'm passionate about. It's something that has brought a whole community of friends to me and with me. And running or not, we'll still be friends. But the supportive community of running has really helped heal some of that body insecurity and some of those issues because anybody can run. It was one of the first things I learned is any shape and size, it's really about one foot in front of the other and being positive and just knowing that you can do it. So this isn't about that. It's about how you feel about yourself, understanding that your body is your body, and accepting and loving the body that you have, treating it well, exercise, making good food choices, understanding the limitations of your body, what you can do, what you should do, what you can't do. Movement is huge, very important. But at the end of the day, it's about loving who you are. Scale. So one of the things through the process of understanding my body, taking recently, like taking a lot of labs, understanding what supplements and hormones and all the things, but to have gone from curvy girl by all muscle, but looking heavy on the scale, to being, you know, through the pregnancy years. And we call we call this one time period the divorce diet because divorce diet is you lose a lot of pounds just because you're stressed. We'll talk about that on another day, the breakup podcast. But I'm I'm an open book. So if any of the listeners want to talk more about the journey, I'll be happy to talk about the, you know, how body shaming and sometimes even so I've recently been on GLP1s, I've lost some weight. It helped get me past the edge of why can't I lose weight? Why am I running so much and working out and not eating as much, eating all the protein, doing all the things? So we can talk. Well, I definitely want to talk about that later because I have some something interesting to talk about, to be excited about in a few days. But it's all about making yourself feel healthy and feeling strong and whatever that means, whether it's like lifting weights and being super strong muscular, whether it's running and knowing your cardiovascular health, both ideally, whether it's about eating healthy, just having the energy to pour into your family and your life and the things are important to you. That's really what it's about. So now that we're past all of that, I just realized somebody had talked to me about these things when I was younger and helped me with it. And I think we were in a time frame back then that was different than it is now. Although the negativity and when people talk about, you know, how social media is negative, I also feel like I've actually met a really great community of people that are very supportive. I feel like females supporting females and just in general, people supporting people, you can find good, good, good people in good communities and even through the social media of support and building one another up. And I encourage you to do that. I encourage you, if you choose to, you know, spend your time on social media, find groups of people that are positive and get rid of the negative ones because that's that's really ideal in connecting. It's all about life is about making connections with people's. Anyway, let's move on to words matter. So words matter when we're talking about body image is today's word is enough. For years I believed that I wasn't enough. I wasn't thin enough, I wasn't perfect enough, I wasn't small enough, I wasn't fill in the blank enough between pageants and cheerleading and auditions, and you would be surprised. And most people probably that knew me didn't even know that I was struggling with some of those body insecurities. But let's just all tell ourselves we are enough. We've always been enough. And your worth isn't about what you look like, it's about who you are on the inside, and we are who we are meant to be, and we are enough. So I was doing some research for this, quite honestly. And I started thinking, you know, I wonder what's out there. I wonder what other people are saying, what other resources there are. Um, so this is something that I found. Your body is an instrument, not an ornament. I share that. My big girls haven't heard this yet, but I'm gonna send it to them and we're gonna go through this journey together. But it was highly recommended. It's called More Than a Body, and it's by there's twin sisters I read at the intro last night, and I haven't made it past that because I fell asleep. But Kite and Lexi Kite, and they're both PhDs, and they're identical twins, and they said that they're full lives. So what I got through in the intro was their entire lives is identical twins. I never thought about this, but it was like like one of them, Lindsay or Lexi. Lexi, you're two inches shorter than your sister, and like Lindsay, your nose is bigger than your sister's. Oh, Lexi, you're like 10 pounds heavier, whatever. It didn't matter what what they said, it was always a comp your hair's curlier or your hair's darker, whatever it was, it was always a comparison. And I've never thought about that with the typical twins that you're constantly being compared to someone whom you're supposed to look just like. So I can't wait to hear what the rest of the book is. So it says positive body image isn't believing your body looks good, it is knowing your body is good, regardless of how it looks. And so it was highly recommended. I will talk about it again. Let me know your thoughts. I'm always curious, you know, for sure. You know it's something that I think that my big girls and even Magla. There is a workbook to it too. So we'll see. I'll let you know. And you guys let me know too. And I can't wait going through this journey together. I have a goal of um only weighing myself once a week. We'll see how that goes. I'll let you know. I'll keep you posted on it. So I'm gonna give you a Maddie Joe story and then we can get out of here. This Maddie Joe, you know, Maddie Joe always means a lot when she says things that hits me hard, but she said, I feel strong. She didn't say I feel skinny, she didn't say I feel small, she didn't say I feel she just said I feel strong after we finished one of our race. Small body feels strong. So I realized that's the language I want to say and share and be. I feel strong. Our con our bodies are constantly evolving from childhood through puberty, through childbearing ears, and now into this new world of this menopause thing, paramenopause. But if we say I feel strong, I think that's the right word. It's the cycle. So I'm enough and I'm strong. So lean into that. Your body doesn't need to be fixed. Take care of it. It will take care of you. And thank you. Thank you for this community. Thank you for indulging me in listening to all of this. I hope there's something that you can carry forward with you. Uh have joy, courage, confidence, show up for people you care about. I'm having a blast with this podcast. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do. Thank you for being here for episode 11 of Champagne Smiles and Magical Miles. I'd love to hear your story, your challenges, the moments that have shaped you. And until next time, look the trip, read the book, sign up for the race if you want to pop the bubbles, do whatever it is that makes you happy. Love, hugs, kisses. It's Maddie Joe time. Cheers.