About

About Corinna 

Until my mid-20’s I was bit like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. Always expecting the worst and never disappointed when the worst inevitably arrived. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care about having fun because I was supposed to work hard now, and reap the rewards later but truthfully, I was fun-deprived and I knew it. The lack of fun and the abundance of dissatisfaction, in my life affected my emotional as well as my physical health. Over the years I have tried many different ways to improve my own self-esteem, and to have more fun.

I walked the “get-well” path for many years hoping to find a method that would fix what was wrong with me and help me feel good about myself. While I am grateful for the strides I made towards liking myself more, ultimately, I was not gratified. No matter how hard I tried to improve myself, fix what was wrong with me, or attempt to re-program myself with new behaviors and habits, the underlying theme remained the same. In order to “get well” I first had to admit that I carried something within me that I must get rid of before I could be “ok.” And then, maybe, if I was lucky enough to find a way to control whatever “fault” I had then maybe I would have a chance of enjoying my life. It’s depressing just talking about it and living that way was even more difficult.

Throughout this period of my life I believed that losing weight was the only way that I would like myself more and so I tried every diet. Each one worked for a while. At some point I would start to feel deprived and left out of the fun that I imagined other people were having while they were eating food that I wasn’t allowed to eat. I wasn’t the least bit interested in learning to be disciplined – I just wanted to eat with abandon. So I would binge and easily find all the weight that I had lost.

I was determined to figure out what was wrong with me. Why did I have this obsession with food? Why couldn’t I learn self-control? Why did I hate myself so much that I made myself fat? I believed that if I was “overweight” that it was a sign of there being something wrong with me.

After some really depressing therapy, I focused my attention fully on the fascinating area of self-help books. There are thousands of them! All the best books will tell you exactly what is wrong with you and what you have to change about yourself in order to be happy. And if you follow their instructions you will finally be ok.

I spent years trying to follow system after system wondering what was wrong with me and why those books hadn’t fixed me yet. Each one had me focus on my faults and each one just did not feel right. I changed my behavior and still felt bad…so I would try another book.

One day I had a moment of insight which took me in a completely new and different direction. I was standing in front of my mirror and I realized that the thought going round and round was “you’re too fat to be pretty.” I was shocked when I heard it. Did that come from me?! I was looking at my reflection and I truth be told I thought I looked pretty darn good. Why should I have to wait to love myself until I look physically different? Besides, body image is something that changes with every society and culture, and even changes decade by decade. There was a time when a Rubenesque figure was the ideal.

I began to consider that how I felt about food was how I felt about my life. When I felt that I wanted to eat with abandon – what I really wanted was to live with abandon. I wanted to live without restraint. I wanted to live fully and outrageously without the burden of negative self-judgment. I wanted to feel like I had a right to pursue every dream and have it all – and I didn’t want to work hard to feel that way. I wanted it to be fun.

I decided then to dedicate my life to having fun. While still being responsible for keeping a roof over my head and paying my bills I was determined that every day I would laugh, that I would eat food that tasted good without feeling guilty and that I would look at myself in a mirror with approval.

I created www.ThisLushLife.com as my way to remind myself every day that life is good, that I am beautiful at any size, and that the source of my beauty comes from living a pleasurable life. I wanted women to be able to shop in a size-positive environment where we will never diet post ads. It is a website where women can shop for clothing, make travel plans, decorate their homes, send flowers and purchase gifts without being harassed by images of someone else’s physical ideal. In our plus-size clothing section we will only represent websites that use plus-size models. We want every visitor to feel a sense of self-approval and enjoy This Lush Life that we are blessed to be living.

Corinna Makris
Founder - www.ThisLushLife.com
“Live the Life you Love and Love the Life you Live”