On bodies
I have been a lot of sizes.
And since I was young, people have commented on my size. I was very very sick in middle school and weighed about 80 pounds and was about the same height I am now (a whopping 5ft 3 in). I was terrifyingly thin. I am sure I stunted my growth because of it. Once I started to get better, I had to gain weight. At the same time, we moved stateside from Spain, and I started school at a US high school. I wore baggy clothes to hide my body, and I vividly remember the feeling of a pair of shorts no longer fitting. I was getting healthier, though.
In high school, I was frequently told I was pretty; however, I never felt small enough. I wanted to be tiny like the other girls. I got plenty of attention from boys but saw how much they like the more petite girls, and I wished I was shorter, cuter, tiny—anything besides my awkward long-limbed self. I always seemed to have a boyfriend or love interest, so that made me feel pretty good about myself. Someone wanted me.
21 year old me on a church trip in Spain
During college, I was extremely active with marching band and dance and had plenty of attention from boys, so my relatively thin self continued to feel wanted. I remember feeling like I was pretty, well, at least pretty enough. I even managed to fall into a long-term relationship and get married immediately post-college. I was following the prescripted path. Pretty, fit, educated, married.
When I started working, I became more sedentary and put on a few pounds. They say domestication can do that to you. At one point, a dear friend of mine started using an app to track calories and lose weight. I weighed the most I had in my entire adult life, so I joined in. My metabolism and disposition helped me be extremely successful, and in a few short months, I was the lightest I had been in my entire adult life. I was complimented for being skinny and disciplined. People told me I looked good. I bought a ridiculously small pair of jeans that felt like a victory and a certificate of self-worth.
Then I got pregnant. The weight gain was so hard on me that my midwife opted to no longer weigh me. She said she could observe me and see if I was healthy or not. A recorded weight only brought on my anxiety, so we skipped it. I gained a lot of weight. Considerably more than the charts say you should. It was good for my baby and me, but man, was it hard. I was weighed right before I gave birth, and that was a huge whoa.
41 weeks pregnant
Link was born healthy and hungry. I won the genetic lottery, and all the weight fell off with nursing. I ate and ate and still everyone commented on how thin I was. Less than six months postpartum, I had a friend tell me to please eat a hamburger. That comment simultaneously stung and felt amazing. When Link was six months old, I became a stay-at-home mama and started a food blog to keep me sane. I made ice cream and cake every week. It was a fun time of not caring about what I ate, falling in love with food, and learning to cook amazing things.
At some point in there, I started to gain weight again. I am not sure why. My life was filled with uncertainly as I wasn’t working and my husband started his own company. We went on food stamps. I worried endlessly about how we would pay all of our bills. I needed something to control because everything else felt utterly out of control.
It was at this time that a friend had encouraged me to eat paleo, so away I went cutting out foods. I was VERY successful at my endeavor. I controlled my food, and I was complimented for being thin. Somewhere in there, the Whole30 diet got thrown in, and man, was I really good at that. Read labels and be obsessive? That was my jam. I micromanaged my food so very very well. I lost weight. I turned down birthday cake. I said no to rice. I was in charge, and it felt so good. All my food had to be grain-free, sugar-free, raised on a hippy farm.
Right before I hit the deck
I went on a road trip with a friend about a year into these disordered eating patterns. Outside of my routine, it was so hard to eat the way I wanted to, so I opted to not eat. That worked out pretty well when we were just sitting in the car for the first couple of days. Choosing not to eat didn’t work out so well when we went on a tour of the Maker’s Mark distillery. While moving from a hot fermentation room to the humid outdoors, I passed out. On a walking tour. No, it had nothing to do with the whiskey.
I got down to a ridiculously low weight. I remember checking my weight and height on the body mass index scale and realizing I was just a few decimal points away from being classified as underweight. It was exhilarating. I had such little control over the rest of my life. We were in over our heads in a startup I didn’t want. It was just so nice to be in control of something.
There came a time, though where I fell in love with a girl, and this girl had a long-standing affair with the out of doors. In order to play hard with her in Mother Nature, I had to learn a different way of eating. First of all, it involved eating. Second, it didn’t matter what the food was as long as I would eat it. Both of these were huge challenges.
Summit snuggles are almost as good as summit cookies
Somehow I learned to eat. I’ll never forget the day we summited Three Fingered Jack I brought along these fancy french chocolate cookies because they were my favorite, and I hadn’t allowed myself to eat them in years. They were the most delicious melty mess. Summit cookies became my thing, and eventually, even Oreos made the cut.
When I said fuck it to my life and moved to Mexico to chase the wind, I started the hard work of allowing myself to eat everything. It was and wasn’t conscious simultaneously. Sometimes I would get so caught up in the fairytale of living in a rural Mexican village and kiteboarding that eating a hamburger for dinner was part of the dream. Other nights I would have to talk myself into making pasta for dinner because it was easy, what we had on hand, and the calories our worn-out kiteboarding selves needed.
Along with learning to actually eat, being outdoors started to fundamentally change my body. Well, really, it was kiteboarding. My first season of kiting in Mexico transformed my flat behind and skinny legs into some nice strong, but thick, thighs. One day late in the season, my lovely aerial silks instructor remarked how much she had enjoyed watching my body transform in the few short months we worked together.
Aerial silks class
More kiteboarding, hiking, pasta, and now COVID have brought me to what I can only assume is the heaviest I have weighed in my adult life. I am not sure because I haven’t weighed myself since 2018. My thighs and jeans are no longer on speaking terms. My belly prefers a stretchy waistband. Wearing skirts or dresses makes me uncomfortable because my thighs rub together. There is a moment of pretty much every day where I want to crawl out of my skin because of the way my body feels.
However, I can climb mountains and spend hours on the water under my kite. Sometimes I can even still pick up my 85lb nine-year-old. I am grateful for my body and everything she does for me. Intellectually, I know I am pretty strong and can do the things I want to do because of my current size and shape, but every day is a battle to not come unhinged on the image looking back at me from the mirror. More often than not, I cringe when I glance at myself as I get out of the shower or see myself in a picture.
This is no way to live and I am working really hard to change this pattern.
I have had to develop some thoughts and mantras to repeat to myself when negative thoughts arise. This is a literal conscious every day effort to rewire my neuro-pathways. If I don’t force myself to think something different in the exact moment a negative thought presents itself I. Will. Think. It. All. Day. Long.
Thick thighs can carry a lot of kite gear
The process is arduous, and most days, I just feel like I am repeating things trying to convince myself they are true. I often feel like a crazy person because I have taken to saying them out loud. They seem to carry more weight that way. These mantras include:
I have better things to do with my time than worry about this.
My thighs are strong. If you want skinny legs, then give up kiting and it’s not like you are going to do that.
Your self worth is not determined by what your belly looks like
Can you do the things you want to do? Do you enjoy chocolate? Yes? Then move along.
Ok. Yes, you could eat more veggies. That’s fine. But that doesn’t mean ONLY veggies.
Literally, no one cares what you look like. You are loved just the way you are.
Exercise because you love to move, not to earn food
BODIES AREN’T MEANT TO BE STATIC
I have also found that if I play hard and wear myself out, I feel a little more comfortable and well regulated. It’s why I try hard to spend copious amounts of time outside. Actually, our whole little family does better when we have gotten our ya yas out, so it is a priority for us most days.
It’s hard to write this when I am still so deep in it. I don’t have answers. Just a journey and a chance to record this moment in time so later I can see how far I’ve come. That’s my fucking brave for now.
