Trip to the Emergency Room

On Monday I fell in the parking lot of Day Care that is part of the Hospital I work at.  I tripped over crack in the pavement and twisted my right ankle.  I fell like a ton of bricks on to my left knee and knew there was no way I could get off the ground with both legs injured like that.

My purse and my daughter were still in the car.  I was walking around the car to get her out to take into the

AIM: Show Me Your Maintenance and I’ll Show You Mine

For this month’s topic, Lori, Debby, Shelley, Cammy, and I chose to take on an aspect of our lives that is unique to each of our maintenance journeys. One thing that sets me apart from my AIM friends is that I am a grandmother to three girls and a boy, and it is from that perspective that I wrote this AIM entry.

---------------------------------------------

My daughter, Cassie, mother to the grandbabies, sent me this link last week: “How To Talk To Your Daughter AboutHer Body.” After I read it, I thought about how I presented my own perspective of weight to my daughters as they grew up. They witnessed my diets, but for many years – mostly their formative teenage years – I was uninterested in losing weight. In fact, from 1997 to 2004, they witnessed my 130-pound gain.

Looking back, it wasn’t how I talked to my daughters about their bodies that could have fanned the flames of negative body image because there was really nothing to talk about. Neither of them obsessed about the shape of their butts or thighs, and as far as I know, neither of them dieted or thought too much about food. The more likely breeding ground for negative self-image was in how I talked about (read: berated) and treated my own body. I wasn’t exactly kind to myself and I ate too much of even the healthy stuff, thus part of the reason for my incredible weight gain. My girls, on the other hand, knew when to say when, and frequently witnessed me cleaning their plates. They, thankfully, did not follow my example.

In 2005, when I decided 300 pounds was way more than I could handle, Carlene was 21 and finishing college, and Cassie was 20 and working her way through nursing school. They were excited that I was taking my health seriously and encouraged me all the way down the scale, never once comparing how they looked and how they ate to how I looked and how I ate. If anything, they teased me when I became so militant about food that I wouldn’t even eat a slice of birthday cake without torturously imagining gaining 150 pounds with one bite.

I don’t know how I got so lucky, but Carlene and Cassie don’t internalize my obsessions. If anything, they mirror them and help me see how ridiculous I can be.

Claire, Audrey, Maelie, and Luca

What I like about “How To Talk To Your Daughter…” is the emphasis on creating space for a girl to grow up understanding that her body does not define her, but rather, is part of her strength and her character, no matter what it looks like. This is something I need to let sink in and accept into my own personal body image. It’s not often we get second chances, but this time around, I want to be more conscientious about how I project my body image to my grandchildren, particularly Claire, Mae, and Audrey. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time with a 5-year-old knows they hear everything and forget nothing.

I remember three years ago when Claire was 3, I showed her my driver’s license from when I was 300 pounds. I asked her, “Who is that?” and she said she didn’t know. I said, “That’s Grammy.” She looked at me like my head was on backwards. “Nunh uh,” she said, shaking her head. It didn’t occur to me until I sat down to write this blog that one day my grandkids might construe as obsessive my many sizes and diets and Oprah and People and CNN and my blog and my verbal assessments of how I look and what I eat. 

Grandparents are not left off the hook on this subject, not by a long shot, especially those of us who are maintaining a significant weight loss or who were, as I was long ago, ridiculed by their mother/grandmothers/aunts/friends-of-the-family for not being thin enough or pretty enough growing up. We grandparents also need to be especially mindful about how we present our views on our aging bodies to younger generations.

I’ve always said there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my grandchildren. Easy to say, not so easy to do. I need to pull all that diet/weight-loss/weight-maintenance stuff together and clean up my own body image so I can best help my daughter and son-in-law create the healthy space in which their children will develop their own body image. I will seek to incorporate a few of the suggestions in “How To Talk To Your Daughter…” namely this one: “Don’t you dare talk about how much you hate your body in front of your [grand]daughter, or talk about your new diet. In fact, don’t go on a diet in front of your [grand]daughter. Buy healthy food. Cook healthy meals. But don’t say ‘I’m not eating carbs right now.’ Your [grand]daughter should never think that carbs are evil, because shame over what you eat only leads to shame about yourself.”

Maintenance is no longer about me. There are four sets of eyes watching and four sets of ears listening to everything I say and do in their presence.

------------------------------------------------------

AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you'd like us to address!

Lori @ Finding Radiance

Debbie @ debby weighs in

Shelley @ My Journey to Fit

Cammy @ The Tippy Toe Diet

The Hope of Impermanence

There’s a smell in the countryside of western Pennsylvania that I’ve never smelled anywhere else (and it’s not the smell of fracking…yet). It’s the smell of hardwoods and evergreens, lichens and fungus, and leaves rotting on the forest floor. On summer mornings, whether I’m taking a walk  or riding on the back of the Irishman’s Harley, I want to continually inhale as it blows through my hair and bathes my skin in its cool familiarity.   

That smell is as grounding as a cleansing breath in meditation. It reminds me that home exists inside myself and that it’s possible – and preferable – to be comforted with something as simple as a smell.

Strangely enough, I am also comforted by the truth of impermanence, the Buddhist teaching that – put simply – everything organic and emotional will change, decay, and die. Understanding that truth and, more importantly, reminding myself of it (I have a really bad memory sometimes), I am better able to accept and live within painful body states and emotions.

This understanding didn’t come easy. For most of my life, I’ve clung to the hope of permanence and rebelled against change I didn’t create or welcome. I’ve moved so many times in almost 50 years that when I moved into the duplex I live in now, I promised myself I’d never plant another perennial. I’d never again leave a piece of me behind. Then, after growing tired of looking at the empty space between two day lilies, I bought two coreopsis plants, something I grew in my most recent former gardens in my most recent former house. They make me smile now, in this moment, and one day I hope they make the people who will live here after me happy, too.

It is my trust in the teachings of impermanence that I have decided it is time for another change, one

Al, left, with her sister, Willow

that I don’t like, but is in Alice’s best interest. The precarious nature of my knee means I don’t know when it will go out next, and I’ve been struggling lately to give her adequate exercise. Alice can’t live with me for a few months after my knee replacement surgery in September anyway, and so her sister Willow’s family has generously offered to foster Al while I attend to my knee now and after the surgery.

Of course, Alice doesn’t understand impermanence, and that’s what grieves me most. My sweet dog, with whom I’ve worked so hard these last four months – who walks perfectly on a lead, understands “No jump!” and runs like the wind (especially when fetch is involved), stands patiently while I bathe her and clean her ears, and earns her “good girl” treats every single day – will not understand why I’m not there to walk her or feed her or play with her or scratch her belly and call her Alice Tiberious Dog. She won’t be able to find me when it storms. I’m pretty sure I’m her best friend. She’s definitely mine. And letting her go is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

But…this, too, is impermanent. Her feelings, my feelings, my physical challenges…they will morph and change and mutate into something different, most likely better, because I’ve put the best people in place to give these transactions their best shot at success: Willow’s family, my family, my doctor, and my friends.

 

I will not bury the sadness I feel today. I am allowing it to bathe me with its urgency, just as I let the smell of the Pennsylvania countryside wash over me this morning when I took Al on her last (for a while) walk around our neighborhood. I am comforted by the hope of impermanence, that this, too, shall pass. 

AIM: Maintaining Support…Or Not?

I was standing over the stove yesterday whisking a cheese sauce for a new recipe I was trying (Baked Spaghetti Squashand Cheese…totally worth the time to make!) when it occurred to me that I used to sit down to whisk a cheese sauce when I weighed 300 pounds. My lower back killed me any time I stood longer than a few minutes.  

I’ve written more than a few times about how there’s no way I’d be where I am today – 150 pounds lighter than I was 8 years ago – without the support of some pretty amazing people, both in my “real” life and online. As I was losing weight, I was in touch daily on the Weight Watchers 100+ discussion boards, sometimes posting for hours in order to work out a difficult food or body issue. My friends and family were always there with words of encouragement and to help celebrate a milestone.

In maintenance, the support I need is more subtle. In fact, I often don’t recognize support as “support” until the moment has passed. At this end of the scale, support is a reminder, an experience, an appreciation. It’s remembering that at 300 pounds, my back ached while whisking cheese sauce or, in the case of this photo, rolling out lefse. I remember exactly how I was feeling and thinking at that moment my aunt told me to smile. I wanted to cry my back hurt so much, but I refused to sit down because I refused to let others see that my weight was causing me such pain. After all, I wasn’t really THAT overweight! (Oh the lies I told myself…)

Support is a friend sharing her own realization that I could appreciate and make my own. I had lunch last weekend with my friend, Chris, whom I had met on the 100+ boards eight years ago when I was just starting my journey and she had already lost more than 100 pounds. During lunch, she lamented a bit about how she’s gained some of her weight back, then almost in the same breath, she corrected herself and focused on the positive.

“It’s been 10 years since I weighed over 300 pounds,” she said. “I’ve been maintaining a weight far below my highest weight. That’s a huge accomplishment!”

Yes, it is. And her “Eureka!” moment was all the support I needed to remind me how far I’ve come as well. While I, too, would like my scale number to be a little lower, I have maintained a large weight loss for more than six years. While I can’t rely on that reminder alone to keep the weight off (yes…it still takes daily concentration and dedication to maintain), it’s sometimes a good idea to step back and look at the big picture (pun intended). 

Each of us can be our own best support system. Even if you’re still in the process of losing weight or if you’re stuck on a plateau or feeling blah in maintenance, support yourself by reminding yourself how far you’ve come. Maybe do it the next time you’re at the gym or out for a walk or run, or even when you’re standing at and not sitting by the stove whisking a cheese sauce.

--------------------------------------------------------

AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you'd like us to address!

Lori @ Finding Radiance

Debbie @ debby weighs in

Shelley @ My Journey to Fit

Cammy @ The Tippy Toe Diet

Pulling Back The Sheets: Intimacy and Body Image

It’s not easy to talk about, this most intimate of subjects, but I know sex and body image is something many of us deal with on some level, despite our body size. We can wear clothes that flatter, cover, disguise, hide, tuck in, suck in, boost and separate. But stripped down, bare and naked, the truth is beheld by a beholder, someone who isn’t us, and the myriad emotions associated with that most intimate moment is the topic of today’s blog. It’s rated PG, I assure you, but I thought I owed you all a note of warning.

---------------

Two-year-old grandbaby Mae loves to be naked. She’ll strip down whenever the mood strikes and run around the house yelling, “Nakee! Nakee!”

“Nakee” and alone, I’m better than I used to be. For the most part, I accept (or at least live with or just ignore) the sags, bags, wrinkles, and rolls (as I wrote about in last year’s post, “How Blake Shelton Helped Me Take My Clothes Off.”)

“Nakee” and not alone? Well…let’s just say I’m not as comfortable as Mae.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how does that translate for us – as people of varying weights and body issues – when we are the beheld and the beholder is our beloved or beloved-wannabe? Because at the heart of that “beauty…” sentiment is trust. Trust that when we are told that our bodies are beautiful just as they are, the person saying it believes it.

I remember when I reached goal six years ago, I was at a picnic with my then-husband, Larry. A male neighbor asked him what it was like to be with a “completely different woman” in bed. Without missing a beat, Larry said, “She’s the same beautiful woman I’ve always known.”

I was disgusted by the man’s question, but I was more surprised by my reaction to my husband’s response. Larry had always told me I was beautiful, no matter what I weighed. He loved me, literally, through thick and thin. But it was at that moment that I realized I never trusted Larry’s, or any man’s, words of beauty and admiration in the realm of intimacy. Why? Because to me, I was not beautiful, not in bed anyway. And if my truth was that my body was not beautiful, then – in my mind – that was every man’s truth, despite what they said to the contrary.

My sexual repertoire – at all my weights – has included remaining semi-clothed or having sheets or blankets strategically wrapped around me, and employing carefully choreographed maneuvers to keep body parts from being exposed or displayed in unflattering ways. The reasoning behind this routine comes from years of negative self-dialogue and a subconscious buy-in to the impossible societal definitions of beauty. That I believe that my body, in its natural state, is better enjoyed covered up and not in the naked open is so deeply ingrained in my head that it’s become as much my truth as the fact that I have blue eyes.

Since starting my meditation practice several years ago, my mind has been on a journey of truth. Emotions I thought I had under wraps sometimes swim to the surface and demand to be felt at seemingly inopportune moments, and trying to stop them is like telling a swimmer to keep holding her breathe when she comes up for air. They need to breathe. NOW.

The most powerful NOW moment to-date happened a few months ago when I was dating The Irishman. All he did was whisper, “You’re beautiful,” and in that moment, what I thought and felt down to my very core was, ‘Wow, he has really bad taste in women. I’m so gross, can’t he SEE that?’

It was such an overwhelmingly sad and empty feeling, it made me cry. It was like someone unearthed my 500-thread-count-sheet-wrapped body and put it on display in a museum next to a placard that read, “A 21^st-century example of a woman who never liked her naked body.”

Words tumbled out my mouth as I bawled and told him about my life-long struggle to accept my body. He kept stroking my hair and, when I calmed down, said, simply, “I know. I see you struggle with it every time we’re together. But I think you’re beautiful.”

And here I thought no one ever noticed my strategic maneuvers. Hmmm….

So how do you hear, believe, trust and accept another’s truth about your body when your own view of your body is less than stellar or even polar opposite of our beholder’s? How do you pull back the sheet, even a little, and welcome their truth and meet intimacy with no body image barriers?

Weight loss and weight maintenance envelop our entire lives, including our sex lives. I just don’t see it discussed much in the blog-o-sphere. I know it’s because this isn’t an easy subject to discuss in public, and anyone who reveals they have sex at all is subject to criticism from any number of ideological bents. But if you struggle with this, too, or if you’ve figured it out (or if it’s never been an issue….and bravo to you for that!!) and you’d like to share, leave a comment. No judgment from me, but I do ask that you keep it PG. Thanks!