![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
I've just had an apostrophe.
("I think you mean an epiphany.")
So we've been discussing the whole body-image/anorexia topic to death on the Brunching Board. And in discussing a particular dieting behavior that amounted to an eating disorder, I said (reasonably) that the problem with it was not that it was unusual, but that it wasn't healthy. And, I qualified, by "healthy" I meant "emotionally healthy."
And it didn't occur to me until somewhat later to look askance at that knee-jerk qualifier.
For thems of you as has never met me in person: I am short and overweight. I have been short and overweight my entire life.
I had really awful body-self-image trouble when I was younger. It got to the point where the only way I could be at all comfortable living in this body was to ignore it completely -- I didn't care about it, I didn't care what other people said about it, and I certainly didn't care what it looked like.
It took me a long time to get to a place where I believed that I could look good, and where I would bother to try -- things as simple as taking pains with color and style of clothing, or taking care of my hair.
To this day, I have still refused to go on any weight-loss or fitness regimen, because I have not yet gotten to a place where I can do that without feeling as though, after all these years, I were finally caving to body-image pressure.
Essentially, given the choice between taking care of my physical health or my emotional health, I chose emotional without a second thought.
And what hit me, when I finally put it that way to myself, was what that means.
I still put my mind ahead of my body.
I still think of my mind as who I am, and my body as ... well ... where I live. I am my mind; I inhabit my body.
And when I asked myself "well, why do I do that?", the answer was obvious: I still don't want to think of this body that I hated for so long as me.
How's that for a kick in the head?
And where do I go from here?
So we've been discussing the whole body-image/anorexia topic to death on the Brunching Board. And in discussing a particular dieting behavior that amounted to an eating disorder, I said (reasonably) that the problem with it was not that it was unusual, but that it wasn't healthy. And, I qualified, by "healthy" I meant "emotionally healthy."
And it didn't occur to me until somewhat later to look askance at that knee-jerk qualifier.
For thems of you as has never met me in person: I am short and overweight. I have been short and overweight my entire life.
I had really awful body-self-image trouble when I was younger. It got to the point where the only way I could be at all comfortable living in this body was to ignore it completely -- I didn't care about it, I didn't care what other people said about it, and I certainly didn't care what it looked like.
It took me a long time to get to a place where I believed that I could look good, and where I would bother to try -- things as simple as taking pains with color and style of clothing, or taking care of my hair.
To this day, I have still refused to go on any weight-loss or fitness regimen, because I have not yet gotten to a place where I can do that without feeling as though, after all these years, I were finally caving to body-image pressure.
Essentially, given the choice between taking care of my physical health or my emotional health, I chose emotional without a second thought.
And what hit me, when I finally put it that way to myself, was what that means.
I still put my mind ahead of my body.
I still think of my mind as who I am, and my body as ... well ... where I live. I am my mind; I inhabit my body.
And when I asked myself "well, why do I do that?", the answer was obvious: I still don't want to think of this body that I hated for so long as me.
How's that for a kick in the head?
And where do I go from here?
What got me out of the loop
A serious of things happened that I paid attention to. My father's sister died last year at 49, of complications related to high cholesterol. My mother had a heart attack 3 years ago at 52 of complications related to being over weight. My father had an angioplast recently in part due to stress. My best friend's mother had both knees replaced, in part because she is obese. For the last 3 years, I've been trying to figure out who I am and who I want to become. Here's what I found:
I don't eat healthy. I never excercise. I have a knee that doesn't work right most good days, and doesn't work at all on bad days, such that I *must* hold the hand rail to go down the stairs even on good days. I have an ankle that snaps like a twig every two years, such that I have to wear ankle-supporting shoes if I want stability. *Several* doctors, a few of them non-judgemental, have mentioned that the ankle and the knee would be better if I weighed less and were stronger.
I added those two together and came up with the realization that if I don't take care of me, I could wind up like them. With knee replacements. Ulcers. High cholesterol. Heart attacks. Do I really want that? Well, some of that is probably inevitable. But I control my choices and my attitude, and at any time that I choose to make my knee function better or my ankle be more stable or my heart be stronger for longer, I know what I have to do.
What everyone else thinks no longer concerns me, because it isn't about what I look like. It's about what I feel like. It's about getting out of bed in the morning and knowing I won't fall down immediately. It's about not feeling my heart pounding so hard in my chest I think it will explode.
Slow changes are coming along. I eat more vegetables. I take the stairs up while I still can. I drink nearly no soda. I scroll new things in as I can.
Sorry this post took so long and so much space, but that is how I worked it out for me. Maybe it will help you work it out for you. -