My nutritionist is adorably, professionally pulled together. For an 8am appointment, earlier than I usually get to work, I have compromised with dry shampoo and flipflops, because I’m not stepping on a scale wearing real shoes. She apparently stopped somewhere for a blowout before work, and is wearing heeled ankle boots that somehow pull her whole look together. She’s in that small minority of society for whom the skinny jean trend is working. Basically, I want to trust her because it seems like she has her life together.
The first visit, she asked me about my goals. Can I be you? I say, but thankfully only in my head. I want to feel better, I said out loud. And then, with a self-effacing half-smile shrug, said what I assumed was pretty obvious. “And I need to lose weight.” She waved that aside. If your goal is to feel better, that will take care of itself, she assured me. I’d never question someone so obviously proficient at life, but from experience in my actual life, I know that it’s never taken care of itself before. She never asked me to step on a scale, but recommended that I go gluten-free and limit all grains and sugar. (She will eventually take all three away completely for awhile, but it’s day one and I don’t know that yet.) She gives me a folder of recipes with free-range, hormone-free meats, unsweetened almond butter and coconut flour and other things not in my kitchen, but which I will discover are about double the price of traditional groceries.
I dreaded telling people. I was a pretty reliable good-time eater. And sympathy eater. Many of my favorite memories of my favorite people revolve around that time we … food. When we had that tradition where we … with the eating and the laughing and the love. I felt a little like I was letting down this key group of people in my life by turning down cupcakes. This was all in my head. For the most part, no one blinked an eye, except sometimes in sympathy. But gluten is delicious, they would say. So true.
So while everyone around me ate cupcakes and pasta and French bread dipped in vinegar and oil, I learned that coconut flour is really, really absorbent — that takes some getting used to — and that you can make buffalo “wings” out of cauliflower. And that you can’t compare grain-free pancakes and cauliflower wings to pancakes and wings. They’re different and your expectation has to be different. But they aren’t bad. And I learned that actually, there are lots of people who are making similar choices. My neighbor sent over a file of recipes she said were “tried and true,” which meant… it wasn’t just me on this path. And at soccer practice, two other mothers mentioned their own medical issues and the dietary changes they were working on. At work, it turned out that my co-worker’s husband was fighting the same battle the same way. No one mentioned weight, except that everyone was losing it, as a by-product. Everyone seemed to think that what you put in your body had an affect on how you felt.
For my entire life, I’ve had a weight issue. I don’t even mean that for my entire life I’ve been overweight. Because while that’s been true for much of it, what I’m talking about goes deeper than that. I’ve had a psychological complication in which I question my self-worth because of my weight. Even knowing that what I eat in private will show up on the scale, which will show up on my soft upper arms, popping belly and brushing thighs, I will make that third trip to the pantry. I truly believe it’s an addiction. My husband has struggled to quit smoking for most of his adult life, and I admit thinking to myself, You have children who are seeing you as either an example or a warning, children who need you around for as long as possible, well after they’re adults, and you know this is killing you! How can you just keep smoking? And then I remember … Pot. Kettle. Stern warnings to myself that I will absolutely not enter the kitchen one more time tonight. After this one last trip. I will have tea as a nightly ritual. Soothing, comforting, sort of. I will… develop an insane mixed nut and salted peanut habit, since I’m not eating gluten, dairy or corn but still pretty much an addict teetering on the edge, regardless of what foods, specifically, I am and am not putting into my body.
I think any mother who has ever struggled with weight, not just in pregnancy but in general life, has a horror of being a poor example to her children. It seems like this is especially true with daughters, though I can’t say for sure, since I only have daughters. But for all the world has changed since I was young, I still know exactly what it feels like to be a child on the upper curve of the growth chart. What it feels like to know that none of your friends’ clothes will fit if there’s a sleepover at their house and someone says, Let’s have a fashion show! I don’t want my children to feel that dread, and yet at my 9-year-old’s sleepover, I overheard the girls talking about how much they each weighed. It wasn’t a judgmental discussion. There was no meanness in it. Just factual, because they were creating a crazy complicated hello handshake dance that involved one person being lifted. Well, how much do you weigh? But I thought, No, no no. I’m not ready! I haven’t been a good enough example for long enough yet. I haven’t taught them enough body-confidence, because I’ve been so long without it.
We keep being told that culture loves curves. Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé. Love those curves. Both size 6, though Queen Bey was a size 2/4 at the 2014 Grammy awards, says her stylist via the internets. That icon of female empowerment, Katniss, played by “curvy” Jennifer Lawrence? 5’9″ and also a size 6. These aren’t rail thin women, and I’m grateful for that, as my daughters begin to arrive at an age where shopping at Justice is cool, and they’re cognizant of what Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift wear to awards shows. But let’s not go so far as to say a size 6, 5’9″ woman is all curves.
Since January, I’ve been making healthier choices. Techically mid-December, but there was still some self-negotiation going on through the holidays. I was sort of painted into a corner, what with the waking up with hives day after day. Drugs upon drugs weren’t working (just the antihistamine kind, though there were days I considered the relative merits of something stronger). I felt like, if 6x the recommended dose of antihistamine coursing through my system wasn’t helping, maybe this wasn’t the solution. Also, I felt like hell. And that didn’t begin to touch on the constant stomach issues that I just assumed was my genetic predisposition as a Strunk. So I changed some things. And since January, I’ve felt better.
The funny thing about feeling better is that you want to keep feeling better. It’s not actually as tempting to slide backwards as you anticipate, given a life-long addiction to the food-is-love/food-is-comfort/food-is-fun endorphin rush. My diet is still pretty modified. It’s sometimes a pain at happy hour, but otherwise, not really that big of a deal. And it’s not *a diet*, it’s simply what I eat and don’t eat. I’m not sure that consuming a tin of nuts a week is ideal, but it’s my system, and it seems to be holding me steady.
And the weight? For the most part, it’s taken care of itself, just as my nutritionist prophesized that first appointment. I’ve lost 22 pounds. 20 pounds January – May, and about 2 pounds since. I started running in June, but it hasn’t budged the scale. Perhaps because I’m eating more peanuts than a pachyderm. People have begun to notice, and I’ve begun to get better about saying, “Yes, I have. Thank you.” Rather than trying to explain that it’s a surprise to me, too, and I wasn’t really trying to lose weight, per se, exactly, I just was trying to feel better, and this is what happened. I mount a defense, where no one is asking me to. It’s perplexing. I think I’ve figured out that the defense isn’t so much about judgments from others… for the most part, people are just making small talk while waiting out the last two minutes at the break room microwave. I noticed you lost weight. It’s sure been hot this week. Did you notice the smoke from those New Mexico fires? It’s a passing kudos, appreciated, but not really about me. So why the defensive, self-deprecating knee-jerk? I think I’m still defending the me that was told in 4th grade that if you could “pinch an inch” on your stomach, you were fat. Now, from a place that feels like stable wellness, I want to tell the other me, You aren’t less when you weigh more. But you can feel better and you’re worth that.
In fact, at this snapshot in my life, I am still, by one classic indicator, overweight. Anyone who has ever had a weight concern knows that the BMI calculator is a jerk. My problem wasn’t so much what I weighed, but that I am so short! That’s not my fault! Erm… anyway. Many people will say that the BMI calculator is a poor tool. One of my brother’s friends has something like 8% body fat. It might even be less. And, because of his impressive muscle mass, the BMI calculator lumps him in the yellow zone of overweight but not yet obese. My mother has told me several times that she wouldn’t think of *me* as nearing the red zone. I look just fine. Which is part of the reason I love my mother, but I can admit that the closer I inched to the red zone, the more uncomfortable I was about how my body was navigating through my life. Today, I still technically need to lose about 1.5 pounds to hit green. I could probably buckle down and do it, but I feel like it’ll either take care of itself, or it won’t.
The yellow-zone person that I am today can debate these two pairs of running shoes with legitimacy, because I actually use running shoes regularly. I can go back to Runner’s Roost a week later and say, I tried these on trail and pavement and they aren’t working, and feel like a legitimate running shoe customer.
These made me want to cry.
These restored my faith.
And 1.5 pounds or no, I get to see things like teenaged coyote pups playing like… well, puppies on my route. This is mildly concerning from a protective mama standpoint, but we’ve managed to share the road so far.
Lots of room for all of us. I hope.
And I finally figured out coconut flour. Sometimes the grain-free thing goes better than others. It’s happened where my oldest daughter has said about my breakfast, Doesn’t seem like that’s working out for you. … and she’s been right. But my initial stab at sweet potato waffles? Drizzled with honey? Not waffles. Different than waffles. But good.
Today, I took three 9-year-olds on a hike. I gave them their space intentionally, keeping about 20 feet ahead of them. At one point, I could hear them wonder aloud if they ought to be keeping up. Your mother’s getting ahead of us, one of them said. “Of course she is,” my daughter responded, “She runs every day.” Though this is technically not true, it eased a little of the parental guilt pressure around my heart. I’m far from perfect. I still have one foot in the yellow-zone. I try to binge eat cucumbers and watermelon more often than chocolate, but I don’t always succeed, and I like to eat at least two-thirds of my daily calories after dinner. Not a great strategy. But I hope in this moment, I’m more example than I am warning. “If your goal is to feel better, the rest will take care of itself.” I’ll never be a 5’9″ size 6. But I’m feeling better about being just where I am.