BODY IMAGE –

BODY IMAGE –

Your body image is how you feel about your body. I have been fat/heavy and average. No matter my size, my body image has always been wonky (I don’t know about you, but I love that word!).

Growing up I was taller than average (and I still am). I was told that I was fat and I believed it. Looking back now I see that I was not fat at all. I had curves then and I am curvy now (more so now, though). In high school I wore a size 14. Now I am wearing size 12. I weigh more now and am larger than I was in high school. The women’s fashion industry does not do us any favors by not having standard sizing. A size 10 for one manufacturer can be the same as a size 14 for a different manufacturer. This helps contribute to our wonky body images.

In my late teens, part of me started to think that those who told me that I was fat were wrong because I was catcalled often and men always “ogled” me. Were those who called me fat jealous of me? I will never know. Were they trying to protect me by making me think that I was not attractive? Who knows. I do know that I learned from those experiences and I never mentioned my children’s weight or size to them. I did not want them to go through what I went through.

Eventually life got to me and I gained a lot of weight. Hey, if they were going to call me fat, why not be fat? Also, I was married and did not enjoy the attention from other men so being heavy protected me from a lot of that.

My body image went both ways. When I was fat or heavy, quite often I didn’t think that I looked that bad or that I was that overweight. Looking at pictures from different points in my life, I wonder how I could have thought that. When I was thinner, I thought that I was fat. Ugh!

A number of years ago I consulted a doctor and completed a weight loss program that was closely monitored. I lost a significant amount of weight over a long period of time. One of the things that we were told in the program was that the number on the scale was irrelevant; how we felt was what mattered. But, they also made us pick a goal weight instead of a goal size. In my head, I was going for a goal size, which I achieved and maintained . . . for a while.

Yes, I gained some of the weight back, but not all of it. A few years ago, my doctor put me on a GLP-1 medication to help control my diabetes. Not only did it do a great job of that but I also lost 35 lbs. within the first few months. After that, no more weight loss. That was fine. I was still fat but I was comfortable with my body. Life still had different plans for me and I lost 40 lbs. in 3.5 weeks (which I do NOT recommend – my stress level was the highest it has ever been and my body rejected all food). As I recovered from that, other life stressors occurred and I lost even more weight but that was due to exercise.

As an average size person, my body image still bothers me. I have extra skin due to that rapid weight loss, cellulite, and a lot of my skin is crepey (I can thank heredity for those last 2 things). I have maintained my weight for the longest period in my life since it became an issue.

I am still working on accepting and loving this body. Will I ever get there? I will. Today I am definitely closer to accepting my body as it is. Most days I make progress. The days that I don’t are okay because the forward days outnumber the backward days.