I'm Baaaaaaaaaack. Again. No, really, for real this time...

Well, this is awkward.

The big I’M BACK announcement, and then nothing. For – holy crap, has it been that long?!?! – almost two years. Wow, Fat Dancer, that’s pretty lame.

Well, I was struggling with some stuff related to body image and body positivity that I’ll write about later. I got super burnt out with a lot of things, including dance. And I had a sabbatical where I sat on my ass and gained a ton of weight. Enough weight that I could feel it having an impact on my health.

So I’m here to tell you, in case you weren't already convinced: sitting in one place for most of your waking hours is really bad for you. It’s bad for your heart, it’s bad for your back, and it’s bad for your emotional health.

I mean, nothing terrible happened. I didn't develop a debilitating diet-related disease or have a heart attack or anything. But I've always been 95-100% healthy, so when I started feeling a lot of pressure in my head, especially after eating salty foods, I knew blood pressure might be an issue. My blood pressure has always been around 110/70 so when I went to the local pharmacy to try out their blood pressure measuring machine and it read 135/90, I freaked out.  Went right to the doctor. Where I got properly tested and it turns out things weren't quite so dire but I was on the very edge of pre-hypertension. No medication, but my body was definitely telling me a change was needed.

Also seeing performance pictures from that spring made an impression: 

Looking at this now, I don't HATE it, but this is, as I have said before, not how I see myself in my head.

So on April 1, 2014, I made a commitment to just start tracking what I ate, promising myself no judgment and no negativity. I just wanted to get a nutritional baseline. I also started exercising (teaching two beginner dance classes a week wasn't cutting it). I’ll write more in future posts about the strategies I used (and continue to use), and the online/app tools that helped me on the way, but I’m happy to say that by Halloween I had lost almost 30 pounds. 

There's a little bit of an optical illusion going on here with my left arm, but I'll take it...

Also, my blood pressure is back to normal and my doctor has no concerns about my health once again.

But here’s my struggle, especially with this blog: how to reconcile body positivity, about which I feel passionately, with my personal unhappiness with the way I looked. Sure, I didn't feel great either, and that was at least 65% of the motivation to make some changes, but I can’t say it was only about health. I could not look at pictures of myself at that weight and be happy about it. Despite the fact that I have watched dancers of similar sizes raq it out beautifully. Sincerely. Not “beautifully for a woman her size”, but beautifully. Full. Stop.

But not me. So not only was I unhappy about what I was seeing in the mirror, I was hugely guilty about failing to be body positive by loving the way I looked.

So I spent the last year thinking a lot about that conflict, because I really want to keep writing about dance, body image, loving yourself at any size and all that jazz. I've come to some conclusions, which, you guessed it, will provide the fuel for future posts.

But for right now, I just want to say, once again: I’m baaaack! And this time, I hope I’m here to stay.