weight.
it's been the bane of my existance since college....even when it didn't need to be. in college, i had an eating disorder. it consisted of, to put it literally...not eating. it was not about what i weighed...i looked fine at the time, but it was also what was going on in my head that would end up being either the thing that turned me around or killed me. i was down to 80 something pounds, i felt like crying every second of every day, my heart rate was so low, that they finally put me in a hospital, and i finally knew what it mean in life to be hopeless. truely.
it took work to get out of that. and by work, probably the hardest work that i've ever had to do. have you ever tried retraining a brain...not an easy task. but i did, and lived a healthy life, until the ex came in the picture. i think i weighed a healthy 120 pounds. for some reason, any little mention of losing weight, made me think that i needed to jump on the bandwagon and, what the heck....Atkins diet sounded "fun" at the time. my ex thought that since he was doing it, i should (for WHAT?) and like a moron, i did it.
yeah, not so fun when you go off of it and gain and gain. i put on a lot of weight, sometimes eating barely anything at all....and finally, after leaving the ex, it literally melted off. i worked out and at normally, and it all came off.
fast forward to a year ago. i had put on some weight...nothing astronomical, but it was a bell that went off in my head...i didn't want to get back to where i was and get panicked to lose weight and do unhealthy things to get rid of it quickly. so, i got my body bugg. it's awesome. it has allowed me to lose about 17 pounds in the past few months. in the beginning it allowed me to see exactly what i was burning on a day that i was working out, and a day when i was not....if you think i don't know the calories of things from my previous days, you would be mistaken, so i would just do a simple equation, or more accurately, the bodybugg does, and voila!
for some reason, with this new system, i have not thought about calories as much. maybe because the bugg is doing it for me? i don't know...it freed my mind for a while.
i was having breakfast with my friend this weekend and we were talking about a variety of things involving her husband and she made a comment that three months after she had given birth to their baby, her husband told her that he was "disappointed that she had not lost all her baby weight by that point" it infuriated me to hear that, because she looks fantastic. then i realized how deeply that this had gone with her. this was 2 years ago that this was said. she was devastated that this had been said and carried it with her now. was it motivating to her to lose weight....not in any way. did it break her down a little...yes.
i started realizing the difference in the way that men and women process comments about weight. and maybe its not men and women, but maybe it's more of a difference in the way someone has processed issues with weight in the past.
when i have been consistently losing weight and someone says something to effect when i tell them all the activity i do, "why is it not coming off faster"....not motivating to me. in my head, unlike maybe a lot of other people's, i automatically go to the place of desparation. "they are right, why am i not doing this faster?" when someone comments that a 90 pound person could be really cute...it fires off in my head as "yes, that's true", discounting the fact that when i was at that point, i felt like i was the most miserable person in the world and that my heart wasn't functioning properly.
i don't know why my body does or does not do things....i'm not sure. t asks why it is that when i start working out a lot, why i gain a lot of muscle and therefore gain weight....i don't know. if i could stop it, knowing what goes on in my head about weight, don't you think that i would? the fact that my bones are way more brittle now than they should be....not cute.
on the right is what 80 pounds looks like....not cute. and oh, not to mention that this is what killed her. that is definitely not cute. so when i hear comments like that, be it from anyone, man/woman, child or adult....it makes my insides want to scream. because you have no idea what it takes to get away from that and at times i wonder if i ever WILL be away from it. and if you don't get away from it, your other option is death.
when i think about this issue, i wonder what has triggered other people. it was one of my main focuses in working in the schools...i had never had someone say something to me in schools, but you cannot even imagine the things that people say to kids now. and it's NOT just the kids....adults can be mean too. if you are someone that hasn't had issues with weight (and i don't believe there are many out there), please think about what you say. to the majority of people that i know, it likely affects them differently than it would affect you. don't be flippant about it....because the chances are that the person you are talking to will not just let a comment go, if they've had any issues like this in their life and research states the majority of people have. comments are sometimes hurtful, even though we are not intending them to be that way.
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4 comments:
I agree that weight comments can dig in deeper than people realize. It's such a touchy subject. Why even talk about weight? Why not focus on achievements the person has done in fitness or more basic compliments about someone being strong, healthy, etc?
I will struggle with my weight for the rest of my life, but it does not define me. But if anyone EVER said anything to me about it, I would be devastated.
I think i've a lot to say about this, but will refrain from most of it.
In HS & after, i, too, did not eat. It was motivated by my parents, mostly, who constantly commented on my weight so i thought i was fat (i was NOT, i know that now). My mother encouraged an anorexic diet (egg & grapefruit, about 600 cal/day). I never took it as far as you did, but it has certainly messed with my metabolism and made the struggle with being overweight a sad trial.
On a side note, i've read that when girls begin to develop in early puberty, some parents tend to comment on their getting "fat." A cousin of mine at 14 mentioned stretch marks & getting fat (in my presence) & her mama agreed with her. I nearly went ballistic because this lovely young woman was no where near fat. I informed them that stretch marks only happen when the body is growing faster than the skin can accommodate - it is NOT an issue of "fat." Hope i made a difference, but i don't know.
Yes, folks need to be careful about what they say. (And i have trouble being concise!)
I am lucky in that I have never had anyone make nasty comments to me (despite struggling with my weight and yo yo-ing) but I have heard so many awful stories, especially what they say to kids now, like you mentioned. I know people want to help when someone has an issue, but it's just so touchy and personal.
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