Monday, August 3, 2009

Getting to know me

This morning I actually cringed and squeezed my eyes shut when I stepped on the scale. I had a clean day of eating yesterday, but for some reason I was certain that I was going to be up a pound or so. I could tell by how my just awake body felt that it was going to be Bad News Bears at the weigh in. Actually I was down 1 1/2 pounds from yesterday, verifying my suspicion that the almost 3 pound gain over 3 days of bingeing was mostly water weight. Obviously I was glad, but the fat feeling is lingering. I'm so tired of my endless journey with food, weight, body image...it's been part of my day to day existence for about 22 years...and at times prior to the onset of this 22 year span. It's such old news.

Over the weekend I realized that a part of me was wishing I could accept my squishy big boxy body...make peace with it. That I could don a swimsuit and dive into a pool and just enjoy how the water feels against my skin. That the enjoyment of the sensation of being in water wouldn't be diminished by the terror over emerging from said pool, wet and with the bathing suit clinging to every dimpled centimeter of the flesh it covered, not to mention the appearance of uncovered body parts like thighs and upper arms. I think at some level I was trying to convince myself that I could learn to live a perfectly normal happy life by accepting the appearance of my body and my status as a fat woman. I believe many people can and do live that way, and I envy that quality of accepting oneself fully in the present. Because what is, is. I CAN choose to change it, but hating any aspect of myself in the moment, or at any moment does not serve me in any way other than contribute to self sabotaging behaviors.

Yet I really can't acquire that level of acceptance of myself in my current incarnation. I am healthy, relatively fit and grateful for all that my body is capable of doing, particularly in face of the abuse I've slung its way for so long. There's that old adage that inside every fat person is a thin person screaming to get out...I'm not sure if that's true of every person who's overweight, but I'm beginning to know that it IS my truth. Somehow, keeping this "cloak" of extra poundage around me is getting in the way of me being who I truly am. I'm pretty evolved along my life journey and have come to know and mostly like myself, but my increasing sense is that this weight has been serving me in some way that I've yet to identify and is no longer working.

Several years ago I was talking to one of my dear sisters-in-law (I have 3 and love them all) who struggled for many years with a substantial weight problem but has gradually overcome it and has been in amazing shape for many years now. I told her then that I'd finally become tired of hating myself for being heavy, and that it was clear to me that my weight was not getting in the way of who I am and how I was living my life. That I accepted myself "as is". Well. I believed that at the time, but it wasn't the truth. About a year ago I amended that statement to her by admitting that in fact my weight does get in the way of who I am. It enables me to not fully accept myself, to not always represent myself honestly or to speak up about opinions or ideas. It keeps me out of touch with myself and what my heart is feeling at any given time. I'm much better than I used to be in these areas, but my soul is speaking to me again and again now, gently nudging me to not abandon myself, mouthfuls at a time, by shoving down food and adding pounds rather than letting the me inside emerge and shine. Food is an effective numbing agent, but not a selective one. Sure, it can blunt pain, but it also blunts joy and peace. And it blocks me from moving towards the light.

So, for today I'm going to try to stay the course of losing my excess weight, exercising in moderation, and abstaining from eating food that I'm not hungry for. I will try to feel the desire to swallow something (anything!) that has nothing to do with needing more food, stay with it and strive to find what the real desire, yearning, beneath the "hunger" is. And if I can't identify the yearning, I won't abandon the process and myself by having a Tastycake orgy. Because then, there's no chance of discovering what my truth is in any given moment. Then it becomes about food and fat, and there's so much more to me than that.

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