You didn't ask, but as an overweight woman, here are my two cents...

Lately I have been seeing a lot of news about obesity, fat shaming and body image. I also am raising two daughters, and all this makes me think about my experience with my weight. I have been overweight for most of my life, starting when I hit adolescence. This was definitely painful and not the ideal way to grow into a woman but in some ways it has been a blessing in disguise.

My last nursing job focused on patient education. One of the main programs was about preventing illness in overweight populations, so I know all the research about the risks of obesity. After talking to literally thousands of people about weight and these risk factors, patterns began to emerge. There were some people like me, who were working on weight loss and thought of it like a puzzle to be solved, and then there were (mostly) women who got defensive and/or started crying on the phone. The problem-solvers tended to have a lifelong weight issue, while the defensives/criers weight gain had been relatively recent. A common story seemed to be a woman who had had several children, raised them, and then hit menopause and gained weight. Sometimes these women were still in the kid-raising stage.

And they were DEVASTATED. They couldn’t believe this had happened to them. They wanted to try every crazy stupid diet in the book, or had already done so and had gained all that weight back plus some. Their self-esteem was crap. Many of these kinds of conversations I focused on taking away the shame they felt, and looking at the health benefits only- just changing small behaviors, like walking a little each day, can reduce risk for disease, and improve energy level. Some of these patients were unable or unwilling to see their weight in this framework. At the end of the call they were supposed to set a goal of a small change they could make to be healthier. The whole conversation I had planted ideas of things they could do. Inevitably many said along the lines of “I want to lose ten pounds in the next month.”

That is not a reasonable goal. For one thing, losing more than two pounds in a week can be extremely difficult, especially for women, and they want to lose more than that. Then there is the fact that you CANNOT control how much weight you lose in a month. Your body makes that decision and your brain and its desires do not factor in. What can be controlled is what you do to become healthier, to get your body to move to a healthier weight.

After a few years at this job I started to wonder why I wasn’t as emotional as some of these people I talked to. Now I won’t say that I have not struggled with my self-image, I have, but most of it was in the middle-high school years. Since then I watched/endured my mother’s death from lung cancer, earned a degree, married my husband, had my first child, was a caregiver to my chronically ill father, watched my father die, and had my second child, who was born with a life-threatening congenital defect. Most of the last year has been consumed by keeping that baby healthy, so my weight has gone up. I don’t really care. All that awesome shit I did I accomplished as a fat person. I am fucking awesome!

So that is why I think coming of age as a fat person was actually a good thing in some ways. I had to develop my self-esteem based on something else than my appearance. Not to say that some of the defensives/criers only had self-esteem based on their appearance, but it seemed like that it was enough of it that they had a real problem with shame.

Now for all of those people out there who have never had this problem (and are prone to judgment), think about this. Imagine that the thing you hate the worst about yourself is posted on a board you carry wherever you go. Everyone judges you for it, and offers advice. No one accounts for the enormous amount of energy it takes to change, and just asks you why you don’t change and get it over with. If people had to do this, share their issues with infidelity, spending, drug-abuse, chronic alcoholism, etc. the way overweight people have to, we wouldn’t have all the fat shaming going on.

I read an article recently that talks about being an ‘other’, someone who is different enough from the norm to feel like they are not normal. Obesity was the example they gave of an ‘other’. I have been an other most of my life and have developed a positive image in spite of it. Many of these people that were so upset about their weight did not have this experience and were having a hard time.

They say that obesity discrimination is the last allowable form of discrimination. Now there is research that shows fat shaming is not productive. It is not only harmful to fat people, but to everyone, especially girls. When women cannot objectively look at an issue that should be completely health related, when they think of how they SHOULD be instead of WHO they are, they are stripped of their power. Not only does it waste their time in feeling less than they are, they are not able to build on the amazing daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, women they already are, and where they could take themselves. What a waste of energy.

Not that I am saying we should just have a big smorgasbord and all give up. What scares the crap out of me is going the way my parents went. They both died of preventable illnesses. I see the path in front of me, full of diabetes and heart disease. Losing a little bit of myself at a time until I cannot be the person I want to be because I am too restrained by illness.

But I am not going to lose weight because I want to fit into a size 8. I am not going to do it because I want to be a MILF or so people will approve of the way I look. I am not going to set some grand number that needs to be on the scale so I can feel good about myself.

I am going to value this body God gave me by doing the best I can day by day. I will exercise how I can, no matter how small. I will work on making the small changes in food that add up slowly. I will eat ice cream with my girls because life is too short to count calories, and they need to see that as well as a woman who takes care of herself. If I get down to the magical weight that the charts say I should be, well fine. If I only lose a little but my blood work, blood pressure, and energy are good that is fine too. My goal is my health, and showing my girls how to become confident women. Holding myself up to a standard set by the media achieves none of those. 

Real vs. Fake

I have reached a milestone in my life, one that many mothers go through. First grey hair? No. Send kids to private or public school? No. I am speaking, my friends of real vs. fake, pants that is.

My ‘fake’ pants are a pair of yoga pants that have never seen, and probably never will see a yoga mat. I picked up this term from my sister. I will call her to go shopping, and her response often is: ‘Well, ok, but I don’t look cute. I’m not wearing makeup or real pants’. Now that I am a stay at home mom I have the daily quandary of which to wear, real or fake. This entails a complex algorithm that includes the activities of the day. Appointments for any of Anya’s care move the decision closer to real pants. Lack of seeing anyone I do not live with move it closer to fake. I also take into consideration when I was able to achieve taking a shower, and if wearing fake pants will make me more likely to walk on the treadmill.

This has never been a problem for me before. I could never be accused of being a fashion maven. For most of my life I only wanted to be appropriately dressed. I didn’t want to stand out, actually blending in would be better. In high school my wardrobe consisted of jeans, t-shirts worn with a flannel shirt, and shit-kicker shoes. College taught me that wearing nice pants and shoes equaled more confidence when testing or giving a presentation. When I started my first non-scrub-requiring nursing job I used that lesson. We were critiqued frequently and I felt more comfortable dressing a bit better than I was expected to. Many co-workers dressed very casually in exercise clothes. I never understood how someone could be expected to be taken seriously while wearing a track suit.

So now I find myself rationalizing that I can wear fake pants every day. This was an easy decision when I was staying in the hospital with Anya recently: fake all the way. I could try to sleep comfortably without wearing pajamas, and if I had to meet with any doctors I would still be wearing clothes. Right before she went into the hospital I had bought a bunch of active wear shirts to go with my fake pants, so I felt cute. Cuteness was reinforced when two young men tried to hit on me when I was doing some Christmas shopping at the Galleria. Usually this would have embarrassed me terribly. That day, covered in hospital funk it made my week.

I have had a pair of pants hanging up in my closet for about a year. I have never worn them out. They are a great color and length; they don’t cling to my thighs, the perfect pants. They were marketed as, and sold, as dress pants. The problem is they don’t have a zipper or button; they are slip on pants. They feel exactly like fake pants. I should wear them all the time. The problem is they make me feel like I am wearing fake pants, so wearing them out to dinner or to church just feels wrong. I watch people wearing dresses and tennis shoes together and wonder why I care so much.

I wore fake pants down on Main Street  St. Charles one Saturday evening for Christmas Traditions, I rationalized that I was walking so fake pants were appropriate. (Yes, I usually wear real pants when shopping) I was very confused when I mentioned the fake pants I was wearing, and my cousin commented he thought they were dress pants. He owns and runs a successful boutique on Main St that sells women’s fashions, so he should know.

Maybe he should start making and selling women’s fake dress pants for all occasions. I could be a consultant! Until then I guess I am stuck with my daily algorithm… real or fake?

Why this is a good thing

Nearly every woman has uttered the phrase: 'I am becoming my mother.' It is a ubiquitous statement, something to be joked about or even feared. Occasionally you may find someone who says it with pride, but that is rare. To become one's mother means you are slipping into middle age, no longer able to claim you are too young to know better. Responsibilities abound, and you find yourself acting like the first authority figure you ever knew: Mom.

When my first child, Arwen, was born, I was working full time. I had just started a new job and thus was unable to take more than six weeks of maternity leave. I was completely torn in two about my situation, I had not reconciled myself yet to the idea that I would be a working mother. My own mother had stayed home and what's more had always touted the importance of staying home. Over time I became used to the idea of working, and even saw strengths in the arrangement for my child. Another truth was revealed: you cannot expect a college educated woman who enjoys her career to turn that drive off for years while her children grow up. I had made my choice years before I had planned having children.

 I was spared any comments from my mother, because she died of lung cancer when I was eighteen. I sometimes question what she would have thought about the choices I have made. My mother had a different set of expectations for herself than was set up for me. She never aspired to go to college, but she expected me to. She was proud I wanted to be a nurse. Therefore I expect that she would have been proud of what I have achieved.

As soon as I had Arwen memories came flooding back at me. When I was about ten there were a lot of babies born in the family, and Mom coached me on caring for them. Unasked-for advice and wisdom popped into my head routinely. Being mother to a daughter healed part of my heart.

 Still, my parenting experience was different from Mom's. Shortly after Arwen was born Dad started getting sick more and more often, and I had more responsibility in helping him navigate his health care. I was the sandwich generation, and I wasn't even thirty.

 Anya's care has required me to stay home, in a very fortuitous situation where I stay at home with my kids as well as use my nursing skills. Since I quit working I feel a closer tie to the mother my Mom was. I am becoming my mother, and it is both strange and wonderful. I have more insight into her life than I ever have had before. My mother also had very unique skills to teach: overcoming adversity, raising a family on three hours of sleep or less, and how NOT to stain the stairs to the basement (make sure you don't stain yourself into the basement).

 This is my blog about family life, that and whatever pops into my head.