My parents divorced when I was little and in the summers I went to stay with my father, where, unlike at my mom’s, eating was permitted without commentary. Since most of the year my mother thoroughly and forcefully controlled what was served and how much of it I ate and then how much of it I burnt off on the Stair Master, I had learned no internal monitors, and so always came back a little chubbier, much to my mother’s vociferous dismay. One fall I even overheard her lamenting the situation with my teacher. I got the message, and when I was 13, put myself on a diet of half a granola bar for breakfast, the other half at lunch (and one 1.5-calorie breath mint), a few figs and plain tea for a snack after school, and as little dinner as I could get away with. It was highly effective. I still remember the compliments Jeremy the Saxophone Player paid me that year. My mother was delighted. I was riding horses competitively then and remember deliberately tantalizing my algebra tutor by showing up to sessions in my jodhpurs, showing off my leanness.
But eventually I went off to college. The cafeteria, with its limitless grilled cheese sandwiches and amazing assortment of cereals, helped me gain twenty pounds freshman year. My sophomore year I went off the meal plan and ate a lot of boxed mac and cheese. Junior year it was pizza and enchiladas, and senior year pretzels and orange-flavored milk chocolate accompanied by Lady Grey tea with heavy cream. I went to college a size eight and left it at 16.
Then I moved and got married and fell into a series of depressing jobs and eventually suffered two and a half years of infertility. These things did not encourage me to stop eating for comfort. If something bad happened, I deserved ice cream. If something good happened, ice cream to celebrate! The fall I got pregnant I did start working on my diet and exercising of my own volition for practically the first time since childhood, and lost a bit of weight; I had just gone back to grad school, made some new friends, gone on an anti-depressant, and was feeling brighter and up to making the changes.
I got married about forty pounds north of where I am and now am nearly thirty pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight. Now I’m sometimes even wearing mediums, which is a constant surprise (have the sizes changed?). I can wear a lot of my clothes from high school. Honestly the weight loss hasn’t been very purposeful. It’s mostly just the by-product of being busy and caring about Little Girl’s nutrition and thus my own, and eliminating high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oil, and going vegetarian (and often vegan). I use an exercise bike but even for the spells I do it regularly my weight seems to stay the same, but it gives me energy, time to read, and a feeling of accomplishment. Breastfeeding was evidently quite the calorie-burner for me; I’ve only lost five pounds or so since weaning. I’m overall much healthier, though, whatever the cause; my blood work is improved, my energy, my shape.
What’s interesting now is meeting people in my average (slightly overweight) state. Like it or not, people often group themselves by appearance and assume things about others depending on their looks. I distinctly recall negative reactions I got as an overweight woman–like having to be moved from one bed to another after my c-section, before the epidural had worn off, and the disdainful look and faintly remembered comments one nurse gave another upon seeing me–and I don’t sense reactions like that anymore.
But I do others. A new acquaintance was recently very surprised when it came up that I used to weigh quite a bit more, and I realized she now saw me differently, as fundamentally unlike herself, a person drops her twins at the gym day care multiple times a week to get rid of the last few pregnancy pounds, pounds she is careful to assign ownership of to the children and not to herself. No, unlike her, I’m someone who once was fat, with all the connotations that confers, many of which were true for me. Her change in attitude interests rather than bothers me. I get it. But I am now pretty well at peace with my weight and my looks as a result of being happy with my life (rather than the other way around), and feel fortunate to have arrived at this place.
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I’ve been enjoying making healthful efforts, my chocolate stash notwithstanding. I’m also trying to pay more attention to Husband–to notice him, to engage him. We tried Wii Fit this past summer at my brother-in-law’s in Sweden and we all loved it (Little Girl even tried her hand at golf, and particularly enjoyed watching her daddy and uncle spar) and we’ve talked about getting one ourselves but we already have the exercise bike so it seems difficult to justify the cost. The social and competitive aspects of the game system are very appealing and I think sometimes it would be a great way for me and Husband to pay attention to each other, instead of the laptops, in the evenings, and to make exercise less of a special occasion, conducted only in the walk-in closet where the bike lives. If we had a Wii, we’d put it to good use. I’m a grown-up, now, and taking control of my well-being.
[This addendum is for Magpie Musing's Wii Fit contest which you should consider entering. The post follows its own logic and not always the contest's, as I started writing this before I knew about it. Yet since I was posting about fitness anyway I figured I should not pass up the opportunity to participate in the generous offer to win one of these systems, which I would be truly delighted to get to use, especially without an audience of in-laws.]
