Shame on Me

I'm watching Oprah right now and, as Ms. Winfrey would say, I just had an A Ha Moment. Her guest, Geneen Roth, who wrote the book Women, Food and God, just said (I love my DVR, I can rewind and pause so I get her words just right), "We somehow believe that if we hate ourselves enough, if we shame ourselves enough, we'll end up thin, happy, peaceful people."

Makes sense to me!

I have spent most of my life unhappy with, bordering on hating, my body. The tape in my head goes something like this: Your thighs are fat. Your arms are fat. Your stomach is fat. You're fat. You're fat. You're fat you're fat you're fat fat fat. I try to be more positive. At times I'm even able to look in a mirror and think that I look alright, but the very next thought is always, Don't go easy on yourself. If you stop trying to lose, you'll start gaining. I would never NEVER talk to another person that way. But for some reason, it's perfectly fine for me to talk to myself that way. And if you're anything like me, then you've made it okay for you to talk to yourself that way, too.

Oprah talked about her January 2009 cover of O Magazine where she had her thin self standing next to her fat self. The caption read "How did I let this happen again?!" She said that at the time she just wanted to get it out there, be the first to say it, before everyone else started in on her weight gain. But now, when she looks at it, she realizes that all she did was publicly shame herself. She said, "And in that cover what I was saying was that the thin me deserves all of the praise and the accolades. The thin me deserves to be loved, but the fat me does not."

That is exactly how I feel right now. I don't have a picture of the current me standing next to the me from August 2008, the thinnest I had ever been, but that image is as clear as day in my mind. A few months ago, at a neighborhood coffee, a new neighbor showed up. Throughout the morning I kept hearing myself say things about having to lose weight, not being able to lose weight while nursing (I loved that excuse!) and not being able to fit into my old clothes. Later, after the coffee was over, it dawned on me what I had been doing. I had been using my own secret code to tell this woman that I don't want to look like this. It's okay to like me because I'll be thin again someday.

And it's not just to new people I meet. It's to everyone. I'm constantly telling friends that I still need to lose this much weight. I can't quite fit into my favorite pair of jeans. Even with my mom and my sister, who I know love me unconditionally, I feel that I need to justify why I'm heavier than I want to be and what I'm doing to change that. My sister is coming into town in a couple of weeks (Yay!!) and guess who stepped up her workout in an effort to lose an extra pound or two more before Molly arrives.

I think I'm a nice person. I'm a good friend and I'm easy to talk to. I'm willing to help anyone who needs it. But from my point of view, none of that matters. Or at least none of it matters as much as the fact that I'm not thin. When I just outright say it like that it sounds absolutely ridiculous! So, I'm vowing to be nicer to myself. If I were my own best friend I would tell myself that I'm doing a good job! Keep up the good work, me, because the goal is totally in reach! You'll get there! I'll get there! I'm going to try to focus on the things I'm doing right...and even more so, try to take the focus off food and weight altogether!

It has occurred to me, in the past, that if I didn't spend so much time, so much brain power, thinking about my weight I could be doing some amazing things! I could be curing diseases. I could be discovering new elements. I could be paying more attention to my kids. Seriously, I could, should, be setting a better and more accepting example. A week or so ago my daughter poked me in my tummy. She asked why my stomach looked like that. I'm not proud of my response. "You, your brother and your sister made it look like this," I said as I pushed her hand away. I wish, instead of blaming her, I had said something like, "My stomach looks like this because I am blessed enough to have had you, your brother and your sister." I don't ever want her thinking she's to blame for my body issues. And I certainly don't want to teach her that a body that has carried and nursed three babies is something to be ashamed of.

This will be my last post on weight, at least for the foreseeable future. Instead of beating myself up all the time, I'm going to kill myself with kindness. And in the meantime I'm going to put my focus on other things. Writing, for instance. Since I write what I'm thinking about, and I'm no longer going to be thinking about my weight, it would make sense that you won't see any more about it. It won't be quite that easy, I know. So friends, when, out of habit, I start talking about how unhappy I am with my body, just change the subject. Who knows, maybe you'll inspire my next post!