After years of struggling to not lose weight my body is finally utilizing nutrition again which is great regarding getting my body to a place of healthy stability but a little challenging in the mind of a person who has always struggled with their weight in the opposite way. I am a Gen Xer to the core, having grown up during the birth of the super model culture where an impossibly thin aesthetic was coveted by a lot of us. Failing instantly at bulimia (I haven’t thrown up since I was 12) I had some minimal success with anorexia the summer of my 15th year until my body decided that it would employ nausea and violent heaves unless I put food besides pickles in my body, crisis averted, I was not that committed to adhering to starving myself thankfully.
Throughout my life I have been varying degrees of fluffy layered over muscles mostly built up from years of practicing massage, my chest was harder than my husbands and my grip has always been a vice, I had often joked that if I could massage with my ass I would be ripped. I have worked more on healthy eating rather than eating to be thin but I will admit that I was really happy to lean out my body when I started to practice pole dancing, not really crediting the monster in the closet that manifested into the cancer that was to become.
The lowest weight I have gotten to was 139 lbs but I tended to leave my shoes on during the weigh in so that every increment counted to bring the number up, unlike now as I whip off my boots and every extra, easily removable layer just short of getting naked, in order to achieve the smallest number which was 162 lbs, as per my last visit on a scale. I didn’t enjoy being as thin as I had gotten, it was actually uncomfortable laying on my side due to my knees rubbing together, the bones cutting into one another and only remedied by a pillow in between. My skin, always taut had become loose and crepey, this was not a good feeling except for the idea that I could basically eat as much food as I wanted without the fear of not fitting into my clothes. It was disturbingly comforting that if I was able to eat, that I could do so and fill up with as much as I could unlike the years of negotiations with myself “Hmmmmm…I ALREADY had a piece of cake for breakfast but I had a salad at lunch so cake for dinner should be okay, right?” Of course, excess sugar is not really encouraged, especially when dealing with any inflammatory condition but to know that I could ingest an inordinate amount of calories without certain repercussions has been kind of cool, as fucked up as that sounds.
I am happy that my body seems to be normalizing again even though my mind can be a little confused about whats happening and how I should feel about it, the remnants of years of self loathing and disappointment in my inability to have the most visually appealing body whispers in my halls. I had finally accepted myself in my 40’s which was a really good feeling. This is the beginning of going through the steps of acceptance of my somewhat altered and scarred meat cocoon all over again now that I am in my 50’s… I have said it before and I will most likely say it again, the inner work is never done. Self acceptance is a fluid action, I find myself constantly adjusting to accommodate another layer, if that makes sense.
Until next time ❤️