Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Image of Body

I've put on more than 20 pounds in the last two years. The first ten, many will tell you, I needed. The second ten, however, I didn't. But in the grand scheme of things they are just numbers, sizes, extra flesh and fat covering my body that is still sexy, still looks good in the right dress and a fine pair of boots, that is still considered to be in pretty good shape--especially three kids later.

And most days, I am content with it. My body serves me well, and is certainly only one part of the whole quantum structure--including thoughts, feelings, and mechanisms of life--that contain me. But today, I am torn between being a woman who doesn't let societal standards of beauty define me and a woman who stares at the thickening upper arms in the mirror and wonders how I got back there. The linebacker.

My mom used to tell the story about when I was a baby and the doctor examining me for my check-up commented on my wide shoulders and sturdy one-year-old frame. "She could be a linebacker," he chuckled. And we always laughed at the retelling of it.

The reality is that I was never really overweight until after my second child--despite the teenage chatter about my thighs being too thick, or my belly curling over my jeans only when I leaned over (if only that were the case now!). Sure, I put on weight with my first baby, but I was young and active--and while I never went back to those pre-baby jeans, I certainly retained a healthy weight for a young twenty-something.

With my son, it was different. I was closer to 30 and craved hot dogs and big macs. I put on pound after pound in my second trimester after my doctor warned me that I wasn't putting on enough weight. A year after he was born, I was still 40 pounds over my natural weight and miserable. It was the pain from my diseased gallbladder than finally kicked in the weight loss--foods high in fat triggered a pain comparable to labor and as I waited six weeks for surgery, I dined on only the finest vegetables, fruit, and bread. Even lean meats would induce a daggering effect under my ribcage--and the weight fell off, and continued to fall for three months until I became pregnant with my third child.

And the weight climbed, steadily and healthily--just as it should when nurturing a new life. And I didn't worry about the weight. I ate well, and gained well, and after my baby was born I set my sights on fat-free foods and just right portions.

And then I got sick. Real sick, and the lines began to blur between my state of mind, my body's reactions, and the motivations behind not only my physical digestive ailments, but also the psychological beginnings of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in which I had thought germs were contaminating my food. (Read other details of my experience with this here.) There are so many different facets of what began as the flu and what ended as some strange mix of OCD and Anorexia, that I have spent the last two years pulling out each piece and examining it. This piece here, I'm realizing, is the body image part--which until recently, I didn't think was actually involved.

But as I struggle to fit into the jeans I bought six months ago, and I resist putting on the pants that I swam in two years ago, I understand that I truly wish to be thinner. I look at photos of myself (there are not many) when I was at my lowest weight in the winter of 2008, and I long to see the bones of my hips and wrap my hands around my upper thigh until my thumbs touch. But I know--also--that I was not well. My body may have been thin, but it wasn't healthy.

I was having heart problems, pain and odd rhythms, enough so that I had to wear a heart monitor for 30 days which recorded every palpitation that luckily came out to be harmless as far as heart disease and such was concerned, but it was a signal that my electrolyte balance was off. Nutritionally, I was not feeding my body enough calories, and so the amount of energy I was expending daily was akin to running a marathon. In less than six months my body mass index (BMI) went from 24% to 18%--the low end of the "normal" scale, and was the signal to my physician that I needed to see a nutritionist to make sure I was eating enough. Which, of course, I shamefully knew I wasn't.

And so I would look at that thin body in the mirror and tell myself it wasn't good, even though I felt that I looked fabulous in my new jeans and my niece's skin tight tanks and tees. But I was cheating, and I was miserable. Anxiety ridden at every meal and without any appetite to speak of, I forced myself to eat so I wouldn't kill myself slowly. Other things began to change--outside elements that healed my aching heart and cleared my cluttered mind--and I gained new perspective. I began feeling hunger again. I began feeling other things, too, like desire and happiness. And all this helped. I was eating consciously, but healthily, and slowly I'd introduce different forbidden foods back in my diet.

But now I'm finding--as the scale tips in the other direction--that so has my appetite, and also my feeling of once again being out of control of what I am eating. Stuffing myself with sugar in many forms: cookies, candy, sweetened teas and feeling like I can't shut off the valve. The numbers on the scale climb back up and the majority of the clothes in my closet don't fit, but I don't understand it because I always likened overeating with a state of unhappiness, and I'm certainly not unhappy these days. Instead, I am now beginning to understand that my relationship with food goes beyond the markings of the scale, beyond the last few years and my struggle with OCD, and even beyond the linebacker comments of my early childhood. Instead of nutritional need, food has a place in my life as something that controls me, or needs to be controlled. It is manipulation. It is comfort. It is greed. It is love. It is loneliness. It is sex.

And so this isn't really about body image after all. It is about my ability to redefine, once again, the role that food plays in my life. To understand that my discomfort with my growing waistline is more about being out of control than it is about being overweight, and to try and understand that. My body is the vessel within which my soul moves about in the physical world. It is the piece that ties me between the spirit and the earth, and it deserves as much attention, love, and nurturing as the rest of me--no matter what shape or size I may be.

2 comments:

  1. Lovely and poignant. I feel you. I think one of the reasons following a vegan diet has worked for me is because there are rules, and some how in some ironic way, the rules granted me the freedom to eat things I had never before allowed myself to consume, like french fries and salad dressing.

    I started long distant cycling about a year ago. My biggest challenge with my body has been to accept the gorgeous muscle on my thighs and tush, and that my shape is shifting which causes some articles of clothing to actually fit tighter. I have to remind myself that my distorted notion of a skinny body isn't nearly as beautiful as a muscular set of legs. I expect that for people like you and I, our body image will always be a lurking, irrational demon within us. As long as we remind our brains that the demon is indeed irrational, we will survive and even thrive from our shapes shifting.

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  2. Thank you, Caren. Indeed we will survive and thrive our beautiful shapes. I had been sticking to a nearly vegan diet for a while--but I put dairy back in when I needed to gain weight (as well as though delectable cakes and cookies!). I often feel that if I were eat a true vegan diet I would be the healthiest in look and feel, I've just not managed to get there. :)

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