I guess the best way to start a blog is with the reason WHY I'm starting it....so here goes...
Even at an early age I was a "chunky" child. I
remember at some point sitting in my parents basement looking at old photos and
finding one of me in probably grade one. I thought "wow, how did mom let
me get so FAT!" I don't remember whether or not I knew I was fat at that
point yet but by grade two I definitely did. I was picked on by a girl in my
class. She would often use fat jokes or take shots at my hair, clothes, shoes -
whatever she could think of. I'm not sure why it started exactly, it was a long
time ago. I remember attending one of her birthday parties, so we must have
been friends at some point. But she apparently needed an outlet for her anger
and I was it. It was never physical, only emotional. The bullying followed me
all the way through elementary school. I wasn't a very brave or outspoken child
anyway, but then to have someone center me out for my flaws regularly, I ended
up totally internalizing. Obviously there was something wrong with me, why else
did no one want to talk to me? I kept to myself, read and hung out with a small
group of kids, most of whom were also deemed unworthy themselves in some way by
our peers.
By high school I clocked in at 180 pounds. I remember sobbing my first day of
grade 9, not wanting to face an even bigger building full of people who would
judge me. I took dance lessons, and I loved to dance. And most of the time I
felt I was pretty good at it too. Every year I looked forward to my dance
recital. But in grade eleven I quit rather abruptly. I told people it was
because my knee injury was bothering me and I had too much school work to do.
The truth is, I never totally felt I fit in. I was the fat kid in a room full
of beautiful girls and I always felt that I was holding them back. Certain
moves couldn't be done because I was too heavy, or costumes couldn't be selected
because they were too unflattering on me. Of course, nobody ever said this to
me, this was just what I had built up in my head. I do, however, remember one
of the judge's score cards at a competition saying that costumes should be
flattering for all body types. I immediately assumed that was me they were
talking about. I bet if my dance teacher was reading this beside me right now,
she'd smack me. Magazines and television told me that I was fat. My friends
would make jabs at overweight people and I knew they felt the same about me.
And I would have gone 80 shades of tomato if anyone had ever learned that I
weighed 180 pounds. That number was devastating.
Of course, my mother always told me I was beautiful, but parents lose their
persuasiveness as kids become teens. Suddenly we understand that it's a
parent's job to tell their kids they're beautiful and they have to think that
because we are their kids. But I knew I wasn't. No boy had ever been interested
in me. My mom and dad did the best they knew how. My dad's pokes of "you're getting
big" I know were not meant to do harm. He just wanted me to be healthy. I
don't hold it against him. And my mother to this day has a very poor body image
of herself. Never wanting to smile for pictures or stating how fat she looks in
clothing. If she didn't love herself, she could never have properly taught me
to do it. And the sad reality is that so
many women think like that. Society has raised us to believe that skinny is
healthy, so they were only doing the best they could with what they knew and I
love them very much. There is a reason I am sharing this message - because far
too many of us still have negativity associated with our own selves.
By the end of my first year away at university I weighed in somewhere around
220 pounds. Almost no physical activity, a school cafeteria meal plan, and the
bar scene, and the "frosh fifteen" was more like the "frosh
forty" in my case. My second year away I lived in a townhouse style residence
and had to learn to cook for myself (something I STILL hate doing). I wasn't
good at it, and I disliked it, but I still somehow managed to drop down to 209
pounds.
In my third year, I lived off campus with a very good
girlfriend and three guys. My girlfriend and I planned a trip to Daytona Beach
for spring break. So becoming "bathing suit body" ready became a
priority. We tried a couple of extreme diets, but in the end settled for just
choosing healthier foods and exercise 3 to 6 days a week with a treat on Sundays. That
was the healthiest year I'd had in university. I was crushed that I never
made it to bathing suit body in time. By the end of the school year I had only
lost 20 pounds.
That summer I went to work at a residential summer camp up north. In my first
two months there I had gained back every pound I had lost in the previous ten.
That's when something inside me broke. The hate I felt
towards myself the moment I stepped on that scale was suffocating. I hated
myself for not having will power. I hated that my metabolism was slow. I hated
that I had to work so hard for what came so easy to so many others. Why was it
so hard for me to be skinny? Why did my body hate me so much? Why was my body
so broken? If I was skinny, then everything would be better. So I drastically
restricted my calories and increased my activity. Every time I'd hit a plateau
I'd cut calories and exercise more.
One year later I was 130 pounds, eating a cereal bar and a fat free yogurt a
day and exercising two hours or more. That was it. 130 pounds is in the
"healthy" weight range for my height. In fact, it's just about
perfect. However, I have never been more unhealthy probably in my entire life.
The fact that I was consuming less than 500 calories a day aside, my mental
health was a mess. But people kept telling me how fantastic I looked. My mom
took me shopping for new clothes as often as she could. My dad kept telling me
how great it was that I was small emphasizing how worried he was at how big I
had gotten. My sister hated me for wearing smaller pants than her. Boys started
to pay attention to me. And the whole time, all I could think was 'people only
notice because I look good compared to
what I used to look like. If they just met me now, I'd still be fat'. And I firmly
believed I was still fat. I still jiggled. I still wobbled. I was still
squishy. I wasn't happy.
It was that summer, at my lowest, that I met a boy. A
special boy named Ian, who for a short time, helped me forget how ugly I felt.
Our relationship got serious fast. We hung out all the time, and that meant he
often wanted to eat, so I did too. I didn't want anyone to know I struggled
with food, so I ate with him.
And I watched the scale creep up and up and up.
I have a very vivid memory of our first Christmas together.
I had gained roughly 20 pounds at that point. I sat with him, in the car as we
often did, and I apologized to him. I apologized for gaining weight. I promised
him that I would be thinner. In response he hugged me, he brushed off my
negativity, and he told me he was falling in love with me.
Over the next four years I continued to gain weight again. Ian never left my
side. He never once told me I looked fat or made me feel inferior because of my
weight. He always told me I was beautiful and he loved me no matter what. He
worked a lot of evenings and as I've stated, I hated cooking. So I'd often not
have anything planned for dinner and then when I was absolutely starving I'd
look for foods that I had immediate access to. Cookies to snack on while pizza pops were in the microwave, bagels and cream cheese etc. I'd try and fail
at diet after diet because I didn't like to cook, especially not for one, and
I'd be right back to eating food with very little nutritional value. I gave up.
I accepted that I was fat and decided to stop fighting my body over it.
Even though I accepted myself, I still hated myself. I blamed my body for being
difficult, my metabolism for being slow, my muscles for being weak, my stomach
for being hungry. So I just ate, whatever and whenever I wanted. I ate a lot of
takeout. I didn't care about what went into my body because it didn't work
properly anyway. The only way I had managed to lose weight was too hard to do
again, so might as well just be fat and own it. So I stopped caring. I never
bought new clothes because I didn't look good in anything. I didn't wear makeup
because, what was the point, I was unattractive anyway. I put on an "I
don't care attitude" ... but I cared. I just didn't want anyone to know. I also stopped hanging out with a lot of my friends because I was ashamed of what I looked like.
That Christmas, 2008, Ian and I got engaged, and on October 30th 2009 we had an
amazing Halloween themed wedding. I was at my heaviest - about 265 pounds. Five
months after that I found out I was pregnant.
My pregnancy was fairly complication free. I was told that due to my size I
should try to gain as little weight as possible. I went for monthly growth
ultrasounds since, as the docs put it, "big ladies make big babies"
and they couldn't measure my stomach properly due to my belly. I remember looking
in the mirror and hating that I never got that nice round baby bump associated
with pregnancy. I just felt I looked extra fat. As a result, there are very few
photos of me pregnant. I love maternity photo shoots, but I never did one because I didn't feel I had a belly deserving to be remembered. I did end up with some problems with high blood pressure
that resulted in me being taken off of work early and delivering rather
abruptly in a slightly ahead of schedule C-section (the section was due to my
darling daughter wedging her head underneath my rib cage and refusing to drop).
My body healed amazingly fast.
My mind did not.
I teetered on post partum depression for the next 2 to 3 years or so. I cried
all the time. My daughter, Madison, cried more. I got pregnant again when she
was 6 months old. Not a total "whoops" - we knew we wanted the kids
close together, we just didn't expect success the first month we tried! My son,
Jackson, ended up crying even more than Madison did. But the love I felt for
them both made my heart so full, it hurt. Becoming a mother was
just....completely indescribable. The emotions these two young babies pulled
out of me were a very big change for me. My sister used to joke that my heart
was made of stone, and my new emotional self became a big source of
entertainment for anyone who had known me prior to having children. I didn't
manage well for a long time. I cried at everything. I told no one. It wasn't
until I actually broke down in front of Ian around Madison's third birthday
that he really knew anything was wrong.
I wanted...I NEEDED...to protect my children. From
everything. Disease, injury, violence, war, global warming, cancer, depression,
anxiety, teen suicide, cyber bullying....the list goes on. I teach high school
and I've seen some of these things first hand. I was terrified for them. For
me. I had never in my life wanted to LIVE so badly. Suddenly my life wasn't
about me. It was about them. About wanting to watch them grow up and become the
incredible little people I know they can be. I want to see them achieve their
dreams and goals and to celebrate their milestones with them. And above all, I need
them to be happy.
I can't honestly say I remember what set the train in motion. I want to say it
was a blog post someone shared on Facebook about being in the photos with your
kids, even if you don't like what you look like. Maybe it was talking to my
students about some of their own struggles. But I realized I had to change. I
could not...WOULD NOT...let my children grow up hating themselves. They would
never feel as if they weren't enough - not pretty enough, not skinny enough - I
would not let them believe that their looks decide their value as people. Not
my babies. Not these perfect little creatures.
I swore then that I would never talk negative about myself
or another person in front of them. I would build them up and instill confidence in them. I hated myself, but I would never, ever let my kids know
that. And that worked for a while. But that is an extremely difficult facade to
keep up.
Enter Taryn Brumfitt and the Body Image Movement. I don't
even know how a post ended up on my Facebook news feed, but I'm thankful every
day that it did. Her story, the part where she talks about what it meant for her
to have a daughter grow up loving her body, just hit me. It resonated with
every chord in my body. I still cry every time I hear it. Her message about being
able to actually LOVE your body (not just pretending) so your children can do
the same did more than just talk to me - it screamed in my face while punching
me in the stomach. I knew it was something I NEEDED to do.
I started by taking care of my body. That doesn't mean
restrictive diets or intense exercise. It means focusing on vegetables and
protein and foods that seemed to make me feel good as opposed to heavy or full.
It means I started listening to my body and finding a snack if it was hungry,
or not eating if I wasn't. It means eating the french fries if I really want
them, but knowing that a hardboiled egg helps curb hunger and gives me energy
better than anything else I've tried. I started walking more because I know
walking is good for me, I like walking,
and felt good after doing it.
What I found was that the more I listened to my body, the more I wanted to make
my body feel good by taking care of it. And the more I take care of my body,
the more I WANT to take care of it! This taking care of me coupled with Taryn's
message of body love and my thoughts have actually started to transform. I now
thank my body for what it can do and what it is, as opposed to hating it for
what it isn't. I LOVE my body. I recently likened body love to being similar to
getting a new car. When you love your car, you do whatever you can to take care
of it. Sure, you run it through the mud sometimes, but you clean it up, and you
polish it, and you treat it right. Same with my body. The more I love it, the
more I want to take care of it and do things that make it feel good. And just
like a car, my body will have it's troubles. There will be roadblocks and bumpy
roads, but that doesn't stop you from driving, and it won't stop me from taking
care of myself. One of the side effects of this new mindset is that I have, in fact, lost weight. But my goal has completely changed. It is no longer to fit some societal mold of beauty. It is to simply
live healthy and to set a good example for my kids. When people have asked me
how much I've lost, I've told them I don't know. The number really isn't
important to me anymore. I'm going to start telling them that what I've lost is
my negativity towards myself. And as a result, my body is finding the spot that
it's supposed to be. My personal healthy spot may not be at 130 pounds. My body may not
look like Jennifer Lawrence when it's done adapting to this new lifestyle of
mine. And that is absolutely and 100% okay with me. I only get one body. Why on
earth am I going to waste another second lamenting its imperfections when the
truth is, this body is perfect for me. I have never felt more free or more ME in my entire life.
One of the reasons I find this message so
important to share is that on my own, I can only go so far in convincing my
children that they are perfect. I can educate them on healthy lifestyle and be
completely and openly body positive with them, but at some point, my influence
will wane. I will just be the mom with the biased opinions. My children will be
exposed to movies and magazines and social media and other teenagers and if
they start to make my children feel inferior or unworthy, it will be very hard
for me to be able to convince them otherwise. That is why I share. As an individual,
my power is limited. As a society, we can collaborate to change our perceptions
of beauty and health. We can embrace the fact that people can be healthy at any
size. We can emphasize that mental health is just as important as physical
health. We can remind people that the number on a scale does not measure your
value as a person and BMI is not a score of your worth. We can tell each other
that it is not ok that fat is the only thing we have on our body that we allow society
to define us with - we HAVE fat, we are NOT fat in the same way that we are not
fingernails, we are not knees and we are not hair. We can tell the media that we
are not made to be cookie cutters all fitting into one singular definition of beauty. The same media
who have given us an unrealistic perception of beauty by altering images so
drastically that the women who posed for the pictures no longer look like the
women pictured. We CAN start this change, but we need to do it together. We
need to start telling the magazines that we will not buy into their distorted
images. We need to let every single person out there who preys on the
insecurities of women and men alike for profit that it is NOT okay. We can
insist that health is more than just BMI and weight. We can get rid of phrases
like 'Bikini Body' or 'Swimsuit Ready'. And most importantly, we can stop the self-hate talk, first in public, and eventually, in our own minds. And then
maybe, little by little, we can make this world a little less negative and a
lot more accepting for future generations.
My hope is that our children can grow up without the burden of self hate, and
embracing their full potential.
I'm hoping that in the not-too-distant future I'll be able to say that I am a Body Image Movement Global Ambassador (Check out what that's about here: http://bodyimagemovement.com.au/ambassador/). Keep your fingers crossed for me! And in the meantime, please share this blog and my Body Positive posts on Facebook if they speak to you! Let's start getting this message out to as many people as we can :)
xoxo
#ihaveembraced
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