I’ve had a horrible body image practically my whole life. I never, ever would have believed that I could look in the mirror at my body and experience anything but disgust. I did not believe older women who told me that when I was their age it simply wouldn’t matter as much. Mama, auntie, granny, friend’s aunties, I admit it. You were right.

I thought they were just old. They had no idea what it was like these days. They didn’t have the clothes we had. They had just given up. Their best days were behind them, that’s why they didn’t care. They were married and settled (at the time) they weren’t worried about attracting men anymore.

LOLOL Poor, young, silly me. And I say this now at 40 knowing that even if a younger female hears what I have to say, she probably won’t really believe me either.

Not only does it not matter so much, I love me so much now. I flapped my bingo-wings today and laughed myself silly over it wondering why I had hated and feared them for so long. These days I feel younger (spiritually) and more free than I ever have. And this should never be a consideration about how you feel about yourself, but I’ll say it anyway. Men ADORE me.

I still have moments of fat panic once every couple of months, but considering the lifetime of conditioning I have had to endure I think I’m doing amazingly well.

You won’t believe me, but keep loving yourself no matter what and it will come. It’s the feeling I was chasing all those years that I tried to fit into someone else’s body. The feeling that I am comfortable in this body and that this is where I belong.

I am not saying I never have a “no fatter than this” moment, because I do. However, most of the time, I have found that loving my body is only tangentially about how it looks and not at ALL about what it weighs. Accordingly, my weight/size can change, but the love does not. If you love a child unconditionally … does your love for that child change if s/he gets fatter or thinner? Of course not. That is the meaning of UNCONDITIONAL.

So, what does it mean to unconditionally love my body? It is about focusing on how it feels from the inside (like HOME). It is about how it feels when I do lovely things with it like taking showers, eating strawberries, sleeping, walking, swimming, stretching, having sex, wearing silk, drinking ice water on a hot day, etc…. I am so grateful I have a body that can experience all those things. Loving my body is about the privilege of touching other people and being touched, and about the joy of moving, even tiny movements like breathing. Loving my body is about loving the “there” of me, this is me, this is the space I occupy. I love that I get to do that, that I have a place on this planet that is me. Loving my body is for me a spiritual practice; it takes time and effort to cultivate but it is profoundly worth it.

~Fall
http://www.haescoach.com

P.S. As a side matter, I am not sure I have ever read so many comments about people’s weight since I left Weight Watchers all those years ago… Frankly, it was a little triggering and I gave up weighing years ago, so I can only imagine how triggering it might be for those who are still thinking of the numbers as important. I can’t overstate the importance of ditching the scale in my own journey.

I’ve put on a bunch of weight in the last few years. Between a thyroid problem and a physical disability, my weight has changed significantly.

Each time my weight goes up, it takes me a little while to adjust and accept my body again. And I think, I’d like to lose a little weight, but I can be okay at this size. But oh, I don’t want to get any bigger. Oh no, never want to get bigger.

I know that so far, I adjust after a couple of weeks, but there’s always this horror that I’ll get bigger.

~Kali
http://www.brilliantmindbrokenbody.wordpress.com

If you do think you are gaining too much for no reason, then it never hurts to get some blood tests, since either gaining or losing a lot of weight can be indicative of something medical.

I was ok when IE got me back up to my pre-dieting weight. I was even okay when it got me to my previous highest weight. Now I’m 20 pounds above that – about 60 pounds gained overall, in about 18 months. I’m skirting 250, some days above and some days under. That also happens to be more or less the cutoff of death-fat for someone my height. And it scares me a lot, because I’ve pretty much been gaining steadily despite having an active job and slowly adding more fruits and veggies. I don’t know of any relatives my size (though my mom’s side I don’t have contact with). I catch myself worrying that I’m just going to keep slowly expanding like a balloon. What if my set point’s 275? 300? Rationally I know that’s not the end of the world, but that doesn’t stop the fear.

I’m not fat. I’m at the very high end of the ‘normal’ bmi for my height (for what that’s worth)and I feel like I flipflop back and forth every day on feeling confident and okay, or feeling like I need to just try hard to lose 10 lbs. And I 100% know that I’m going to be fat when I’m older because every single woman on both sides of my family is fat, and started getting that way around their mid 30s. (I’m 26.)

It’s a constant nagging in the back of my head. When I exercise, I do it to feel strong and relieve stress, but running down the street I will almost always have a thought like, ‘I could lose weight if I just pushed myself harder’, ‘I could get thinner if I just skipped dessert all week’, etc…

I admire fat on other women, and think that really curvaceous hips and boobs are awesome and beautiful, but I worry that if I get fat, I’ll be the ‘wrong shape’ of fat and hate it.

It’s something that I consciously fight against. I’m always reminding myself that my size WILL change throughout my life, and that it’s fine. I can’t control it without making myself a living breathing diet machine and I’m not willing to do that.

I just think it’s horrible how this idea of “I’m okay now, but NO FATTER!” is so pervasive among everyone. It’s also good to know I’m not the only one struggling with it.

And I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to find out that her first two novels, assuming she really is a writer at all, were vanity published.

I had a nice doc I am working with tell the other day that I was unlucky to be dealing with these sorts of things so young in life. The implication being that most everybody has to deal with them sooner or later. My mum, who has enjoyed rude health all her life, tries so hard to understand but can’t really, but I have noticed how much she and those active oldies like her resent any change in their health. It is like, the longer you have it the harder it is to let go of it and learn new ways of being.

Well, I guess it works for fat too. The longer you have your tiny ass, the harder it will be to let go of that too. Aren’t we lucky getting to learn these lessons so early in life? :P