And in the end…

So, I’m retiring Good With Cheese.

It’s been a tough decision, but honestly, this chapter of my little life’s journey is over.  I need a fresh start, and I need it away from the these months and months of posts.

I’m exploring new things these days, new ways of eating (not dieting, mind you – just eating more whole foods and trying to really nourish my body) and new ways of working out, and I want to talk about all that without feeling the shadow of my past disordered behavior hovering in the background.

I’ve started a spankin’-fresh blog that I’m going to use to chronicle my new experiences (up first: what the hell do I do with this millet now that I’ve got it home?).

To those of you who offered your advice and support and kindness over all these months, I can only say thank you, thank you, thank you. I wish you ten-fold the healing and peace I have found.

The GWC leg of my journey is over, but happily, I have many more miles to go.

Reckoning.

I weighed this morning.

152.

Yowza.

Granted, my period is due later this week and what with my chronically broken digestive system, I’m sure I’m retaining all kinds of…well, you get the picture.  So I know it’s not all permanent parts of me, not all bone and fat and muscle and gooey bits.  But that number?

Again I say: Yowza.

Why did I weigh, you may be wondering.  The answer is simple: Because I wanted confirmation that I was truly as fat as I suspected I was.   I wanted a number.  I wanted a reason to toss all this damn body acceptance shit out the proverbial window and I wanted an excuse to get back on some kind of Program.  I wanted something to shock me so badly I could say, “Man, this past year was a horrible, horrible mistake.”

It kind of worked.  It kind of didn’t. 

I really want to lose weight.  Really, really badly.  Not a lot of weight.  Just a little.  Just…well…17 pounds.  That’s not a little, is it?

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.  I hate this.  I hate feeling like I have to choose either hunger and exhaustion, or sadness and a pervasive sense of being icked out by my own chub.  Where’s my middle ground, damn it?  It’s like I’m not allowing myself any other choices:  I’m either a disordered eater and compulsive overexerciser, or I’m a girl who feels regret over what she’s given up, who misses both her functioning colon and the tiny shred of social acceptance her smaller ass gave her, but who is too terrifed to pay attention to what goes into her mouth lest she spiral out of control again.

I miss seeing my abs.  I miss feeling fast and light.  I miss sitting in a chair and pulling my feet up and tucking my knees beneath my shirt, so lithe and bendy I felt.  I miss feeling like I could trust myself with a freakin’ food journal when having digestive issues and trying to track down a cause.  Now I feel lumbering.  I feel Too Big for the kind of life I like leading.  My abdomen hurts.  I feel heavy and bloated and full of rage.

I don’t know what to do anymore.  It all feels like I have to pick one path or the other.  Do I fight the good fight on behalf of all the fat girls and eschew anything resembling restriction or dieting, or do I try to make this fat girl feel her best, even if that means a food journal and workout logs?

I want to be where I spent those five years between 11/01 and 1/07, where I worked out hard and ate mindfully, but didn’t beat myself up over pizza and beer on occasion.  I felt good there, strong and healthy and fit, but not disordered or deprived or sluggish or bloated.

I guess to be there,  I just do what I did when I was there.

I just wish it didn’t feel like a betrayal.

Time Flies When You’re Navel-Gazing.

I started this blog on May 13, 2007, as  way of forcing myself to be accountable to my three-month No-Dieting contract.  I suspected that without someone, even the faceless internets, knowing what I was doing (or not doing), it’d be easy for me to quit.  To diet again.  To hop back on the treadmill and stop the fattening as soon as that first pair of pants got too tight.

The only reason (and I really do mean ‘only’) I did not return to dieting is because of the community of body acceptance and fat acceptance I found out here in the ether  And I remember being so shocked that people were even reading what I was writing, let alone taking the time to comment, to buoy me up after a hard day  or to celebrate with me after a good one.  I felt so propped up by this community as I tried to figure out what healthy looked like for me.

Because let me tell you, after that initial high of not counting grapes wore off?  I wanted to diet a lot.  More than I even said.  Like, daily.

I was freaked out by my changing shape, freaked out by not knowing to the ounce what I weighed each day.  Again and again, as people “noticed” my weight gain, I found myself trying to put into words why I was making the choice to leave behind the socially-accepted body I’d worked so hard for.

I still dont have a good answer that doesn’t sound like justifying or, well, loser-talk.  Every answer sounds like I just wanted to eat malted milk balls and go out to dinner a few times a month.  And you know, a lot of it is that I wanted to eat malted milk balls and go out to dinner. 

Because the fact is?  Dieting totally works for me.  I’m a person who can lose weight pretty easily while still eating a reasonable number of calories (far more than, like, Weight Watchers would let me have) and working out a mere hour or two a day.  I can achieve a body weight that is BMI-approved.  I can fit into clothes at any store.  I mean, my body settled at 135 for over 5 frickin’ years, only requiring a bit of mindfulness in regards to my food choices, and would probably still be there now if I hadn’t decided to screw with things back in January ‘07.

True, to get to anything below 130, I have to get obsessive about food and overexercise, but to hang out around 135 and a size 8/10? I just have to eat one tablespoon of peanut butter instead of two on my English muffin.  I just have to run 30 miles a week and lift every other day.  I just don’t eat the second I get peckish, and instead ride it out to the next snack or meal-time.

Is that dieting?  Hell, I don’t even know anymore.  I do know that lately I’ve been really missing that 135, but the choices I’d need to make to get leaner sound restrictive and therefore…hypocritical?  I mean, not eating when hungry is going against the first rule of demand-feeding!  Not eating when hungry is restriction!  Restriction is Dieting!  Bad Megan for even considering!

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  I know it’s physically easier to run when I’m thinner because my body doesn’t bounce about quite so much and I feel…speedier.  And running at 135 simply doesn’t make my feet hurt like it does at 148 pounds.  While this hurts the most to admit, I know how to recognize my body at that size.  Even now, my brain doesn’t always understand the dimensions of this body; I often find myself trying to squeeze through too-small spaces.  I glimpse my reflection in store windows and can’t immediately recognize the chubby girl I see there.  I feel the terrain of my body beneath my hands in the shower, and it seems like the topography of a foreign land, all hills and valleys I don’t know.

I don’t hate it.  I don’t find it unattractive.  I just don’t feel like it belongs to me.

The truth is, I’d prefer to be 10 or so pounds lighter than I am now for practical and aesthetic (yes, that too, I shall not lie and say it’s all about function) reasons.  It’d take minimal effort to make the rather small changes to get me there.  Because right now, my intuitive eating sucks.  I eat past fullness routinely and snack when bored almost daily and my digestive system is jacked upbecause I’m no longer careful about fiber and vegetables and such because it sounds diet-y and I don’t want to be a bad intuitive eater and OHMYGOD JUST MAKE IT STOP.  It makes me long for the relative easiness of my old meal plans.

It sounds like I’m trying to talk myself into dieting, doesn’t it?  Maybe I am.  After all, most everyone around me is doing it.

Maybe I’m just tired of swimming upstream.

Comments disabled because I’m about 85% certain I’m going to regret this post tomorrow and take it down anyway.

Better than a thousand words.

Yesterday I cleaned out my closet and dresser of everything that is, by my own definition, “too tight.”  Goodbye, size 10s!  Granted, my husband is bereft because he likes me in too-tight pants, but as they made me feel badly about my body, he’ll just have to get his kicks in some other way.

I loaded up a huge bag of clothes and another huge bag of shoes (including a few pairs I’d never even worn, so that’ll be fun for someone else!), and donated them to a local women’s shelter.  They’ll serve a much better purpose there than in my closet, encouraging me to hate on myself.

In related news, I spent the weekend out of town with my mom, sister, and Girl Cousin, and we took lots of pictures of our adventures.  I was looking at them on Sunday afternoon after we got home, and I was struck by how pretty I looked. 

Pretty.  Me.  All 149 pounds and 31 years of me.  I looked relaxed and happy and my skin was all glowy and my body looked strong and I didn’t look tired or gaunt or terrified.  I can’t remember the last time I looked at a picture of myself and thought I was pretty.

During the dieting days, I would scan pictures for proof of my “hard work,” trying to spot bones or sinew as evidence that I was getting skinnier.  At the very worst of my behaviors, I saved pictures that showed a too-frail wrist jutting from a sleeve or a visible hipbone pressing against my pants, and I reviewed them regularly because it kept me focused on my diet.  Even then, though, I never found the pictures pretty; I’d mention how badly I photographed and I’d avert my eyes from the sad, scared face looking up from the glossy print.

But these pictures?  That girl is pretty.  So that must mean…I’m pretty.

It’s amazing what you can see when you start looking through your own eyes.

Put it together.

My last two posts have reflected the drift I’m feeling lately, the move away from my body-acceptance journey toward one seeking a broader self-acceptance.  I feel like I’ve held the body image stuff in my hands for so long now, turned it over, examined it from all sides, lifted it to the light.  I think I know it pretty well.  But I also now know it’s just a puzzle piece, not the puzzle itself.

I am ready to pay more attention to who I am and how I am and why.  I want to learn things about myself beyond how many miles I can run or how I take my coffee.

I’ve always been disappointed with my natural inclinations.  I’ve fantasized about being strong and stubborn and courageous, carefree and brash and assertive.  I like the idea of those things, how powerful they sound.

But the truth of who I am?  It is not those things.  And that is okay.

I am quiet and cautious and safe.  I listen to both sides.  I frequently change my mind.  I wait until I am certain.  I look, then step gingerly off the edge, leaving the leaping to lords.  Security matters to me.

It all doesn’t sound very exciting; Wonder Woman doesn’t wait for safety nets.  But I am not Wonder Woman.  I am Megan.  I like to be prepared.

And you know?  Confidence isn’t always brash.  Smart isn’t always stubborn.  I can be my own version of those things.  The Wonder Woman type is only one variation.

I think self-improvement has its place.  There’s something to be said for becoming more well-read, or a better cook, or fluent in another language.  Those things are all awesome and worth doing.  But too often, we make goals of changing the fundamental traits of who we are.  We look at our brashness or shyness, our restlessness or stillness, and we see them as flaws to be overcome.  We focus on improving what is already acceptable and, in doing so, we tell ourselves over and over and over that we are not good enough.

Who you are?  How you are?  Those qualities and characteristics that are unique to you?

They are all good enough.

Be proud of them.  Love them.  Be proud of you.  Love you.

And happy Valentine’s day.

On fire.

The farther I get from dieting, the better I can see what it gave me.

Oh, restrictive eating and the accompanying illusion of control, how you soothed me.  Oh, punishing and endless exercise, how you numbed and distracted me.  Oh, single-minded purpose of becoming smaller and smaller, how you turned my attention away from my broken places.

I am dissatisfied so much these day, so full of vinegar and fury; it spills everywhere across my life. 

It terrifies me.  It’s asking for sweeping changes, loud declarations, cleaned slates.  It would be so much easier to starve it into silence, to tire it out on the treadmill until it is limp and weary.

But I’ve learned self-punishment can’t be my sedative.  So I don’t self-punish to contain my rage; I let it seep into corners and across pages and I hope that by letting it out, it will let me go.

I have a spent a lifetime not being good enough.  I have spent a lifetime apologizing for being me.  For being not-pretty, not-clever, not-graceful, not-lovable.  Apologizing.  Diminishing.  Hoping that if I make myself small enough through word and deed, then I’ll be allowed to pass by unharmed. 

I made myself small for my father.  For my classmates.  For too many men.

And eventually for myself when I believed they were all right about me.

I don’t want to be small anymore.  I don’t want to be small in my own esteem, small in my body, small in my life.  I want vastness, fullness, depth and breadth.

More than just wanting though?  I believe I deserve it.

I am not apologizing anymore.

An Open Letter.

Dear Women I Work With,

To begin, I am not interested in what you are eating today unless you also brought some for me.

If you tell me about some kind of “dessert” you fashioned out of rice cakes, fat-free Cool Whip, and Splenda, don’t expect me to say it sounds good.  Because I won’t.  Because I’m not that good of a liar. 

I am not going to tell you that you are “good” for eating an apple no matter how much you fish for that.  I eat apples almost every day and I’ve yet to achieve sainthood, so I think there’s not actually a moral component to apple-eating.

I do not care that you lost five pounds.  That’s why I shrugged and said, “And?”  It’s not because I’m rude; it’s because I don’t think your worth is measured by your weight.

When you say you “shouldn’t” have that piece of chocolate, I will agree only if it turns out you stole it from either a small child or me.  Otherwise, it’s chocolate.  It’s delicious.  Get over yourself.

And lastly, this is an election year.  Our nation is at war.  The Super Bowl is this weekend.  The Oscars are coming up.  There are million things we can talk about besides how fat you think you are.

Please stop being so boring.

Sincerely,
Megan.

Agent of Change.

So, at work, every available surface is PLASTERED with Weight Watchers flyers.  Thus far, I have resisted the impulse to rip them down, but only by this much. 

But after two weeks of seeing them every day, I have reached my breaking point.  I’m working on a flyer of my very own all about HAES.  And I’m going to be hanging one next to every damn WW flyer in the building.

The thing is, last year before I quit dieting, I had no ideathat not hating myself was even an option.  After all, my fat was completely the result of my Very Bad Couch-Sitting and Constant Donut-Eating.  All I had to do to fix it was control my calories in v. calories out with, well, chronic undereating and overexercising.  And if I still didn’t achieve thinness, then I just needed to try harder.  You know, eat less and move more, even if “eat less” really meant “attempt to starve” and “move more” meant “spend hours on the treadmill every day while ignoring friends, family, pets, sleep, and ONE’S OWN SANITY.”

But then I found out that my body wasn’t an object of shame.  I found out my health, which is a real and tangible thing, had meaning that was not relative to my pants size, an arbitrary and inconsistent thing.  I found out that exercise didn’t have to be punishment.  I found out that constant hunger was a sign of a problem, not a symbol of my virtue.  I found out that beauty isn’t a BMI.

I still have hard days.  But even on the hardest days, I still know the truth.  There’s no un-learning body acceptance.  Even when you want to ignore it because in a lot of ways it’s easier to go back to being a good-for-dieting fat girl, you can’t forget it for long because you know better now.  And the part of you that knows you deserve kindness and love?  It’s going to fight like hell to keep you from going back.

I’m a reserved and quiet person.  And so, I’m not much of an activist because I’m not quick with the talking and the smartness; I’m better at applauding from the sidelines.  But you know?  I can’t use that as an excuse.

Even I can wrangle a few flyers and a box of thumbtacks.  And that’s a start.

All I Want For Christmas.

Dear Santa,

I’d like to get over myself.

Sincerely, Megan.

Dear Megan,

Then just do it already.

Love, Santa.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

So, an ice storm moved through, well, most of Oklahoma on Sunday.  Lots and lots of ice.  Lots and lots of tree branches snapping off and falling onto power lines.  And as a result, lots and lots of people with no electricity for lots and lots of days.

Here’s a quick rundown of my week:

• Our power went out early Monday morning. 
•  I watched five of our six trees fall to the ground that afternoon, thankfully only grazing the house.  
•  I threw out everything in the fridge and freezer on Wednesday. 
• I reached my official breaking point around 4 pm on Thursday. 
• Around 5 pm that day I consumed two whiskey-based beverages and felt a little bit better. 
• Around 6 pm our power came back on.  It’s entirely likely I cried when that happened. 

 I asked my husband if he’d ever been happier in his whole life.  He said, “Yes, when I asked you to marry me and you said yes.”  I told him not to lie, that electricity is so much better. 

But power remains out for much of my family, so my sister and her kids have been sheltering here in our home since Friday.  The washing machine never stops running; the dishwasher fills up in what seems to be minutes.  But I am happy, happy, happy that we are able to take them in and hopeful their power will be back on soon. 

So, just checking in to report I am not frozen here on the Oklahoma tundra (and Jill, I hope your power is back on by now!!).   I’ll be back with a real post soon. 

In the meantime, I’ll be composing long, flowery, and incredibly sincere love letters to linemen, and of course, doing another load of laundry.