Indulgence.

My entries have been a bit self-indulgent lately, but that is the reason I started this blog: to talk about and work through my feelings and opinions on a variety of things, most of which, lately, has been fat acceptance and my body. And that’s fine.

I’ve joined the local branch of the pro-choice organization I worked for last summer, and I’ll be attending lots of events with them soon, so I’m sure I’ll have some completely different issues to blog about. Still, fat acceptance is pretty central to this blog.

So today’s tidbit is as follows: I’m training for a 5km charity run to support Crohn’s disease and colitis research (my fiance has Crohn’s disease, so this cause is dear to me). It’s in one month. I’m really, really excited, and I might post occasionally about how my training is going. It’s been over a year since I trained for a specific sport/event, and starting again has reminded me how much I love working out with a purpose.

Stripping Away.

Today I did something fairly radical: I removed my belly button ring.

This requires a bit of explanation, clearly. I was almost 20 years old when I got my belly button pierced. I pierced it for myself; my then-boyfriend-now-fiance doesn’t like piercings and I never wore bikinis or belly-baring shirts, so it was really just for me. At the time, I was about the same size I am now (having gained about 30 lbs. from my weight loss three years previous). I was unhappy with my weight, but was dieting, and eventually got to an “acceptable” weight for a girl with a belly button piercing. I was occasionally complimented on it when I wore a bikini. I wore a bikini. (Yes, I still wear a bikini. :)) I was the kind of girl whose tummy was nice enough to wear a belly button ring.

More recently, as I became more and more dissatisfied with the way my belly was becoming softer and flabbier and not-flat, I started to realize that my belly button ring was often uncomfortable. Sometimes it got caught on my clothes; once I swear I almost ripped it out by accident. This wasn’t new: this had happened occasionally since I’d gotten it pierced. It had just never bothered me much before.

About a month ago, I stood in front of a mirror and removed the ring. It made me look fatter. I don’t know what it was – the way the ring covered up my deep, deep belly button I’ve always been a little self-conscious about, maybe. Maybe my exposed belly button revealed the depth of my stomach fat. Maybe the indentation accentuated the convexity of my belly. Maybe it was just the lack of adornment that made me see my belly as a stark, fat thing with nothing to hide behind. I put the ring back in.

This morning, I made a decision. No longer would I feel the ring digging into me when – yes – my flesh makes rolls when I sit. No longer would I hide my jiggly self behind a piece of metal.

I took out the ring. I looked at my exposed belly. I sucked in. I relaxed. I ran my hand over my soft skin. I haven’t been able to stop doing so most of the day, stroking my belly through my clothes at work, feeling no metal.

I still think I look fatter without the ring. But this time, I don’t care. This is me.

Digging out.

Big thanks to Bee and Tiffabee (heh, two bees) for their comments on the last entry.

Today was a happy eating and activity day. I ate a variety of foods I enjoyed, including some ice cream :), and ate until I was satisfied but not overfull. I also walked almost four kilometres with a friend, which didn’t even feel like a lot of walking, because we were talking and catching up on the last year (I haven’t seen him since last September when I moved across the country for grad school) and generally enjoying being outside on a nice evening.

This is good.

The Big Move, and … Bigness.

The new apartment is fantastic. The balcony is huge, the view is lovely, the place is spacious, the neighbourhood is killer. We’ve been working hard getting it in shape the way we like it, and I’m almost satisfied.

All of my jeans are becoming too tight.

As much as I’ve come to embrace HAES and fat acceptance, and as much as I’ve been able to accept my body the way it is, I can’t accept and be happy with the fact that I’m getting fatter.

The thing is, I have not been practicing intuitive eating. I have been overeating daily. I have been sedentary. I know that for many people, their weight is not so directly linked to their eating and activity habits. Right now, mine is. When intuitively eating and exercising moderately, I was about ten pounds thinner.

I hate being inactive, and I will be more active starting tomorrow, now that I have the time! The food thing … is a struggle. Intuitive eating doesn’t come easily to me. Overeating is my M.O. I only have extremes: I either overeat, or I diet. This is why I’ve never been able to “eat more healthfully” or “make responsible food choices” … I must either totally regiment my food intake, or eat everything I want.

I’m not a chronic overeater. I don’t eat past the point of fullness very often. I don’t binge. I simply eat even when I’m not hungry, until I’m full, and then again as soon as I’m not full anymore. I don’t know what my hunger cues are. I’m not even sure I have them anymore. I went through a large bag of chips tonight and didn’t even feel full. I was successfully eating intuitively for about a week a few months ago, and then it ended and I haven’t been there since.

I want to eat what my body needs and wants, not more. I want to exercise. I want to do these things because they will help me to be healthier and more energetic and happier.

But I also want to do them because I want to drop the ten pounds that have crept on recently. And I don’t want to want that. But I do, and I know that I will be tempted to restrict and to call my restriction intuitive eating. I will be tempted to push the point of hunger and argue with myself, insisting that I’m not really hungry yet. And when I do give in to my hunger, I will eat more than my body wants, again justifying it with intuitive eating, insisting that if I want to eat it for whatever reason, I ought to.

This was hard to write. I don’t know if this is disordered eating or just a struggle. I don’t know what to do to re-establish a healthy relationship with food. I just don’t know.

Cosmo: so over it.

I bought myself an issue of Cosmopolitan for my flight last night. I hadn’t read the magazine since last summer, and I figured I’d enjoy a fluffy, lighthearted, easy read on the plane. I was in for a surprise.

I didn’t enjoy it at all. At all. I knew the magazine tended to have ads portraying ultra-thin women in sexualized situations, so that didn’t faze me. I knew the content was mostly drivel about celebrities and ways to improve your sex life, so that didn’t faze me (in fact, that’s the content I was going for when I bought the magazine).

It was things I hadn’t previously noticed that bothered me, things I should have noticed and now feel silly for overlooking or brushing off. How the magazine is 100% slanted toward heterosexual sex and relationships. How all the tips about loving and flaunting your fabulous self are geared toward women in or just barely over the socially acceptable weight range (”he’ll never notice your little tummy pooch when you’re on top.” Well, he will if you happen to actually be fat. Of course, if he’s someone you should be sleeping with in the first place, he won’t care). How lines like “a low-fat diet is beneficial for everyone” are slipped in as matters of fact. How stereotypes of “what women like” and “how men think” are rampant. How ads for diet pills and plastic surgery are on facing pages with articles about how to improve your self-image (adjacency, much?). It goes on.

I couldn’t even enjoy the articles I’d normally like, because these things were so pervasive. I’d say Cosmo has changed from being a fluffy, fun experience to a minefield of oppressive and insultingly stereotypical junk … except I know that Cosmo is the same as it’s always been. It’s me who’s changed. And I’m damn proud of it.

Away I go!

Moving back across the country today. My time on the West Coast was great, and now I’m heading to the city that thinks it’s the capital of Canada (but isn’t), to embark on my career.

Guess I’ll have to change my banner picture to a skyline including the CN Tower!

Book #4: Before Green Gables.

Look! Look! I finally read another book for the Canadian Book Challenge.

Keeping with my YA/children’s theme, I read Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson. It’s a prequel to Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, published by Penguin Canada in honour of Anne’s 100th anniversary of publication. The hardcover edition matches the 100th anniversary collector’s edition of Anne: a pale green jacket and a small gold-framed drawing off Anne on the cover. Penguin has also released a large, hardcover scrapbook of L.M. Montgomery’s letters, art, and photography.

Before Green Gables, unsurprisingly, chronicles Anne’s life before she arrives in PEI to be adopted by Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. It starts a little further back, in fact: first we meet Walter and Bertha Shirley, Anne’s parents, just as Bertha discovers she’s pregnant. Wilson follows Anne’s story as she becomes orphaned, lives with the Thomases and then the Hammonds, and goes to the orphan asylum (none of this information constitutes a spoiler – anyone who’s read Anne knows how her story unfolds).

At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Before Green Gables. The voice didn’t seem right, and details were included that the prudish and proper L.M. Montgomery would never have dreamed of writing in, such as Bertha Shirley’s internal monologue about her missed period. Wilson’s prose seems aimed at a slightly younger audience than was Montgomery’s. The change in voice seemed jarring, and I wasn’t sure whether I could accept it.

But then I realized that Budge Wilson is not L.M. Montgomery, and her voice is her own. That doesn’t make the book inferior, it just makes it different. Wilson’s story is imaginative, evocative, and true to Montgomery’s character. Anne is loveable and spunky, but not perfect, which is just right.

I was sad when the book ended, even though I knew Anne was about to embark on her new life at Green Gables.

Sickness impedes HAES, yo.

It’s pretty hard to be Healthy At Every Size when you’re not healthy.

I’d been looking forward to this week for so long. I finished my classes on Tuesday and wrote my last paper yesterday. I had been planning to go for a swim a couple of times, walk around areas of the city that I haven’t seen, maybe gingerly try rollerblading again. I was so excited to have some time for myself, and particularly time to actually move and be active, once the extreme time demands of grad school had let up.

Then I got sick. I was really sick in early March, sick enough to miss a day of class (for me, this is a big deal). I recovered, but two weeks later, got really sick again, this time sick enough to miss parts of an entire week (I spent part of each day trying to survive at school before going home sick – I just don’t give up). I thought I’d recovered from that, but it came back and it hasn’t left. I’m starting to suspect bronchitis, because a simple cold can’t possibly be kicking my ass for two weeks solid. But I’m too busy to get checked out. (I know, I know. I know.) Plus, I am getting better.

It’s just hard to feel happy with my body when I don’t feel well. It’s not a problem with how I look, it’s a problem with how I feel. I’m sluggish, tired, lazy. I finally have time to devote to enjoyable activity, and my body says no. Frustrating much?

LOL: Google Hit.

I’ve been found via this search term: “gluttonous bbws.”

I think I might start a separate list of hilarious search terms that bring people here.

ETA: Now I’ve gotten a hit from “fitting fat people on school bus.”
Uh, similar to the way you fit thin people on a school bus … people board the bus and sit in the seats. Does that help your dilemma?

Drawing the line.

There’s a post over at Big Fat Deal today talking about an article listing the “top 40 BBWs of all time” – BBW, of course, standing for Big Beautiful Woman. Mo took issue with some of the women listed: Kate Winslet, Sophia Loren … these women are hardly fat, just not size 2s.  I agree.

The thing is, I’m uncomfortable with where the line is drawn, how to draw it, where to draw it. I am 5′8″, 170 lbs, and wear a size 12. I have fat on my body, of course. I’m rather thick-waisted and I’ve got big thighs. But I’m not, overall, fat.

This puts me in an interesting position as far as Fat Acceptance is concerned: I’m an ally and a supporter, but I don’t face the serious issues of discrimination that fat people face. Sure, there are stores I can’t shop in or ones in which I can barely squeeze into their biggest size, but I’m not ridiculed on the streets, I’m not denied health care until I lose some weight, I’m not forced to pay ridiculous prices to find clothing that fits me. The average person wouldn’t think anything of my size.

My issues are more internalized, but they come from the same societal place. When I dieted, I couldn’t ever be thin enough. I reached one goal and set a new one. At my current weight, which we’ve established isn’t fat, I often feel like I’ve failed because a year ago, I weighed fifteen pounds less. Six months ago, I weighed ten pounds less. I don’t want to diet again, I don’t want to weight 135 lbs. again, but if I could just “be good” and lose ten pounds, maybe fifteen …

The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with my current size, but there’s always this fear in the back of my mind that this isn’t the size I’m going to stay. There’s not much to indicate I’m going to gain more weight, but what if I do? So I’m fine at 170, I’m not fat at 170 – how about 180? The most I ever weighed in my life, before my first diet, was 182. What if I weigh that again? At that weight, I was in plus sizes, almost 20 lbs. into the medically “overweight” category. Weight is just a number …

I worry sometimes that I believe in Fat Acceptance only as far as it suits me, which maybe means only as it applies to other people. I accept fat people as great friends, beautiful people, completely worthy, with no judgement. I accept that I do not want to diet ever again, that I don’t want worrying about food to take over my life again. I accept that I’ve gained some weight since I quit dieting, and I accept the amount that I’ve gained (sometimes, mostly, occasionally, rarely, depending on my mood).

It worries me that I might not be able to fully accept Fat Acceptance for myself. If I were to gain ten more pounds, could I still be happy? If I were to cross that invisible line from wherever-I-am-now (average? slightly larger than average? chubby? soft? curvy?) into Officially Fat, could I still accept it? Am I a hyprocrite for genuinely thinking many large or fat people are beautiful, but sometimes slipping into thinking that I, smaller than most of them, am not?

This isn’t how I intended this post to turn out. I meant to blog about the line between not-fat and fat, but here I am, living on the line, and not knowing where it is makes the notion of Fat Acceptance more confusing for me. I don’t want there to be a line. I want it to be a natural continuum. But I know I’d fall somewhere on the continuum, somewhere in that grey area of acceptable vs. not acceptable, and I’ll be in the same place as before.