When Fat Equals Failure

http://lizapalmer.blogspot.com/2013/07/when-fat-equals-failure.html

Thursday, July 25, 2013

When Fat Equals Failure

I was sitting at a lovely, long overdue dinner the other night with a couple of friends and as dinners with old friends tend to do, we started talking about health and bodies.

I'd just gotten back from ComicCon, which made me want to cut my limbs off and float around as an untethered torso, so I had just talked myself off a ledge about fitness and health and feeling strong again when one of my friends started talking about feeling like she needed to lose weight.

(around Comic Con.  Holy shit, right?)

A side note:  the people who love us - love you - don't see the weight.  I think we get to a point with loved ones where they transcend their bodies, if that makes sense.  You're just you.  And I know we know our own body's fitness levels and where we feel best - and when we get into unhealthy territory the conversation must change -  but those who love us have a harder time seeing the flaws we think repulse the general population. So we think they're "being nice" or lying when they honestly say that they either don't see it or don't care.  Because as my friend was talking, I didn't see what she was talking about.  Whatever weight she thought she needed to lose, I didn't notice.  She's beautiful.  Just all the time.

A side note on the side note:  Oh hell yes, there are people in our lives  - or who were in our lives, ahem - that make us feel bad about our bodies.  That shit is on them.  Whatever agenda they have or insecurities they are plagued with?  That's not about us.  I've had to come to terms with my own inclusion in a Fat Harem or two in my not so distant past.  

Fat Harem:  Proper Noun.  When a particularly insecure friend needs her circle of friends to be heavier than she, ensuring (she believes) her beauty (worth?) dominance.   

As I drove home that night, I couldn't stop thinking about that conversation.  How we talk about weight as if every pound is like Jacob Marley's chains - a silver box of shame that we must carry around as some penance for our failures.  A pound isn't just a pound.  It's a proclamation of our worthlessness.  No wonder it's so hard to rid ourselves of them.

I know, in my own health journey, reconnecting with my body has been THE final frontier.  It was so much easier to hate my body from afar, detached and as if it was some far off enemy out to get me.  Hating my body both while denying it nourishment/pounding it into the ground with whatever exercise I overdid it with thereby losing weight too quickly or eating too much of the wrong kinds of food for comfort and making my life smaller and smaller, gaining weight and putting on that suit of armor to protect myself once more.  All because I was trying to get out of actually getting to the root of the weight.  The Why.

I had this moment the other week in Pilates.  It was a particularly Raised Shirt Pansa (Pansa is spanish for tummy) in the Mirror kind of session and I was at wit's end.  Totally in my head and it was getting ugly. It doesn't help that my pilates teacher is a dude and that every position seems to be - oh, is that the area of your body that you're insecure about?  Oh, okay - why don't you put your arms in the air and bend all the way back, pushing that part of your body up and out and Imma just stand right here takkinnnng it allll in.

I was on the Reformer (pictured above) in basically a Push Up position and was being asked to raise my knees (kind of into a plank) and send the reformer's carriage up and back however many times I could manage. Almost like a weird push up/plank/burpee hybrid.  It seemed impossible.  Almost as impossible as explaining it.  So, I sat there... arms out, knees bent and my head down.  Totally spinning in about how I couldn't do it and and and.  And my pilates instructor went around my body saying, "from here.  not here.  Here.  Here."  And he kept his hand there.  So gentle.  No judgment.  

 The Moment.

I closed my eyes and just breathed.  One big exhale.  Focusing on where his hand was, I lifted my knees and sent the carriage up and back, up and back... I finished and came out of the haze.  I was, for the first time in a very long time, truly and purely connected with my body.  Not judging it for what it could or couldn't do.  Not berating it for what it was showing or not showing.  Not belittling it for how long it was taking to get in shape.  Not insulting it for what it looked like.  No, there was no DVD commmentary track to that exercise.  We were finally united with no judgments.  Just two little weirdos tied together and we were going to win this goddamnned three legged race no matter what AND without calling each other names.

(this is also the Promised Land.  hello.)

For me, that's the promised land.  To see this in a healthy and happy light instead of a judgmental, punitive, fear based boot camp.  Ever since the Cancer, this isn't about thinness anymore - I almost wish it was.  It was easier when I could just yo-yo however much weight and I could still hate myself?  Win/Win.  But this?  Connection?  Love?   That's the hardest part of this and it's one that I have to battle every day.  For me, the judgmental killjoy voices in my own head were somehow proof that I was "working on it."  I know, I would think.  I hate myself, too.  Right?  Aren't I gross???  It was my constant companion.  A hobby.

I want to be at a place where pounds are just like miles ticking off on some road trip.  Just because you're 300 miles outside of San Francisco doesn't mean you're shitty and oh my GOD WHO WOULD LOVE YOU????  Nope.  They're just miles.  And if you keep driving.  Keep moving forward.  You'll get there.

We'll get there.

Here are my progress pictures.  

(Left: January/2012, Middle: January 2013, Right:  July 2013)

I'm pretty nervous about posting them.. oh the cruelty of never knowing when you're taking your Before photo.  

Sigh.  

We'll get there.