Living in This Body, My Body
Like many young people growing up in today’s society, I feel like I have been surrounded by images of what it means to be beautiful/attractive/sexy my whole life. I can’t say I’ve been immune to the influence of those images. I feel like I have spent the better half of my life worried about the 10-20 extra lbs I’ve been carrying around. Hey, I’m a girl who likes food (sorry not sorry about it). Ask my parents if they had ever seen me turn down a piece of food in my life - the answer is a hard no. I am unapologetic about my love affair with the culinary arts - eating food, talking about food, finding good restaurants, and being around a table with good people. It is just my THING and the thing that has been my true north through many moves and rebuilding my communities of friends across the country. Food never fails in terms of bringing people together.
Anyway, I can remember being 13 years old and worried about dieting and trying to change the body I was in. It hurts me now to think about the ways we shape young minds and hearts in this way. It wasn’t until 2017 when I did my first Whole30 that I started to really examine my relationship with food. I will say, it remains complicated. Although my love for food has remained solid, it has been complicated. Food has been comfort, it has been punishment, it has been reward, it has been full of shame, and many other things. I have never felt a sense of control and peace around food. I feel the exact opposite - out of control. This is a part of me that is FOR SURE still going through some healing and discovery. There have been times in my life I have been super strict about what I was eating and not eating, super strict about working out to burn off what I just ate, and many many hours spent feeling guilty about something. It has taken up a lot of brain space and has taken a lot of my peace.
That issue only became more complicated after being diagnosed with a whole cart full of chronic illnesses and other issues over the past few years. On top of dealing with constant shame and guilt around a bit of extra weight I carry around, then I’ve had to deal with all of these underlying issues that made matters worse.
Living in this body has been hard. Living in this body and letting go of the feeling that I needed to be in another body, a better body, has been hard. It feels like the challenge that will continue to show up again and again, not to make my life harder, but to serve as yet another invitation to healing.
I’ve started to do some reframing about my “health” practices. Yes, I have my food that doesn't make me feel so good, I know that exercise does make me feel good, but I’ve learned to look at this work as much more gentle and full of love. When I get up in the morning, I have reframed the thought to be less about what workout will result in the most calories being burned to work off whatever I ate the night before, and more about what type of movement would serve me best.
This reframing is hard. I’m a human who is still influenced by the world around me. Would I like a six-pack? Yeah, that would be cool. But I keep learning again and again that it all feels so much better when I treat my body like my friend and not my enemy and when I remind my body that I am not going to abandon her or punish her but show her the most loving care.
I’m still learning what it means to live in this body and care for her the way she is.
