What is the opposite of Body Dysmorphia?

I remember seeing a picture of what body dysmorphia is a long time ago. Basically, there are multiple line drawings of a person, the same person, from extremely trim to very portly. An eating disorder care provider shows the picture to a patient and asks them to point to the one that looks the most like them. For someone who has body dysmorphia, they will inevitably select a representation that is three or so sizes larger than they actually are. That is how they see themselves, even in the mirror, even when reality is something else entirely.

I have had a disordered relationship with eating and exercise, but sometimes I think I have the opposite of "dysmorphia." When I was growing up, I never "felt fat" (which isn't a real thing, but you get what I mean) before I heard that I was fat from other people. 

Taking a bath with my cousins: "You're as fat as my mom."

Sitting behind a classmate on a van for a field trip in junior high and accidentally hitting the back of his head as I moved some stuff around, then apologizing only to be told: "You're so fat."

Bagging groceries at 16 years old: "Oh, are you expecting?! I worked at a grocery store when I was pregnant with my first."

And it got to me. I remember standing in front of my parents' bathroom mirror (because it was bigger than mine,) and puffing out my stomach, looking at my reflection and saying, "I hate you. You're so gross." 

But the thing is... I didn't hate myself. I thought I was really cool, funny, and smart. It really never occurred to me until it happened (over and over) that someone might not be interested in me because of how my body looked.

And yet: "She's too much woman for me." "You have to pull it together; you're about 50 pounds overweight." "We can be friends, but I'm just not physically attracted to you."

This worked, and by "worked," I mean that it got me to lose weight multiple times in my life. But I still always always thought, "If this person would get to know me, I think I could win them over because of how I am. I'm pretty awesome!" 

(Incidentally, the same person who told me he wasn't physically attracted to me came around months later, apologized for saying that -- I'd given him a talking to about how rude it was -- and said he actually DID find me attractive... but fortunately, I was old enough to have some self-respect and wasn't interested in him.)

Furthermore, when I look in the mirror, I like what I see. I think I look great most of the time. Sometimes, I'll see a picture that makes me go, "Yeesh," which I think is a normal human experience. But I think I'm cute. I identify as "fat" (specifically "small fat" since I can buy clothes in non-"extended" sizing, but only barely and not certain brands) because I think my BMI is in the "overweight" category (though I haven't weighed in more than a decade) and clothing sizes tell me I'm big... but I don't, again, this isn't a real thing, "feel fat." 

This is probably because I'm extremely fortunate genetically. My parents both have long-lived parents and grandparents, and we just hit the lottery that way. Diabetes doesn't run on either side. Heart issues are sprinkled around, but neither of my parents has heart disease. I haven't developed arthritis yes, and I didn't do the kind of youth sports that would come back to haunt me as an adult. I have been lucky enough to mostly be able to afford the healthcare I need to stave off problems (though I *do* need a neck ultrasound and a DEXA scan, and have for 2 years... I'm just glad we still had insurance to get my thyroid and parathyroid removed before the coverage ran out!). 

So the fact that I can get up and go and do whatever I want to do, with my body being pretty darn reliable, means I don't have complaints that make doctors suggest that losing weight might help. None of my doctors since I've been an adult has suggested weight loss or dietary changes, regardless of my weight at the time of care.

All of this means that it just surprises the crap out of me when people ask if I'm pregnant (the last time this happened when I wasn't actually pregnant was about 15 years ago; now I probably look too old for that to be a possibility). Or that I'm too shocked to respond when a family member found out how much Mal weighed at birth and said, "What?! You mean I carried a heavier baby than YOU did?!" (She was 5 days postpartum, so I gave her some grace but... holy crap, it's okay to think things and not say them out loud.)

I also want to state that I think fat people ARE cute. I know that fat people are healthy and active and, in fact, a lot more active than I am (fat marathoners, I see you... from the stands and support you but that couldn't be me). I also know that a lot of people can't achieve whatever "healthy" means because of disability or access to medical care or chronic health issues. And those things can happen to anyone regardless of size.

But my point is that there is a disconnect somewhere that I am so absolutely shocked and appalled when someone looks at my body and then makes a comment that does not align with my own experience of myself, and it's jarring. 

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Dear Diary session. Have a great weekend!

The Struggle Continues

That sounds like an exciting sequel, but it's not. It's annoying and exhausting and I often feel like I'm over it, but then it sucks me back in, and this both disappoints me and pisses me off.

Mostly, I don't think critically much about how I look. I try to keep my hair brushed, my hands and face clean, and my clothes comfortable. Then I go about my day and it's fine.

But sometimes, especially at certain times of the month, and maybe especially especially because my body is making some midlife changes that I KNOW TO EXPECT... Sometimes, I just feel like I don't know the body I see in the mirror when I'm not expecting to see it.

The part about this that bothers me the most is that I am anti-feeling-like-crap about the way you look. I outgrew self-hate-speak years ago. I see pictures of myself from 15 years ago and think I look... insubstantial. I don't want to go back to that. Maintaining an artificially low (for me) body weight took up so much of my energy and attention that I have zero desire to go back to those days.

And yet...

My body is changing quickly and seems partially alien to me. I'm still flexible. I do the splits, I stretch, I squat, I bend. But now, when I try to touch my nose to the knees of my outstretched legs, I can't... because my belly is in the way.

I feel spry (mostly; I did a killer workout Friday and am just now getting over being sore about that on Sunday evening), and my body does what I want it to. I don't struggle with movement, and I'm strong enough to handle most tasks I set out to do on my own. In other words, I'm extremely functional, and probably more so now than I have been in years.

I'm proud of who I am, what I've learned, how I'm trying to improve, and of the life I and my people have built. It is absolutely profane that a chance encounter with my own reflection at an angle I wasn't prepared for threatens to send me spiraling.

Here's what I know: I'm not going to do anything about it. It's dangerous, mentally and physically. Usually, I just wait it out until the feeling passes. Fortunately, I guess, my life is generally too busy to get mired down in this sort of thing for very long.

Update: I'm past it now but wanted to go ahead and post this because... most of us end up in that space sometimes. 

Here's a picture of me walking last week. I have to go VERY late not to walk in complete darkness since Daylight Saving Time started again. I hate having no time to myself when I get home, but seeing sunrises like this *almost* make it worth it.

Photography and Sense of Self

The week before last, my dad started singing, "There's No Business Like Show Business," for some reason. It reminded me of the summer after I was in the 6th grade, when I was in a show at the King Opera House in Van Buren, AR. It was an all-ages musical review, loosely tied together with some flimsy narrative that I'm sure was pretty terrible.

For my bit, we kids were supposed to be siblings in a giant family. The lady who played our mom was actually extremely pregnant at the time. Someone had gotten a good deal on this bright pink fabric with blue... hippos? elephants? on it, and we all had some element of our costume made out of it. Mine was a flouncy-sleeved blouse, a littler girl had a dress, a male friend had a button-up shirt, the pregnant lady had a maternity jumper dress.

At one point in the show, my parents had bought me some cotton candy, and I was standing in the alley behind the opera house waiting for my cue. My dad took a picture, and I remember thinking how awesome my life was: I was getting to be in a real show (not school-related!), and I was eating cotton candy, and did life get any better than that?

Time passed, as we had to fill up the entire roll of film and then wait for it to be developed. You kids might not know what I'm talking about, but it could sometimes be months after a photo was taken before you could see it.

This is that picture.

As an adult, I think that's a super cute picture that captures a very fun time in my life. I believe the person standing partially in the frame is my friend and classmate Anna Williams; I think she was in a different part of the show than I was, but she has a body suit on in the same colors (there were blue sequins across the front).

As a kid seeing this photo of myself, I was heart-broken. I saw a fat (??!!?!?!!??) dork with huge glasses and frizzy hair that looked nothing like Amanda King's! (I'd gotten my long, straight hair cut off and a spiral perm so I could resemble Kate Jackson's iconic character, not realizing that I could not possibly have feathered hair without using styling implements, and I did not have the hardware nor the skills to pull that off.) I didn't even notice the farmer's tan at the time. I guess I didn't wear sleeveless tops as a kid.

This picture was absolute devastation to me at the time, and it was years -- decades, probably -- before I ever wanted to look at it again. For a long period, the photos associated with this program tainted its memory for me. I'm very sad about that part. I wish there were a way to go back and repair that.

It wasn't, however, the first time a picture of me had conflicted to strongly with my self-view. I vividly remember the first one, and it was years before this.

I was in second grade, and I was having a pretty good hair day. I'd grown my hair out extremely long, and had it cut by my Pepa, who was a barber. He'd cut my hair Dorothy-Hamill-short, and I didn't hate it, but once it started growing back out, I started to feel almost glamorous.

One night, after I was dressed for bed, I put on a bunch of my mom's necklaces and she let me wear some make-up, as well. I asked for her to take a picture of me as a model. In my brain was probably Brooke Sheilds. 

This, however, is the picture we got.

I forgive you for laughing, truly I do.

Again, I see now that this is precious. When I was seven, it made me HATE... something. I don't know what. Probably myself, or my self-denial. I couldn't even have put a name on the dissonance here, but when my mom took the picture, I felt pretty. When I saw it, I knew this wasn't even remotely close to what was in the magazines. 

I didn't even know what a "double chin" was, but for a long time wondered why my mom hadn't told me to lift my head up a little bit... but of course she didn't. You don't tell a child how to pose to eliminate that kind of thing because it is vapid and cruel, even if you mean well.

Growing up, I really liked myself. I thought I was neat, and talented, and even pretty at times. I got the message that I wasn't quite as ++something++ as other girls, but I liked my individuality. Heck, I even tried out for "Man in the Moon," Reese Witherspoon's debut film at the age of 14, when they did a southern open casting tour. I mean, who did I think I was? I thought I was something, but clearly "the world" didn't perceive me as I perceived myself. Even the camera didn't.

As I have been thinking about this, it has helped me be a lot more understanding as to why D doesn't like to look at old pictures. For me, those pictures are super happy memories of my kid's growing up. For D, they're jarring and upsetting. And I get this on some level.

Both of the above pictures were before I ever thought of going on a diet, even though I knew that I was fatter than other girls my age. I'm extremely grateful that dieting and weight loss wasn't a part of my life before I went to college. I might have detested the way I looked, but I guess it seemed like Weight Watchers and Herbalife supplements were something grown-ups did. Thank god there wasn't WW Kurbo when I was in elementary school.

Also, every picture I view from when I was a minor reveals that I was never as "fat" as I thought I was, even though I was definitely told I was fat from the time I was in junior high on up; and, obviously, now I realize that even if I'd been the giant tub I thought I was, that would have been fine and people shouldn't make anyone feel unworthy as a person because they aren't... whatever it is that people want people to look like in the moment.

I've mentioned that recently, it's hard to look at pictures of me as my body ages and changes. However, I've learned my lessons about this kind of thing. If I could have destroyed the above pictures in real time, I likely would have. My parents would have killed me, though, because they were irreplaceable and expensive. With the advent of digital photography, however, I've disposed of plenty of pictures, including one I regret to the extreme.

When we lived in Sherman, one morning D had gotten up super early when I was still in bed. We'd fallen back to sleep together, and Ken thought it was a cute little scene, so he took a picture with my camera. D was probably around 5 at the time, and it was a year or so into when I'd lost a substantial amount of weight.

I found the picture on my camera, though, and I HATED the way my jowls looked because of how I was lying. Without a second thought, I deleted the picture. I wish so much that I had it now. What a precious time.

A few years ago when a photographer friend of mine came to visit our "new" house, we walked to the lake, and she snapped a picture of Mal and me from below as we made our way down the rocks to the water line. That picture is SO unflattering of me. It's just bad. It's bad enough that I'm not sharing it here, because I still HATE that it makes me look like I'm 4 feet tall (I'm 5'6" or 7") and that I'm wearing rubber bands in several locations across my abdomen. It's very upsetting.

But because I'm getting smarter, I saved the picture. Someday, I'll probably love it. It's been three years and I still hate it, but some day...

Also, we don't have to dress or pose in ways that are "flattering." "Flattering" almost always means "makes you look skinnier," and it's a super dumb standard. I know this intellectually. I believe it spiritually. But that dissonance when you see a picture of yourself that isn't how you feel you are on any level is so distressing.

I get why people say, "I just feel better when I weigh a little less" (than what?). There were several years when I could easily look at pictures of myself and think, "Cute!" The first time that the "Ick, what?!" returned was in early 2012, when still weighed a lot less than I do now, and I'd fixed up for a formal event where they took professional portraits. Seeing the picture was devastating because I had felt so elegant and beautiful all night, then felt frumpy and "Well, you tried" after that.

In fact, I ran across this picture from this time 9 years ago (2011), when a friend and I visited Austin for the first time. Here's the picture I shared of our delicious stop at Taste of Ethiopia (same place, different location, as where James and I got take-out on 4th of July weekend this year!).

I had cropped it a bit to "get rid of the white space," but the real reason I cropped it is that I didn't like the "bulges" at my general belly area.

HA! Bulges. Man. What a waste of energy and self-hate.

But the cure for this wasn't to lose MORE weight, because no matter how much weight I lost, I still felt like I was bigger than the average person, and it was a constant battle to stay that size. I thought I was doing the hard stuff, working out all of the time and carefully monitoring what I put in my mouth. Truth is, the much harder work is figuring out why an image of yourself can make you mad at yourself and generate self-loathing.

Excising fatphobia is an ongoing work, but it has made me healthier and happier and better able to be present for my family. I'm still working on being able to truly appreciate pictures of myself. I think that's probably even a little bit better than thinking, "Whoo, I'm hot sh!t!" because I've acted in very self-absorbed ways when I felt like this.

Also, know that you're the only one examining your pictures as critically as you are (unless you're a social media influencer or celebrity, and I can't imagine the BS that comes with that; people really feel entitled to notice and remark on EVERYTHING then). Never delete pictures! And don't let your happiness or self-worth hinge on your captured appearance. The way you feel is the true you. Be that guy.

Healing Relationships with Food and Body is a LONG ROAD

"Someone is getting that 'lean arm' look."

I remember it so clearly. We were sitting in a restaurant and this person commented on the appearance of my upper arms. Months before, he had made it clear that he was not pleased with my body size and shape, and this had sent me on yet another journey of food restriction and forced exercise that I didn't enjoy in order to maintain a body type that is not natural for me. I did it, and it lasted for the better part of a decade.

But even though it was so long ago, I remember the relief and pride I felt when he acknowledged my lean arms. I wasn't really proud that I'd worked so hard or accomplished a goal; I was just proud that someone, the person I was trying most to keep from despising me for being myself, saw something attractive and worthy in me.

It's been a long time since I started intentionally trying to heal my broken relationship with my body, with food, and with movement. The food stuff was the easiest. I just told myself that I was going to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, and not feel guilty. It was actually easy not to berate myself when I went to bed. Not to think, "I screwed up today, but tomorrow, I'll do better." I genuinely extricated myself from those thoughts within a few weeks. Don't miss 'em.

Joyful movement was interesting. I stopped doing that work-out I hated slowly at first, when we moved into the RV and my jumping jacks bothered D (small space, lots of noise and movement). It ended altogether when I realized that my spinal injury was genuine and not just soreness. In fact, I likely worsened it by continuing to push through my work-out (which included sit-ups and lie-down leg lifts) even as I lay in the floor crying from the pain.

When we moved into the Nuthaus near downtown and the UT campus, I realized that riding my bike actually took some pressure off of my back. It felt good. Plus, in many ways it was easier to ride my bike to places like Whole Foods and Wheatsville Coop than to try to drive in the car. After my back got better, I rode a lot. For fun. It was a cool way to see downtown and to experience the new (then) boardwalk at Ladybird Lake.

Then we moved to the apartments, which was all hills all the time. There were a couple of rides I'd take Mal on, like to the mailbox, to a trail in a neighborhood behind us, and then just around the complex a few times. It was difficult because of the hills and the baby and the fact that my bike needed some chain maintenance that I didn't know how to do. Then the bike got stolen.

I genuinely LOVE riding my bike. But I've found, where we live now, walking is a great way to see things and meet neighbors. When we first moved in, we walked to the lake almost every day, and at least every other day for months. That has been scaled back to once or twice a week now, but we still love going down there. We walk around the neighborhood to see how new houses are doing, or to admire older houses' yard decor and things like that. There is a bass-shaped mailbox (we live near the lake, remember?) a ways away from our house that Mal has a love/fear relationship with. I know when he wants to see it that we're going to get in a couple of miles.

Sometimes I walk by myself. I usually cover more ground and see more things then, but I definitely get more of a work-out when Mal comes with me. He has enough energy to power a small sun, but he HATES walking. So when he's amenable to go, I push him. He outgrew the umbrella stroller I have that holds 50 pounds (which is right where he is, but he's so tall), so we got a push/pull wagon and he loves it. It weighs 30 pounds, so even though it rolls beautifully for now, it's still a lot of weight I'm pushing up the gamboling roads leading away from the lake. If we walk TO the lake, there's a serious hill to tackle on the way back.

Although he has ridden like this a couple of times, he prefers the sun shade because, he says, "I like to look at purple."

I do love getting out and walking. I loved bike-riding, too. If we had a bunch of "extra" money, I can see getting a good bike and getting Mal a good bike and one of those "trail gators" I had when D was little so I could tow the smaller bike behind me.

The other thing I've genuinely loved, in terms of exercise, was Zumba classes. But I'm no longer willing to pay for a gym membership, plus... I don't know if you've heard, but this kid up there takes a LOT of time and effort. (TFW you realize your first kid was easy, but you didn't know it at the time.)

Anyway, those two things - food and movement - were fairly simple to straighten out. The body thing has been more challenging. And I mention this all because, a full five years after I made the definite decision that I was finished dieting and hating myself and trying to change my body through intrusive means that I did not enjoy, when I was putting my hair in a bun to go swimming yesterday, I noticed the bulk in my upper arms. And I flashed back to that approving statement: "Someone is getting that 'lean arm' look."

When I look back on pictures of me from about ten years ago, I am rather shocked at how unsubstantial I appear. Did I have boobs at all? Hard to tell. I was so tiny (but never felt tiny). I do not wish to go back to that body again. But, ironically, why is it so hard to see pictures of myself now? I firmly believe that the answer to that is internalized fatphobia.

When I'm just sitting around and hanging out with my family, I don't think about my body. It moves how I want it to move and when I want it to move. It is strong. I am doing housework and playing hide-and-seek and getting down in the floor and moving around all day long.

But I know my body is changing. Not just from my changing exercise habits (like my upper leg strength declined after my bike got stolen), but also from age. I recently listened to an episode of the "Food Psyche" podcast featuring Erica Leon, who is a dietician/nutritionist who works primarily with middle-aged women.

She said, "[T]here’s this period of time from, they say the perimenopause, which is the period of time prior to menopause, three to five years, I think it's even longer. Where bodies start to change, because hormone levels start to shift, just like in adolescence. Estrogen levels, and progesterone levels, they drop, they change, they shift. And so what happens during the period of time is that, periods become abnormal, they become longer, shorter, heavier. And in addition to that, people gain weight around the middle. It happens, like in puberty. I call menopause the second puberty. And, I think people aren’t really aware of that. All of a sudden, it’s like, 'Oh my God. My pants are getting tight. Why is that happening?' It's happening, people don’t hear that this is very normal and natural, and the period of time prior to menopause... [B]odies are changing. And things are happening in the body that we’re not necessarily aware of. Because, when hormone levels shift, there are some issues that occur, because estrogen is a very protective hormone. It keeps us [supple], it keeps our bones strong, it keeps our heart strong. And as our levels shift and lower, we start to have things like, more brittle bones, and really we’re in need of more calcium, and more vitamin D. Things happen with our heart. And I'll say on a personal note, I’ve never ever had a health issue, and all of a sudden, I have elevated cholesterol. And, it's because estrogen is protective, and, helps to keep the heart pumping, strong, and then when our levels are reduced, these things, all of a sudden, are concerns. So things like heart health, bone health... [P]robably the most distressing symptom of all, of menopause, is the weight gain. And it is normal, it is natural. It happens because estrogen levels drop. And, as Margo Maine talks about, it is the life preserver. Which I love, rather than a 'spare tire,' because, hey, we get a spare tire around the middle. But it is protective. When the ovaries stop producing as much estrogen, the body looks for other sources. And the idea of having estrogen is that it helps, it's cardio protective, it protects our bones... And so the body does everything to defend that. People have come to me and said, 'Oh my God, I can’t lose weight like I did when I was younger.' It's like, 'Yeah, you’re not supposed to.'"

Anyway, there's the part in my head that I know to be true: My life is constantly changing. My body is changing (and it's perfectly normal and to be expected). I'm taking care of myself the best that I can. I am happy. My family loves me.

Then there is still that nagging, "Um, that's what I look like?" when I see candid pictures of me. I think a lot of people feel that way. And it really irritates me that society did such a good job of pouring into me that I need to have an appearance that fits into an extremely narrow range in order to be "attractive" or worthy of love or self-esteem. I blame it on society because I always thought I was cool when I was a little kid. I liked me. I learned from others to hate my body and, therefore, myself.

That's the part of this journey that is still the most difficult from which to extricate myself.

So...

If you're lucky like I am and you get to go swimming this weekend, be gentle with yourself.

And while you're at it, maybe watch the words you say to other people. You might think, "You look great! Have you lost weight?" is a compliment, but it feeds into a very destructive world view that is detrimental and that really holds on to the heart and soul of a person.

Take care of yourself.

Dear 15-year-old me...

Hey, you. I know you're upset right now. Your first experience with a boyfriend just ended, and you're disappointed. I'm sorry. It really does suck. But before you start high school and before you begin a journey that will eat up so much of the next three decades of your life, I want to intervene. I want to assure you that there is another way. And, mostly, I want you to understand how much you can accomplish if you are willing to try to throw off the false messages with which our culture has been bombarding you since the day you were born.

I know something about you that maybe no one else knows. You hate your body. You feel monstrous and huge, completely "other" from even your closest friends. When you sit on the floor, cross-legged, reading notes at a sleepover, you notice how the flesh on your friend's leg doesn't round up at the calves like yours does. You see another friend wearing clothes that you think would look like a clown costume on you, and you're jealous that she can get away with picking anything from the thrift store shelves and it will look nice. You stand in front of your parents' vanity mirror and extend your belly as far as it will go. "I hate you," you tell yourself. "You're disgusting."

That, you will learn, many, MANY years from now, is called "internalized fatphobia." You have bought into the idea that fat people are lazy and gross. You are neither. Your self-talk is making it worse. First of all, isn't true; your future self will look at pictures of you at this time and be shocked at how someone so beautiful could feel so ugly. Secondly, even if it were true that you were exceptionally corpulent, science will bear out that genetics and puberty are the culprits and not your lack of motivation or appreciation of good food or any moral failure on your own part.

But every time you reinforce to yourself the message that you are somehow "less" because you do not meet some arbitrary standard of beauty, you make life worse for yourself.

You do not owe thinness to anyone. Not even yourself. You have believed a lie, and you will waste so much time and emotional energy powering this machine. Please don't. Please try to find the better way.

You don't realize it, but every time you indulge in self-hating fatphobia, you also make life worse for other women. Every time you judge yourself, you judge them, too. Either they're "thinner" than you and therefore an object of envy and resentment, or they're "fatter" than you and a source of judgmental feelings of relief and maybe even superiority.

Other women are not your competition. You don't have competition. This isn't a race or a game to be won. Living that way is isolating. Other women are your comrades. Don't you see how damaging this is to you all? You should all be on the same side. You should be about dismantling this world view, not continuing to prop it up.

Let me give this to you straight: Purposeful weight loss (through dieting and/or exercise) does not work in the long-term. Science has borne this out time and time again. Any program or study that promises or shows weight-loss only follows participants for two years. Within 5 years, 95% of people who lose weight have gained most if not all of it back. I'd cite multiple sources, but you do not have the internet like we do yet. Trust me, the future is great in this regard. You'll have access to so much information and so much validation. I just wish you could believe me in 1987.

Not only does purposeful weight loss not work, it backfires. Your body's metabolism slows down when you lose weight, and it stays slower. This means that the ultra-low-fat diet you will engage in from the time you're 20 until you're 23 will affect your ability to manage weight for the rest of your life. And again when you're 30 and lose weight "healthier." And 33. Every time, it will be harder. Every time, it will require more work. Every time, you'll have to expend more energy to work out and eat fewer and fewer calories. And you'll always gain it back. Always. Even when you keep it off for almost 7 years.

Health-wise, weight cycling like this puts a huge burden on your cardiovascular system. And repeated dieting interferes with your ability to listen to your body's hunger and satiety signals. It will further separate you from your social contacts, when you don't allow yourself to eat after a certain time of day, or when you check out of a conversation early because you cannot miss a workout or terror will ensue.

You're not going to believe this, but this is the most important thing: The best thing you can do for yourself at 15 is to rid yourself of the fatphobic attitudes the culture has given you, and then work on helping everyone else do it, too.

This is actually easier, and much more fulfilling, than hating and berating yourself. It's more productive than engaging in a mental and physical illness to make your body more appealing to yourself and others.

So... what if you do it? What if you manage to chip away at every lie you've ever believed about yourself and your body and decide to dedicate your energy to things like pursuing your passions? There is a two-pronged problem here, and you'll have addressed only one.

The second part is that, yeah, pretty much everyone in our culture has co-opted bigotry toward fat people. This will include men in whom you are interested, and who you want to be interested in you.

I wish you could just forget about dating for the next ten years, but I know you won't, so maybe you'll just take this to heart:

If any man claims to care about you but shows disdain toward your body, HE DOES NOT LOVE YOU. Love is not conditional. He might like your personality. He might find you humorous or think you have a beautiful face or feel like you might make a good partner. However, ultimately, he is selfish and foolish.

Your body is not a shell that holds you. Your body IS you. You are your body. Everything you do -- sleeping, talking, walking, laughing, watching a movie, singing -- EVERYTHING you do is enabled by your amazing body. It's not a shirt you can change to please someone else (though, for what it's worth, if someone doesn't like your shirt and thinks he can tell you to change it, he's probably not great for you, either).

If someone shows disdain for your body, END THE RELATIONSHIP. That might sound drastic, but it is absolutely necessary. There is no getting around or over it. If someone's feelings of affection for you are predicated on your body looking a certain way, that is not unconditional love, and you need to remove yourself from it.

I heard a podcast once (kind of like a radio program) where a woman was saying that she'd realized something about a man she was living with when she was engaging in disordered eating and exercise: He was probably the only person who knew how unraveled her life was, and not only did he not stop it, he encouraged her. He encouraged a woman he alleged to love to continually sacrifice her pleasure and ease (by passing up food she liked, by spending hours doing work-outs she hated, etc.) because her thinness was social currency to him. To put a finer point on it: He shows up with a hottie on his arm, and it make him look like a big deal. So she's doing all of this horrible labor just for him to glean the benefits. That's definitely not love. It's dysfunctional.

And if any man says, "I can't help it; I'm just not attracted to bigger women," then whatever. Good luck to him. He is a bigot, and you don't need that kind of person in your life.

Not at all incidentally, you, too, have that bigotry. It is death, and you need to cut it out immediately. Everyone, including yourself, yes, but EVERY SINGLE PERSON, deserves respect and the freedom to move and exist in the world without harassment regardless of how they look, of their size, of their abilities, of their health, or of anything. Every single person deserves to eat what they want, go where they want, wear what they want, and be who they are without anyone else's opinions being foisted on them. You have to take your thoughts captive and excise them. The phrase, "Do they even own a mirror?" should die on the vine long before it becomes a conscious thought. No one should do this to you. You cannot do it to others. Or yourself.

I'm writing you because I don't want you to look around at the great life you have 30 years from now and wonder how much further along you might be if you could trade those 300,000+ minutes (that's more than half a year!) you spent working out and the countless hours you meal-planned and obsessed over what you were going to eat, and how many calories it had, and how much fat, and when was your next free day, and how many candy corn could you manage in one day when you otherwise ate only dry spinach for doing something that would have made your life or the world at large a better place.

You will get to this place of freedom. It will be a hard-won battle, and, actually, it will be ongoing, as some of these dogmas die more slowly than others. But if you could just start on it now instead of after your second divorce (*wince* I KNOW), you could save yourself a lot of heartache and wasted time.

I know you don't cuss. I wish, just a little bit, that you did. Because instead of responding with silent and hidden hurt when someone judges you as unworthy due to your body type, I really wish you could just happily respond, "F*(4 that" and get on with your life without a second thought. Before you're middle-aged.

In retrospect,
46-year-old me

A thing I wrote last week...

I'm sorry that I was
Too much for you to handle.
But you wanted a bonsai;
Something you could prune,
Meticulously trimming back
Until a shape pleasing to you
Would emerge.
Instead, I am a wildflower
Spoiled by handling
But thriving in the sun and fresh air;
Blooming loud and shameless
On a hillside for all to see.

When Fatphobia Leads to False Conflations

Today, James and I had to have some vitals checked and do some blood work for a new life insurance policy.

First, the whole thing was kind of sketchy. They're a medical contractor that does the work for Mutual of Omaha, and they do offer to come to your house. I'm glad that James opted not to do that, because my allergies are worse at home than anywhere else, and that affects my heart rate at times, for sure.

Anyway, the address they gave us was a pretty spectacular glass office building that was way fancy.

Mal especially enjoyed this white noise indoor courtyard.

When I found the suite, I went in and told the guy we had a 9:30 appointment. He asked, "Do you know the name of the company? We have a lot of companies here." Well, actually, maybe? They didn't mention that they rent office share space, and that information would have been helpful.

Next, they'd instructed us to start drinking water before the appointment because we'd need to provide samples. I took this seriously, and when they hadn't called us in by 9:45 (we were already discussing how long to wait before we took off), I went to the bathroom. As I washed my hands, a lady opened the door and said, "Laura? Oh. We need a urine sample." I told her, "I held one for you for fifteen minutes." Sigh.

We went back into this office and I was ready. I am at a healthy headspacee, for the first time in 30 years, regarding my body. I eat and move and wear what and how I want, without thought to others' opinions, or without shaming myself, and it's so freeing. But I don't know how I'd react to having a number assigned to me (I don't really care what size I wear; that's never been an issue) and I don't want to risk obsessing or going down a dark tunnel over a stupid measurement of my body relative to the gravity of our planet.

So.

I said, "I need not to know what I weigh." The technician interrupted me with, "But no! You're beautiful." I said, "I know." (Seriously. Ask James.)

Just because I was performing self-care doesn't mean I think I'm ugly. On the contrary. Most of my life, I've felt pretty until outside sources "corrected" me. My not wanting to know my weight made her think I feel "too" fat and therefore ugly. There's a meme I just saw last week, and this recalled it.

From Body Positive Memes by Michelle Elman

So there's that. Anyway, because the whole office was carpeted, the scale didn't work, anyway, and so we both just provided weights out of the air. I said what I weighed when I first went in because I was pregnant with Mal. My body is definitely different now than then, but besides that pregnancy, I haven't weighed in 10 years, other than at the doctor's, and then I said the same thing: I can't know. It's not good for me.

Besides that, neither of the women who helped us had English as a first language, although one was fluent. The other was a lot more fluent in English than I am in any other language, but since we were talking about medical conditions and medication, sometimes had a difficult time understanding James and therefore writing down what he was saying. Never mind that EVERY SINGLE THING they asked us we'd already answered on our life insurance application.

Fortunately, the blood-letting was done quite adeptly and you can't even tell that I got jabbed today.

But also, the notes given to us before the appointment about what to expect were: "Blood and urine samples, body fat checks, basic questionnaires."

Sigh.

This is for life insurance, so I'm sure they have some rubric they use to determine risk, based on many factors. However, science is on the side of saying that "body fat" shouldn't be one of them. From a study a few years ago, researchers found "a U-shaped curve, with the bottom of the curve — the lowest risk of death — falling around 25 to 26 on the BMI chart, making the risk of early death lowest for those now labeled overweight. People considered 'mildly obese' had roughly the same risk of dying as those in the 'normal' category. Death rates went up for those on either end of the scale — underweight and severely obese — but not by much." (New York Post)

Anyway, I'm just glad that's over. Because ugh. And after fasting and not having caffeine, I treated myself to Krispy Kreme's Chips Ahoy doughnut and a soda. Because that, too, is self-care.

Five Years

These pictures were taken 5 years ago yesterday.

We had walked from the Nuthaus to Nau's Enfield Drug store for breakfast, but got there too late and had to have lunch. A few things about this day: 1) It was HOT, and we're all sweaty. 2) Mei Li's feet were bleeding because she hadn't realized we would be walking all over creation and had only brought flats (and we still had to walk home... uphill). 3) D was there but I didn't include that picture, since D doesn't like public photos at this stage. 4) My back was in constant searing agony. Bonus for 5) James and I look pretty young, and he looks well-rested (I wasn't sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time because of my back).

It's only in hindsight that I know what happened to my back, but here it is: The weekend I moved into the RV park in Austin, I slipped and fell in the laundry room because water had accumulated in a clogged grate in the middle of the floor. I went down in the splits and my left knee swelled to ridiculous proportions almost immediately, though I didn't remember hitting my knee. That was in mid-August 2012.

It wasn't until December 2012 that my back started hurting. Once again, Khrys and Mei Li were visiting, but this time with Patsy and Kitana. Every time we got into a car, I writhed in a shock of pain. It got worse and worse until I couldn't sleep more than 3 hours at a time because I had to get up and stand up. I couldn't sit normally, either. I stood and I found one of those 1980s ergonomic kneeling chairs. I had sciatica that was excruciating, and lower back pain.

The night these pictures were taken, March 30, 2013, I actually told James he didn't have to marry me if he didn't want to, because I was a different person than he had started dating. I was sleep-deprived. Everything else in my life suffered because of this. I was moody and exhausted and couldn't go on road trips. I felt like my whole life revolved around avoiding pain, which I couldn't, so I felt like a failure. My sweet kid would often ask, when I cried out, if I was okay. At some point, I said, "I'm not. Please don't ask me anymore. Neither of us can do anything about it."

Several months later, I would find that I had a ruptured disc, and after pursuing many treatments (chiropractic, acupuncture, massage), time, gabapentin, and a failed pregnancy healed me completely. I only took gabapentin at night for about 3 weeks, but that allowed me to sleep through most of the night for the first time in months. That, I believe, gave my body the energy to start healing. Then the spike of pregnancy hormones, I fully believe, finished the job. Also, I'm well aware that the gabapentin might have contributed to that pregnancy loss, but we were not expecting to get pregnant so early, not even sure that was a possibility.

By the time we went to Haiti in June 2013, I wasn't too uncomfortable on the plane or in the shuttle van. By the end of summer, I was pain-free. The whole cycle took a year.

I mention all of this in conjunction with our anniversary, because I had an epiphany this week...

The RV park where I lived ended up reimbursing me for my medical costs due to the injury. That was the only concussive thing that had happened to me. It was the cause. But I exacerbated the situation by not listening to my pain, and by "pushing through" to work out.

I remember vividly lying in the floor of the trailer, trying not to half-ass workout components I had done easily for years. Tears would stream from my face as I pulled and stretched, fighting against my body, which was telling me, "STOP IT! This isn't the 'good' kind of pain! You're hurting yourself!"

But I couldn't stop.

Why?

Because I was afraid of what would happen if I stopped.

I was afraid that if I didn't work out, the nightmare would come true.

I would get fat.

And the lesson I'd learned all of my life was that gaining weight was the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen to a person.

When I was in junior high, a friend's mom told her daughter and me that we needed to watch what we ate, because her husband once told her that "boys don't want to hold on to no chalk."

How I wish the 14-year-old me had had the confidence and swearing ability to tell her, "Then eff those guys."

Because, seriously, EFF THOSE GUYS.

(Side note: same message for the ladies who won't date someone shorter than they are. Idiots.)

I overheard a guy saying he couldn't date me because I was "too much woman" for him.

I felt like I was a pretty cool chick, but never had a boyfriend, while all of my friends around me did. I was desperate for someone to love me. I dated gay guys, not knowing even if I kind of "knew" because they were the only ones who didn't seem put off by my large physical presence... which, at the risk of being offensive, is really part and parcel to being a "beard."

Then I got married. Twice. When people enter into a marriage, they promise to love each other through all sorts of situations. However, it became clear to me that "fat" was not one of those circumstances.

Both of my husbands had issues with my weight. Neither of them said anything initially, but they both began to treat me with disdain. I could feel the resentment boiling beneath the surface, and confronted them about what was going on. Denial. Confrontation. Denial. Confrontation.

Finally, they both cracked and told me. I was overweight. It was difficult to be attracted to me. I looked pregnant. "Why didn't you say anything earlier? "I was afraid you wouldn't marry me."

I tell these stories together, because they were strikingly similar. They played out almost the exact same way.

In one situation, the guy had a breakdown later in the day of our conversation, confessing that he was afraid I would leave him. I wish I'd had enough gumption to tell him that was it. Or at least to inform him that he didn't have the right to have a crisis of confidence in which I had to reassure him. It was my turn to spiral out of control, and he needed to man up and take responsibility for the pain he'd caused. Instead, we stayed married more than 4 years after that. I developed an eating/exercise disorder, lost a ton of weight, and was pretty dang hot for a few years.

I garnered a lot of attention with my newly-slim body, and after a while, was over being ignored and left alone by the workaholic husband. We got divorced, and a couple of years later, I married my second husband.

After OUR conversation about my weight, he is the one who said he wanted a divorce. I fought against it, as we had a 1-year-old child. I lost weight in a more "healthy" way (meaning I ate more than jellybeans and candy corn and fat free bread with fat free butter substitute and jelly), and kept it off for a long time. We stayed married 9 years after the "you need to lose weight" conversation. Sometimes, he seemed pleased with me, but mostly he seemed to dislike me a great deal. And I always knew I was only a stone or two from losing his affection entirely.

Even my failed attempts at dating after my second divorce reinforced this idea that my natural body was not okay. One guy I tried to date referred to my "weight fluctuations" and how he weathered those, still finding me attractive... when I didn't realized my weight was fluctuating. I had long jettisoned a scale, knowing my relationship with it was not healthy. And I was post-divorce, trying to keep my head above water, so was focused on other things. Apparently he was not.

And a second person I met online told me after our first meeting that he couldn't date me because he wasn't physically attracted to me. I can only assume that this was because I am heavy, since I'm pretty symmetrical and have (or had, when I had the time to "do" it) great hair, and my eyes are amazing, and all of that.

Incidentally, this guy changed his tune after a while, when he got to know me better and realized that my high school self was on to something: I'm a pretty cool chick.

Why all of this, and what does it have to do with my anniversary?

I haven't wanted to have to worry about my weight. Ever. When I worked in an all-woman office in my mid- to late-20s, I saw ladies in their 50s and 60s obsessing over the latest diet, what they could and couldn't eat, how grossed out they were by their appearance. I'd seen the same thing in my first post-college job at a newspaper, but that was young women my age.. I was incredulous that women were wasting decades of their lives focusing on depriving themselves and being negative about themselves. I didn't want to be on that track.

It's taken a long time, but now, at 45, I'm finally 5 years into a life that is giving me the gift of loving myself because I'm married to a man who loves me unconditionally. He loved me when we first got together. He loved me when I was a mess because of chronic, unmitigated pain. he loved me when I had baby brain. He loves me when I'm over-tired and grumpy. He loves me when I'm dressed up or when I'm still in the pajamas I wore to bed two days ago. He just loves me. And knowing that I don't have to be anything I am not to retain his affection has made a revolutionary difference in how I live.

This is definitely a process. I'm only about 18 months out from the time I saw a picture James snapped of me on his cell phone and declared, "If that's how I really look, I should just kill myself now." I'll never forget the shock that flashed across his face. That was the last time I tried to drop weight, and I did so by eating only 1200 calories for two full months and seeing zero difference. I was hungry, obsessed with food thoughts, packing the early part of my day with food and then not being able to eat after about 3 PM, and constantly thinking about food. I knew it wasn't healthy, in addition to not working. I've probably messed up my metabolism horrifically by all of the times I've lost 25-50 pounds (which is probably 3.5 times, and I've kept weight off for five and then almost ten years, but it's always come back).

So I stopped. And I decided I was going to try to love myself and focus on other things. It's amazing how difficult it is to accept myself. I have a photographer friend who has captured a few candid moments between Mal and me over the past couple of years. One was of us giggling and having a good time at the apartment pool. My first reaction to seeing the picture was to pick apart "problem" areas on my body, but I forced myself to ignore that and focus on the joy. And I put the picture away to enjoy when Mal is 10 or 11 or 12, and I know it will just be more precious to me then. Same thing with a picture of my holding his hand, walking him down to the lake. I wanted to think, "That shirt is NOT flattering... I look so short and stocky!.. The rolls!" but again forced myself to see the relationship instead of being vain and making it about my physical appearance.

Because that's the crux of it. My weight loss has never been about health. Most people's isn't. It has been about vanity. About looking good. About earning the male eye of approval.

My husband's eye of admiration regardless of what is going on at the moment has been the catalyst to the greatest strides I've made on my journey to freedom in this area of my life. And I am grateful.

Random Musings of a Sleep-Deprived Mind

Yea! Fall is here, and it's finally cooling off, Austin-style, meaning that I can wear socks and something other than a tank top in the mornings.

Lots of stuff is happening, and I wanted to take a minute (we'll see how many I can sneak in... Mal slept over 3 hours before waking the first time last night, but has already awoken once this evening) to note some updatey things and some mental note things. You know, junk and stuff.

First of all, this evening, I had this very panicked feeling that I'd crossed over into "old lady" territory for reals. I was going into Mal's room to pick some stuff up as James was on his way home. I was wearing skirted leggings and habitually make sure the skirt is covering my bootay. As I did this, I realized that the pants part under the skirt... it was soaked. My first thought was< "Did I pee myself and not even notice?!" And I might have had a brief thought of something I've heard of called "anal seepage" which might actually be a dog issue, but I wasn't necessarily thinking rationally, as I pondered what the heck this meant for my future and my marriage and my parenting my kids into adulthood. Then it hit me that, although today has been a gorgeous day, it did rain all weekend and I had just been sitting on the patio furniture and the cushions have not had nearly enough time to dry out. But isn't it fun where our minds go? (Not so much fun when our minds go.)

Last week, I had taken Mal to his "gym" to play and a couple of people were asking how old he is.

Allow me to interrupt myself here to say that twice last week, different people (both older) referred to Mal as a girl. I don't even care; you can't really tell with babies. I think it's just going to get worse as his hair grows out. I would have corrected the lady at the gym if I'd realized that we were going to end up talking for half an hour, but whatever. I'll probably never see her again. However, she did say something interesting...

To continue, when these people found out that he was 13 months (or 1 year, 1 month, as I promised Daphne I wouldn't be one of "those moms" who says "He's 41 months;" James says we should say it as a fraction, as in: "We're 13/216 done."), they were surprised at how agile he was.

The above-referenced grandma was really getting a kick out of watching "her" climb and run around so adroitly. At one point, she said, "I think you're going to have a gymnast right there."

That struck me because someone made a very similar prophecy over Daphne when she was just a little older. Of course, that girl wasn't a grandma. She was actually a gymnast from Russia who was teaching a community tumbling class in Las Vegas, and I took her a little more seriously. Anyway, it will be fun to see if Mal is at all interested in gymnastics as he gets older. Goodness knows he has the energy for it.

There used to be a Special K commercial (or a series of them) about how you were a Fatty McGee if you could "pinch an inch." The answer, of course, was to eat their very nutritious *sarcasm* cereal and drop that flibbity flabbity floo so that your stomach region was ungrabbable. Well, I have to tell you that I've pretty much all my life been able to pinch at least an inch, and I have at least one person who is really glad.

When I nurse with a "pull up" top (as opposed to a "pull down" top), Mal likes to knead my stomach. It's actually quite a relief, because otherwise he often wants to play with my other... um, side. It doesn't seem fair. I feel that the off-duty side should get a break, for goodness' sakes. Or sometimes, especially if he's really sleepy, he'll put his hand in my mouth, which, okay, whatever. Until he starts scratching my gums with those razor blade fingernails of his. So, yeah, pinch an inch, dude. Not many nerve endings down there.

I've been very emotional about some things lately, and today had several cry moments listening to "Free to Be You and Me" streaming on Spotify. When I was little, we used to check this record out from the library like several times per year. Then when D was small, my mom found a copy of a book that was made to go along with a CD, and we listened to it quite often. It means so much more to me now that I have a teenager.

Okay, first, this is a silly little poem, but it made me choke up a little bit, and I'll try to explain why in a minute:

Don't dress your cat in an apron
Just 'cause he's learning to bake.
Don't put your horse in a nightgown
Just 'cause he can't stay awake.
Don't dress your snake in a muu-muu
Just 'cause he's off on a cruise.
Don't dress your whale in galoshes
If she really prefers overshoes.

A person should wear what he wants to.
And not just what other folks say
A person should do what she likes to
A person's a person that way.

And then here's the title song. Oh, my gosh, it's such a hippie.



Then there's the story of the princess Atalanta and her evenly-matched would-be suitor. And "William's Doll." "It's All Right to Cry." "Boy Meets Girl." Just do yourself a favor and go listen to the whole thing on Spotify. It really is fun. Your kids will love it. If you don't have kids, your cats will love it, too.

The album came out the year that I was born, and I couldn't help but wonder as I listened to it today how much of my laissez-faire attitude about kid stuff started fermenting with these ideas, repeated over and over, and echoing in my memory.

Here's the thing: I don't really know how radical this album was when it came out, but I do know that today's world is very different than the world in which my parents grew up. And I know that some people lament the passing of the "old days." But, can I tell you, I don't? I appreciate the freedoms we have to make decisions so much freer of the narrow gender expectations that were placed on the generations before ours.

As the parent of at least one gender-nonconforming kid (and with Mal's love of hair products, fascination with make-up, obsession with cleaning, and enjoyment of "cooking," who knows), I am glad that the world is so much more accepting of people who might be outliers in the gender Bell Curve.

Also, I'm so grateful to live in Austin, where people don't really care what you wear or whether you're made up or whatever.

Now... I had thought of one more thing but can't place it now. Besides, Mal has awakened again, and I don't want to be a distraction. Also, I should probably get sleep. I wouldn't trade my kid or my circumstances for anyone else's, but, dang, I'm ready for him to be able to go to sleep/stay asleep/go back to sleep without assistance. I look forward to seeing how, if at all, this affects our future relationship. I plan to remind him of it often. :D

Fat and Valuable

Today, I was reading an article about Melissa McCarthy's new clothing line for Home Shopping Network. Well, first of all, the pieces are way too expensive. I was pretty excited about the whole thing until I saw that a t-shirt is $60 and a kimono is $160. I'm sorry, to whom is she selling?!

Anyhoo, there was this whole thing about how she hates that the clothes, which are made in sizes 4-24 are advertised as including "plus size." She thinks it's an insulting term, and you can agree with that or disagree, whatever.

What got me, though, were some of the comments on the stories.

Usually, I don't read comments because they make me sad about us as a humanity. For some reason, though, I scrolled down a bit. Maybe it was because I wanted to leave a comment about the stinking unaffordability of the outfits?

Regardless, there were comment after comment that can basically be summed up by one person's question:

"Why don't fat people realize they're fat and get to a gym?"

Oh, I'm so glad you asked, internet person. I've heard variations of this a lot over time, and I, a fat person who realizes she is fat, would love to answer your question.

I don't get to a gym because there are so many other things in life that are a bigger priority to me than spending a good 1/24th of my God-given hours inside a building with work-out equipment.

I did do Zumba when Daphne was in gymnastics, and I love dancing. But I'll tell you what; I did it because I thought it was fun and it was a way to relieve stress. I did not do it because I felt I owed the world a more trim version of myself. I'm not a self-conscious teenager. I don't buy into that whole thing anymore.

Here's what people who ask craptastic questions like those above don't seem to understand: Fat or skinny are labels that do not have values assigned to them. Fat is not bad. Skinny is not bad. Fat is not good. Skinny is not good. They are labels, and they might be true, and they might be used as insults or compliments.

People who are fat do not need to be fixed. People who are fat are not automatically unhealthy. Most of us don't sit around feeling ugly and wishing things could be "better." Most of us have romantic partners and vibrant, full lives, and we're not cowering in a dark shadow being jealous of how awesome other, smaller people look.

I would never suggest to a skinny person that he or she needed to eat a sandwich. I don't believe any of us has the right to voice an opinion about someone else's body (unless that person is a dear friend of yours, and you know something is wrong, and you're always going to be friends with them whether they listen to you or not) at all.

The other day, a friend had mentioned that someone had referred to her (tall, lithe) as a "beanpole" and that she didn't like it any more as an adult as she did as a kid. Well, one of HER friends mentioned that someone called her daughter "skinny" and when her daughter asked what "skinny" meant, she said, "It's what some people call trim and healthy people when they're not." Then other people tried to ease the sting by saying this was "better than (being called) Fat Ass." UGH, folks, NO! First, you don't try to teach your daughter about healthy body image (hashtag "no eating disorder," she'd written) by insulting someone's body type when they've just made an unsolicited and rude comment about body type. Second, FAT ASS and BEANPOLE aren't value-specific and neither is "better" or "worse" than the other!

Anyway, when people who tend to be thinner say that they eat whatever they want, and they just tend to be thinner, no one questions that or calls them "gross" or suggests things they might try in order to be "better."

So why, when people say that they're prone to carrying more weight, is that met with skepticism and derision and they're then treated like disgusting slobs who can't control themselves and just need to put down the mayo and get onto the treadmill?

Why do people even care about it?

But back to the original question: Why don't fat people just realize that they're fat and get to the gym?

1) The gym is not the only place (or even the ideal place) to get exercise. I ride my bike. I carry my kid. I walk and hike with friends.

2) Most fat people know they're fat. Some care, some don't. Some are motivated to change; some don't feel any need to change; some want to change and don't know how and are already miserable, so don't be a jerk and make it worse; some are on a road to dropping weight, and good for them. None is more virtuous than the other. They're just different.

3) My body does what I want it to do. There is nothing that doesn't work. I don't have to take breaks walking up the stairs, and my knees don't bother me, and my blood pressure and cholesterol are both great, thanks for your concern. I don't need to go to the gym.

4) I have a daughter, and a son, and a husband, and an extended family, and books to read, and meals to cook, and, yes, dang it, desserts to bake... and I can't imagine why I'd want to try to squeeze in time at a depressing (to me) gym into my day, taking time away from things I actually love.

5) Why should any of us fat people feel like we need to alter our body type for anyone else?

I'm on a great website called Fit Fatties where you can discuss fitness separate from dieting, weight loss, etc. It's super incredible to have that freedom. Also, on the site, you can meet, for instance, women who are 5'5", weigh 250 pounds, and who run marathons. So don't make assumptions and don't try to fix something that might not be broken. In short, mind your own business. Don't worry your pretty little head. Go do something productive. Heck, go to the gym if you think that's the answer. But don't assume I need or want to. I don't owe you anything.

A Moment of Brokenness

I mentioned at one point some old pictures that my mom had brought when she'd culled her photo collection. I said she could throw them away, but she didn't. She brought them. I thumbed through them briefly and set them on a shelf. I should throw them away. I don't have anything to do with them, and most are repeats.

But I feel like that stack of pictures is a living, breathing animal that threatens me if I get too close to it. I don't want to pick it up to throw it away. I don't want to do anything with it. I hate it.

And I think that I just realized why.

I don't want James to see those pictures. I don't want him to see all of the years condensed like that: when I was carrying so much weight after having Daphne and not being able to breast-feed, but still being in the "pregnancy appetite" mode. But mostly, I don't want him to see the pictures of me when I was much trimmer. I'm scared to death that he'll look at those pictures and think, if only for a moment, "Wow. She looked great." And he'll wish he'd known me then. Or maybe he'll wish I still looked like that. So I place myself of today in competition with a me of the past.

The worst part is that, in the pictures where I look so amazing, I was dying inside. In my early/mid-20s, I had a full-blown eating disorder. I weighed less than I had since grade school, and because the scale at GNC told me that I was still 8 pounds overweight, I felt like a monster.

In my mid-30s, I lost weight more "healthily," consumption-wise; meaning that I ate food that was balanced and I exercised regularly but not as desperately as I did in my 20s. But I was still sick. I thought about food and how to ration it and how to prepare it and what I could have next every second of every day. I knew that if I didn't maintain a certain appearance, I would lose what affection I had from the person whose opinion mattered the most.

Still, when I look at the exterior of that young woman, I'm very tempted to wish that I could be the 40-year-old me on the inside and look like the "extreme weight loss" version of me. I hate myself for that impulse, and it breaks my heart to think that my husband would have it, as well.

I'm sharing because, if you're someone who struggles with this kind of body image issue, I want you to know that you're not alone. I do not want anyone to comment about how, if I would do a) or b) then I could lose weight. I don't want to lose weight. I am fit. I ride my bike or walk all of the time. My body does whatever I want it to do, subject to some limitations from my back injury. I am investing exactly as much time and effort into physical fitness as I want, and I am happy with myself... I am confident that my husband is pretty happy with me, also.

It's just that old hurts, habits, and hang-ups die hard. And I'm sometimes pretty sad for that girl who looks fabulous but was clawing at something solid to hold to.

The other night, my daughter texted me, having found a scale at her dad's and weighed herself. She wanted to know how much I weighed. I know she wanted to compare it to her own weight. Thing is, unless I go to the doctor's office, I don't know how much I weigh. I'm so grieved by the fact that she's being tempted to define herself by those numbers.

When I was younger, I worked with a bunch of women who were in their late 50s, and they were always trying a new eating plan or exercise, comparing notes, talking about weight loss, etc. And they always seemed to be in the exact same place. I didn't want to live my life like that, and I think of it often. I want more for my kid than this. I want more for her than the me of junior high, when I'd stand in front of my parents' mirror sideways, stick my belly out as far as it would go, and say out loud, "I hate you. You're so ugly. You're so fat."

I can tell her over and over that who she is is so much more than having a flat front panel on your jeans, whether or not your breasts are larger than your waist. I can assure her that her identity and worth come from other places, from the God who created her and loved her enough to pursue her, from who she is as a person, and all of that... But what is it about "us" that allows a size to make us forget who we are and see ourselves as these monstrous caricatures?

What is it about me that makes me jealous of my husband gazing on my younger self and perhaps desiring her more than he desires me?

What is wrong with us?