The Secret.

No, not that stupid one Oprah has been talking about.  That one just annoys me.

My secret is way more subversive.  Are you ready? 

I like my fatter body better than my thinner body.  

I completely didn’t expect this.  I’ve spent so long hating the fat parts of my body (because you have to hate entire regions of your body to get really good at dieting–highly successful dieting must be fueled by a lot of self-loathing, after all), that I didn’t imagine that I could actually prefer my body with fat.

But I do.  I like the softness of my belly and the smooth heft of my legs and I particularly like the way you can’t see my sternum anymore.  I feel curvy and comfortable and way too cute for my own good. 

The excellent part of this is, I have gained a noticeable amount of weight; like, I’m getting full-on double takes at work now, and while no one has said anything, I know it’s  they’re all thinking, “Wow…she’s packed some weight back on.” 

But instead of being bothered, I mostly just feel delighted and thrilled that I’m living in a body of my choosing, not the body the world says I should have.  And all those long, odd looks?  That doesn’t change the fact that I feel fan-freakin’-tastic these days and am enjoying living in my body more than I ever did at any point during the diet days.

So, that’s my secret.  I think I need it on a t-shirt, because damn.  The women around me should know about this.

Two minus one equals one.

I just dropped my husband at the airport an hour ago.  He won’t be home again for three weeks.

I hate this.

We had a lovely weekend, and I still revel in the pleasure of going out to eat with him and not having to discuss what I “can have.”  We just go, we eat, we enjoy, we don’t have to let my disordered eating be a third wheel on our dates.  Love that.  Also love that I didn’t feel like I had to come straight home and get on the treadmill to pay for my weekend food sins.  Instead, I went to the grocery store, came home, packed my lunch for tomorrow, ate some leftover pizza, and am now having a lovely rum-based cocktail and distracting myself with the internet. No punishment, but just a touch of self-pity.

The week after he leaves is always hard for me, and will probably be doubly difficult this week because it’s my lady-time, which makes me six different kinds of crazy.  But hey, at least it’s just a four day work-week for me, and he’ll be home again the three weeks, and I still have quite a lot of my cocktail left. 

I’ll be okay.

Shopping can suck it.

I have been shopping for two days straight (well, excluding the hours I’m at work and sleeping) and I have concluded that all clothes in the metro area are designed for teenagers, elderly women, or women who have giant breasts and/or no ass.

I am not a teenager.  I am not elderly.  I am essentially flat-chested and yet have a rather ample derriere.  This apparently means I should drape myself in a sheet and be glad of it, or never venture out into the world where clothes are necessary.

 All I wanted was something cute to wear out to dinner with my husband on Saturday.  Something simple, fairly casual, that wasn’t shiny, lacy, sequined, cleavage-baring (see above about lack of cleavage), tunic-length (as I have already tried out the 80s, thank you so much), or ugly.

Such an outfit apparently doesn’t exist.  So, I had to go home and go through my damn closet and storage containers of clothes, and got to have a horrifying, kind of depressing evening of trying on clothes and discovering just how much weight I have gained. 

I flung a lot of stuff under the bed and I have suggested to the big dog that he sleep on it tonight.  Or possibly destroy it.  Whatever he thinks is best.

There’s a lot of clothes here in my house that no longer fits me and it pisses me off because I can’t even buy new clothes because I can’t find any.  Curses on living in a mid-sized Midwestern city!! I’m going to have to plan an actual road trip to find some damned pants.

On the plus (HA!) side: at least when you don’t even find any clothes to try on, you don’t feel like your body to blame when things don’t fit.  My body clearly was not the problem this week and that actually feels kind of good.

Big tummies.

Saturday night, I was hanging out at my sister’s house.  We’d played on the trampoline all afternoon and now we were all sprawled across the couches and floor, sweaty and sunburned.

My nephew, who is three, sidled up next to me and said, “MeMe? My daddy has a big tummy.”

 His six-year-old sister gasped, ”Mom!  He’s not being nice!”

My sister turned to my nephew, and I could tell there was going to be a reprimand. 

So, completely overstepping the aunt-boundaries, I said, “Yes, he does.  Some people have big tummies and some have flat tummies, just like some people are tall and some are short.  And you know how Mommy’s nose is little and MeMe’s is big, or how you have blue eyes and Nana has brown?  We’re all put together of different parts–that’s what makes us fun to look at.  Wouldn’t it be boring if we all looked the same?”

My sister, heaven bless her for not taking offense at my interruption, said, “Yes, MeMe’s right.  And good observation, kiddo.”

His dad does have a big tummy.  And his mother isn’t a thin woman.  And someday, when my three-year-old nephew is a grown man who will likely be shaped a lot like his parents, maybe this one time that his MeMe told him that tummies come in all sizes will help him to feel better about his own body and the bodies of others. 

Now, if I can just get to every three-year-old in the world…

Chock Oh La Tay.

Today I ate the world.

I mostly ate when I was hungry (though there was an … incident …with the Whoppers), but nothing really satisfied me. I didn’t feel like I was eating because of any emotional issues, which I’m trying to pay attention to; it was more a matter of being hungry and not being able to figure out what would touch that hunger.

Also, my lady-time is next week and I always want to graze the week before, so I think I’m going to chalk this up to the joys of womanhood, and move forward.

Right now, there’s a batch of chocolate-zucchini muffins cooling on the kitchen counter. They look awesome and it’s a recipe I’ve never tried, but the fun was really in making them.

 I love baking.  And I love the process every bit as much as the result.   While I was dieting, I rarely baked. Oh, I read cookbooks like it was my job, I clipped recipes, I looked at every baking blog I could find. I thought about what I would like to bake and made lists of things to try, but usually only baked something every couple of months.

Why? Oh, because if I bake it, I’ll eat it, and eating a chocolate chip cookie warm from the oven? Why, that’s the road to gaining weight, don’t you know? So, I abandoned one of my greatest pleasures (and, interestingly enough, one of the few things I’m just as good at as I am at dieting) in pursuit of weight loss.

That totally sucks. So, today, I baked. There is no special occasion, there is no external reason, and my husband is not around to eat all the muffins. I baked because I like baking and I should do things I like doing more often.

Who knows? Today muffins, tomorrow rock-climbing?  

And after that, maybe even shorts in public!

On cheating.

I was thinking about my workouts this morning.  I really can tell I’m gaining weight (of course I am since I’m not eating air and running a million miles a day, but it’s making me feel uncomfortable and disconnected), and so I’ve been thinking, “Hey, I could go back to working out a lot like I was before.”

I mean, if I’m not doing it because of what the scale says and I’m only doing it to keep a certain shape to my body, that’s okay, right?

 No.  Actually, it’s not.  Because, dear cheatin’-hearted girl, if you’re doing it because of appearance and not because of health or function, it’s not good for you.  You cannot do something to change the appearance and shape of your body and still claim to be treating yourself with acceptance and love. 

If I go back to working out to control my size, that’s the exact same thing as working out to control my weight.  Exactly.  EXACTLY.  I can’t really say that to myself enough.

 The fact is, I have big thighs and a big ass.  I just do.  I am pear-shaped.  That’s my shape.  It just is.  And I’m not going to fight myself over something that is just what it is.

I’m not freaked out by my crooked nose or the odd color of my eyes or the tragic case of shrimptoes that I proudly trot out in sandals.  I’m accepting of those parts of my body because they’re just parts–they’re not the whole.  I’ve been looking at that nose and those shrimptoes my whole life and while they’re clearly imperfect, they’re just parts of me.  Parts, not all.   Just like the thighs.  They don’t say anything about me, they don’t tell the world what I like or what I do or what makes me laugh.  They’re not me.

If I’m going to practice body acceptance (and I truly believe  that this the single most important thing I’ve got to get into my noggin right now), then I have to practice it daily, even as my body changes in ways that stretch my comfort.  I am getting rounder and that’s okay.  It really is.  Because it’s physical proof that I’m really taking care of myself.  I’m not punishing myself with unnecessary exercise.  I’m not withholding food.  These developing curves (Second puberty!  Woo!) are the results of homemade cookies with my husband, dinner out with my parents, pizza with my niece and nephews.  They’re the result of an hour spent reading a book or making a craft or playing a game instead of running six miles on the treadmill.  It’s a gift of love and time and energy I’m giving to myself. 

When I die, I don’t really think I’ll look back sadly on the size 4 pants I had to give away, but I suspect I would be very sorry for every moment I stayed home alone because I was scared of eating ‘risky’ foods or missing a workout, every moment I said yes to the scale and no to my life.

It’s time to say yes to my life. 

Up and down.

There’s this museum about an hour away from here that we used to visit all the time when I was a kid.  Without getting too detailed and turning this into a travelogue, it’s basically lots of Native American and Western art and artifacts.  And guns, but hey, that’s required in the Midwest. 

In one building of the complex, there’s a two-story stained glass window (well, really more of a wall, it’s so big) and it depicts two paths, one for good and one for bad.  The bad path is beautiful.  It’s all downhill, surrounded by lushness and loveliness.  The good path?  It’s uphill, rocky, snakes lurk in the bushes, thunderclouds loom overhead, darkness gathers.

Even as a kid, I got the not-so-subtle message that doing good is harder than doing bad, so, you know, just say no or whatever.  I got it, but I didn’t really get it.

I’ve been thinking about that window lately, and think maybe it’s not just referring to acts done out there in the world, but the acts and actions you take inside yourself. 

If I hold doors open for the elderly, and I give money to the right causes, and I stick up for people who need it, and I’m generous with my energy and my time, but I still treat myself badly?  Maybe I’m still on that easy path.  Because maybe doing all those ‘right’ things is the easy thing.  The hard thing is looking at yourself, a person you know suspect may suck in a lot of ways who doesn’t always have pure motives and right thinking, and still treating yourself with kindness and gentleness and compassion and love.

It’s been a hard few days and I find myself thinking how much easier it was when I was dieting, when pants weren’t tight and my belly didn’t stick out and I wasn’t quite so squishy, but perhaps it’s time I stopped focusing on what’s easiest.  The easy path hasn’t served me well thus far after all; it’s made me weird and obsessed and anxious and mean, mean, mean.

Maybe I should be glad that this is hard right now; maybe that’s how I know it’s the right thing to do.

Let’s Get Physical.

I used to work out 2 hours a day.  Which is not a lot for a professional athlete or a person in training for a marathon or triathalon, but which is probably more than a social worker from the Midwest who has never been called upon to run 20 miles in one day needs to get.

When I stopped the disordered eating, I also stopped the compulsive exercise.  Honestly, that was harder than giving up the calorie-counting.  Because when I decided to get really skinny, I’d work out in the morning before work and again when I got home from work.  My two-a-days.  My, I was disciplined.

Now, I’m trying to embrace moderate exercise.  I walk for 30 minutes every day before work.  Then, three days a week, I run and lift weights.  It’s a fraction of the exercise I used to get, but honestly?  If I’m looking at it as a matter of health and not a way to control my weight?  It’s plenty.

But it’s really hard to keep the rigidity out of my plan.  I get focused on certain days–like, Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays are the days I run and lift.  And if I don’t do it that day?  I feel freaked, much like I felt back in the day when I would almost miss a five-mile run or something (I say “almost” because I never missed a workout.  I’d run late at night if need be or after icing my ankle to numbness and then crying through all five miles because it hurt so bad, but either way, that run was happening).

Today is Friday.  I feel blue and really miss my husband and wish that Friday nights felt more special, a little “Woohoo!” at the end of the work week.  And today, I didn’t want to come home and run and lift.  Really, really didn’t want to. 

I reviewed my contract with myself and it says I’m not to exercise if I really, really don’t want to, because then it’s not about self-care, and it should only be about self-care.

 So, I’ve bumped tonight’s workout, and I know I’ll probably just do it tomorrow instead. 

But, I’m letting myself have a night off even though the calendar says I shouldn’t.  I’m going to have a nice dinner and a cocktail and I’m not going to tell myself I can’t eat certain things because I missed my workout.  And while I wish I didn’t feel a faint sense of anxiety and guilt, I’m going to celebrate the fact that tonight, I won.  I gave myself a night off when I needed it; two months ago, I couldn’t have done that.

 Baby steps, baby steps.  But steps nonetheless.

Nacho Thursday.

I had homemade nachos for dinner tonight. With lots of jalapenos and red onion and it was so spicy and good.  And it wasn’t a special occasion; it was just a Thursday.  But I wanted nachos and so I made them.

Why, you may wonder, is this a big deal?  Because nachos, a meal made of chips and cheese, is not something I would have even considered as a dinner I could make for myself two months ago.  Not enough protein and too much fat and the CALORIES, DEAR GOD, THE CALORIES.  If I’d wanted something Tex-Mex, I would have fashioned some kind of sad, fat-free bean burrito, with one tablespoon of cheese on a multigrain tortilla that tasted just okay.  But it would have had exactly 220 calories, and I would have paired it with an 80-calorie apple and that would have been an acceptable, “good” dinner.

But I’m learning how to eat real meals again.  Meals chosen because of how they appeal to my appetite.  And it’s a revelation. 

Good food, real food, is so much more satisfying than diet food.  I was worried that eating non-diet food would send me off into an orgy of gorging.  But the opposite is happening; I eat a yummy meal that really answers my hunger and I’m not left feeling lost and wondering what else is in the kitchen. 

Accepting and honoring my appetite is just another way of accepting and honoring myself. 

Nachos are a step on the path to self-love.  Who knew?

Weeding.

Last night, I cleaned out my closet.  I took out all the pants that don’t fit me at my current size and moved them to the spare bedroom where they aren’t looking at me every morning. 

Last night I felt triumphant.

Today I felt sad.

 Even though I am one-hundred-percent certain that I am taking better care of myself right now than I ever have in my life, I felt a small sense of loss and disappointment.  It’s hard saying goodbye to this cultural ideal I’ve been chasing for years now.  But a goodbye being hard doesn’t make it bad.

I’m looking forward to being a year down the road from quitting diets and seeing what size I am then.  I’m looking forward to buying clothes in one size (or very small range of sizes, sizing being the fickle whore it is) and having those clothes fit me then and fit me the next month and even the next year.  I look forward to my body stabilizing wherever it needs to, and then rocking that body.  Wearing clothes that make me feel beautiful or cute or however I want to feel that day, size be damned.

 I believe I will be lovely and awesome regardless of how big my ass is or isn’t.  Because I’m really starting to believe that the very best parts of me come from the inside.  And that’s only getting better and stronger the more I take care of myself.

So, goodbye, pants.  Thanks for the good times and I look forward to seeing some of you in larger sizes down the road.