Loving my here and now body

Never did I ever think I’d post a photo of myself in a swimsuit on social media. Fully-clothed selfies take me out of my comfort zone, so a selfie of me in a swimsuit? That’s damn right terrifying, especially when I’m occupying a body that I don’t always love for reasons that transcend what I actually look like physically. However, when I saw beautiful women of myriad shapes sharing photos of themselves in their Be A Heart swimsuits and also others admitting their own tumultuous relationship with their weight and their figure, I knew it was something I wanted to do for me and the body I’m slowly but surely learning to love and accept.

Like the creator and designer of the swimsuits, I once was a tenant in a bigger body – a body that boys and sometimes girls shamed. I once had an adult slap my hand when I reached for a cookie during a Christmas party and admonish, “I don’t think you need another cookie.”

Boys oinked at me. When I got a rash on my legs from horseback riding, some mean boys at the back of the bus called me a fat leper. Yet, when I naturally grew and bloomed, one of the very boys who teased me started to flirt with me.

My ugly duckling turned swan moment was all very confusing because I was essentially the same nerdy, horse-loving, silly bookworm. I just now possessed what was considered a desirable figure. My body became my social capital. I quickly realized I could use it to gain popularity and even affirmation as a woman. So I whipped my skin in to submission. I could become even more celebrated if I lost more weight.

I experimented with a stint in anorexia, eating only scraps of lettuce (hold the dressing, please), but my parents grew concerned very quickly. I was a people-pleaser and also didn’t want to add any more stress to their lives as they were dealing with an older brother and his addiction problems. Bulimia seemed a good fit because it was much easier to hide. I avoided a tsunami of calories and stuck with the purging part. I’d induce vomiting or abuse laxatives or run through stress fractures and sickness to make just everyday calories disappear and/or not count.

Then I entered treatment. It wasn’t as linear as this all sounds, but my journey in to eventual treatment is a post for another day.

For over two years (one year at my university and then one year in private therapy) I worked to overcome my eating disorder. The self-destructive habits mostly stopped, but the harmful thoughts didn’t. I turned to my Catholic faith eventually and found a lot of healing. The Mass fills up my mouth and my heart. Christ offers a peace the world and fallible humans cannot give. Even with all the current human brokenness and the ongoing, awful abuse and subsequent coverup revelations, the divine part of the Church calls me and comforts me. As our pastor recently preached, it’s both the best and worst time to be a Catholic. It’s the worst time because of the horrendous abuse, the scandals, the coverups, and dealing with the questions from others on how we can belong to an institution that has made grave mistakes and hurt so many as well as how we are facing our own twinges of doubts and wavering faith. But it’s the best of times because now is the time we can reveal just how much we trust in God and in God alone. Human brokenness will always be a part of the Church. But so is the Holy Spirit and Divine grace.

{If you are Catholic and feeling helpless in the wake of the revelations, please check out The Siena Project. Its primary purpose is to make it easy for any member of the Catholic faithful to send letters urging our bishops to enact meaningful reforms in light of recent revelations of grievous abuses in the Catholic Church.}

That same grace has helped me slowly accept my body wherever it is in terms of weight, clothing size, and/or shape and to also recognize that despite being mostly healed, I was still holding on to certain food and fitness rules, which were leading to occasional mini binges where I felt out of control around food. A few of the food police laws still occasionally taunting me: Carbs are bad or at least not as “good” as other food. Clean eating is akin to saintliness. Stay away from processed garbage. It will ruin your body and eating it is a sign of weakness and leads to horrible health outcomes. It doesn’t matter if you don’t really enjoy hard-pounding burpees. That’s the only way to lose weight. Lift heavy or don’t bother lifting at all. Run fast or don’t run at all. Don’t ever feed your feelings. That makes you a glutton. So does over-eating. Don’t EVER feel stuffed. That’s another sign of weakness. Don’t weigh yourself, but take a before and after photo. If you don’t seem changes in two months, then you’re doing something wrong.

The list goes on…And so does the anxiety around my food and body.

But, my friends, I am through with all of that. I’ve made great strides over the past two months. I am happier and more at peace with the skin I’m in than I’ve been for a long time. This isn’t to say I look at my reflection and love my body and how I look every day. That’s just not the case. But I don’t let my negative feelings dictate how I feel about my life or inner self or what I should or should not eat.  There’s so much more to life than being obedient to the food police.

The same holds true for exercise. No more drill sergeants telling me to eke out another burpee. No more running races and being disappointed if I don’t end up on a podium. I have plans to run a marathon next fall for the fun of it. Originally, I’d decided to only run a marathon once I knew I was on pace to qualify for Boston. But I just don’t want or need that kind of pressure right now. I have another friend who is turning 40, and we’ve decided we want to celebrate our fourth decade with a marathon. She’s a skilled runner, but she’s the one who invited me to just run this together and to enjoy the journey rather than making it in to something else that we have to try to measure up to.

I’ve also decided, even though I am still sometimes tempted to try the latest health fad out, that I will never embrace any kind of so-called healthy lifestyle change (which is really just another diet re-packaged under the guise of health or balanced fat loss) whether it be Whole 30, intermittent fasting, or clean eating. I just can’t do it. Maybe you can and still be happy and at peace with your body even if the scale doesn’t budge or your clothes fit the same. Maybe embracing one of these lifestyle models doesn’t make you crazy around food and think about the ice cream sitting in your fridge every 10 minutes. Maybe you feel better and your skin glows when you slurp down green smoothies. When I tried that several years ago, I ended up with kidney stones and passed three on my own and then had to get surgery for one that became stuck. My urologist told me to cut back on greens. Yes, greens. That kale and spinach you’re eating isn’t healthy if it’s all you’re eating. Or if it’s giving you oxalate-related kidney stones. (I haven’t had another kidney stone develop since I stopped drinking green smoothies.)

Listen, Christian dignity demands us to love and serve others as Christ would serve them. That includes yourself. So, yes, take care of your body. Practice body kindness. If you’re winded just vacuuming your home, a change may be in order. But if you’ve gone up one clothing size in two years (as I have), and it sends you in to despair because you’re afraid you’re letting yourself go even though you feel fine – other than the anxiety you sometimes have when you slip into a swimsuit or eat certain foods that many of your friends have blacklisted – then maybe it’s time to take a deep breath and realize that self-care is not about making your body an object to be tweaked, fixed, and whittled down to a certain size or “enhanced” with visible muscles.

There’s a lot of talk about embracing the now, but how about embracing the body you have now? Can you do that? This here and now body I am living in at this very moment is all I have. Sure, I can resolve to make things better. Perhaps I can even change some of the things I’m not happy with, but there’s no guarantees.

I’ve been the chubby, marginalized kid. I’ve been the “pretty” girl who had plenty of dates.

I’ve been rifle-thin. You can only be almost-crazy about your body, but cross the line when the hip bones start jutting out and then you get criticized. You have to learn to lose just enough weight.

I’ve been the pregnant mom that others complimented on how “small” I was because I never gained tons of weight (thank you, all-day, interminable pregnancy nausea and vomiting). I’ve been a size 0 postpartum mom, and a much bigger size postpartum mom, and you know what? I’ve never liked my arms. No matter how thin I was, I wanted to change my arms. But even if I did finally achieve the sculpted shoulders and long and lean arms I dreamed of, would I find everlasting happiness? Maybe briefly. But the arrival fallacy tells us that the allure of whatever we are pining for is generally much more rewarding than the reality.

So enough with wanting to get back to my “goal” weight, sculpt sleek arms, or to tone up more or lose belly fat with HIIT workouts and/or intermittent fasting. I had to make a difficult choice recently. Can I be okay with weighing a bit more but eating whatever I want whenever I want (and don’t worry…I’m not advocating pure gluttony here; my body is very wise if I listen to it and it’s a lot like a toddler who may not eat great one day but over the week his dietary habits all balance out because of his healthy tuition)? Can I take a big and scary leap of faith and be willing to put more energy in to the here and now and the body I’m occupying at this very moment rather than pining for a new body or being wistful over the body I once had? Can I love the reality I am living and the skin I’m in without ever trying another diet or lifestyle “program” again? Can I exercise to move my body and to take care of it and find activities I enjoy without turning physical activity in to another way to atone for too many calories consumed or a method of changing my aesthetics? Can I allow running to be a playground and not a proving ground?

The answer to all of these questions is a resounding yes. It takes a lot of hard work, but I’m ready to champion my body as it is right at this very moment and to practice intentional, reasonable self-care.

This is me. I have a straight, athletic build. Even when I was barely eating and no longer menustrating, I didn’t have a thigh gap.

I have dignity and worth. I had dignity and worth when I was teased for being too fat by today’s cultural standards (imagine the slender women of the past gazing at the physical abundance of upper class women with envy). I had dignity and worth when I was grappling with a full-blown eating disorder.

You do, too, no matter what body you’re occupying right now at this very moment. All women do. Once upon a time a woman’s economic futures depended upon whether they married well. Their bodies were, in fact, their social capital. By berating my swimsuit-clad body even while in a happy marriage to a husband who loves me for me, I’m conveying a sad message, “I only have skin to offer the world. My happily ever after depends upon the physical shape of me.”

Most of us Western women consider the bygone custom of foot binding in China to be a horrible act and an assault against women. How could anyone permit such a painful practice that physically distorts and changes a woman’s natural design all for the sake of an arbitrary beauty standard and higher social status? And, yet, I see similarities between that act and our own dieting culture, our fat bias, and women’s desire to be thin or embracing what seems to be new rage of being fit and toned. What are we willing to do to whittle our bodies down to the shape we think is beautiful, healthy, or acceptable?

How about all of us women focusing more on our lives being a reflection of God’s love than our bodies being a reflection of what is culturally acceptable and desirable?

You are perfectly lovely in every way. The same God who dusted the sky with stars and planted the earth with a rainbow of vegetation made you and me. Stop questioning His taste.

***I recently debuted my first IGTV segment and share why we should shun the scale and also other insight into how I’m (finally) making peace with my body.