Sunday, July 27, 2014

The Great Weight Debate

There is an evil creature lurking in my bathroom. With just a glance, it can make my day go from good to awful. It can infiltrate my thoughts and pick apart my self-esteem like a vulture with carrion.

What is it? The Scale.

That's how I think of it in my head: The Scale. As though it is a self-aware gremlin hiding in the cabinet. As if it is intentionally malicious.

It's true that the scale can only show us a number which is really just an expression of our relationship with gravity. But we all know how much power that number can wield. We know how much of our self worth is wrapped up in our weight; we know all too well how that number translates into whether we think of ourselves as "good" or "bad."

I don't know how it started, or where along the way my weight became to central to my value as a person, and  wish I knew how to extricate myself from that kind of thinking. But I don't. I don't know how to stop feeling like a terrible failure as a woman, as a wife, and as a mother for being fat.

What I try to do--and sometimes succeed, and sometimes fail at--is remind myself that I am sick. I have a multifaceted (invisible) illness that, unfortunately, has serious consequences for my overall health, not the least of which is relentless weight gain. My body is caught in a maelstrom of malfunctioning hormones, enzymes, and synapses. It literally cannot do what I want it to do sometimes, which includes losing weight.

Just be patient, my doctor says.

I love you no matter what, my husband says.

Mommy, you're beautiful, my daughter says.

I hate everything about you, my inner critic says.

It's a daily debate. We hear: love yourself the way you are, and then immediately after, lose ten pounds in ten days. We are told beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that too thin or too fat is not beautiful. I swing wildly between actively loathing my body, detesting the fact that it won't obey my weight loss attempts, and feeling overwhelming love and sympathy for this pile of tissue doing it's best to keep functioning despite it all.

If you are struggling the same way that I am, my only advice is this: try to ease up on the self-hate once in a while. You can only do what you can do, and when your body can't do what you're asking it to do, it isn't because you've failed. This, right now in this very moment, is beyond your control. Your poor, sick, battered body needs all the love and acceptance you can give to it.

One of the best pieces of wisdom that I've run across to help me remember my own advice is that you are not fat, you HAVE fat. In fact, no matter what your particular health challenge might be, let's elevate that to include the loving words of Walter Miller Jr., "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

So, for today, that's what I am holding onto. Just like hair, toes, hands, and skin, I have fat. I am not fat.