Lost my first pair of jeans to inner-thigh hole due to chub rub activity. Moral? Beware the sale rack. The jeans, not my thighs, are the problem.

When I was a chubby fifteen-year-old and my mother took me clothes shopping, she wouldn’t allow me to buy things that just looked okay on me. “You need something that makes you say ‘wow’ when you see it on you,” she told me. At the time, I resented the advice for a couple of reasons: firstly, it meant I didn’t get as many new clothes as I would have liked, and secondly, I thought it implied that I needed “wow” to be pretty enough. Those thinner girls could wear anything and still look good, but I had to dress myself extra carefully in order to fool the world into thinking I was pretty. (My mother never implied this whatsoever; it was all my brain talking.)

Fast-forward through several years in which I could, and did, buy random articles of clothes in various “average” sizes correlating with my intensity of dieting. I bought jeans I didn’t particularly like, because they were a size 29, and fuck it, I needed to own them because they were a size 29 and I could fit into them. I can’t recall actually buying clothes that didn’t look good at all, but I definitely bought clothes that were just so-so, because it was easy and I could do it. Some of the clothes I bought were deliberately temporary, just to hold me over until I dropped another size, as I was constantly planning to do.

Fast-forward a couple more years, and my weight now stands where it was when I was fifteen (though my shape has changed). I still wear straight sizes, and I know I have a huge degree of thin privilege as a size 12/14. However, I have become more discerning in the clothes I buy, partly because I’m damn poor, but partly because I have a renewed attitude toward how my body deserves to be dressed.

I’m not wearing designer brands. My style hasn’t changed much. I still dress like a student most of the time. But I’m no longer settling for so-so, even on the basic items. Case in point: today, I spontaneously stopped into Old Navy in search of some workout clothes. I tried on a pair of capri-length running pants and a tank top. The top was just so-so; it was fine, but I can do better, so I left it. The first pair of pants I tried on didn’t fit, so I changed sizes. And WOW! These running capris hug my legs without being uncomfortably tight, sit at a perfect height on my waist and don’t dig into my hips, and make me look like a real runner. Of course I snapped them up. I wore them to the gym tonight with a regular t-shirt, and I felt fabulous (due in large part to their sheer comfort: goodbye, upper-thigh rub in baggy shorts!).

Could I have bought workout clothes that were just so-so on me? Of course. Workout clothes don’t need to make a fashion statement. If they had been insanely comfy but unflattering, I might still have gone for them. Still, the power of the WOW factor caught me every time I passed a mirror in the weight room. Vanity? Sure, a little. But I damn well deserve it. My body is beautiful just as it is, and dressing it with clothes that look great on it is one of the things it deserves.

At a request from commenter randomquorum, here is a little update on my struggle with disordered eating habits.

As much as I’d love to say it’s gotten easier, it hasn’t really.

I’ve tried a few strategies, including a food diary (nixed it after a couple of weeks, because it became too self-policing, as I’d worried it would), and then a pseudo food diary that listed only the servings from various food groups (breads, meats, dairy, fruit/veggies) that I ate in a day, in an attempt to learn more about my eating habits and balance out my food groups a little more. That helped me to realize I eat more bread products and fewer veggies than I should, but I knew that anyway. I gave up that diary a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve had some notable, short-term successes. Thanksgiving at my fiance’s parents’ house was completely un-traumatic. I ate one helping of anything that looked good, then stopped, because I was full. I’ve had several weeks when I’ve cooked a large meal at the beginning of the week (chili one week, stew another, stir-fry a few times) and divided it into servings to eat at work during the rest of the week, which is a strategy that has worked great both for saving money and for ensuring I get a good mix of food groups into my day. There have been many days, though not usually more than one or two in a row, when I’ve thought back over everything I’d eaten that day and been satisfied that it had nourished me and that I’d honoured my hunger and fullness cues.

I’ve also had days, or stretches of several days, when I haven’t felt like eating fresh foods. I’ve binged. I’ve eaten potato chips for dinner. Conversely, I’ve talked myself out of eating something I wanted because it wasn’t “healthy” or I didn’t “need” it, and I’ve skipped dinner a couple of times because I’d “eaten enough calories” that day. I’ve obsessed about my weight and resolved to “be better” a bunch of times. I’ve gained about 5 lbs. since the end of September (I actually attribute this, literally, to seasonal weight gain – my activity levels dwindle in the winter, and after all, it’s only 5 lbs.).

So in other words, or to make a long story short: I’m still learning how to listen to my body and how to honour its cues. I’m also still learning to be gentle with myself. Intuitive eating and practicing Health At Every Size are on-going processes, and I think that my supposed failures are just steps along the way.

One of the women I regularly swim with but haven’t seen in a few weeks (she’s been away) told me today, “you’ve lost weight!”
I shook my head, bewildered. It wasn’t feigned. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life. She said maybe it’s because she’s getting bigger (she’s pregnant) so I look smaller by comparison, and I said she SHOULD be getting bigger, and she agreed, and we chatted about her pregnancy and how excited she is and how I work at a baby store. End of that.
But the comment has stuck with me a bit. I mean, I know she meant it as a compliment, despite the fact that it’s untrue. Maybe I looked particularly good in general tonight. Maybe the swimming and ab workouts I’ve been doing have changed my shape slightly (I don’t think so, though). I wish I could completely ignore this, but it has me wondering what she saw that made her think I’d lost weight. And I’m pissed at myself for putting any stock into this at all because IT DOESN’T MATTER.

In reply to a fabulous thread at the Shapely Prose community forum, I’ve made a list of some of the things that make me healthy, physically and mentally. It’s a great response to the “but you can’t be healthy if you’re overweight” paradigm. Actually, there are lots of indicators of health that are ignored in favour of a low BMI. I’m not ignoring them. Here are some of mine:

I called in sick to work today because I’m getting a bad cold and I’d rather head it off now.
I swim twice a week.
I walk and take public transit everywhere.
I try to get enough sleep (which for me is a lot).
I eat a variety of foods and like trying new ones.
I buy clothes that fit me.
I have not dieted since October 2007.
I bought a wore a bikini this past summer.
I have never tried a cigarette or any hard drug.
I am in a deliriously happy relationship with my fiance.
I will not diet to fit into my wedding dress.
I try to find the positive aspects of a job I’m not crazy about.
I get annual physical check-ups and Pap tests.
I rarely weigh myself.
I have a Master’s degree (they say higher education improves your mental health, I think).
I volunteer for two organizations that mean a great deal to me.
I’ve become more politically informed and active in the past year.
I’ve gotten much better at not beating myself up over my food and activity choices.
I ran a 5K charity run in June.
I took the “RealAge” online test and my age came up at 16.9. And yes, I gave my true weight (unashamed at 185!).

How do you take care of your physical and mental health?

I blogged every day for one month. It was enough to convince me to start a new blog for exactly that sort of thing (ask me for the address ).

Back to blogging about the issues I care about most.

Let’s talk about male privilege for a moment. My fiance and I were downtown holiday shopping today and stopped in at a bank branch to withdraw some cash. A young woman (maybe 20 years old) was at another ATM, talking on her cell phone, almost crying, and having trouble making her transaction. I heard enough of her side of the conversation to know that she was freaked out because a man had been following her.

I interrupted her and asked if C and I could walk her somewhere. She asked us to check outside to see if someone was there, and to wait outside for her. We gladly did so. There was no one there, but it cost us only a few minutes and calmed her down completely.

How dare that man threaten her like that? How dare he think that just because she’s an attractive young woman (and she was beautiful), he can follow her and scare the hell out of her? I’m still angry over it. And very glad I did the right thing by offering my help.

I did, didn’t I?

I think that was a lie. Today, I was a whirling crazy person, cleaning the entire apartment top to bottom (after I woke up at 12:30pm, of course). Do I have energy left to write an interesting entry? No.

But I have decided, in the wake of NaBloPoMo, that I am more capable of writing little day-to-day entries than I once thought. Therefore, I am starting a new blog for just that sort of thing. Please comment or email if you’re interested in having that blog’s address. I’d like to at least know who you are, in a cyber kind of way, if you’re going to be reading that blog.

This blog will revert to its former state of fat acceptance, body image, pro-choice issues, feminism, and such, on December 1. Stay tuned.

Draft three of my thesis is in, which means I might actually write a real entry tomorrow. For now, I eat chocolate and play Wii in celebration.

“Don’t ever let nobody bring you down, girl.
Don’t ever let nobody tear your world apart.
Look in the mirror and see who you are —
Beautiful, you are.”

Poor grammar aside, this song by Deborah Cox has been my power anthem over the past few weeks.

Can. Go. Edit. Itself.

That. Is. All.