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.

Below is a comment that I made in another person's journal, slightly edited for clarity:

M's advice -- "assume good intentions" -- is awesome. It doesn't really apply to me though. I don't assume BAD intentions, per se. I just assume, especially in the last six months (but it's been something I've been learning for years now), that some people, when they interact with me, are not really concerned as much with my needs and feelings as they are with their own agendas. I base this assumption on past interactions with those people, not (just) on cynicism (i.e., I wait for two or three pieces of what to me is obvious evidence, and factor in how much I've felt screwed over lately in general).

Because of that, I find myself less inclined, as time goes on, to go against my own needs and feelings and do things that people ask me to do simply because I love them. In other words, when considering something that someone asks me to do that would be "not good for me", I am less inclined to do it, where once I would have done. In general I feel that were the situation reversed, the person involved would not be doing those things for me. This is not to say that if I think someone wouldn't do something for me I won't do it for them; it's much more complex than that and I weigh in a lot of other factors. For instance, if I know X wouldn't do Y for me, but X is begging me to do Y for him and acknowleding that it's a big PITA but please please please, I'll probably do it.

And sometimes I just do it anyway, because I'm all about the unconditional love. Just, eh, one has to protect one's self too.

I repeat: I'm all about the unconditional love. But I think it's also true that sometimes, you have to take care of yourself. I'm very understanding when someone falls short of what I'd like them to be or do for me, but being understanding doesn't mean that I'm going to just stand there and accept being treated less well than I want to be. When these things happen and I sense a pattern, I step back. I'm still there for the person as a resource, and I'm still loving and giving, but I am more reserved, emotionally speaking.

An example of this is if I'm asked for more than I can easily give (for whatever reason), repeatedly, or if someone repeatedly breaks a promise or commitment to me, even with good reasons each time. After a bit, I will make myself a little less available in some ways, or I will be less enthusiastic when a new promise is made. I still care and I still love, but I become more reserved and just a bit more distant.

I'm not sure if this is a bad thing. On the one hand, I do it to protect myself, just a little bit -- to give myself just a tiny cushion from being hurt by that person in the future, and I do it because experience tells me that that person is in fact going to hurt me, if only in little ways. On the other hand I wonder sometimes if becoming more reserved is the best thing to do. I know there are certain people with whom I can never be reserved, who have only to call and I'll fling myself over whatever emotional cliff may be necessary -- and this may be despite the fact that our relationship is hidden so deep so as to be almost invisible.

So it seems to me that with certain people I distance myself when I am disappointed by them, while with others I am never disappointed by anything they do in the first place. And I wonder if I have done the wrong thing, to ever love people for whom I can't help but reserve myself from a little, if perhaps I should only love the people whom I can always love unreservedly. It's not that I love the former group less; it's that I love them less freely. And I wonder if that is a bad thing.

I was talking recently to one of my colleagues about the trip to Bangalore, India that I'm now not taking, and he was asking if I minded, knowing that I'd originally been quite positive about the trip. However, coming back from Britain I've had a really hard time recovering from jet lag, mostly because I really overdid it while I was there (mostly work-wise).

So I said, "Well, I don't know...I mean, I have no immune system really, and I'm so afraid that I'd pick up something there and I'd be really sick..."

And then I realized what was really bothering me, and I felt horrified, but I said it anyway.

"I've gained so much weight this past year," I said. "And I was so uncomfortable in the plane to and from the UK, and I was just dreading being so uncomfortable in the plane for so long..."

I'd made a commitment to myself, years ago, that I would never let my weight interfere with my life. I've known people who made excuses as to why they couldn't do this or that -- biking, camping, traveling -- due to their weight, and I'd vowed I wouldn't do that. And here I was, saying that my weight made it too uncomfortable to travel someplace that I'd been excited about.

The funny thing is that I'm not (yet) at my top weight. I've weighed more than I do now, at least a little -- well, okay, I don't actually know that because I haven't stepped on a scale, but I'm fairly sure that I'm at least ten pounds under my top weight. However, I feel ickier than I remember feeling when I was at that top weight. I feel enormous and uncomfortable and unhealthy and bloated and...

And the thing is, I've wanted to keep on my plan the whole past year. The one thing that is true about me is that I don't deal with stress well, in terms of diet, and 2004 was a very stressful year. Ultimately it was all good stress -- any learning situation is good -- but it was a lot of stress. It began with recovering from major surgery, and it ended with my leading a major initiative at work. In between the two, things just went nonstop. And I just kept gaining weight. It's the one year since 1999 when I didn't lose any weight all year -- I just gained and gained and gained.

The other day I said to my partner Chris, "Everything about my life is absolutely wonderful. Absolutely wonderful -- everything except my weight." But you know, I can say this but at the same time I know that if I've gained all this weight there is something going on in my life that is not good.

When I look back over the past year, there was one thing that fairly consistently influenced me in a negative way. It's not the only thing that caused me stress -- there were several different things that did so, in both positive and negative ways -- but it was the one thing that pushed my buttons all year long and was behind a lot of the less pleasant things that I had to deal with. I hesitate to name it because it would sound as if I were demonizing someone, and frankly, that's never been my intent. But on the other hand, to say "there's something that's on my mind" and then not to name it...that's not right. So here I go.

My issue this year has been my ex. Not him personally, but my need to get past the things that, from my point of view, happened in our relationship. For various reasons, and I don't blame him for this, it's been difficult. It's not worthwhile to go into all the ins and outs and recriminations and misunderstandings -- that's not the point. The point is that, for various reasons, I found myself very concerned, over most of the last year, with what he had to say about me.

And that's not useful. My opinions, feelings, and beliefs about our relationship are mine. His are his. We have our own truths, our own realities. We have our own lives. He's doing some really awesome things with his. I am doing some really awesome things with mine. But we're involved with each other in a way that we shouldn't be. We care far too much about what the other person says, or might be saying, about us. We haven't let go.

I can't make anybody else's decisions, but I can make decisions for myself. I have to let go. I had succeeded in letting go, actually, to a large degree, but then I made a decision that resulted in my getting re-involved, emotionally speaking, and I can date the worst of the weight gain -- the last six months -- from then. And that's just wrong. It's not his fault; it's mine. I am responsible for my own life, my own body, my own health. And what's right for me is to finally just let it go. I was with this man for seven years, and some of it was great and some of it wasn't, but I am in a fantastic place, I have a truly beautiful life, I'm really happy, and nothing that he thinks or says about me, or that I think or say about him, should matter to the other.

When it's all said and done, we're both people, nothing more and nothing less. We love, we live, we make our way through the world. Whatever happens to us in our lives will be what we've made of them. And that makes it all good.

I think once I've finally walked away, without looking back, I'll have leapt over the last obstacle in my path. It's not him. It's me. I am the obstacle.

And I think that at long last, once I have leapt it, I can be happy, and healthy, and wise.