I also realized that I am tired of dieting. Like, not bored with it, or cranky about it (well, maybe a little cranky), but just bone, dead, exhausted. I haven't tried every diet out there, but I've done a lot of them. I've done Atkins -- four or five times -- and it worked great, until I had a bite of potato and then all bets were off. I've done NutriSystem, and it worked great -- until I went broke (and also, their food tastes really, really weird). I've done the Six-Week Body Makeover -- apparently my "Personalized Body Type" requires a diet of nothing but broiled chicken breasts and brussels sprouts. That's not happening. I've done eDiets (I think I'm still paying for that, actually) and I've done Weight Watchers Online. I've logged calories on LiveStrong, and counted points and counted carbs and weighed every piece of food that went in my mouth. I've logged exercise and kept food diaries. I've done The Firm (like really done it, every day, for weeks) and Zumba and the Belly twins and on and on. And guess what?
I'm fat.
My husband and daughter say, "Shut up! You're not fat." But I have eyes, and also, I have seen pictures.
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| Photo credit: Bob Edens |
I'm fat. My mom is fat (sorry, Mom!), my dad is fat, my husband is fat, my brother is fat (but getting skinnier), my aunt is alternatively fat or scarily skinny -- my family is a fat family (most of the time). My daughter takes after her dad's family and is totally normal weight but she is the only one in a sea of fat people. I think it's really too bad that making a statement of fact (person X is overweight) has turned into an attack. I'm honestly not trying to be self-hating when I say I am fat, or hateful when I say someone I know is fat. It's an objective observation that has become an insult, which is part of the problem I have with the whole body image issue.
I personally have never known what it feels like to be normal weight. When I diet, I don't even know what I'm aiming for -- and I think that's part of the problem. That number, whether it's a specific weight or a specific number of pounds, is a total abstraction. What would it feel like to weigh... let's say 60 pounds less than what I weigh now? I have no idea.
But that's not actually true. I was at least 60 pounds lighter in high school than I am now. When I was a young thing just out of college and living in Manhattan, I was so stressed out that I developed a weird eating disorder where I couldn't eat in public -- swallowing literally made me gag. I was a size 12! 12! I haven't been near a 12 in 20 years. But even though I have been in the magic normal BMI range before (if that's a real measure of anything), I've never, ever felt normal weight. I don't know what it feels like to not feel fat, even when, objectively, I wasn't fat.
I know what it feels like to feel fat, though. I felt fat most of my life. When I wasn't really fat, my inside image of myself was totally out of whack with what people were seeing. Part of the issue is that I'm tall and have big boobs and a really enormously broad back (thanks, Dad!), so people tend to call me things like "Amazon" when they walk by me on the street. I was always self-conscious about my size, even when size wasn't really an issue.
When I was in my late 20s, I moved to England, which is when something changed. The script flipped, so to speak (ha, I'm so hip). These days, if I never encountered a picture of myself, or looked in a mirror when I wasn't prepared, then I wouldn't feel fat either. In my head, I am awesome. Not thin, but curvy and shapely. In my head, my stomach is flat. My imagined self, as I'm walking around and doing my stuff and teaching my classes and dancing (more on that later, too) is freaking gorgeous and cool. I think that has a lot to do with why I have never been able to lose weight long term since I turned 30 -- now, in my head, I'm not THAT fat. But look at me (pictured here with one of my idols who is 10 years older than I am and at least 100 pounds lighter):
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| Photo credit: Pixie Vision Studios |
Oh yeah, I'm that fat.
[Just to head off a bunch of negativity right from the start, I'm also healthy. Really. You can ask my doctor. She's not even worried about my weight. She's far more concerned that if I don't stop being such a stressball I'm going to collapse. But my blood pressure and everything else is A-OK. I even had a stress test recently, and they were NOT prepared for how long it took for my heart rate to get to whatever it has to get to. At first I could tell they were thinking, "Last one of the day. I'll get to leave early," but I just kept going.]
Seeing pictures of myself literally makes me want to kill myself. But one of my two chosen professions is highly picture-intensive, and also is totally about getting up in front of people and going "Look at me and my body! I'm awesome!" (My other profession is so totally the opposite -- although I do get up in front of people for about 12 hours a week, it's mostly to say "Look at this novel! It's awesome!" and then I go back to my office and sit in solitude [if I'm lucky]). I'm a big girl (ha!), so I don't kill myself every time I see a picture and even though I usually feel like crying, I don't. I skip past the really horrible ones and look for ones where I can go "That's not too bad." That's about as good as it gets. Here's a not too bad one -- I am winning a competition in this one:
It's still bad.
Or is it? I mean, that's my point, I guess. I am finally at a point where I feel like saying, "Hey, world -- this is me. Deal with it." But I have to be able to say that to myself first.
So I am fat. I am a dancer. I am a belly dancer. And I am awesome. But I would also like to be less fat. Because that is the world I am stuck in.
This blog is about my journey to having the outside me look more like the inside me. We need to meet in the middle.
