Self-love is a maze

Hi! Bless me, blogosphere, It has been 10 days since my last post. I didn’t go anywhere! I wasn’t sick and I didn’t fall off any wagons. I did have a little crisis of conscience, though.

The same day I wrote my last post, I had a really difficult therapy session and it seemed like all my healthy ideas and goals went whooshing out the window. Since then, I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and going in little mental circles, and then trying to write about in my paper journal, and not quite failing but not making sense of it either. I realize I was waiting for it to really resolve itself before I wrote here about it, but now it seems like one of those large mental events, like a switch going off, where I have to rebuild a sense of momentum and security, not because I lost it but because my fundamental assumptions about life have changed. (Notice how I am writing alllll about the problem but not really mentioning the problem! This, too, is part of the problem.)

I realized that I like to keep secrets from myself. That is, I like to think I can. It’s taken me a couple weeks to figure out that maybe this is a case of Fat Thinking at work. The more mundane version goes like this: if I am ashamed of my body for being fat (a self-esteem issue I haven’t quite resolved), then perhaps if I don’t shop in a fat girl store or appear to dive for the last brownie then no one will know I am fat! Ridiculous, right? If anyone cares at all, they can just look right at my body and have their own private thoughts, end of story. I can’t control how others perceive me, only how I choose to perceive my self. This is how I try to keep secrets from myself: If I’m trying to improve my self-esteem, then I shouldn’t focus on weight numbers, because it’s getting fit that really counts! Ignore the fact that I don’t feel good in my body (back pain is a good example) because admitting I want to lose weight means I’m not focusing on self-esteem. Therefore, think about Health At Every Size and self-esteem all day long, and completely ignore that voice inside that says I want to lose weight (even though, as I’ve said before, I secretly think that pursuing my Good Girl goals of fitness and good food will lead to weight loss anyway).

But! Where am I focusing my energy? Every morning I refuse to drink water until I’ve gone to the bathroom, done my 10-min morning exercises, and taken a shower, at which point I weigh myself and record my info at Physics Diet. I try to eat healthily, but I don’t plan out meals and I totally abandon healthy eating on some weekends, and then get frustrated on Monday when I’ve gained a pound or more. My therapist asked me, what will make you feel good? I didn’t hesitate to respond, “lose weight.” In essence, I’ve set myself up for failure if I have a secret goal of weight loss that directly conflicts with my other goal, which is to accept myself for who I am.

Pondering all this, a good friend prompted me to think about whether I would accept stagnation in my career because I thought I was “supposed” to like my job, when in reality it sucked and my ambitions were higher. The answer of course, is no — I would work hard to get where I wanted to be, no matter what! When it comes to my body, though, I’m stuck in this rut where pursuing my goal of self-esteem means I’m not supposed to pay attention to weight loss. Because after all, what happens if I exercise my lungs out and couldn’t lose weight? Shouldn’t I work for self-esteem now so that I reap the benefits no matter what size I am?

There’s an obvious solution to my conundrum. And that is to accept the fact that I can love myself and still want to lose weight. (And not because I’m scared of judgment, but maybe because I’m sick of back pain. Or so I can do those Yoga poses that have eluded me.) I think I’ve been wandering in this maze of confusion for a couple weeks because I just couldn’t quite accept that premise. It explains why I struggled and struggled against the idea that I could work on loving myself and also work toward weight loss — doesn’t that mean I’ve given up on my current body? Sigh. Somehow all my work on building self-esteem hasn’t sunk in, because this week, today, I’m struggling to love myself and move forward toward my goals. It’s hard to know what it looks like. Maybe I’m doing it already, I’m not sure. All I know is that suddenly the mental work of being my best self became a lot harder than it was before.

Anyway. I’m not feeling resolved about all this. But this is as far as I’ve come so far in trying to think about, around, and through this thorny issue.

The _____est girl in the room

In my quest to Act Like A Fit Person, I’m now attending a weekly yoga class and a weekly hula dancing class, both at work where I have multiple colleagues reminding me to go and making me feel virtuous about hauling around my purple yoga mat and workout bag with an occasionally smug smile. (I’m trying to work on that one — doesn’t everyone hate smug yoga people?)

Just for the record, I want to state that I am proud of myself for going to these classes, because not only do they involve going to the scary gym across campus, but I am inflexible and fat, not to mention out of shape. Yoga can be a special kind of hell for fat people, or at least for me anyway. Inflexibility aside, there are poses and moves where my chubs just get in the way! The lovely yoga teacher is very lovely and loving, a big proponent of doing What Feels Good To You Today, but I still have trouble with a few things. Let’s not forget about my ankle injury, which makes my left ankle extremely inflexible and my left leg in general kind of weak. So yoga involves a couple of scary things:

1. Bending my ankle,
2. while balancing,
3. and while sweating in front of people (a fear that deserves its own entry!)
4. and being the fattest girl in the room
5. all in front of a giant wall of mirrors!

(Can you tell I love lists?) So yoga is a big test of self love, for me. I have to shut down my anxieties about looking around the room, comparing myself to others, and simply focus on being inside my own body and my own mind, trying my hardest to exist in the pose. I admit, I still have some residual shame when I see myself in the mirror, though. All my nice internal peace whooshes out of my mind to be replaced by other thoughts. Is that really how I look to other people? Are they looking at me now?

Also: Do they think I don’t belong here? I really have to push that one away. That’s one I work on almost every day. For a long time I thought that being sad and anxious all the time was the price I was forced to pay for not having a “normal” body. I thought that most people were disgusted by me, and that they were correct, and my only option was to apologize for my own existence. I know now that this is not true; that every person is entitled to a good life, no matter what their external self looks like. If I believe in putting love and peace and optimism (with occasional sarcasm) out into the world, then I also have to believe that I am part of the world, and therefore deserving some of that universal love, too.

In any case, being in yoga is a good test. I am a total novice, clumsy with my lack of balance and therefore painfully fulfilling the Clumsy Fat Person stereotype. While I’m sweating and feeling very visible and awkward, it feels like the mental work to keep myself centered is just as difficult. I love that this is the aim of yoga — to be mindful while pushing your body in new ways. I love it even when I am sweating and tipping over from my Mountain Pose.

The hula dancing class is another matter, though. Yesterday, during the first session, we learned six very basic steps, and then learned to string them together to the soothing sounds of some ukulele music. And what do you know, that random belly dancing class I took eight million years ago paid off, because damnit, I know how to move my hips! I picked up the moves fairly quickly, though I am no dancer, and I was really proud to be in the front row and moving along with people who had taken this class last year. I was also really proud of only sneaking a few glances at my fellow hula dancers, because if I have a right to learn yoga with my crappy equilibrium and my inflexibility, then that skinny lady in the back row also has a right to learn hula even though her hips don’t really move. Health at every weight, Hula at every ability, friends!

I wouldn’t say I am disheartened by yoga and then lifted up again by hula class, though the two occur in that order — I work really hard at hard things one day, and work only a little bit at things that come easily the next day. But the contrast between the two classes is certainly nice. I may be the fattest, least flexible girl in the yoga room, but I am the girl with the shimmying hips in the hula room, and that feels really, really good.

PS – One day I want to try a yoga dvd with the very awesome Megan Garcia who is a fellow Smith College alumna! As I recently learned in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, she promotes yoga for large bodies and has special techniques of “moving the flesh” that help with some of the different needs of our bodies. How awesome!

Fat acceptance versus self acceptance

Last week I received my (autographed!) copy of Jennette Fulda/Pasta Queen’s brand spanking new book, Half Assed: A Weight Loss Memoir. I have only been reading Jennette’s blog for a month or so, but I was so charmed by her sense of humor and her incredible journey that it only took me a couple days to read through her ENTIRE archives. It was a very tasty, satisfying blog binge, and it made me want more.

Her book was very satisfying on a completely different level, though, because she talks more about her philosophy of life, about the human moments, and about the inevitable childhood history stuff. If I thought she seemed like a cool chick after reading her blog (three parts humor, one part nerd), that impression was only deepened by the time I finished her book. I’m most drawn to her level-headed take on the world, and to her particular brand of fitness, which started with what was possible (a slow treadmill walk in the privacy of her home) and built up as she gained strength and confidence (marathon training outdoors in the cold rain!).That is the kind of approach I want to have: do what is possible, every day.

Since her story has been inspiring to me, I’ve been following the Blog Tour, where Jennette hopscotches around the web for interviews and other fun stuff. I was surprised to read the comments on Big Fat Deal’s interview, which started with basic Fat Acceptance and Health At Every Size stuff I had gleaned from PQ’s book & blog and other sources, and branched off into issues and anger that really made me think critically about how I approach health and bodysize.

The reason I started this blog was to write about the experience of incorporating a healthy lifestyle with my getting-stronger-every-day self esteem, which used to act like an invisible black hole, sucking the energy out of me on previous weight loss or fitness attempts. Without loving myself, I wasn’t able to find a balance between exercise, good nutrition, and good mental health.

Jennette said something in the Big Fat Deal interview that really resonated with me: “Self-acceptance isn’t the same thing as self satisfaction.” Meaning, if I love myself, that doesn’t mean that I have to be content with how my heart struggles as I lug around 90-plus pounds of extra fat. The opposite of PQ’s statement is also true: self satisfaction (lower weight, for instance) isn’t the same thing as self-acceptance. If this were true, no skinny person would ever have low self-esteem, right? It’s important not to take external indicators (weight, clothing sizes) as a proxy for truly feeling good in your own mind, even if they temporarily make you feel good. There is not a single tiny sundress in the universe that could negate that feeling of worthlessness that can steal over me in darker moments.

I think it’s these feelings that make me identify with the Health At Every Size movement, in some respects. But frankly, some of the comments to that original BFD interview were startling for their vehement rejections of Jennette’s views. For example, in discussing how she was shunned from a Fat Acceptance forum for trying to lose weight, Jennette made a comparison to hair color: “If I didn’t like being a brunette, no one would give me shit about dying my hair blonde.” For this statement, many BFD commenters took her to task for refusing to acknowledge the mechanisms of privilege that favor thinness in society and cast fatness as a moral hazard. (On the contrary, through her writing I think I would say she’s acutely aware of how privilege can work for or against a person.) However, there was also a lot of comments where I was uncomfortable with how her weight loss was seen as a silent (or not so very silent) rebuke to the Fat Acceptance community. Or at least certain commenters seemed to take it that way — that her positive message was entirely tied up with weight loss rather than fitness and self acceptance.

Maybe I want to defend Jennette (though she does an admirable job by herself!) because I’m still working out my own ideas of how to reconcile the goals of fitness and weight loss. Maybe I have been sheltered from the kind of “diets” that people rebel against, the ones based on temporary starvation or restriction — maybe I really was brainwashed by all those health classes about exercise and eating good food (even if I was maybe also getting brainwashed by the dairy and meat councils!), because aside from a brief and very sad episode of depression-induced anorexia, I have never attempted to lose weight in an unhealthy way. In an unhappy way, yes, but for the most part I gravitate towards good nutrition, balanced blood sugar, and plain old healthy exercise.

I tend to see healthy eating and exercise as goals unto themselves, though I do still get cranky when I don’t see the scale numbers going down. What if I became truly fit, a running swimming biking climbing walking skating leaping wondergirl, but I was still “fat”? That is the real challenge. That is where self acceptance really has to kick in, to override all those negative societal messages about “acceptable” body size.

I really don’t believe in weight loss for weight loss’s sake — I do believe in the endorphin high of holding a plank, or training to do full push-ups, or feeling my legs wobble deliciously after a long and vigorous walk. I believe in good food, and in learning not to use food as a way to regulate my emotions. I believe in gardening, and walking around the neighborhood, and stretching my mind to imagine a world in which I feel fabulous.

Is it wrong that I also think all these things will result in a smaller self? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about that part, because I do, deeply so. But I will get there with my self-esteem intact, and I’m not going to wait for some mythical number on the scale to magically grant me that feeling of happiness and satisfaction.