Back to the future.
I was thinking yesterday, if I could back to how I was before November 2001, before I ever went on that diet, before I ever decided that fat was a bad thing to be, would I?
You know? I don’t think I would.
I do miss my blissful ignorance about the unacceptability of my fat ass. And I would like to have back some of the awfully cute size 16 clothes I had then, as well as the ability to look at my thighs and ass without only seeing cellulite.
But while I was accepting of my body then, I didn’t take very good care of it. Honestly, I didn’t even thinkabout my body; I lived from the neck up. HAES was something I’d never heard of, and as a young, living-in-my-first-apartment, no-clue-how-to-cook, hot-damn-food-costs-money girl, I ate a lot of quick and cheap prepared foods. I also didn’t exercise, because I’d never thought of myself as someone who could be athletic.
Now here I am, 6 years and 4 months away from that decision to make myself smaller. My weight has stabilized 40-odd pounds below my highest-known weight, but 20 pounds above my lowest. I have a belly and squeezable thighs and broad hips. I also can run harder and farther than I could at either my highest or lowest weights. I don’t get lightheaded every time I stand up (as a side effect of not eating enough), nor do I get as tired as I did when I never moved and ate nutritionally inadequate food.
I am healthier than I was at 187 or 126. I feel better. My body never feels like it’s breaking down these days; my limp is gone. I don’t find myself wondering how many more miles I can get out of my ankle before I damage it too much to run at all, because I don’t push through injury now.
More importantly, I think I love my body more than I could have if I hadn’t dieted. Dieting (and eventually overexercising) made me aware that what I do to and for my body has consequences. If I eat junk and don’t move, I feel run down. If I don’t eat enough and move too much, I feel broken down. I have learned there’s balance to be had, that there’s an equation where eating enough and moving enough and resting enough add up to a body that feels comfortable. Strong. Happy even.
So, are self-love and self-acceptance more meaningful if you go through self-hate and self-harm to find them? I can’t say that’s true for everyone. But for me, my dieting and disordered behavior led me here, to a place where I neither ignore nor harm my body, but live with it and through it.
And that’s a pretty great place to be.
I have to agree with you about not wanting to go back to the whole ignorance is bliss phase. I think that you learn so much from going through the disordered phase. You grow and learn about your body and who you are. And there is NO replacing that.
I was on my first diet at 13. I recall the bliss when I gained weight the previous year and how I no longer felt small since I was now over 5 foot tall and how I thought that I would always be tiny. I’m stopped growing taller at 13 but I didn’t know then. I was so happy that I gained weight and then I was shattered a few minutes later by being called fat. I was 5′2” and a 124 pounds. And the chart the school had suggested that I should have weighed only 90 pounds.
I felt that I should have been praised for having feminine curves but here I was being called fat for the first time in my life. A great way to enter womanhood. I knew that 90 pounds was too small, but the only height weight charts that I found for teens suggested 110 which didn’t seem that much better. I dieted down to about 114 that year.
I’ve been on the diet roller coaster a number of times since. I think it’s different for people that are ‘overweight’ than ‘obese’. I don’t have the same weight issues as them. I feel like I can’t relate to the problems of the ‘obese’ and yet I’m not a member of that ‘thin’ club.
Sometimes, I feel fat and out of shape although I work out regularly and watch my diet. I know that I have thick muscles and I’ll never be at my teenage goal weight of 110 unless I’m very ill or starved by no fault of my own. I’m working hard at accepting myself at a higher healthier weight.
I would like to have the ignorance that I had when I told my classmates that I weighed 124 pounds with pride. Instead of joining me in my victory of finally gaining weight, my classmates told me that I was fat.
The only other person in my class that was fat was ‘obese’ with a number of health problems and I knew that I was ‘healthy’. It was the first time that I felt the dichotomy of being fat or thin with no in between. I was as huge as someone over 200 pounds in my classmates’ eyes.
Suffering sucks, but sometimes it makes us who we are, you know? I wouldn’t ever voluntarily go back in my past - there’s a lot of painful stuff there - but that pain also led me directly to finding my husband and my dream job.
Okay, that came out a bit weird. I guess I’m trying to say that it’s the bad things as well as the good ones that make up our lives and ourselves.
amen, to all of this. i believe myself to be a much stronger (physically and mentally) and more aware person having had to fight my way out of disorder. i’m also healthier and more active than i ever was before going in. like you, i didn’t think i had the ability to be athletic, and i didn’t give vegetables the time of day. i’m sure i did irreparable harm to some dark corner of my body that wouldn’t be there otherwise, but overall i’m sure i’m healthier now. and *definitely* healthier than i was while trying to lose weight, no question.
i think the biggest thing i gained was a more open mind. i’ve read so much on the politics of body hate, and i never would have read any of that if i hadn’t said to myself one day that my ED had to stop. i also journaled myself into exhaustion and analyzed every thought and action i had or did. because of that, i feel like i really know myself well, much better than before. if i hadn’t gone through the ED, would i just be another one of those women who have low grade body hate and who pick their bodies apart in a mirror but never let it fall into something more dangerous? probably.
however, in a perfect world, i would have the positive mindset and belief in myself that i have now, without needing to go through hell to get here. i could go back in time and lecture my younger self on health issues and supply her with a reading list and convince her that she’s perfect the way she is. would i do that given the chance? absolutely.
I don’t think self-love is better if you go through self-hate first, just more noticeable.
Wonderful post - you’ve made great progress.
I’ve come to love my body when I was in my twenties.
I learned that I wasn’t fat and ugly, but I had a nice figure. I have a small bottom. I didn’t know this until another women that had a bottom around the same size as mine was cracking jokes about having a small bottom like it was a great access. I was so sure that I was fat even when other people around me were the same size and weren’t fat.
in the words of david cassidy…i think i love you.
i’ve just spent two hours of my working day reading your blog from the beginning, and nodding my head in recognition and agreement.
thank you!
So, are self-love and self-acceptance more meaningful if you go through self-hate and self-harm to find them?
———————————
we had a selflove shoutout at my site on friday and interestingly no one brought that up.
it’s a big one for me as I almost say YES.
it’s the whole philosophy of our scars making us who we are and would we really wish to erase them?
no matter how notpretty they may be now or now hard they were when we gained them?
great post.
MizFit
Aaaaammmen, sister!!