Tao and Zen

This is inspired by, but not about, something someone else said.

Not all that long ago I posted about having gained a lot of weight in the last year. And it's true, I have, and it makes me very uncomfortable in a lot of ways. The most immediate problem is that because I have a very tiny frame, I'm more likely to be in pain, and of course, being this fat is just not good for my health in general.

But of equal concern to me, vain creature that I am, is that I don't think I am attractive when I'm this fat. I didn't think I was a beauty queen when I was fifty pounds less than I am now, either, but I certainly thought I was more attractive than I am at this point. I was still fat, but I wasn't horridly fat (technically speaking, I'm once more "morbidly obese"). I could stand for people to see me. These days I get upset at the mere thought of having my picture taken, whereas at the lower weight, while I didn't always like pictures of me, I could at least deal with the concept.

From the above paragraph, one could surmise that for me, more fat = less attractive. How un-PC of me! However, there are some mitigating circumstances here. First of all, as I mentioned, I have a very tiny frame, even for my (short) height. This means that my "fighting weight" is a good deal less than other people's, even other people my height. Ergo, at my current weight I'm actually a good twenty to thirty pounds more overweight than many other people my height. Second, while I feel that I am less attractive when I am fatter, this doesn't mean that I find fat people unattractive. I'm not particulary attracted to fat, and I do have an affinity for thin, androgynous looking people, but fat is not and never has been a dealbreaker for me as far as attractiveness goes (I become concerned only if the person's health is very bad as a result of being very overweight).

Therefore, it's pretty obvious that my issue is with how attractive I feel I am when I'm fatter, not how attractive or unattractive fat is in general. I think I can further break this down into three sub-issues:

1. When I am fat, I feel uncomfortable and am often in pain, which contributes to feeling unattractive
2. It's harder to find really great clothes at this size, so I feel that I can't dress attractively
3. I know that at this height and frame size, I should weigh a lot less, and when I see people who weigh what I should, I feel less attractive

There is also a fourth sub-issue, which is that some people find me unattractive simply because of my fat. However, while I find this annoying, it doesn't bother me as much as it might, because (unlike a lot of people who are as fat as I am now) I used to be thin, and I've had people find me attractive or unattractive for plenty of reasons that I could see clearly had nothing to do with being overweight. I think it's possible that people who have always been fat are never sure, when they are rejected, that they're not being rejected because they're fat, but it's not an assumption I tend to make without some kind of hard evidence. At any rate, this fourth sub-issue is one that I consider less important.

So let me look at these sub-issues one by one:

When I am fat, I feel uncomfortable and am often in pain, which contributes to feeling unattractive.

Being fat means that it's harder to fit into and onto things -- for example airplane seats -- and that makes me feel uncomfortable. In addition, because my frame is so tiny, being fat puts a lot of pressure on my bones and muscles and lowers my endurance. For example, the fatter I am, the harder it is to walk down a flight of stairs. Big-boned fat people, or fat people who also have a lot of muscle mass, don't have this issue to the same degree that I do.

When I feel uncomfortable or in pain, it makes me feel as though I have to work harder to feel happy and attractive. I feel old and sick and ugly. Since being fat means more pain for me and is not good for my health for other reasons (there's a history of both diabetes and heart disease in the family), I feel guilty for not being better about losing the weight, and this contributes to my overall feelings of unattractiveness.

In other words, the issue is not whether or not I am actually attractive; the issue is with how healthy and comfortable I feel. While certainly health often correlates to attractiveness, my fat does not necessarily equate to a lack thereof, except in my own mind. While certainly I should be working on losing weight, I should shake myself loose from the idea that the discomfort and pain associated with being fat makes me unattractive.

It's harder to find really great clothes at this size, so I feel that I can't dress attractively.

Actually, it used to be almost impossible to find decent clothes at the size I am now. However, in the last decade Lane Bryant's selection has gotten better and better, and on top of it, I do a lot of shopping at Torrid, which has even more of the type of clothing I like to wear. As long as I don't get much bigger than I am now I should be able to shop at both places without much trouble, and of course, the idea is to get smaller anyway.

Certainly I don't look the same in my clothes as a thin woman does in similarly styled ones, but I can dress attractively and I certainly look hot in some of my outfits. Therefore, while the situation vis a vis clothing isn't perfect, it's also not something that should make me feel unattractive.

I know that at this height and frame size, I should weigh a lot less, and when I see people who weigh what I should, I feel less attractive.

This is probably the biggest problem. I used to be thin, as I've mentioned before. My younger daughter, Cherry, actually looks very much like me at the same age. When I look at her, or (less so) at people who have the shape that I used to have, I get upset because I remember looking like that. Looking at Cherry makes me feel old and ugly sometimes for this reason. The funny thing is that she thinks I'm beautiful, and not in spite of my fat, either. I should listen to her more.

So anyway, I think the problem here is that I don't normally feel any particular age, except when looking at my younger daughter or other people who look the same way I used to look throws my fat into sharper relief. Often I think to myself that I'd be content if I lost any weight at all, but looking at Cherry makes me want to look like that again myself. I think it's pretty unlikely that I will ever look quite like that again no matter what I do, but I don't think I've accepted that yet and so thinking about that upsets me. I look at Cherry, I realize how much fatter I am now, I yearn to look like that again, and then I get upset when I tell myself that it's unlikely I will do so. In my mind, I still look like that, so when I subsequently catch my reflection in the mirror or in a window, I instantly feel unattractive. I suppose that if instead of being fat I was thin but had a very wrinkled face (my actual face is almost entirely free of lines), I would feel as unattractive as I do now simply because in that scenario I still wouldn't look as I did when I was Cherry's age.

Looking at all this, it's pretty clear that my sub-issues really have nothing to do with my being unattractive because I am fat. They have to do with my perception of myself and my fat. The fourth sub-issue deals with other people's feelings and perceptions about fat, and that's something that I can't do anything about, so I won't even try. As I said, it's not something that bothers me all that much anyway. But I can certainly do something about my own perceptions.

First of all, I can work on feeling more healthy at this weight. One thing I'd begun to do, as a result of stress, was to eat a lot of junk food. I began doing this while I was on low carb, using "allowed" snacks, and I felt awful because I knew that I was abusing food. Since dropping low carb, it's just gotten worse. I need to eat more healthy items without worrying about losing weight per se, just because they will make me feel better both physically and emotionally, and I need to be more active (just walking around will help) so that I can build up my endurance and resistance a bit better. Even if I stay the same weight, I'll feel better and that will make me feel more attractive.

Second, I can continue to dress attractively. Gradually I've been acquiring some very nice items which I'll be able to keep wearing even if I lose weight (if I gain any I won't fit in them, so I guess I'd better lose!). Dressing attractively will make me feel more attractive.

Third -- and this is the hardest -- I need to accept that I'm never again going to look the way I did when I was sixteen. I might lose a lot of weight and I might come close, but comparing myself to a girl in her teens, or even someone in her 20's, is just ridiculous. What I need to work towards is simply being healthy, and not worry about what somebody else looks like.

In a way, I suppose I'm trying to do something that I always said I'd never do: accept my fat. I don't have a problem with other people being fat, or accepting their fat, but for me it's very hard because I didn't spend my teens and early 20's being fat, and so I think of it as something that I can't accept. However, I think that my lack of acceptance is leading me to feel unattractive and to do things such as abuse food, which is something that I never did until fairly recently. In general I like myself, but I say terrible things to myself about my fat. I'm thinking that instead I just need to accept it and think of myself as a contentedly fat person, and then perhaps I can start to make more healthy choices once more.

The irony of the whole situation is that there are very few people who know me now who also knew me when I was thin; my parents and sibs, my first husband, and one longstanding friend are pretty much the only people who I've kept in touch with who remember me as a thin person. Ergo, the fat me is the me that people know, and in knowing that fat me, they know a person who cannot accept her body and so is a walking set of issues. I'm not sure I ever realized that until now, and I don't like it; I'm cheating everyone who knows me now of the person that I really am, without the body issues, and cheating myself as well in the process.

I need to change my outlook. I need to be a person who is okay with being fat, who is happy in her skin. I need to love the person I am at the moment, fat and all, and then I can perhaps do something about being less fat. I've lost weight before and I can do it again, but I'll never do it while I despise my body.

Food, ha ha, for thought.