MJtBA Part 3: Shifting Perspectives

My life seems to be divided into noticeable blocks of time where I saw the world in one particular way and then something happens and I have a drastically different viewpoint that makes it hard for me to relate to the person I was before. I'm not talking about external things like political, social, or religious views. Even as a child I was pretty agnostic, pro-choice, and (though of course I didn't learn the term until I was older) socially progressive. I'm talking about perspectives about myself which affect how I interact with the world around me.

For example, there was a time in my life when I accepted facts given to me by authority figures completely at face value without examination of their merit. There was a time that I would nervously pretend that I agreed with my peers just to fit in. Or kept secrets about benign likes and dislikes to avoid being made fun of. This letter could have been addressed to me just two short years ago.

I'm not ashamed of any of this. Personal development is a natural part of growing up and it's not surprising that there are situations I've come across even as an adult that I would probably handle differently now.

One of the major things that changed me was having my son. Before my pregnancy I was pretty willing to allow toxic people into my life to run all over me. I knew that these people were bad for me, but it was like I felt sorry for them or like I was obligated to help them along in life because they were misfits just like I felt I was. Plus I will admit I got some pleasure out of being told how great I was for putting up with all the bullshit. Being a martyr is kind of intoxicating. Getting together with my husband definitely started chipping away at that behavior, but it wasn't until I got pregnant that I drew a line in the sand when it came to my codependent tendencies. I can't do that anymore. I'm a mom and I have to be mentally healthy for my boy.

Interestingly though, developing my body image has gone a long way toward easing my fear of confrontation that created a lot of the shenanigans listed above. I'm not overly confrontational or anything. I'd still prefer to keep the peace on most occasions. But I'm genuinely not suffering from the delusion that if I make myself invisible, no one will notice I'm fat.

I think this is a problem a lot of fat people suffer from. The word "fat" is super loaded in our culture. It implies smelly, lazy, stupid, gluttonous, etc. , and it pretty much shuts down any argument because most of us (even a lot of thin people) are mortified by this accusation. It was like this imagined silver bullet just hovering out there waiting on me. I would rehearse a confrontation in my head and get maybe four lines in before my would-be opponent made a fat joke and all was lost as I slunk home with my tail between my legs. IN MY OWN FIGHT FANTASY! Sheesh.

And here's the weird part. I never ever ever ever once in my life ever believed any of those fat stereotypes to be true of other people. I have always been around a wide range of body diversity and I've pretty well always been on the small side of fat. I've never found fat to equal automatically unattractive in anyone but me. I know people who weigh over 400 pounds and live active lives (one of them plays college football and baseball and no he is not all muscle) with friends and romance and families and all the other things Sanjay Gupta wants you to think you can't have while fat. I have absolutely always believed that a fat person can simultaneously be a beautiful person. I've seen it with my own eyes on many occasions. Yet, it's almost like I saw myself as the one and only really fat person on the face of the planet. No one else deserved all the torment and shame heaped upon fat people in this culture. You know, except me and my lazy fat ass deserved it in spades apparently.

It has been hard to shake this mentality and believe things like my husband loves me for attributes that include my body not in spite of my body. Or that no, in fact I'm not lazy and if I were it would be no one else's business because I have no moral obligation to be otherwise. I spent a lot of time afraid of being fat or fatter even when I was thin and that hampered me quite a bit. The notion that I am fat and that is totally fine has made a huge difference in my life. I still have doubts and hard days but I'm no longer afraid of speaking up.

Watch out world. There is no silver bullet, no kryptonite, no Avada Kedavra. I'm free now to be exactly who I am.

My Journey to Body Acceptance Part 2: Feeling at Home

I ran 4 miles last night.

I'm just going to let that stand on its own because I am SO proud of it. I don't really know why even. I feel like I did something really important though and I'm deciding to relish it.

However, I am simultaneously experiencing a rush of resentment towards my school PE teachers. You see, last night I met a goal that I never consciously set simply because I would have never believed I was capable of such a thing. I was just feeling pretty good when I got to the end of my third mile (I have a 5k coming up which is what I've been "training" for.) and so I decided to keep going and all of the sudden there it was. And I find myself thrilled, but very very angry.

I have been building up to this since April. If I remember right I could not even do a half mile then at a slower pace than I am running now. I've gotten here because I was patient with myself. If was hurting, tired, or injured I didn't run. I didn't go faster or longer until I was sure I was ready. And I was finally and honestly working out to do something for my health and for myself rather than pursuing the goal of making myself take up less space in the universe.

Running makes me feel great. It clears my head. I can tell that I've gained strength as well as speed. I have more energy during the day than I used to. Most importantly, I feel very at home in my body in a way I never really have before. (I plan to write more about this feeling.)

I'm just bitter mostly at a particular teacher, Coach J, for making me intentionally avoid running because I have found that I really really really enjoy it. Starting in elementary school Coach J would make us run a mile as a class. He clearly delineated what was a good time and made sure we knew anything less was unacceptable and was pretty effective at pushing the POV that anyone who could not achieve said time or better was somehow defective. There was no discussion of what running could do for your health, no starting benchmarks from which improvement could be made.Nothing. Just a whistle, a stopwatch, and an unnatural affinity for humiliating little kids. Among other bad behavior, Coach J allowed an ENTIRE 6th grade class to make fun of me for running slowly. I don't know what he was going for, but I didn't run again on purpose until my last year of grad school.

I guess our teaching philosophies differ. I think teachers are charged with providing safe spaces and opportunities for growth and learning. He thinks he should blow a whistle and be a jerk.

The sad thing is that I really believe that proper Phys Ed is important and can be a positive force in a kid's life. In a proper PE class I would have been TAUGHT to find and honor my physical comfort zone and provided with reasonable and appropriate opportunities to expand that zone rather than just being shamed and barked at.

Running has been so important to me. Meeting and exceeding these goals makes me feel so accomplished and confident. And like I said, my relationship with my body has improved dramatically as a direct result. I think this would be true as I progressed in any physical activity that I liked. Feeling like this would have been very useful growing up and him and others like him cheat kids out of that everyday. It's shameful and it really is putting a cloud of spite over my happy time.

My Journey to Body Acceptance Part 1

I never really meant for this blog to become so food centered, but I guess it makes sense that it has. A short time before I got pregnant, I was introduced to the world of fat acceptance by a friend via Shapely Prose. (I'll probably link to their posts a lot in this series even though Kate hasn't decided if she wants to continue the blog because they were my first exposure and therefore most concrete in my mind.) I was only beginning to absorb the ideas and question my own practices and beliefs when I got the news that I would soon be a mother. From that point on I have been, in earnest, fighting to normalize my relationship with my body, with food, and with exercise because avoiding passing on self-destructive/self-hating habits to my child/ren is really important to me. No matter how they look, the world gives kids all kinds of messages that they are not good enough. I want to do everything I can to make sure none of these messages come from or seem supported by me.

In this series I want to explore all of that, so I can parse it out for myself, so I can use it in my future children's adolescence, and also in case anyone who happens to read this might find it useful in navigating their own path to being kinder to themselves. At some point I'll post more specifics about my past and about the things I've done to come this far, but tonight I want to start with a victory.

I never liked pictures of myself. If I got dressed up and looked in the mirror I was capable of thinking I looked nice but if I was ever photographed and then I saw the pictures you can rest assured that up to now whatever I was wearing at the time would never be worn again due to how ZOMG DISGUSTING WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME? I looked in it. But a little over a month ago, I was at my MIL's house about to leave for church and I decided to snap a picture knowing I was in a situation where I would just have to accept the result and would not be able to change. So I did. And I looked at the picture, and felt nothing. Just kind of, "That's pretty much what I thought." It may not seem like much, but this is huge people.

For example,

I'm on the right, the one standing up straight. This is about 20 years ago and this is not a picture of a kid totally stoked to go trick-or-treating with her BFF. This is a picture of a kid wishing people would stop taking pictures of her because she's so freakin' fat and she'll probably have to be tortured by looking at these pictures later. And this isn't even the earliest I felt this way. I remember feeling too fat for the world in mother-effing pre-school so I've got a long way to go before I'm deprogrammed. But I've made some progress, and that's something.

Body Image Confusion Ramble

I'm beginning to think there might be a serious disconnect between how I actually look and how I perceive myself. There is a fat blogger I read that likes to talk about fashion and hair and other visual stuff like that. She is super cute and trendy and posts pictures of herself a lot. I have always thought that we were more or less the same size which has really helped me on my journey of undoing all the negative messages about my body that I've been sent by society at large because I really like the way that she looks and I'm proud that she is proud enough of herself not to be invisible but to go out and take up space with loud clothes and a sassy attitude that very often fat people (and I daresay fat women in particular) don't feel allowed to do.

However, recently she was reviewing a dress for a plus-size online boutique and she was talking about the sizing and in doing so she spelled out her dimensions. She is about six inches shorter than me and weighs close to a hundred pounds more than me. Now to some degree the whole height/weight thing looks different on all people and so I don't know exactly how far off my perception is, but with that great of a disparity we can't look all that similar.

It's a bit jarring. I mean I know I'm still fat because 1) I can see myself. and 2) Most of society reacts to me as though I am a fat person. I just may not be the kind of fat I think I am which is disheartening because I thought I had...well okay really I don't know what I thought but I'm just feeling very weird and not happy about this at all. I've been working really hard at gaining a realistic self-image and then becoming fine with that. ( I plan to do another post about my destructive dieting/ overexercising/ perpetual goalpost moving and my subsequent quest to recover and develop healthy food and exercise relationships eventually, but I'm waiting to have time to do it well.) And it seems that I'm not doing nearly as well with that as I thought I was. It sucks is what I'm saying.

Oh so many grumbles!

Grumble 1) In January we had a friend over and had the Beef Stroganoff that I posted for dinner, along with a Vanilla Bean Cheesecake that I made. (It was said friend's birthday.) As it turns out if there are more than two adults having dinner that evening you may want to make more of the crockpot ingredients for the stroganoff. I've edited the recipe to reflect this. It escaped my attention the first time because there were technically three adults eating and we had leftovers, but the third adult in that case was my mother-in-law and I forgot she eats like a bird. :-) So sorry if that made for any awkward evenings for anyone.

Grumble 2) My wonderful, wonderful child will not sleep. I haven't slept through the night in nine months but it was tolerable when he was sleeping three and four hour stretches. We even made it to six and seven hours on some nights and that was great. But all of the sudden since we got back into town he has gone back to sleeping only in one hour intervals and I am just run ragged. We've tried a lot of different things. The pediatrician has suggested a method for babies over 6 months that we will probably try for a few days next week. It involves letting him cry for 10 minutes before picking him up when he wakes up at night which hurts my heart to even think about but I believe being alone with him during the day in the fatigued state that I am in is becoming unsafe so I've got try something. (Not that I'm on the brink of anything intentional or anything like that. I'm just starting not to feel safe driving him places, operating the stove, etc.)

Update: This post took a long time to write so I can tell you that this method totally worked as promised. By the third night my sweet baby began sleeping multiple hours at a time and just yesterday slept 13 hours without waking. That doctor is likely to get a big wet kiss on the mouth at our one year checkup.

Grumble 3) Why is it that with all the respect, power, and obvious intelligence Michelle Obama possesses, she has decided to avoid all the real issues facing this world in order to champion the cause of making life harder for fat kids? I mean for one I agree with Melissa at Shakesville the whole campaign is totally ableist. There are lots of people for whom "Let's Move" is simply not an option. Secondly, I thought it was common knowledge among educated people that childhood obesity rates had leveled off? And that attempts to break out of one's general setpoint range fail 95% of the time and usually result in further weight gain and other health problems? She's not even taking into account that a large amount of the previous rise in children's weight can also be attributed to medications for mental illness that have become more widely used due to reduced stigma and furthered progress in the field of child psychology. She's also not addressing (as far as I can tell) the issue of many children not having a safe space where they can "move" or play. (The surgeon general is talking about this particular issue, so that's good.) I really just don't understand it. All the credible research (i.e.not funded by a diet company) that I've read also suggests that weight is not even a health disadvantage, but rather it is the way doctors' perceive and treat fat patients that leads to disparity of outcomes. This is what happens when epidemiological studies become the conclusion rather than the starting point. Correlation does not equal causation! Grr!

BTW, I completely support all initiatives to make people healthier. I would love to see all neighborhoods have safe green spaces to run and play in. I would love to see healthier foods made cheaper so that the average person could routinely afford them. I would love to see vending machines and fast food chains banished from public schools. I would love to see thoughtfully structured physical education programs. I just don't see why body shame has to enter into it.

Speaking of Complaints and Good Stuff

Complaints:

I am sick of busting my ass just to have certain individuals fall all over themselves to let me know that my parenting style is crazy/over-protective/unnecessary.

1) I pick up my child everytime he cries as long as I am physically able to do so because that feels right to me. Think that will "spoil" him? Tough. I don't. Not what you did/do with your children? Fine. It IS what I do. Get over it.

2) I am still nursing and plan to continue to do so until... Whenever the hell we both feel like stopping. Period. No one outside the nursing relationship is entitled any feelings on the matter. So suck on that! (ha!)

3) I make my child's baby food. It is cheaper, more nutritious, and I can be reasonably sure it's done correctly and hygenically. It is just practical for me to do this. It is not in any way excessive.

End Complaints

Good Stuff:

My baby has shown me that having a soft squishy belly is awesome. He loves to knead it and squish it and zerbert it and it is so funny to watch. For the first time in my life I love my belly.