onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “eating disorders”

23 Oct 2016

Crazy for sugar

When I was growing up and I was active in my food/sugar addiction, everything was about food. Now that the sugar is down and I keep strict boundaries around my eating, everything is about feelings. In retrospect, it was always about feelings, but the food masked that.The craziest I have ever felt in my life, the sickest around food I have ever been, was when I was 27-28 years old. I was in a socially acceptable body, maybe even thinner than I am now. (I am a healthy weight now, but I am not skinny.) But my feelings were out of control, my eating was out of control, and the things I was doing to keep the weight off were absolutely out of control. I was constantly tormented. 
Around this time of year is when I have the most memories, or more like flashbacks, to that time, now 11-12 years ago. At that time, I was essentially starving myself. But I wasn’t losing weight. And then, my period stopped. 

I had the whole thing twisted around. I wanted my body to work like normal while I did abnormal things to it. I didn’t want to fix my eating because I couldn’t imagine a fix for it. The idea of giving up sugar never ever crossed my mind. That would have been crazy to me. It was what I lived for. It was my joy. So I wanted to eat what I wanted to eat, not have it affect my weight, and have my body be healthy. And I was getting none of those things. I was eating mediocre “diet” substitutes (lower calorie, but still full of sugar) for the things I really wanted, I was exercising to the point of hurting my body, my period had stopped, and I was still in a body that I hated.

I went to the doctor, and she asked me about what I was eating, and I lied through my teeth, and she put me on birth control. Basically, we were going to force my hormones to start working again. But what happened was I started to have these emotional outbursts that I could not stop, even though there was a little, rational voice in my head telling me that I was acting crazy. It would say things like “Don’t yell at this cab driver, it’s not his fault.” “Don’t throw a fit in the grocery store. They are just out of something, it happens.” I could see very clearly that I was being crazy, but I could not stop being crazy. This was, without a doubt, the worst time of my life. I could not imagine a way out. I truly feared that I would end up institutionalized.

The way out would turn out to be giving up sugar. Exactly the thing I was trying to keep by doing all of these crazy things. The starving, and the exercise bulimia, and the regular old stick-a-toothbrush-down-your-throat bulimia, and birth control pills that made me scream and cry like a mad woman.

The other day, I had a rough day emotionally. I was filled with a lot of anger. I was frustrated, and riled up. I did a lot of praying, and a lot of calming exercises, and a little talking to sane people, and even a little crying to get it out. But I didn’t eat over it. And the next day I was all better. 

Those feelings could have been anything. They could have been hormones, or SAD, or just a bad mood. But they did not get fed sugar, or mean-spirited acting out, or emotional outbursts, and they passed.

That is the gift of having my eating under control. My feelings are in their proper place. I get to look at them sincerely, and see if there are things in my life that I want to examine and change. But they don’t get a say in what I do, what I eat, if I keep my commitments, or if I behave kindly. They get to read the map, but they don’t get to steer the vehicle. 

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16 Oct 2016

Way too close to chocolate cake

I have to say that I am so ready for November 9th. Seriously. I am having a hard time emotionally. Every day, the political noise gets louder and angrier. And more than once I have been sucked in. But I don’t want to be sucked in. 

I want peace. Today my husband was watching something and I had to get up and walk away from it. It brought up so much hate and rage. 

I hate these feelings. They scare me. I am ill-equipped to handle them. And I can’t dive head first into self righteous anger. It’s a sick place for me. It’s a dangerous place for me. Each toxic, hate-filled thought I entertain is a paving stone on my personal highway to hell. And not the cool highway to hell that AC/DC was on. I’m talking more like Illinois expressways during summer construction. I’m talking about picking up my substance. Because do you know what would numb all of these uncomfortable feelings? Cake.

Consumerism in the U.S. is all encompassing, and that includes the news. I believe that people, in general, like to get riled up. It’s exciting! They like the way their heartbeats quicken. They like to yell, and berate, and accuse. They like it so much they are willing to pay for it. And somebody will always sell what everyone is willing to buy. 

I used to be one of those people. I loved to get angry. I loved to argue. I loved to show how clever I was in mean spirited ways. (I still love to show how clever I am. I just try to keep it light and friendly now.) But that kind of thinking is like peeing your pants. It feels good at first, but soon it leaves you cold and uncomfortable. 

Addiction is also like that. I would eat a cake. I would feel like I didn’t have a care in the world. For a little while. But then I would come to, and I would feel fat and gross. And the only thing left to do, the only way to get rid of that feeling, was to eat another cake.

I don’t know that I won’t get sucked back into the mire of heinous depravity that is this election season. But no matter what, I can’t take it lightly. I can’t say “that’s just the way it is.” I have to protect myself. Because It’s too close to temporary oblivion. It’s too close to resentment and righteous anger. Because it’s way too close to chocolate cake.

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08 Oct 2016
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Misogyny and the politicians who love it

I generally try to avoid political talk. I have opinions. I vote. I occasionally get riled up enough to speak up. But I find that most political “discussions” are just an opportunity for people to get their righteous anger up and running. And I make a concerted effort to maintain my personal peace. I actively avoid the kinds of situations that will cause me to feel rage and resentment. I know that they cannot always be avoided, but I don’t go looking for a fight. But today I want to touch on something that borders on political. I want to talk about misogyny. 
When I was fat, everyone and their brother thought they had a right to talk about my body. Strangers harassed me on the street. Men I went on dates with said things like “I bet you couldn’t give that shit away.” (That is a direct quote from a blind date I went on with a good friend’s cousin!) People compared me to elephants and hippopotamuses. Blew out their cheeks and put out their arms to mimic my big belly.
I didn’t really understand that it was inappropriate for people to do that because I was so ashamed of myself. I knew it hurt, but I did not have enough self-esteem to recognize that my body, my life choices, and my level of attractiveness were nobody else’s business.

When I lost weight, people (mostly men, though some women) still thought they had the right to talk about my body. They would yell on the street that I was sexy. They would tell me I was dressed like a whore. They would grab me by the arm and try to force me to talk to them. Men would touch my ass as I walked along minding my own business. Or masturbate next to me on the train.

If you live under a rock, you may be confused as to why I am bringing this up. Well, one of the U.S. Presidential candidates has a lot of things to say about women, and what he is saying is either about their weight, attractiveness, sexual viability, or about how he believes he can assault them because he’s famous.

So I want to take this time to remind all women of some very important things. (And gentlemen, you feel free to take this advice as well. Because I love you guys too!)
1) Your body is nobody else’s business, unless you request their support. 

I have people in my life that I talk about my body with. But I choose who they are. Nobody has that right unless I give it to them. Not my parents, or my relatives, or my friends, or even my husband. I need support to help with my eating and body image disorders, so I have a small (teeny tiny, frankly) loving circle of people with whom I speak openly and honestly about my weight. I welcome their opinions and honor their suggestions because I believe in facing reality head on. I am certainly not looking for anyone who is going to help me come up with excuses to eat cake, or tell me I haven’t gained weight when I have. I am looking for true friends who help me find peace around my food and body. That doesn’t mean I welcome any and all opinions and suggestions. I don’t.

2) You are not only valuable for what you can contribute to male pleasure. 

I love to wear beautiful clothes. I like to feel beautiful. But I am not doing it for the pleasure of men. Or even women for that matter. Please don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy respectful flirting. When a gentleman tells me in a gentlemanly way that I am looking nice, I very much enjoy it. I like that kind of friendly acknowledgement. I love seeing well dressed people feeling fine and walking with a spring in their step. I also really like being pretty. But I don’t owe being pretty to anyone. I lost 150 pounds because I hated being fat. I did it because eating was killing me. I did it because it was painful to live in a hard-to-get-around-in body. I’m saying I did it for me. Only me. Nobody else.

3) Your body is yours. Period.

I don’t care what you look like, what you are or aren’t wearing, how or if you have makeup on, or what time of day or night it is. Your body is yours and you have the right to your autonomy. There is nothing you can do to forfeit that. Nobody is allowed to touch you without your permission. 
4) You are your body, so love it no matter what size, shape, color, or age. And don’t let anyone tell you you shouldn’t love it until it’s “perfect” or “better.”

I used to pretend I was not my body. I was ashamed of it. But I was smart, clever, funny, and interesting. I liked to think that I was these things. I wanted be my mind alone. But the honest-to-god truth for all of us is that we cannot be separated from our bodies. Well, that’s not true. Of course we can, and eventually will be. It’s called death. But while we are alive, we are tied to the vessel we live in. So I decided to love my vessel. I love it with my stretch marks, and flab and so much extra skin. I love it with my crooked legs and squarish hips. I love it in spite of being bombarded with photoshopped images of impossible women. 

5) Love is not something you earn.
Love is a gift. If it is not a gift, freely given, then it’s not love. You are worthy of love, right now, exactly as you are. I didn’t feel worthy of love for a long time. And it was all tied up with being fat. So in a lot of ways, I felt unloved. But when I put down the sugar and got some clarity and self-esteem, I realized that I had been loved all along. Not by everyone. And often not by society. But by the people who mattered.

Obviously, I am a woman who lost 150 pounds, so I am a proponent of weight loss for people who are overweight. But not because I think they are lacking. I wish it for them because I know first hand that life is so much easier. I wish it because I wish everyone the kind of peace and joy and self-love that I have. I don’t want people to choose it for me, or for their potential (or current) mates, or for society. I want them to choose it as a form of self-care. And if they don’t, I hold no judgment. I have love. And I wish peace. That’s all.

Posted in Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , , ,
25 Sep 2016

Fat Girl Sh*t

My best friend, like myself, is a compulsive eater who has had boundaries around her eating, and has been a healthy weight for over a decade. Sometimes we will be talking, and one of us will say something and the other one will say, “No, no. That’s not true. That’s just old fat girl shit.”

“Fat girl shit” can be any number of thoughts that I have about myself that are rooted in how much I hated and was disgusted by my body when I was fat, and how I assumed others judged me based on my expectations that they also hated and were disgusted by my body. It does not matter how long I have been a healthy weight, or had my eating under control. These are old old thoughts. These are paths I’ve worn into my brain by thinking them consistently for as long as I can remember. This is exactly the kind of thing that I have to dismantle on a regular basis.

This week, I got back in touch with a High School teacher that I haven’t seen or heard from in over 20 years. The first fat girl thought I had was that he wouldn’t remember me at all. I have this thought a lot. I have it in my head that I was not memorable, because who would want to recollect such an unattractive person. And then, if for some strange reason he did remember me, I would be remembered as the fat girl. Because being the fat girl has always been my first identity. Even now, when I can get out from under my fat girl shit, being a person with boundaries around my eating (essentially, the opposite of being a fat girl) is my primary identity. In other words, I have always been either a fat girl, or the woman who overcame being a fat girl.

But this teacher does remember me. He remembers me even though my name has changed. Not only that, he remembers, and still quotes (!?!) a line from a poem I wrote that was published in our school’s student art and literature magazine. He remembers me as “wicked funny.” (Hell yes, I will take that compliment.) He remembers me laughing a lot. But here’s the thing that threw me for a loop. He does not remember me as fat. At all. I mentioned it briefly, and he was surprised. 

I bring this up because it’s bittersweet. I am grateful to know that I was more than just a fat girl to people. And yet, I wish that my teenage self had known it too. I am sorry that Kate could never see herself as just a person first. And I am sorry that even looking back now, I have a hard time seeing that Kate as just a person first.  

I am not sorry to have found a solution to my eating problems, nor am I sorry to live in a healthy body that is easy to move around in. And my zen-like way of living reminds me that there is no other way for things to have gone except for the way they went. But I would like to make amends to that Kate for never really acknowledging her. I would like to start remembering that Kate as something more than fat. I think I’ll go with “wicked funny.”

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17 Sep 2016
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Just because you won’t look at it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there

The New York Times apparently thought I’d be surprised by how many foods contain added sugar. The New York Times obviously doesn’t know me very well. Or read my blog. Which is fine…I guess…

But really, do people not know?

I know that I read labels and not everybody does. So maybe I know that there is sugar or starch added to all sorts of things you wouldn’t expect, like pork and fish. And maybe people who don’t read labels don’t realize that. But in the grand scheme of things, if you are not addicted to sugar the way I am, maybe in small amounts it’s not enough to affect you. (Though, seriously, fish? Why does anyone need to add sugar to fish?)

But do people really not know that if something tastes like candy, it has sugar in it? Seriously. Do you, as an adult, really still think Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch is part of a balanced breakfast, just because when we were kids they said so in the commercial and printed it on the side of the box? (Alright fine, it does have 25% of your recommended daily riboflavin.)

Here’s the thing. I’m not talking about everybody quitting sugar. I am sick around sugar, but I don’t pretend that everyone is. And I am a firm believer in freedom. Like I think that people have the right to smoke. But nobody is pretending that cigarettes are good for you. I was a smoker for many years, I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway. Smokers know that smoking is dangerous. And if you tell a smoker that smoking is bad for them – which people sure do like to do for some reason – and you get a shocked response, it is sarcastic. Because everyone knows and you’re being a moron.

But we pretend that certain sugar foods are “packed with nutrition.” And we let people be shocked when somebody says that a granola bar is not that healthy; it’s mostly just sugar. But have you had a granola bar? If it tastes like an oatmeal cookie, that’s what it is. Even if it’s rectangular, and says “organic” on it. As a culture, we say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but we eat doughnuts and Pop-Tarts. Or frosted cinnamon rolls. Or various kinds of bread with syrup.

Again, the judgment is not about what we are eating, but how we are lying about it. If you want to eat sugar for breakfast, I will not try to stop you. More power to you. But you know that doughnuts are just cake. Breakfast cake, yes. Sure! But still just cake. And if I see you “look shocked” when you “find out” that the snack that you bought at the health food store, which totally tastes like a candy bar, is just a candy bar, I am going to have to call bullshit.

But here’s the thing. I get it. Because when I didn’t want to give up sugar, I also pretended that health food store candy was not candy. And I pretended that healthy meant it wouldn’t make me fat. But I wasn’t losing any weight. And I wasn’t interested in looking at the truth if it meant that I was going to come face to face with my relationship with sugar.

As a culture we are playing dumb for one another. We’re a bunch of enablers. And I think it’s ridiculous. Eat what you choose. I hope you enjoy every bite. But I also hope you have your eyes open. Not looking at the sugar, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

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04 Sep 2016

What goes into and comes out of my mouth

When I was eating compulsively I spent a lot of my time plotting revenge. I am not saying I necessarily carried it out, but I thought about how best to hurt the person I was angry with. I had a lot of conversations in my head where I used my razor sharp wit to cut someone down or shut them up. I thought about ways to bother and upset people who bothered and upset me. It was exciting. It gave me a self-righteous rush!

When I got sober from sugar, I had to give that up. The desire for vengeance is a byproduct of resentment. I cannot afford resentment. It is as poisonous to me as sugar itself. Resentment is one of the ways my addiction uses to convince me that I “deserve” a fix.

The truth is that there are ways that I am being treated right now that I don’t like. I consider them abusive and controlling. And there is nothing for me to do about it. I didn’t do anything wrong. But if I seek revenge, even just in my head, even if I am just cultivating disdain, I will have done something wrong. And when I have done something to wrong someone, whether or not they abused me first, I will feel the guilt of my own actions. And that will make me particularly hungry. 

But eating my feelings, especially stuffing them down with sugar, is no longer an option. So if I did retaliate against a fellow human, I would have to apologize and make amends for my actions, even if those humans have hurt me, but won’t make amends to me. It is all about me. It is only about me. Not what I want or deserve, but how I have impacted the world and the humans in it.

The good and bad news of personal responsibility is that I am accountable for all of my actions, in all ways, on every level, regardless of outside circumstances. In other words, I am responsible for what both goes into and comes out of my mouth. 

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28 Aug 2016

This post does not contain attachment. Post anyway?

I was taking to a friend the other day about compromise. She was confused about why someone was acting a certain way when a compromise would be easy. I told her that this person most likely didn’t want to compromise. My friend asked, “then what do they want?” It was funny to me because the answer was obvious to me, but because of the nature of my loving and generous friend, she could not imagine it. She could not fathom that people want what they want. They want to win. They want complete and total victory.It’s perhaps obvious to me because I lived like that for so long, wanting what I wanted, feeling defeated or put upon if I had to let go of my (often grand and exorbitant) expectations. Feeling cheated and wronged by anyone who got even a fraction of what they wanted at the expense of the total of what I wanted.

Addiction makes most of us self-centered in the most unhealthy ways. We believe we should have all the good, and yet we expect everyone else to deal with the bad. We decide that we deserve our good fortune, but in the face of bad fortune, or even just the consequences of our bad decisions, we condemn life as completely unfair, and others as wicked, cruel, and out to get us.

This ultimately comes down to our attachment. Attachment to the way we want things to be. Attachment to our expectations.

In recovery, I had to learn non-attachment. Non-attachment is a spiritual idea that I have known about for some time, but was unable to practice until I got my eating under control. When I was younger and searching for a spiritual practice to make me feel whole, I read a slew of self-help, spiritual, and religious books. Zen Buddhism books talk a lot about non-attachment. But I was never able to fully grasp it until I put boundaries around my eating. I am sure that had something to do with the fact that addiction is attachment. It is attachment to one’s substance, the belief that you simply cannot live without it.

In recovery, I had to learn that I could only control my own thoughts, words, and actions. Of course this started with the food. I was no longer going to eat cake. Ever. And I was going to have to come to terms with the fact that other people were. And that I could not be resentful of that, or I would be in danger of ending up back in food hell. Even if They weighed 300 pounds and were diabetic. Even if I thought they were sugar addicts like me. I made a choice for myself and the only person I could expect to live the way I wanted to live was me. And soon, it became clear that this needed to be true in all areas of my life.

I do not get a say in what others think, say, or do, and (here’s the kicker) that is exactly as it should be. It was confronting to realize that I was not the center of all of my dealings in the world. It was painful to accept that I, not only would not, but should not always get everything I desired. But there is also something very freeing about recognizing someone’s autonomy as sacred, rather than inconvenient. 

I do not claim to be a guru. But I am good at non-attachment. Not because I think it is holy, but ultimately because it is convenient. I live a happier life knowing that other people’s choices and behaviors have nothing to do with me. Of course I still want things. And yes, there are things that are important to me that I do not get. But that’s life. And that’s another thing I have found since I put boundaries around my eating. When I don’t fight against other people’s choices, trying to force the outcome I think I want, in the long run, life always gives me better than I thought I wanted in the first place.

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20 Aug 2016

Not a night owl or a vampire, just a sugar addict.

I used to think I was a night owl. I loved to stay up into the wee hours of the morning. I kept what people call the vampire hours. I would read, write, watch movies, and sometimes even do things like sew, crochet, or make some kind of DIY project. I would be happily awake until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more.

But of course, I had a terrible time getting out of bed. I would get 4-6 hours of sleep most days, and then sleep for 12 or more hours wen I had a day off. I regularly overslept for appointments. And I was unhappy to be awake. The daylight hours were a burden. And because I hated it so much, I had a lot of disdain for people who loved the morning.

I have come to realize in the past ten years that I am not a night owl by nature. I am a sugar addict. All of that energy that kept me awake was from sugar, from being high on sugar. That’s how I stayed up all hours of the night. And when I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I wasn’t falling asleep, I was passing out.

When it comes down to it, I have a love/hate relationship with people. I’m fun and funny and charming (and humble, as my husband would point out.) But I am an addict. And addicts are, by definition, bad at relationships. I am anxious. I want to be liked. I am afraid of humiliation. So, along with being hopped up on sugar, I was probably awake in the middle of the night because it was time when I could be alone. Being alone in the dark with a chocolate cake and a pack of cigarettes was always easier for me than being out in the world where the other humans were wandering free. (By the way, I still love to be alone. To this day I spend a lot of time in solitude, and it is a necessity for my happiness. I may not be a night owl anymore, but I am still, and will probably always be, a loner.)

So when I gave up sugar and put boundaries around my eating, I stopped getting the energy at night from the sugar, and wound up sleeping at night. And because I was eating nutritious food, I wasn’t passing out from my drug, but actually sleeping. So I would wake up refreshed.

And then I realized that I love the morning. I love the quiet and the stillness (or relative stillness when I was in New York City.) It’s funny, because it was really a gradual change. 10 years ago, morning was 8 a.m. (Hey, for a girl who couldn’t drag her butt out of bed before noon without threat of death, 8 was pretty freaking early. I was impressed with myself.) Eventually morning became more like 7. And then was really 6 or 6:30. And now, in the past 5 months, I get up every day at 5:30.

I take my jog early, have breakfast, run errands, do a silent knitting meditation, and write for 3 or 4 hours. I get all of these things done in a day before the sugar addict night owl I used to be would even have gotten out of bed.

But there is another reason that I can love the morning, another reason I can happily wake up at 5:30 and not be cranky and angry. I go to bed. I regularly sleep 8 hours a night. It’s important to me. I don’t hate going to sleep like I used to. I don’t fight to keep my eyes open a little longer. I am not afraid I am going to miss anything. I look forward to the end of the day, when I lay on the couch and read a little. Maybe I still want to read one more chapter, but I know that the book will be there tomorrow. And there is something satisfying about another day done.

I really believed once that being a night owl was an unalterable part of being me. I thought it was the way I was made. And it made my life harder. It’s hard on a person’s spirit to always be late, or worried about being late. It’s hard to live in a body that is in physical pain from lack of restful sleep. It’s hard to be cranky and angry because it’s daytime. So I am glad to be a morning person, even if young Kate would look at me with disdain. She can think what she likes.

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14 Aug 2016

Let’s not spread it around like germs

It is hot here in Kentucky. For the past few days, it has been in the nineties, but the heat index has it feel like 100-105 degrees. And yet, I am not suffering. In fact, I am enjoying it. (Though I could do with fewer bugs, thank you.) In recent years I have found that I am always cold. Sometimes I sit out on my porch in the morning and if it’s only in the high seventies, I need to put on a sweater. Seriously. Always. Freaking. Cold. So I am absolutely loving that I can go sit outside in as few, teeny tiny clothes as possible.

 

When I was eating compulsively, I was basically always hot. I was so generally warm that I didn’t wear a coat in the winter in Chicago. I would sweat pretty much constantly, no matter the season, no matter the temperature. And on top of that, I was so ashamed of my body that in the summer, I would keep myself covered up. I would wear jeans under long dresses no matter how hot it got; so that was even more sweating.

 

I would guess that between the ages of 14 and 22, I didn’t own a bating suit. If I did, I don’t remember, and I would guess that I didn’t use it very much. The idea of being seen in a bating suit was terrifying to me. I want you to think about that. I was more comfortable wearing layers of clothing in the scorching heat than I was letting people see my legs, arms and shoulders. I probably didn’t get in a pool, lake or sprinkler for eight years because it was more comfortable to be oppressed by the sun than it was to be oppressed by the potential judgment of strangers. I was both ashamed of myself, and afraid that others would shame me as well.

 

And here is the thing about body shame: it doesn’t go away easily. It didn’t go away because I lost 150 pounds. In fact, it was never just going to go away. It had to be dismantled and I was the one who had to dismantle it.

 

I still have to dismantle it. Here’s the thing, I am not fat. I am 5’6 ½”, I wear a size 6/8. But I am curvy. I have wide hips and round thighs and a belly. And those things can make me feel fat. My thighs rub together. For various reasons, one of which is being fat during my formative years, I am knock kneed. (It is actually a pretty common phenomenon among women because we tend to have wider hips than men.) My upper legs lean toward one another while my lower legs lean away. Because of this, my thighs have always rubbed together. Even at my very thinnest, probably 20 pounds lighter than I am now, when I was wearing size small clothes, my thighs rubbed together. The only way they would stop rubbing together is if I became skeletally thin, and frankly, maybe not even then. Sometimes that makes me feel fat. I have a lot of extra skin and stretch marks and sometimes that makes me feel fat. I have broad shoulders, I have large calf muscles, I have flabby arms. Sometimes every single one of those things makes me feel fat.

 

And it’s not just because I used to be fat. It’s definitely not just me. The other day, on Facebook, there was a picture of a friend (a real natural beauty by any standards) and she made a comment about looking “pregnant” (which I read as fat.) Just to be clear, she did not look either pregnant or fat. And I commented on it, because frankly, it freaked me out. I will admit that it was none of my business, and I probably shouldn’t have made a comment, but I did. In my wishful thinking, I hoped that at least she would acknowledge that like me, while she might feel fat, she at least understood intellectually that she was not. But she declined. She said that at least we could agree that it was an unflattering picture. At that point I had already overstepped my bounds, so after that I kept my opinion to myself, but you know what? No. I am telling you, my lovely readers, that I refuse to agree that it was an unflattering picture. It was a picture of a real woman with a real body, doing real things. What is unflattering about having a body big enough to actually house a full set of human internal organs?

 

I refuse to accept that the only beauty is the hyper-specific set of characteristics that the beauty and fitness industries acknowledge. I refuse to accept the idea that what I am right now at this very moment is anything less than enough. I refuse to look a beautiful woman and agree with her when she tries to convince me that she is lacking.

 

I know that I cannot change others. But I can change myself, and the best way to do that is not always by changing my body, though obviously as a woman who lost over a hundred pounds, I am a proponent of that as well. Sometimes, the best way for me to change is by loving and accepting my body as it is. And what that often looks like for me is to take small actions that make me feel uncomfortable, until they are comfortable. And then I can take another small action that makes me uncomfortable.

 

I can think of so many examples of little obsessions that I managed to let go of. When I was overweight, I never wore a top that didn’t cover my butt. Even after I lost weight, it took something to get over this. It was burned into my brain that by not hiding that I had a lower body, I was somehow being rude to others. When I first started working out about 15 years ago, I wouldn’t wear spandex workout clothes; I would only wear things that were loose fitting, never mind that they might be less comfortable or might even make it more difficult to move around.

 

Several years ago, when I was my thinnest, I started wearing a bikini when I went to my (mostly) secluded New York City roof to sunbathe. I would never have gone out in public like that, but at that point just putting on a bikini was a huge step for me. That I owned a bikini felt daring. Years later, and thirty pounds heavier, I started wearing my bikini in public. And not in a shy, apologetic way. I didn’t hide. I didn’t avoid talking to people (I am a friendly person.) I was just being myself, with more skin showing. It was uncomfortable the first few times, but when I did it often enough, it became “just the way it was.” In fact, I have four bating suits right now, but I only wear two of them, because the others are not bikinis and I decided that I prefer bikinis. My running clothes are spandex now. I wear them because they are made of moisture wicking material. Do they look great? I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t wear them to dress up, I wear them to run.

 

I’m not saying that I am totally free of self-judgment, especially around my body. I have some super-serious body image disorders that I expect will dog me my whole life. But I refuse to kowtow to them. I refuse to spread them around like germs. I refuse to accept them as truth. And I absolutely refuse to prioritize my life around hiding things that some people call flaws, which are really just the realities of living in a human body on the planet Earth.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
07 Aug 2016
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Perseverance, exhaustion, and bedroom slippers

I used to spend a lot of time trying to decipher what things meant. Why I felt a certain way, why circumstances were what they were. I thought that everything was significant. And I needed to understand it all If I was going to crack the code of life. What I have come to understand since I got my eating under control is that it is not my job to crack the code, if there even is one. 

In the past few weeks, I have been writing for five hours a day as part of my daily routine. And it has pointed something out to me about myself: perseverance exhausts me. 

On certain days of the week, I might end up staring at a blank document on my laptop for what seems like an eternity, typing a few sentences, and then just discarding the whole thing. I might do this over and over again for much of the day. On days like this, nothing productive is going to get done after that. Because after hours of fulfilling a commitment for the sake of my integrity, I’m just plain spent. I’m going to do something escapist for the rest of the day, like read a novel or some manga, or watch TV.

But other days, the writing seems to pour out of me. I get my hours in, I make some notes about what more I have to say when I pick back up, and I feel particularly accomplished. On those days I still have the energy to do whatever else. Maybe I do some laundry or run an errand or work on knitting my sweater. The other day, I managed to clean the whole house, including mopping and vacuuming, after an easy writing session.

But here is the lesson, as I see it. The me before I had my eating under control would have expected to always be able to write easily and then clean the whole house. If it was possible once, it should always be possible. But those kind of expectations lead to burnout. Just like eating within my boundaries, or jogging 2 miles a day, or almost anything I do in my life, the goal is consistency, not perfection. The goal is to be able to do these good things for myself for the rest of my life. One day at a time, yes, but hopefully forever. Which is why I make sure that my food is delicious as often as possible, even if it’s not particularly low in calories, and why I focus on running my committed number of miles, rather than working to get faster or run longer or some other method of upping my running game.

When I first put boundaries around my eating, people who had boundaries around their eating told me that if the only thing I could do in a day was eat my meals and not eat anything else, that was enough. They told me that everyone needs a “bedroom slipper day” once in a while. They told me that I should be gentle with myself.

Which was something new to me, frankly. When I couldn’t stop eating, everything in our society and culture told me that I was lazy. The media and the people around me, knowingly or unwittingly, told me that I was not working hard enough or doing well enough, because if I had been, I wouldn’t have been fat. I was cruel to myself. I was hateful to myself. I expected perfection from myself, and when I failed to be perfect I quit. Just one more log on the not-good-enough fire.

But finding out that I could give myself a commitment, and that it would be a benchmark of daily accomplishment, was a revelation. Suddenly there was a minimum that I could do that was attainable, and it would be, by definition, “enough.” This made everything so much less scary. And so much less significant. 

I believe in perseverance. I believe in it because I believe in commitment. Because of my willingness to persevere, I have learned a lot about myself, how powerful I am, and what I can accomplish. But for the sake of peace and sanity, I also have to admit that it takes something out of me. And that I need to replenish before I can move on. 

I have had to learn that replenishing myself, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, is just as important as the perseverance itself. I have had to realize that just because I have the same number of hours in a day as Beyoncé, doesn’t mean I can accomplish what she can. And I’m A-OK with that, my friends.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , ,

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