...and all i got was this damn wrap dress
So two years ago, I lost 30 pounds. I wasn't "fat" per se but was definitely plump, and more important, I was above where my body's set point is when I'm living how humans should be living, i.e. eating reasonably and getting off our asses sometimes. I'd always been on the softer side of the body spectrum but hadn't been actually overweight since I was a kid, until I started smoking pot every weekend. And smoking pot, to me, also means eating a pint of ice cream, some brownies or cookies, exotic candies, etc. And quitting pot didn't feel like an option because my alcoholic boyfriend needed something when he decided to "go sober" (oh, the rationalizations I made about pot being better than booze! I mean, it is "better"--few people become assholes when high, as opposed to when drunk--but in his case it was just a replacement).
Anyway. I started running instead of doing the elliptical. I followed a macrobiotic diet for three weeks to kick-start things. I started cutting entrees in half and taking the rest home; I stopped eating in front of the TV; I was strict with my solo dinners so I wouldn't have to feel deprived when going out with friends. I was smart about it, and it showed: The weight came off at a little more than a pound a week, and two years later I haven't gained any of it back.
Now, like what seems like every other woman in America, I had some body image issues all along, and anybody who has read my journal with semi-regularity probably knows about them. And like any student of eating disorders knows, those body image issues have very little to do with the body and more to do with image, control, a form of sexism so ingrained that even those of us who are aware and righteously angry fall prey to it, psychology. But still, I thought that things might change when I lost weight.
They didn't, not really. In some ways, they did: I started dressing differently. I had worked to lose those pounds, and damn if I wasn't going to show it a bit-nothing terribly revealing, but form-fitting dresses that I knew I looked good in. I attracted attention from a different sort of man than I had earlier, much as hipsters hit on me in greater proportion when I cut off a foot of hair and started dressing in obnoxious ironic T-shirts.
(Here I should note that I wasn't grossly overweight when I began, nor am I super-slender now. I would say I'm "average" or "healthy," but I used those words to describe my body 30 pounds heavier, so it's all relative. I went down 2-3 dress sizes if that gives an indication.)
But those changes weren't actually changes. So men who were slightly more status-conscious than previous suitors approached me-they weren't of better quality as people. The torrent of compliments when I went from a strict jeans-and-hoodie uniform to cute wrap dresses peaked, then subsided, and the thrill of having single-digit dress sizes in my closet has worn off. (The biggest consistent change I've noticed in how I'm treated, however, is from shopkeepers. Nobody before would ever have guessed my size; they'd ask and then help me find it. But now they think nothing of guessing it-and they usually underestimate, thus giving them a chance to do what they probably think is buttering me up by saying, "Oh, but you're so small," which just infuriates me because it's so transparent. I could maybe be called athletic or trim, but I'm 5'7" and muscular! I am not small! It makes me wonder what they say to women who actually are small-have they learned yet that small women don't necessarily like attention being called to that fact? Anyway.)
Most of all, though: Overall, I felt the same way I had about my body as I always had. I felt stronger and healthier and maybe prouder, yes. But I have the same number of "fat days" now as I did 30 pounds heavier. I wrote here about how I'd always hated my thighs, and how if they "suddenly ceased to be bulbous, I wonder what it would be next? And, yes, my thighs are no longer bulbous, and instead it is my stomach that plagues me. I look in the mirror now and most days see my good points. But there are just as many days now as there were then when instead my eyes zoom in to the bad points. It's the points themselves that have changed, that's all. The mindset is pretty much the same.
So now that I've ruled out my actual body as the cause of body image stuff, it makes my goal of being not-freaky about it both easier and harder. I have no illusions that I'll ever be 100% okay with everything all the time, but I can strive, and I want to avoid being preoccupied with food in any way but pleasure. Right now I vary pretty wildly-I am pretty controlled in what I eat most of the time (except late at night-no control there). At the same time, I eat well-I have something sweet pretty much every day, even if it's small, I eat foods I like, and when I dine out I'm conscious of my choices but also indulge myself. (I'm a fucking Glamour coverline, all right.) My habits aren't out of control, but once I get on that hamster wheel of counting every calorie and being too austere or culty about my diet (raw foods, anyone?), it's hard to get off it. And that's damaging, but most of all it's boring. There are photos to be taken and blogs to be read and stories to be written and a wonderful man to enjoy, and instead I'm going to sit there and enter in oatmeal-salmon-olive oil-spinach-red peppers-apple-blueberries into fucking fitday.com again? Like, aren't we done with that already?
I'm trying to recognize what goes on in my mind on the good days. Like today. What made today okay? Was it a good night's sleep, was it my pinstripe pants, was it having professional affirmation, was it putting my hair up, was it knowing I had a night to myself with no tasks to complete for the first time in a while? Why was I totally okay in my skin today, while much of last weekend I was-lordy, I don't even know what I was or what caused it, that's how foreign it feels to me on days like today? I do think part of it is recognizing how boring the whole body-food hamster wheel is. Seriously, why should I go to fitday.com or be reading "detox diet" crap-stuff I already know-when there is so much I don't know? One of my best traits is my curiosity and I want to actively use that to my advantage.
/mindbleed