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viewsI Pledge No Obsessing (My Body and Me are Fine)
By Brenda G., Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 2 commentsThe flavor of the week is the shape of my body. It's like a favorite song played repeatedly until the grooves blur into one another, until the words, I can recite like the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge …
- Not to obsess about the real estate allocation around my body,
- Not to turn sideways when I walk past the floor length mirror in route to the closet,
- Not to hold my breath when I stand on the scale,
- Not to cry out in frustration when I do stand on the scale after working out six days in a row, two of which are with the Darth Vader's of trainers, only to have lost one measly pound,
- Not to consider the cocaine diet of rapid weight loss,
I don’t like thinking about the shape of my body because it's not Cover Girl perfect. It's flawed. I've traveled this obsession over the years coming close to the edge only to claw my way back inch by inch to the safety of sanity. The current love affair with my body has to do with the yearlong 5AM workouts and recent submission to working out with a trainer (something I truly cannot afford rather the acceptance that I need some help getting off this plateau, and since I am giving up food, it seemed a logical investment). It's a healthy sort of obsession for my body, our troubled relationship, and me, but it's a fine line that the three of us walk. We've issues. We are hyper-aware of our body obsession that if not held in check can send us to that darker side of our psyche where logic and common sense gets lost in the shuffle.
In my mid twenties, I had developed an unhealthy obsession with the number on the scale. It began when I when I was working as an Accountant for Vidal Sassoon in Beverly Hills. The women I worked with were pencil thin, and even though I was in my range of size small, in comparison to their bare bone frames, I was gigantic. They drank Dieter's tea, which cramped their stomachs and forced out anything they had eaten. Drinking the tea was easier than exercise they said, so I drank tea. Once accepted into their clan, they introduced me to the next level in diet management. I dabbled with laxatives. I complained to my new friends over a lunch one day that the cramping was unbearable. They agreed, and offered me diet pills. They were less painful, but more expensive they said.
I wasn’t gigantic but I wasn’t pencil thin either, so I took them up on their offer. I didn’t last long on the little white pill diet, mostly because I was paying off my first car loan and two student loans, which didn’t leave me much to spend on the other things in life, like buying diet pills. Also, I lacked the tenacity to be a truly devoted pill popper. I knew these women had deeper issues than I did because we all shared our fat stories over lunch and glasses of chardonnay in the trendy LA bars. I knew how hard they fought to maintain sizes 0, 2 and 4 (a size 4 in that crowd was the equivalent of a size 24). I wore a size 10 back then, my smallest size ever.
In truth, I was afraid to take the diet pills. My new friends looked like Cosmopolitan cover girls in their bare bones bodies, but they were always jittery. They worshiped their bodies but complained about the side effects, which ranged from a lack of sleep, headaches, and dizziness. I stopped drinking the tea, and popping laxatives, and started riding my bike. I broke free of my obsession, and there after managed my weight by the size of clothing I wore, and not the bathroom scale.
As I said, it's a fine line, and one I hope not to break or cross as I travel this obsession, once again.
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2 Comments
I think it's great that you
I think it's great that you didn't keep harming your body with pills and laxatives and you turned to exercise instead. Working out is empowering, those other things are not, they're for people who do not love themselves enough to really take care of their bodies (I've been there, no pills, but lots of not eating and disappearing). It's amazing the strength a woman gains when she invests energy in giving herself love rather than hate. There are few things I regret in my life but the major one is the fact that I spent years Killing myself, I was so weak at one point that I couldn't stand up at work for 20 minutes, there was nothing beautiful about that. Go easy on yourself, you're all you've got in the end, and if you hurt yourself and starve yourself, and stress about your weight, you're only going to end up being a very skinny, and not in a cute way, boring, dead, and empty human- it is a miserable way to live.
Don't cross that line, please. Keep up with the clothes judging if you must judge your weight at all-muscle weights more than fat (remember that scales are totally stupid). And ultimately remember that there is so much more beauty in the confident healthy and fun woman than there ever could be in a skeleton who can only count calories. You're beautiful- and smart. And I admire you for sharing your story, but please don't give up food to pay that trainer. I'm here to listen if you need it, I once again admire your strength. Take care of yourself. Xoxo-katy
thanks kindly for your words,
thanks kindly for your words, I hadn't realized how dramatic that sounded (giving up food) until you mentioned it, It's part of the process - eating more, but less and training. I've no intention of going back to that twenty year old self. I love the strenght trainging to be honest. I am constantly amazed at how far I can go. Thank you so much for the wonderful thoughts.
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