So, I’ve been moving with intention now for 21 days. Things that are better: my sleep, my general joint comfort, my imagination (in that it is often focused on things like birds instead of my continued failure to write regularly).
(Since I likely will only have one job all summer, I am already formulating how I will organize all three of those months around writing related goals.) (Which is not to say that a sooner month won’t be, too.)
Moving more, with intention, has also made me very aware of how my eating habits and not moving have contributed to 30#s that aren’t going to melt away on their own. So, I’ve taken steps to work on my eating habits (again). Someone in one of the online communities I belong to said today, “I wish I was as fat as I was the first time I thought I was fat.” And, yeah, wow. Because that happened for me in the fourth grade, when I was only slightly pudgy, but still active and –more importantly– wanting to be active in focused ways, like dance and tumbling classes. I remember this dumb game/test that one of the girls in my class thought up–she said to the other girls in our group (of which she was the pretty undisputed leader) that she could suck her stomach in more than anyone else. She pulled up her shirt and her gut to her spine until her little ribs jutted out. One by one, each of the other girls tried it, and everyone compared the margins of difference. When it was my turn, I pulled my shirt up, sucked in my gut and this little girl (how early we start!) scoffed, “Yours looks like mine when I push it out!” And then she puffed her stomach out, in demonstration. Everyone laughed and agreed and went back to comparing who was “skinniest.” The next year, a stranger, a woman on a bus, would scold another friend and I for eating ice cream, “You girls probably don’t need that.” A stranger! On a bus!
In high school, I wore a size 8/9 thereabouts. I thought I was a blimp. In college, I went from a 10 to a 14. The first years of my marriage saw me gain 15 or 20 more, but plus sizes weren’t really a thing, so I am not sure what size I wore. XL t-shirts and men’s jeans in a 32 or 34 inch waist, mostly. When I moved to Santa Fe and then left my husband, I started walking and dropped down to a 12 and could suddenly wear J. Crew and Banana Republic clothes–at that time, they didn’t even make size 14s in those brands. But then, moving to Austin, getting a car, and my weight crept back up. A control-freak boyfriend moved in and decided that he could help us both lose weight, so we started going to the gym every day and following an old online program called “e-diets”–I can’t remember my starting weight, but I remember getting to 152, or a size 8, before we missed a single gym day (without a justifiable illness) and he called the whole thing off. Over the next two years, I slowly ballooned back up to a size 18. By then, there was Lane Bryant selling slightly cooler business casual and casual/nice clothes. I had a rotation of linen elastic waist pants and large tent shirts. Single again, I went out one New Year’s Eve with two other fat friends (beautiful and fun women), and some guy made a shitty remark to us as we left the bar. Something about how hard it must be to be so big and alone. Except we were together, asshole. But still. I moved again, and started to be more active without worrying about my weight. Online shops started offering awesome dresses for fat girls and I bought several. I did my hair and makeup and completed triathlons. Eventually, though, I became aware that I couldn’t get much faster at my size. I joined Weight Watchers in 2007 or so, and over the next year, I lost over 50 lbs. Since then, I kept most of it off–I’d slip into bad habits and gain 10 or 15 back, and then bust my ass to eat better and work out until I was back in sight of my goal, then I’d slack, and the weight would come back. Twice, I got down to just under my “goal” weight of 142, but then I’d stop tracking every bite and every minute of exercise and it would come back. At some point, after months of keeping track, I’d start to either get cocky and think I knew how to eat and move well enough without the trackers, or, I’d get depressed that I had to track every day for the rest of forever, and so either way I’d stop writing everything down. This last time, I fell in love and though I tried at first to keep up my running regimen, it was no match for dinners out and long mornings in.
I don’t know why I felt compelled to list it all out like that. But whew.
The real point is, all along the way, abusive men and cruel strangers and even a couple of shitty girlfriends have used comments about my weight to control, shame, and silence me. It’s because I believe that my own fat is the direct result of my inability to do what I need to do. I love and ogle many body positive activists and I always speak up when someone says “she probably shouldn’t wear that.” I believe that people should be in the body they love. But I don’t afford myself the same understanding.
I want to fit into all of the great clothes I bought in the last five years. The coats and tech gear. The cute sweaters I’ve knit. I also want to be able to run 5ks again without being hobbled with knee and hip pain. I want to be able to do yard work without my elbow or shoulder freezing on me. I want to hike up a mountain and have it be about looking around, not surviving the climb, sweaty and mad about it. I don’t want to be “skinny.” I want to feel better in my skin.
So, I am definitely being better about moving with intention than I was last year, and I plan to keep it up. All the hiring committees in the world can’t take any of that away!