a body at rest

Before the new year began, I was thinking about trying a low-carb diet. I have never, in my whole life, gone on a "diet." Instead I have made complete lifestyle changes with the intention of sticking with that plan forever. But I was thinking about trying this diet anyway. I checked out a bunch of books from the library, hit up some low-carb friends for their experiences, studied the scientific literature, and genuinely thought I might do this thing. This diet thing.

Here's why.

I've changed the way I eat in many ways over the past ten years. I've done junk-food vegetarian. I've done whole food vegan. I've done raw. I've done WAPF. I've done Paleo.

I've changed my activity level, too. I've been a gym rat. I've been a yoga freak. I've been a jogger. I've been a cyclist. I've lifted weights. I've worked out by countless silly videos. 

I've done so many things to try to heal my body from the way I did things when I didn't know any better.

I like where I am now. I feel comfortable where I am now. I even have some confidence. I love how I eat. I love how I move my body. There are a few things that need work, but mostly, I think I'm in a good place.

Much of this is because of Health At Every Size. I credit this philosophy with giving me permission to live as healthfully as I know how without using the scale as my primary rubric.

But here's a little secret. Some part of me -- I'm still not sure how big it is -- believed that if I let go and followed the philosophy, if I adopted a healthier diet for all the right reasons and found activities that I truly loved, I would lose weight.

Although HAES is not a weight-loss program, many people do lose weight when they embrace it, because they stop following fad diets and punishing workout routines and instead eat consciously and exercise normally. Weight loss is just a side effect, not a goal. Some people do not lose weight, of course, and that's considered acceptable, too. What's important in HAES is not pounds or sizes or BMIs, but personalized healthy habits.

I've been one of those women who has not lost weight. No matter what I've done over the past ten years, my weight has stayed roughly where it is now, give or take ten pounds. Through two pregnancies. Through veganism and high-fat animal foods. Through green smoothies and cod liver oil. It. Just. Doesn't. Budge.

And maybe I started to feel self-conscious again. Maybe I started to lose confidence. Maybe I started to wonder what I was doing wrong. Maybe I read Gary Taubes and started to worry that the teaspoon of honey in my tea was undoing my otherwise healthy efforts. Maybe I was watching closely as a low-carb friend shed pounds effortlessly. Maybe I thought how nice it would be if someone said to me, "Wow, you look amazing!"

Maybe those old neuroses starting flooding back in again. Maybe I started slipping in my good habits. Maybe I doubted that I was really so healthy, if I'd truly experienced such a turn-around. Maybe I wondered if I was deluding myself.

Maybe I tried to fool myself that I wanted to try a low-carb diet to get my blood sugar under control. Truthfully, it's mostly under control. But that seemed a good excuse. It's not weight-related, after all, which is good since I don't worry so much about my weight anymore. That's not what's important. I'm more evolved than all that. Right?

It's interesting how our minds work in these tiny hypocritical ways and we don't even have to be aware of it. Like how I thought, semi-consciously, that I might lose weight by ignoring my weight, or by focusing on a specific health marker like blood glucose, even though I didn't really care about losing weight or even think it was particularly healthy to focus on losing weight, at least consciously. That's pretty funny. Is funny the right word?

In the end I decided not to go on a diet. I stopped at a certain point and thought, Huh. What am I doing here? It might have been when I was actually pondering a bag of Splenda at the grocery store.

I don't want to get a bunch of nasty emails from people who had their lives saved by Atkins, so let me just say, it's not about the Splenda. It's not even about the diet. It's about my value system. In theory, I value all people, all bodies. In theory, I believe that corporations, including the monolithic diet, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries, induce women (and increasingly men) to loathe, mutilate, and subjugate their bodies for profit. In theory, I am a feminist who believes that people of all shapes and sizes, including the very skinny and the very soft, are beautiful and worthy of love and acceptance.

In practice, I am a hypocrite, if only with myself. 

Wanting to be an ambassador of Good Will Toward Bodies, I'm trying to find the courage to speak up when I hear my friends talk about their frustrations with workout routines or diets "not working." Whenever possible I try to say, "You look wonderful as you are. If you're doing everything right and this is what you weigh, maybe this is what you should weigh." And I mean it. I really do think that almost everyone I meet is a beautiful person. I really don't believe that unhealthy attitudes or practices are going to result in health even if they result in weight loss. It hurts my heart to hear women with luscious, curvy bodies, or sturdy, narrow bodies, complain about those bodies. It makes me angry to realize that they would probably feel perfectly normal and at peace with those bodies -- neither too admiring nor too condemning -- if they did not have a culture constantly screaming at them about how ugly they are.

Have you ever stopped to consider how much our self-worth, as women, is tied to body modification? The project of a woman's body is her primary occupation. At any one time we should, as women, be on a diet. Or be trying one workout routine or another. Or "cleansing." Or trying to stay away from caffeine or sugar or saturated fat. Or targeting our "problem areas." Or using some product made from the emulsified aborted fetuses of the red-bellied lemur to stop the "subtle signs of aging."

If left to our own devices, with no audience, with no public body ready to dismiss our bodies as repulsive and threatening to all insurance carriers, almost all women would follow the dictates of Health At Every Size without even thinking about it. Unfortunately, a woman's body is a public project, not a private one.

I can't tell you how badly I want to move from theoretically accepting to truly embracing. I'd love to appreciate my own body as much as I do my friends', but I'd settle for just not loathing it so absolutely. In a culture where it's not only typical but practically mandatory that women hate their bodies, it's a radical act to be comfortable in one's skin, to jump off the modification train and say, "Nahhh.... this is far enough."

If ever a woman dares to do this she is accused of giving up. Letting herself go. Committing to imperfection, and not the mild imperfection of bony elbows or ugly toes but the critical and fundamental offense of a body out of bounds. A body at rest.

Here's the truth: Eating normally and moving naturally, I may never weigh less than I do today. I may never wear a smaller size. I may never know what it's like to be given a gold star for beauty. And I'm tired of putting my life on hold until my body is more acceptable to strangers. 

My weight hasn't budged over the past ten years, but my health is very different. Ten years ago I caught every cold and cough that came my way. Now I almost never get sick. Three years ago, my digestion was so bad I preferred not to eat, ever. Now I almost never have digestive problems. Five years ago, I needed days or even weeks to recover from exercise. Now I do a little something every single day, and sometimes I do big things, and I feel strong and sure in my movement. I sleep better (when Tuna isn't shoving his cold, wet nose down the back of my shirt). I feel full after meals. And I laugh a lot. I used to be embarrassed about this, but to hell with that.

I am healthy for the first time in my whole life. And yet I'm supposed to concern myself with what other people think of the shape of my body?

Fuck that. 

If I can't do it for myself, I owe it to this girl to be better than that.

And now, a challenge for you. 

I rarely ask anything of my readers except patience with my long, convoluted essays. But now I'd like to deliver a challenge. If you have resonated with anything I've said here, spread the word. Post on your blog about your own "body project." If you don't have a blog (or if you are very shy), talk about it with a friend, or with your partner, or with your child (young girls often feel this pressure before they hit preschool). And if you feel inspired to think differently, to even try to think differently, post about that, too.

And one more thing. One day this week, find a female friend and tell her that she is good enough just as she is, regardless of whether she loses one single pound. Remember that most women are engaged, on one level or another, in a body modification project, with no end in sight.

We could all use a little relief.