Pre-diet.

Last night, we went over to my sister’s house for a holiday weekend cookout. While there, we watched some home movies from when my nephew was small, around early 2000 - 2002. My First Diet Ever didn’t begin until November 2001, so it was interesting to see myself on video back before I found out I was fat and my body unacceptable.

You know, I was pretty cute then. I looked happy, healthy, comfortable in my own skin. Sure, I was curvier then, but it wasn’t unattractive. It was just different. During the course of the home movies, I gradually got thinner and thinner, and I never really looked any happier or healthier - just skinnier.

What I want more than anything is to go back to a time that I didn’t think of my body as separate from me. I was an integrated whole. It wasn’t me against my body. I was all one girl, one girl who didn’t look at all uncomfortable with her size-16 self.

Because I’ve only been off dieting for six weeks or so, I know I still have a good 10 or 11 months before my body will likely settle in a weight range that it wants to be in. And sometimes I find myself hoping the range it chooses isn’t above some certain ‘acceptable’ number I’ve got in my head. But those videos reminded me that I was happy in my body at a size 16 so if I spring back to that, I can still be happy in that body.

I mean, my body. It’s my body. Me. Maybe the first step to ending the me v. body war is to stop talking about my body like it’s a roommate. It’s my body. And I’m just fine regardless of my size.