Wait! It’s just Weight.

So it’s the beginning of the new year and everyone is going crazy on their diets for the New Year.  Gym memberships soar, workout videos sell like hotcakes and by the end of February no one will be using any of them.  In 2007 Tara Parker-Pope wrote that 40% of those serviced ditched their resolutions because they were just too busy.

I was doing really well at my weight loss last year this time.   I was down to a size 10 and 8 was fast approaching.  I was working out every single morning and then my life had a sudden change.  Hubby ended up in the hospital with emergency surgery and my mother moved in.  Hubby got better and was back at work and I was here to take care of my mother.  She stayed with us from January – July.  In July I moved her into a nursing home, my sister freaked out and took her out of the home, then started telling everyone I was stealing her social security money.  I was devastated.  I stopped going to my grandma’s.  I stopped going everywhere.  

I stay in my house now, barely ever leaving.  I go outside to feed my chickens, or to clean up the dog’s yard, but that’s it.  Hubby has to force me to go into town and into stores. I have panic attacks when we leave the house.  Obviously since I stopped moving, I've begun to put on weight.  I still eat the same; I could however lower those portions a bit.  I’m back up to a size 16.  I like being a size 16, shape wise.  I believe that curvy “Goddess” built women are so sexy.  I can also say that hubby is very “Sir Mixalot”, if you get my meaning. 

So what’s going on?  Why am I talking about this again?  Yesterday a dear friend of mine shared a blog post from Dianne Sylvan, called Ten Rules for Fat Girls.  As I was reading, my chubby little heart was filled with joy.  Finally someone who got it. Finally someone was speaking up for the fat girls.  I quickly shared the post and liked her page.  Then I went back to start looking at her other entries.  I was just as quickly disheartened as I saw that Dianna was an author who’s picture I had to dig for on her webpage.  Her page is decorated with “beautiful” skinny girls.  So no matter how much she was telling me to be proud of whom I was in her rules, here she was contributing to the sizeism in popular media by not using her position to elevate fat acceptance.  I’m not saying she can’t have a skinny girl as her main character, there are many reasons for having that character but I was a bit puzzled and felt as though it were a mixed message. For more info on this I recommend checking out "Killing Us Softly" by Jean Kilbourne. Ed.D. 

I spend enough of my life feeling not good enough.  There’s a lot in the media already that tells me I’m not tall enough, or thin enough.  I’m not the right skin toned or have the right hair color and with their product I can be right.  I literally sit sometimes and just cry.

My friend then shared this video.

I want to be able to embrace who I am.  I want to be able to love me for me, and not for the size of my jeans.  I don’t want to feel bad when I look in the mirror or embarrassed when I see someone who saw me in my “skinny jeans”.  I look at those pictures and feel like such a failure now.  I’m still healthy.  I’m not hurting.  I’m not eating crap.  But for some reason I just can’t put that bad down.  Even when I read stories on NPR about how the BMI is junk science, I still hold myself accountable and expect myself to measure up to those guides.

It is self-defeating and abusive.  If someone sent me an energy request on my blog for guidance in a situation where I was their partner and I was treating them how I treated me….   Well I’d tell them that their partner was abusive and they should seek out counseling or leave the relationship.  Yet, I allow myself to pick up that bat and beat the shit out of myself daily.

It may take me a while.  I’m a work in progress.  Next Month I’ll be 44 years old.  I’m on a new goal.  A new resolution.  By age 45, I want to be able to say, I love me.  I love who I am, what I stand for and most importantly how I look.

After all, you know what they say about fat-bottomed girls.

Namaste and Blessed Be!

Sosanna

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