This Body

A lot of things have had me thinking about the concept of body image in the past week.

Mine in particular, and how it has changed over the years.

Growing up, I was skinny.  I loved to eat (especially sweets) and therefore always carried a little "sugar belly," yet I always remained stick thin otherwise.  Because I'm so tall, I had a lot of growing to do before I ever filled out.  So I was very skinny all throughout high school.  I did begin to fill out somewhat in my sophomore year, though it was nothing to brag about.  In fact, it was more disturbing to me.

Before this time, I never once in all my life thought about food and how it might make me fat, or compared my body to other girls.  Not once had any of this entered my mind.  I don't know what changed, but I remember looking in the mirror one day and realizing something.  I didn't look like a model.  My thighs weren't stick thin like they used to be.  I was now a whopping size four, pushing a six.  My stomach was chubby.  Had something changed, or was I only just now noticing these "horrible flaws?"

I put myself on a diet.  At age 15, five foot eleven inches and 145 pounds, I put myself on a diet.  I even went through a short period of about a month where I was teetering around borderline anorexic behavior.  I remember going to sleep at night, my stomach practically eating away at itself because I was so hungry.  Somehow (and thankfully), this kind of living became tiresome to me so I quit-- at least the extremeness of it.  I went to my grandparents' for Christmas and for the first time in a few months, let myself enjoy food.  I knew then that food was something I wasn't ever going to give up for anything.

Over the next year, I continued to count calories.  I wanted to make sure I stayed within my daily calorie quota so I wouldn't get fat (never MIND that I was never fat in the first place?!).  During my junior year I put myself on a sugar fast from October until Thanksgiving.  I did it again from March until May.  I trained for the River Run so I could stay thin and maybe even lose weight.  Then that summer in 2004, I went on the South Beach Diet.  I lasted several months on that, but had an epiphany one day that I was 17 years old, thin, and didn't need to be on a diet.  Ever.

So I gave all of it up.  The dieting, the calorie counting, but not the exercising.  I gave that up once I was half-way through college due to time constraints and lack of willpower.  I stayed thin all through high school and most of college, mostly because I had a good metabolism.  Was I stick-thin?  Nope.  But I was thin.  My eating habits weren't healthy, but I was happy because at least I ate what I wanted and didn't feel guilty about it.  If you've never tried it before, I can tell you it is immensely liberating.

Though I've never clinically suffered an eating disorder, I do believe throughout the years I have at times suffered from what they call disordered eating.  I've gone on Weight Watchers twice since college.  Both times I'm convinced did more harm than good.  All of the other time in between I've been afraid to start any sort of lifestyle change, because I didn't want to fall into the same controlled, guilt-ridden mindset that always came with diets in the past.

I've written a lot of posts over the past few years concerning body image.  All of which were written during a time where I was not eating healthy, nor was I exercising.  And I don't regret that time at all.  I have wondered if I'm hypocritical for my efforts over this summer to become healthy and active, and lose weight.  Did this mean I had to take back everything I said?  That I had to swallow my pride, admit I was wrong?

No.

Because I wasn't wrong.  I believe all of it-- the horrible diets, the weight losses and gains--was just part of the journey for me.  There wasn't a person who could have talked me into or out of any of those behaviors.  And when they did, I suffered my greatest failures.  You see, during the past few years, I learned to love myself.  When I wasn't focusing on my weight, or calories, I had more energy to devote to other things.  You're right, I was unhealthy.  But I truly learned to love myself, that I had more to contribute to the world than a flat stomach and thigh gap.  And I came to the realization eventually that it was time to treat this body that I love in a way that it really deserved.

That's what the past few months have been about.  I've experienced peoples' approval and disapproval in the past few weeks of my weight loss, as well as my healthy eating habits.  Sometimes the approval is appreciated, other times it comes across in an "it's-about-time" kind of manner.  But I do feel like I've finally come to a point where approval or disapproval-- I don't really give a damn what people think.

It's been 11 years since the first time I thought my body wasn't good enough.  I've spent a lot of that time hating my body, then learning to love it.  Now I'm learning to treat my body like I love it.

It's mine for life.