Gaining by Losing?

You may have seen Special K’s recent ads that invite you to consider, “What will you gain by losing [weight]?” They even have a section on their website dedicated to showing answers to this question, received from those who are taking the Special K challenge.

If you’re trying to lose weight, whether through this program or something else, it’s an interesting question to consider. Yet the flip side is, do you need to lose weight to in order gain these things?

For more tangible items, you may have to shed pounds. Using myself as an example, here are some things I gained by losing weight that I couldn’t have gotten otherwise:

• fitting into seats easily
• not worrying if the seatbelt will fit
• being able to wear shirts with buttons without fear of embarrassment
• going through small spaces, like tiny cabins and stairs (especially helpful on my tour of the Galapagos Islands, when I was on a smaller boat)
• being able to fit into a standard wetsuit (also helpful in the Galapagos)
• being able to borrow clothes
• wearing clothes that once belonged to my mom

Some things became vastly easier when I weighed less, although it’s uncertain if I had to lose weight, or at least as much as I did, to achieve them:

• climbing to the top of Mt. Katahdin (almost a mile high)
• going up multiple flights of stairs without turning red and gasping for breath
• playing with my niece and joining her on the playground (I especially loved swinging again)
• having more energy

More interesting, though, are the intangibles, the ones where I wonder if weight loss was truly required.

Confidence. That certainly increased in inverse proportion to my weight loss. Having confidence, in turn, resulted in changing jobs so that I ended up doing something I liked better, taking on leadership roles at my church, trying online dating, and participating in more social events.

Better relationship with my dad. In losing weight, I finally let go of some old baggage related to my parents and weight, which allowed me to talk more openly with my dad about the issues from my teenage years and find resolution and healing.

Acceptance of my body, as I’ve written about before, and enjoyment of physical activity.

Increased love of healthier food and cooking. I never hated healthy food blanketly – I always loved fruits and many vegetables – but I’ve become much more willing to experiment and introduce more variety into my menu.

Determination to lead a life I won’t regret. When I was heavy, I often thought my life couldn’t be happy and fulfilling unless I was thin. When I realized being thin wasn’t an automatic answer, I searched for and found real answers for myself.

Did I have to lose weight for these things? I thought I did, but now, I’m not convinced.

Admittedly, our society makes it very hard for fat people to feel good about themselves as they are, and while some can manage it, many lose that battle. Of course, what I didn’t realize as a heavy person was that people of all shapes and sizes may struggle with self-acceptance, confidence, and self-esteem. Which is why I hesitate to promote it as something to gain by losing.

If you have very specific goals for weight loss that literally can’t be achieved any other way, that’s important to recognize and remember; it will be a great motivator.

But for some of the other goals, maybe it would be good to think of them as things you want to gain, period, no strings attached. Maybe that makes them harder goals, maybe even ones that feel impossible, but if you let your mind run wild and dare to imagine this possibility, do you get a different answer when you ask, what do you want to gain in your life? And when you know that answer, maybe you can start working toward that now, instead of waiting until some unknown future time, like after losing weight.

My First Tank Top

We’ve been having something of a heat wave here in Maine, although that didn’t stop me from getting out to pick blueberries last Monday afternoon. Picking allows plenty of time for reflection, and as I sweated in the sun, I thought it might be better if I was wearing a tank top instead of a T-shirt. The only problem is that, despite what Iwrote last week about feeling more comfortable with my body, I have never owned a tank top.

Buying one had simply never occurred to me, even when I went shopping with my niece recently and she bought some. Tank tops were for Other People, not the likes of me. Except as multiple days of 90-degree weather rolled by, I realized that this wasn’t true.

Even better, I remembered that I had $10 in Kohl’s cash, plus a 30% off coupon, and I took advantage of that on Friday. The options were somewhat overwhelming. Did I want something sparkly, or with ruffles? Spaghetti straps or thicker? How low-cut? What color? Finally I settled on a turquoise blue top, with thicker shoulder straps, a slight V-neck, and some embroidery at the top but otherwise undecorated.

It couldn’t have been better timing, because Saturday I went to the Saltwater Celtic Music Festival, and given that I was going to be spending hours out in the sun, some of it sitting but some of it dancing, I figured the tank top was the perfect thing to wear. And I was right. I was still hot, of course, and it meant having to slather more of myself in sunscreen, but between the top and wearing shorts, I had as little clothing sticking to me as possible, which was nice. It was also lovely when the breeze picked up to feel it on bare skin.

I couldn’t help thinking about how a younger me would have worn longer pants and shirt to something like that, no matter how hot I got as a result, because I was so embarrassed about my body. It was wonderful to feel completely comfortable wearing my first tank top – and I suspect it will not be my last.

Talking Heads

For a long time, my only association with the term “talking heads” was the musical group and newscasters (in that order). But as I gained weight, I developed a new fixation on the idea. I thought how wonderful it would to exist only as a head, and maybe hands, without worrying about the body I wanted nothing to do with, and certainly didn’t want to claim.

I thought I was alone in this. I didn’t know other people who were as big as me, and I couldn’t imagine that anyone in a normal body (whatever that is) would understand that feeling. Normal people, after all, had no reason to feel disconnected from their physical selves – or so I thought.

I was therefore surprised when I recently watched a TED talk by Eva Ensler, who spoke about disassociating from her body because of abuse issues; she felt she existed only as a head. The part that made my heart ache most was her comment: “I never had babies because heads cannot give birth.”

Then, in a nice example of synchronicity, I started reading Stranger Here by Jen Larsen, the recounting of Larsen’s experience with weight and bariatric surgery. Early on, when talking about being overweight, she writes about fantasies where she could do away with her body. For instance, in one her head was surgically attached to the body of a model; her old, fat body was left behind without a qualm, because, after all, that’s not who she was.

These stories bring tears to my eyes because they’re so close to home, yet at the same time so drastically different than how things are for me now. It sets up a strange, cognitive dissonance, remembering my earlier loathing of my body while knowing how much I now cherish it.

That cherishing, that embracing of the body as something to be enjoyed and appreciated, is a gift I wish I could give to all those who feel like they only exist from the neck up, for whatever reason.

Sadly, I am not a fairy godmother. I can’t wave a magic wand and bestow that understanding. All I can do is remind others that they are not the only ones to feel this, and that this body love doesn’t come automatically by seeing certain numbers on a scale. It takes effort and courage to be accepting of your body and open to what it tells you, no matter what size you are. But it is also worth every ounce of effort to be a whole person, not simply a talking head.

Do You Want a Burger?

Such an innocuous question, and yet somehow I struggled with my answer. The reason was that it was a few days before celebrating the 4^th of July with my dad’s family, and I still hadn’t decided what to have for lunch. My aunt was bringing burgers for some other people and asked if she should bring one for me as well. The easy answer would have been “yes”, but somehow I wasn’t quite comfortable with that, so I told her I’d think about it.

That’s when I asked myself, do you want a burger?

I pictured the day as best I could from past experience. I knew we would be at the shelter of a nearby state park, that it was forecast to be a hot day (around 90), and clearly some people would be having burgers. I could picture the grill marks, imagine the smell and the juices of the meat combining with mustard and ketchup for a mouth-watering, tasty bite.

And yet – I’m not a huge red meat eater, and the fact that I had recently had some ground beef made this less tempting than it might have been. Plus, I’ll be going camping in a month, and I knew that I most enjoyed burgers in that setting, after a day of hiking.

In fact, I realized that the only reason I was thinking about it was because I felt oddly pressured by the holiday itself, the sense that I should be having something grilled to celebrate our Independence Day. Isn’t that, after all, what true Americans do?  

So I considered grilling chicken (which is what my brother’s family did), but somehow that also wasn’t appealing. I tried to think about what I did want, regardless of the date. And then I knew.

I wanted a BLT salad. Specifically, a salad made with my own abundant butter lettuce, ripe tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market, bacon from happily raised animals, and some avocado. For me, that seemed like the perfect summer meal – light and cool but satisfying, sweet and salty and juicy and crunchy and creamy.

Happily, on the day itself, I was pleased with my choice. I was glad to have something cool, without worrying about standing over a hot grill in the already warm weather, and I enjoyed complementing the salad with watermelon and some cucumber. Everyone else seemed quite content with their grilled items, but I was just glad that I had taken the time to ask myself what I really wanted, and to be okay with the fact that it wasn’t a burger.