I Like My Body (Finally)

I have vacillated back and forth, liking my body, then hating it, liking, than hating it. I found that regular, moderate exercise made me feel lighter with more energy. I continue to eat healthy food.

Then I went on retreat in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, fell on some stone steps and bruised my knees, which were already hurting from so much sitting meditation. Two men helped me to the infirmary and a kindly, gray haired man who was trained as nurse tended to my wounds. He is an advanced practioner and gave me many ideas for deepening my practice. Then he said to me "You exude gentleness and warmth. You remind me of an earth mama. I find it very attractive." I thought, OK, I'll accept that and for the rest of the retreat I kept thinking to myself, "I am a warm, gentle earth mama."

The thought stuck in my mind as I went to a second retreat in Vermont. And the craziest thing happened. A nice looking man from Texas started flirting with me. It was very subtle. He would always sit by me at lunch and walk with me as we went to and from the Pavilion to the cafeteria. It was harmless. We were both married and on retreat. And then on the way home. I struck up a conversation with a man who was married and he gave me his whole life story. I listened because he seemed to need someone to listen. We had to get off the plane in Phoenix and he followed me to the sandwich place and sat down at the table with me as we ate our sandwiches. And like a good puppy he followed me back to the plane. He went on to San Diego and I got on a plane for Oakland.

I am happily married and have spent many years being single so I am not someone who actively seeks or is dependent on male validation. And even after this attention, I was ambivalent about my body. I noticed that everyone at Buddhist events I went to were thin. And the thought occurred to me that I wasn't ambivalent about the fat so much as being different from most people. I felt fearful and self conscious about looking different. And then I thought, I am not ugly, I am just different. I am in a minority of heavier people, but being different doesn't mean that I am ugly. So I looked at myself in the mirror both naked and clothed and noticed how large my breasts were and the perfect round curve of my belly and the semi hourglass shape of my torso and I liked it. I didn't talk myself into liking it, the love came effortlessly. I imagined myself telling my parents, who are always nagging me to lose weight for health reasons, that I do not have a problem with the way I look. I notice that most people, at least the ones I consider worth knowing, respond positively to me. For the first time since I put on this weight, I look in the mirror and smile. There has definitely been a shift forward.

A friend told me that a friend of hers made a negative comment about my body after she first met me but wouldn't tell me what the comment was because she didn't want to repeat something hurtful, which was fine with me. I felt threatened again. I didn't feel ugly or angry, I felt unsafe, like I was going to be picked off from the herd because I was different. Like being a Jew in Nazi Germany. Then I felt the love for my body and myself. It's OK, I told myself. I am safe. So, the obsession with thinness and the rejection of fatness by society can not only be annoying and insulting, it can be scary.

 In the book, A Romantic Education, the author Patricia Hampl talks about how the ideal of women's bodies changed after World War II.
"...the model is reminiscent of the vacant starved face of a just-liberated prisoner of Auschwitz...We have, unconsciously and hesitantly, claimed the beauty that must be ours, as if it were a historical, even an evolutionary inevitability. There in the swank fashion magazines is the sexless...figure, thin to the point of horror, looking out from the page with the bewildered vacuity of a refugee. Thin, thin beyond flesh. All you need is high cheekbones and you have to be thin. You must be thin beyond health or hope. There is no thinness, no disappearance of flesh extreme enough to satisfy our idea of beauty-- for we call it beauty, this bruised sacrilege of the body. The human figure changed with the Second World War. The spontaneous image clouded and came back in that horrible way, the skeleton in its gruesome pajamas."

Too Big

Like any diet or fad I am only into it for 3 months. I was into fat acceptance for three months until...I got on my knees to retrieve a ball for my dog and had a hard time getting up. Until I couldn't get the seatbelt in my car fastened. Until I discovered that I don't walk, I waddle. My fat had become a nuisance. I couldn't accept it.
So I joined Weight Watchers, bringing all the experience of my past weight loss attempts to bear. What I have learned is this: I gain weight easily. I can't take a break or overindulge because the pounds come right on. Right now I am over 300 pounds. That's too much to accept. So I'm now on a plan. I write down my food and watch my points. My first week I lost 2.8 pounds.
I will still be in the plus size range for at least another year and I can accept that. I can accept other people who choose not to lose weight. But I need to get down to a point where it is easy to move in my body and I feel good again.
I think I failed on previous weight loss attempts because my fat was not real to me. Now it is very real. Too real for comfort.Whenever I see that delectable chocolate cupcake I think to myself, "I weigh 300 pounds. I can't eat that."
I also don't deprive myself. I eat these chocolate bars that are only 4 points and are designed to stop cravings for sweets. They do. This will be the trick of succeeding. To not deprive myself when I get cravings but to eat a low calorie substitute that won't knock me off plan.
It's a long road ahead. I accept my weight each step of the way but my goal is to lose the weight and keep it off, which means I will have to watch my points for the rest of my life.
Anyway, there will be plenty more blogs to come.

How Big is Too Big?

I am happy at the size I am right now but do not want to get any bigger so that I outgrow my clothes. I would like to eat to maintain my weight. Even if I lost 100 pounds I would still be in the plus size range. I also do not want to get bigger because of the stress on my knees. They are starting to hurt when I sit for long periods of time.

Setting Them Straight

When I was at Seminary I was in a discussion group and one of the members was passing out Hershey's kisses.
"Here," he said to me, "Take six."
"Are you saying that because I am large?" I asked.
"I was just kidding," he said.
"Well it wasn't funny," I answered.
At the risk of being defensive, I think it is important to set people straight about the assumptions that surround fat people. Because I was large, this man assumed I would stuff myself with Hershey's kisses. And if I was going to stuff myself with Hershey's kisses, I would not need his damn permission.

Update

Silly me didn't write down my Google email address or my password and I lost access to the original Plump Sadie blog. For past posts, see http://plumpsadie.blogspot.com/. For new posts, stay here.