For me, the feeling that I should be just a little bit thinner has followed on my heels, lurking as lightly and as closely as a shadow, my entire life. No matter how thin I have been, I've always felt I could do better. My very thinnest college weight is a number that is seared onto my brain forever. That weight was achieved by swimming 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, and eating very little besides plain popcorn and diet coke. Maybe a little tuna. I have always dreamed of, and from time to fleeting time I have experienced, the feeling of to eating and being joyous at the same time, instead of mentally calculating the calories and where they might land, pushing the guilt back to a dark little corner of my mind, to be exhumed and worried over later in private.
Every year, about this time, like everyone else in America, I contemplate my big white self in a bathing suit and I'm overcome with guilt and dread. Sure, my clothes from last summer still fit, and I have lost ten pounds from the all-time high I hit for the second time. But I'm still not there. I have never considered myself a yo-yo dieter. I feel like I'm almost there most of the time. And I never do fad diets (ok, I tried the Atkins diet once) or starve myself (anymore). But I'm still not thin. And I still don't know if I should be.
At the beginning of the year, I sought to avoid this state. I checked my BMI online and at the doctor's. The BMI indicated that my college weight would be a better weight for me, basically. But dude, that is a lot of weight to lose! That is half a Back Street Boy, as Mike would say. It didn't seem right, and it didn't seem healthy. Or even remotely possible. So, when I got a new strength training routine from Susan, the trainer at the gym, I also had my body fat measured. That indicated a less drastic recommended weight loss of 15-20 lbs. I counted off the weeks until our upcoming Hawai'ian anniversary trip and decided it was completely do-able. It really was.
Then I panicked. Which is what I do. Every time this happens, it makes me think of Seventeen magazine, a staple for me during high school. Sometime in the spring, they'd always publish a "Countdown to Prom" issue, complete with a detailed diet plan and suggestions for what to do each week and month to look my absolute prettiest (and thinnest) by the time that special day came around. I'd read the diet, maybe start that, or if it seemed too daunting (who whips up custom diet fruit smoothies every morning at eighteen?), I'd embark on my own starvation diet of Diet Coke and fill in the blank. Diet Coke and raisins, Diet Coke and popcorn. Diet Coke and tuna. Diet Coke and Diet Coke. And of course, cafeteria food at lunch, or nothing. My crash diet would quickly crash and burn, and I'd watch the remaining days count down on the calendar, feeling like a failure.
The phrase that always comes to mind is a line from the "Wear Sunscreen" piece that was mistakenly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut years ago (but was actually written by Mary Schmich):
"In 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine."I'd contemplate losing a limb to be the weight now that I once agonized over in high school. To have my size in the single digits again. I watch the Discovery Channel-- there are all sorts of remarkable prosthetic limbs now. Knock on wood. Or carbon fiber. Of course, I'd lose the weight, but then I'd be a one-legged fat person, not a thin person who happened also to be missing a leg.
Thin equals pretty, pretty equals happy, therefore fail at thin equals fail at happy. Right? So here I am, less than 30 days from take-off, with a theoretical 10-15 more lbs to go. And worse, I'm struggling with how I can be happy and have fun on my vacation if I'm fat. Because I failed at reaching a goal that I thought about once in January, that got closer and more impossible as each day went by. It's embarrassing to admit.
I find myself in a battle. Wanting to lose weight and not being successful at it means that I believe fat is bad and thin is good, and that I am not good until I am thin. I don't believe that. I fight against it. It seems to me that wanting so desperately to be something different, whatever it is, means that I don't think what I am is good enough. In general, that is not true, but when it comes to weight, how can it not be true?
I have said before that I don't want to be at war with food. I want to be healthy. And I am. Recently, I had an EKG, tests for diabetes and a cardiac "stress test". Because of my family's history of heart disease and diabetes, I wanted to establish a healthy baseline so that I know what's going on with my heart over time. Secretly, I suppose I wanted to be told that I could be healthy without having to go on the dreaded diet. That for once, I could relax.
It was so very gratifying to hear the doctor tell the nurse that my heart slowed down so fast after the exercise because "She's fit. That's why." In the follow up, she said my heart looked great, that I was very healthy. I asked about weight, and told her about my BMI and my body fat percentage. We talked about statistics concerning fit, slightly overweight people and thin people who don't exercise. I'll live longer. I said I have always felt fat and I wanted to know if I really needed to lose weight. What she finally said was that I would probably "feel better" if I lost 10 to 15 lbs.
The same night, I went to a belly-dancing class with my friend Lisa. There were two very thin women, and two very not-so-thin women, and me in the middle. The instructor was telling us at the end that we'd feel the workout if we weren't used to exercise. She looked at the two thin women and said, "I'm sure you exercise, and I'm sure you exercise, and...," she looked at me, "do you exercise regularly?" Of course, I just said, "yes." But what I wanted to say was, "I probably exercise more than anyone in this room. I do six hours of cardio a week, including my daily dog walks, and I lift weights twice a week. How fast can you run a mile? Because I bet I can beat you. I'm fit, dammit." And then I would prove it by kicking her belly-dancing ass.
That made me examine the fact that I don't just want to be fit, I want to look fit. I want people to look at me and think that I'm strong. That I must work out. That I'm... I hardly dare to say it... attractive. Pretty. And the desire to be pretty, combined with the fear that I may never get there, is a scary thing. If anyone knows me, you'll probably want to reassure me at this point, telling me that I AM pretty, and I AM desirable. If you're my husband, you'll tell me that I'm sexy, because that's the kind of great person that you are. (Thanks for the "For Doing the Taxes" flowers, too, by the way.) But I'll never see it in any way but that you are trying to be nice to me. Until I'm thin. Or at least, thinner.
Don't worry, I'm going to be ok. I feel better already. In a week or so, things will look rosier. I'll get over this hump, and maybe even shave off 5 more lbs before I go to the islands. Writing has helped me get to the (wide, lumpy) bottom of this, and I know that it's more important to be happy and healthy than thin. I really do seek a healthy state of mind and body on a daily basis. I'm not afraid of, or at war with, food. (As evidenced by the 102 posts on my blog about it!) I am going to continue to slog toward weight loss, and I'll get there eventually, but if I don't get there with my sanity and health intact, weight ain't nothing but a number.
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