I do a love-hate dance with my body.
One day I’m feeling great. Then quite possibly within the same day, I’m feeling frumpy, I’m cursing my thunder thighs, the coffee cake I wolfed down earlier, and I start inspecting every blemish on my face. I overthink and start to question my life choices. Within 24 hours, I set a world record for how fast I can change my mind about myself. For a while that felt like forever, I felt alone and that I didn’t have the right to have these seemingly petty problems because life was still good. I was living a comfortable life, with people who loved me, and with a whole future ahead of me… a future that didn’t care about my shape or size (I hope). But the truth is, whether I like it or not, these body issues have hit me and they aren’t going away. And I hope that speaking up will help me overcome them.
The trouble began some weeks into my gap months (nope, not a gap year — can’t afford it) and I had loads of time for myself. I just left my first job and needed R&R, lots of it. I ate my way through the countryside of Nagasaki, was reunited with my family, and refilled my mental/emotional fuel tank. This falls under one of those days when I’m feeling great. For the first time in a long time, I was actively doing nothing for the sake of balancing my health. I thought I couldn’t ask for more. It turns out, I did. I asked after my friends back home, caught up with them, and what they were up to. They were crossing off items on their bucket lists, bagging entrepreneurial awards here and there, joining noble advocacies, finding the loves of their lives, and transforming themselves one way or another. While I was genuinely happy for them, some of these conversations would leave me feeling hollow.
What was I doing?
Well, nothing. What could I do? What can I change in my life right now? I looked for something to work on that would make me happy and accomplished. I didn’t hesitate to think of my body as my next project. Maybe social media had something to do with it or it could have been the hundreds of seemingly perfect and stylish women I would see in the city streets. Maybe it was Eli from To The Bone. Bottom line, I thought that slimming down my body would make me “enough” which in turn would make me feel satisfied — I’d have something to show for, then I wouldn’t feel left behind by my friends.
The first month went like clockwork. I gave myself an A+ for eating clean, kicking fast food and sugar out of my life. The second month was a painful daily consumption of a mere 1,145 calories. With just that much to eat, I would workout 6 out of 7 days. By the third month, I was morphing but not physically. With my calorie Asperger’s, I became a not-so-favourite person to have at the dinner table; somehow, I was hurting people by declining their kind offers of an extra helping of dessert, by not touching my favourite dish that they cooked for me; and I’d beat myself up for exceeding my calorie budget. And for all this and my til-I-collapse mentality on exercise, I didn’t see any change in my body. I wondered constantly if others did. My attitude was the only thing shifting. What was going on?
I have a few theories.
Theory One. I was motivated by comparison and not inspiration. Rather than carving out my own path and setting goals based on what I was capable of, it was “I have to do it like them”, “I have to look like them”, “I have to do better than them”. The result was that I never reached them because my idea of them changed by the day, because they changed by the day. I forgot that I only had to be better than myself. Cliché but true, and also the driving force as you kill yourself with that extra push up, squat, lunge, extra everything.
Theory Two. I didn’t get enough support because I wasn’t willing to admit that I had a problem. What’s worse is that I projected the exact opposite on social media until, for a time, I stopped projecting altogether. That leaves a person feeling frustrated, misunderstood, and hostile. What can I say? I was scared of being judged, of being thought of as small-minded and as having no right to these issues.
Theory Three. I love food. Desperately. And I’ve been lucky all my life to be surrounded by people who loved to feed me. When I grew up, I did the same for them — cooking for family and friends, baking breads, cakes, and cookies for days, discovering new recipes, and so on. In trying to change my body I stopped doing all this. I stopped doing things that made me happy and confident — I actually stopped engaging with my life and it affected how I saw myself and how I interacted with others.
Theory Four. I had the wrong formula. I oversimplified it and equated weight loss/eating healthy to wellness. Don’t get me wrong, changing bad eating habits will do you a ton of good but in aiming to love your body and yourself, it takes so much more. And blaming everything external for my internal feelings of emptiness and self-consciousness wasn’t going to cut it. It took theories one to three for me to realize that the equation is more complex.
It’s important to have good motivations because on my worst day, that’s what’s going to push me to go further. It’s important to admit, to myself at least, that there may be a problem. Not everyone is as polished as they seem, so I shouldn’t be afraid or surprised that I’m not. Every girl’s gotta have this struggle at some point in her life. If it was in high school, college, in my mid-twenties, that’s fine. It will probably hit me again down the road but now, I think I have a pretty good idea of how to face it. In practical application of all my theories, this is what I’ll do — I’m going to revisit the things that make me feel whole and proud of myself. I’m going to do things that I love. I’m going to give my body a break and focus on other people instead of myself. Last I checked it’s the one thing that fills you up with zero calories and it puts self-conscious thoughts at bay, too.
As I finish this piece and put these resolutions into place, I promise to be more patient with myself, to enjoy life a little bit more, maybe have that extra serving of dessert tonight, and to be comfortable with this dance I do with my body.
