In the past few months, just about every girlfriend I speak to on a daily basis and some on a not so daily basis, has had an issue with her weight....On top of all our collective real issues, unemployment, special needs children, children with other needs, husbands, hormonal imbalances, mid life questions, mid life reinventions, health worries, foreclosures looming, entering into the sandwich generation, just to rattle off a few....we still obsess about our weight, wondering what the hell happened and then delving into total disgust with letting ourselves go......
So I started thinking about this, because Lord knows, not only do I worry about everything, but I must over analyze and over think everything as well......Where would the fun be if I didn't?????
I never had a problem with my height, weight, looks until it was pointed out to me just how inadequate I was by someone else and their standards. I was about 9 years old at the time and until that moment, I was just me, being me. A typical 9 year old kid who loved to draw and read and dance and watch the world around me....who believed fiercely in fun, and even more deeply in Santa Claus and all things fantastical....and who feared death and worried about my mom's health....who thought television was the best invention EVER...Until then, whether I was good or bad rested solely on how I chose to behave, not what I chose to wear, how I looked in it or what my BMI was....there was no BMI.......
It starts young. Most women can spit out weight, dress size, and shoe size to match each pivotal milestone in her life the way guys can retrieve stats on their favorite players and teams....Case in point...Wedding day, October 16, 1993..I was a size 6, at this point weighing 118 pounds, size 7 1/2 shoes that were killing me....Day I became a mom, May 29, 1997 weight 160 pounds, size 10 Maternity, shoe size 8...my feet had swollen as did the rest of me with a difficult pregnancy....Present day, congratulate me, I am about to obviously give birth to a huge bundle of what I'm hoping is enlightenment because I'm closer to the weight I was when I was nurturing a new life inside of me than when I was romanticizing the life I thought I was going to lead. Here in lies an issue....The emphasis should be the life we lead, the process of realizing who we are, what is important to us, what makes us feel alive. How we accessorize it should be the afterthought. How is it that I question how I let myself physically go, when I stopped letting myself emotionally be at 9? When we speak of healthy weight, really how healthy is the conversation, when it doesn't begin to address the bigger picture? What is healthy or balance here in an environment that harbors eating disorders (me, included, I was anorexic), obesity rates of epic portion, and doesn't see a correlation with lack of after school programs, poverty, lifestyle, super processed foods, fruits and vegetables that have been so genetically engineered they are no longer as nutritious as they once were,(not to mention all the pesticides, chemicals and perservatives used) artificial sweetners??? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said it brilliantly " All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem." Depression, stress and emotionally eating go hand in hand, easy to say put the cookie down, but when we say put the cigarette down we get attacked, yet put the cookie down seems justified.... Because we are conditioned to degrade someone with a "fat ass" comment, because it's easier to blame an overweight person for thier lack of self control and say they are unhealthy as a cigarette gets puffed away and we all know the cancerous ramifications of it, the emphysima, and the absolute hold nicotine has on the addict.....It's also easy to overlook a situation we are all a part of, and that we all have helped to not only create but continue to thrive........
When we women are overwhelmed the first thing we do is punish ourselves by berating our failures to maintain our physiques, we are doing what we are taught to do early on. Every time anyone wants to put a woman down they attack her looks first, then they go for her sexuality, and then her intelligence. We do the same to ourselves and to each other. It's a vicious cycle and it goes beyond the refrigerator, the therapist couch or the gyms....It starts with what we tell those 9 year old girls and how we modeled the behavior for those 9 year old boys as well....It's how we behave towards ourselves. It's what we monetarily support, what we purchase, what we choose to watch. It's what we designate as beautiful, acceptable, and what we say must then fall at a waistline...It's about allowing other people to measure our worth with a scale and a measuring tape, instead of taking stock of what makes us feel beautiful. When we demand better perhaps we will get better. A healthy weight fluctuates from person to person and where they are in their lives. Healthy weight and healthy behaviors are also not necessarily synonomous. I will never be the same as I was on my wedding day, but I would like to be able to run around and not have to wrap myself around every mailbox trying to shove my heart back into my chest.....I know I have to eat healthier because I have witnessed first hand the curative effects of good food....and I would never allow my boys to eat like I do. I know I have to exercise more consistantly because it's so good for your mind, and with my family history I fear losing it....
But when I think back to that young 9 year old and later years....what comes to my mind for each year first is not the dreams I had but the size I was.....In junior year of high school I was 5'4", 85 pounds, a size 0. My menstrual cycle hadn't begun yet and wouldn't until a year later, when I started to eat better. My fingernails peeled off....My hair fell out....and yet, I don't remember what inspired me....I was given compliments for my thin frame. I couldn't see past it, I still was enormous, I was still far from a perfect weight.....I still didn't look like everyone else......It didn't occur to me that I wasn't supposed to because I had been conditioned to be just like everyone else.....So, now that it's evident that if I sneeze I can possibly rip my pants......and that exhaling takes on a rippled effect on the rest of me......that when I did my exercises today for the 3rd consecutive day a lounge is starting to resemble a little less of a cow tipping and a little more of an actual move.....I'm going to try a novel approach....I am not going to obsess....I am going to try to reconnect with the things I've loved along the way....I hate exercising, but I love dancing...used to all the time....maybe reconnecting with the life I should be really experiencing can shed the pounds a life of denials and fears puts on.....There are about 10 pounds of reading comprehension anxieties just waiting to jump on my ass.....so.......I'm gonna bust a move..........I'm going to dance it out.....Dancing Queen.....maybe not long and lean or 17...ok, short and round..oops, curvy, and 42.....never the less Dancing Queen......letting myself go......in order to run free................ok, walk....3 vaginal births, running can run it's own risks................
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