It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I know, I know – how many intermittent bloggers have started a post with that opener?!
Thing is, following that last post, my life has turned upside down in the very best way. New job, new partner, new outlook, new attitude – I’ve been so busy with life I’ve hardly had any time to tell people what to do!
What’s brought me back to Proverbial Pearls is something I didn’t expect i’d ever write about: body positivity. This will be a long one, so take a deep breath and make yourself comfortable as you embark on this essay.Body positivity/self-image/self-esteem… It’s a topic which has been covered many times by many people, and has had a significant amount of media coverage recently and ongoing. As such, I am aware that what I am going to say is neither original nor ground-breaking, but even if there just one person out there who might have experienced a similar trajectory to me (I refuse to use the vomitorious word ‘journey’) who might feel less isolated by reading my story, then I’ll be content. Plus, rather selfishly, I’ve just re-read this post before pressing publish and realised how cathartic writing it was. Perhaps that one person I’ve helped feel less isolated is actually me?
So, let’s have as potted a history of my body attitude as possible. Growing up, I never had a problem with food. I had hollow legs and would be constantly grazing. my first word was ‘more’, closely followed by ‘biccy’! I ran around like a mad thing outside, walking the dog, exploring the woods near our house, and bossing my sister around in our own miniature sports days (I’m sorry, Claire). It balanced!
Next chapter: puberty. I feel like this word has to be accompanied by the Jaws theme tune! I moved less, because I felt aware of my changing body – and honestly, I got lazy. I also wholeheartedly detested getting sweaty at school and didn’t make an iota of effort at all. To add to the excuses, complicated eyesight meant I had trouble with hand/eye co-ordination so I was always chosen last for teams as I could neither throw nor catch terribly well. Teachers only bothered with the gladiator students (ha. Not me) and plus, I just didn’t care enough about any of the repulsive sports at school to bother putting myself out and making the effort to be improve. In addition, I couldn’t imagine that any sport would ever be appealing based on my school experiences, so I didn’t think to look beyond the school gates. I kick myself now, of course, but hindsight’s a great thing, isn’t it?
Together with the onset puberty came the inevitable school bullying that everyone experiences in some capacity at some point in their lives (if you never have experienced it, I sincerely hope it’s because you are a genuinely lovely person incapable of being picked on, and not because you were the bully). The teasing about a changing bod did nothing to motivate me to shift my carcass or reduce the biscuit intake! I wasn’t what you would consider colossal by any means, but I was certainly nowhere near the average size 10 of my year group. However, bizarrely enough, not once, ever, throughout the entirety of my teenage years did I equate clothing size with weight, nor necessarily with what I ate. It seems remarkable to review that sentence (particularly in light of the fact I went to an all-girls’ school), but it’s true. I had a truly wonderful role model in my mother, who never, ever, ever made comments about her weight in front of me, who never bought women’s magazines and who never made comments about my weight. The only thing she did to influence my thinking was to casually show me a newspaper article when I was about 14, which told the story of a teenager who suffered from anorexia and who had been on the brink of death. The article had a ‘before’ and ‘after’ pair of photographs – before and after the extremes of the eating disorder affected this poor girl – and my mum just said, ‘she thought she looked more beautiful in that picture on the right.’ I remember this so clearly, and I can still see the images in my mind nearly 15 years on. I was so appalled that anyone could think that skin stretched over bones could be beautiful – and more beautiful than the glowing, ‘normal’ girl pictured before anorexia set in – that that was enough to make me push away the very notion of a diet.
Fast forward to university, and HELLO freshers fifteen! Drinking and eating crap became normal, my padding had become more padded and by the end of university, I finally reached my maximum tolerance point. I was called ‘chunky monkey’ and felt incredibly round following an ill-advised pixie cut which made me feel like a pumpkin with a pea for a head! So, I started my first ‘healthy eating’ plan and started Weight Watchers. I lost a stone and a half, and for the next few years, oscillated between gaining and losing 7-10 pounds. In addition to this, I graduated from university and had no real idea what I wanted to do. Rather than pulling myself together and pulling pints even, I fell into a bit of funk. For quite a while. To cut a long story short, I then started temping and also set foot in the gym for the first time in my life to try and boost my mental health (channelling my inner Elle Woods: “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don’t kill their husbands. They just don’t.” I’m not at the husband killing stage, but the point stands!). Exercise became a habit – and! Shock horror! I ENJOYED it! Finally: no team sports (shudder) and no ball handling (wink wink and shudder). I didn’t realise that it was possible to enjoy feeling sweaty – but I did! I loved spinning, zumba and weights classes, and enjoyed feeling fitter than I ever had in my life. A baseline of fitness established, I then had the confidence to join an outdoor bootcamp class – and that was it. Deal sealed. Moving became as much a part of my life as brushing my teeth, and I continued to eat everything in moderation.
Then…. about two years ago now, when I was feeling beyond fed up with life (I was unhappy at work, unhappily single, unhappy where I was living), I made the decision to apply for the RAF. I know, right?! The girl who hated sport was considering the armed forces as a career! A job where you have to be really fit for a living! It was something that had been in the back of my mind for a while and I had a sudden moment of clarity – I wanted to apply because I was approaching the cut-off point for being too old to apply, and I didn’t want to reach 55 and think ‘how different might my life have been if I’d only tried? I was already quite fit at this point, but my focus suddenly sharpened. Diet became strictly healthy and I became single-minded in dropping into the required weight bracket for minimum qualification.
However, at the same time, I had a temporary promotion at work as my amazing, lovely, wonderful boss left and I was asked to run my department whilst a replacement was recruited. So for 7 months: I was looking after a department during an incredibly busy time of the year – and then going home and swotting up on current affairs/the history of the RAF/aircraft/current ops (it goes on) in the evenings, as well as working on my fitness, as well as working through the various application hoops. It didn’t help that I felt that the RAF was a ‘one egg, one basket’ way out of a position at work where I was feeling increasingly unfulfilled and miserable, and so I put incredible pressure on myself to get into the RAF and out of that job.
As a result, and throughout this whole timeframe, my periods stopped. For nine whole months, in the end. I had never experienced anything like this before – my periods were as regular as clockwork all my life, and I was single at this point so unless there was some immaculate conception witchcraft going on, I wasn’t pregnant. At first I wasn’t too concerned – I knew that periods can be delayed through stress and each month I thought that things would settle down… Not so. I ended up going for tests at the doctors; I had blood tests, scans, internal exams – and thankfully and mercifully – nothing sinister was thrown up aside from a hormone imbalance which apparently would calm down with time. I was told to relax. I could have decked the doctor at that point.
By May, the RAF application had come to a close: I had reached the penultimate point of the whole process and hadn’t got through. Weirdly, even though I’d wanted it so powerfully for the whole 9 months, when it came to the crunch I actually thought – you know what, I’m not sure this is me after all. And I was relieved. But I then had to go back to the Drawing Board of Life and try and come up with a new Plan. And still no periods.
Anyway, to summarise, I got increasingly desperate with the whole situation. One evening, whilst watching TV, I flicked through the channels and came across a documentary with the Body Coach. I instantly clicked with his style and his message, and on the back of that, bought his first recipe book as a) I’m a cook book geek and b) the food looked awesome (and c) if I’m honest, he was hot). Then…. on reading the introduction of the book, I read that too much dieting can have an adverse affect on women’s health and… can even stop periods. That was it. That was the magic line. I signed up for his 90 Day SSS plan in a heartbreakingly desperate attempt to get my body back into harmony.
Two and half months later, and having followed the plan to the letter with dotted Is and crossed Ts, I was in the best shape I’ve ever, ever been in (apart from possibly when I was 7?). I was absolutely miniscule; I had muscle definition, I had a thigh gap, my clothes hung off me. I had a pixie cut again to prove that I wasn’t a pea on a pumpkin. And guess what? Still no periods. Still unhappy. Still hated my job and still felt directionless and helpless. And even worse – I could feel the smoky tendrils of an obsessive mindset creeping into my mind. I was refusing nights out with friends because the food would be off plan. Admittedly, my incentive was genuinely my health and my periods – I would never have stuck to a plan like this without that powerful motivator. However, I could still tell that it had the potential to become something worse because at the time, I still thought my thighs were too big and that I needed to shave off the remnants of my love handles. I look back at the pictures I took of myself as part of the programme and think, ‘what the flaming hell is WRONG with you?!’ I looked like a boy I was so small!
Has anyone read ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman? (If not, you should.) It’s a semi-autobiographical story of a woman with post-natal depression in the Victorian era, which then was treated with bed rest and total lack of stimulation to allow the mind to heal. At the end of the story, the main character has lost her grip on reality completely – something the author said that she was close to. ‘I peered over the edge into the abyss, but was pulled back.’ That was how I was: teetering on the brink. I was so, so miserable, and just frustrated on the whole. I was applying for jobs all over the country, and not really getting anywhere.
But now. A happy chapter! I met someone. He has changed my life in every possible sense. I started taking the pill again and so my periods have regulated (had I had the chance, I’d have preferred to allow them to sort themselves out naturally, but goalposts move). Through being happy and relaxed, and also admittedly starting a new job where I’ve eaten myself silly through stress! – I’ve put on pretty much all my pre-RAF weight. Despite being blissfully happy, I have had many times where I’ve been full of self-loathing, looking at my 90 Day SSS pictures and punishing myself for letting myself go so completely. I actually tried doing it again – it didn’t work. I tried following the 5:2. I tried calorie counting. Being on the pill doesn’t make weight loss easy: I feel very puffy through water retention and I’ve tried to shift the excess pounds multiple times – but weight sticks!
Just as I was about to start another cycle of beating myself up and torturing myself with my tiny weeny body pictures, I downloaded Megan Jayne Crabbe’s book on body positivity, started read it, and I’ve found peace again. In one fell swoop, she has swept away my residual self-loathing, complexes, hang-ups, insecurities and bad attitudes. I haven’t finished it yet (in many ways I don’t want to) but one part that has stood out for me is the comparison of people to dogs. We are all the same species, but we are ALL different. Like dogs! You don’t see a St Bernard starving itself to look like a poodle – it’s just never going to happen. And yet that doesn’t make the St Bernard less of a dog or less beautiful/worthy of dog-ness than a poodle, does it?
So with the reading of that book, I asked myself the following questions:
Has your personality changed at all during the times your weight has changed? No.
Are you still the same person at 10 and a half st as you are at 8 and a half? Yes.
(Important, this one) Do you still enjoy exercise? Yes.
Are you proud of what your body can do? Yes.
I am just trying to build up my confidence – or, really, my lack of self-awareness! – back up to my teenage level. Yes, I am quite significantly rounder than I was a year ago, but really…. who cares? I now don’t worry about going out for dinner with friends because I’m veering off plan. I don’t panic about visiting people because I won’t be able to have ‘on plan’ foods (now that is a seriously crap state of affairs). What a freeing state of mind to have reached. It’s not going to be easy all the time, and I’ve deleted my 90DaySSS pictures from my phone because it’s just too awful to have them there as reminders.
I wish I had a profound quote to end on, but I don’t. Just, I suppose, the lesson here is to stop obsessing about body image so much. Love yourself (you only get one body), eat everything in moderation and find a type of exercise you enjoy. From there: live life and jolly well enjoy it!
proverbial pearls of wisdom 