literature

My Body

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I don’t believe there is a day that goes by without looking at my body in the mirror. As a writer, I feel as if it is important to record my thoughts and amplified feelings, such as when I get a lyric stuck in my head and I need to write the whole song. When I do look in the mirror, it is no question that I was not born naturally slender and firm. I still constantly compare myself to other women, and wonder for a millisecond where I didn’t get that same bargain. The truth is that this body is mine, and I work with what I have. Somehow, this body was meant for challenge after challenge, and it has history and character. Despite my cells renewing themselves, it’s practically the same outfit.

This story is also intimate, and it is going to make me open up about a lot. As I stood in front of the mirror in a sports bra and new underwear, it is the first time in forever that I saw it in an entirely different light. Maybe it’s because it’s a bright summer day, or the idea that I was about to go to the gym. The daily routine is that whenever I change clothes and get to see my body how others may see it, naked or not, I do a 360 degree turn and check up on my backside. Added to that, I’d pull away the skin from areas to see what it might be like after surgery. Before I get to that subject, I want to begin talking about the past.

Up until I was 13, I was a heavier girl. I’m sure I was fine when I was a toddler, but then it became more and more apparent that I was chubbier and discovered I had a belly. All of a sudden, it was the thick life. I didn’t know I was supposed to be slender and pretty, and it stumped me as to why I didn’t fit in. Since I ever began school, I was bullied. Nobody beat me up or hit me, with an exception of being slapped at one birthday party in grade 2. It was usually for a stupid reason, not really something I can explain. The link just was not there between myself and popularity, and though my weight was not the direct reason, it was certainly a factor.

I also don’t believe I had the right idea of what a healthy lifestyle was. As a child, all my concerns were was what I wanted to be when I grew up, when dress-up time was, and what my Barbies are doing in their lives. After all, Barbie and Ken just moved into their new apartment. If it was yummy and edible, I ate it. If I didn’t like it, I didn’t eat it. Easy. Whenever I went to restaurants, my key phrases were “waffles”, “water”, “chicken fingers and fries”, and “spaghetti”. An understanding of the difference between health food and junk food, or dare I say the word “carbs”, was not a part of my development at that age.

When I first began middle school, there it was… the coarse realization that I repel positive recognition. Still bullied, still made fun of, still “different”. Even the shortest and heaviest boy in my grade 6 homeroom still poked at me and made jokes. Then there were the skinny girls that did attempt to offer *some* friendship, like asking me for my MSN email, but that was about it. Like spotting the differences in a kid’s activity book, it fell upon me that I wasn’t skinny. I was actually fat. Fat was the word. It was no wonder why each bath made me look down at my stomach and hate it.

The connection still was not there between my weight and how I ate. If I felt like eating a stack of 5 Oreos, that was what I ate. If I felt like eating two pieces of cake for dessert, I did. Health class usually consisted of running around and doing fun activities (oh my god, that big multicolour tent!), and I loved it! To me, that was play time, not exercise. When health class a couple years later started talking about calories and grams of fat and sugar, I thought, “Oh this is bad!” I’d go home and whatever I ate, I looked at the calories it had before I consumed it. Wasn’t too long before my mom said, “Don’t worry about calories, you walk those off!” Okay! I can completely disregard those scholarly gym teachers in basketball shorts.

That lasted up until age 12 when I really tried to pay more attention in class, and that’s when I got the idea. Calories meant fat. After all this time of my mom thinking I had Attention Deficit Disorder, it became more about disappointment in myself about what I was doing to myself. That was a year of internal and unexpressed, “What the hell am I doing?” In the meantime, my day started around laziness and convenience, and I bought whatever I had the money for when it came to lunch. I remember taking plain ham and cheese sandwiches to school that I’d microwave, and then get fries and cookies in the cafeteria using my allowance. One day in grade 8, I bought just an ice cream cone. Wrong, wrong, wrong I was. That, of course, was not my everyday routine, but it would still happen sometimes. No wonder why I felt lethargic and sleepy quickly after I returned home from school.

Let’s also keep in mind that throughout my life, I had fainting problems. About once a year I’d black out, and something would trigger it. It wasn’t epilepsy, and in looking for a dysfunction in my brain using an MRI and a cat scan, they could not find anything wrong with me. That was a part of the cocktail which caused me to have little to no energy. My mom enforced me to eat more and heartier meals to help me function properly. I wasn’t sick, just needed a lifestyle change. Around this time was probably when I gained a bit more weight. It didn’t help being a low-income single-parent family, but I’m not blaming that on my problems.

Being a young tween, I would have been surrounded by society’s idea of how girls should look. That was something I wanted really bad, but I didn’t even make the first step towards progress. Nor did I take on the responsibility of doing anything about it, I just understood that I was big and that was it. Teen magazines and television came into play and gave me the impression that in order to get what I wanted, I had to go to the extremes. Besides not completely “getting” the idea of what health really meant or how to get there, I’d sometimes initiate a lose-weight-quick regime for about a day. Then it would fail when I disregard everything with excuses and soon after hate myself all over again. I really did hurt myself.

When I was a month away from being 14, I became a vegetarian. How it started was that my science teacher said that the next day in class, we were going to dissect baby pigs. I didn’t want to do that, so that day I didn’t go to school. I stayed home and did my thing. A little after noon, I was looking for lunch in the kitchen. Then it dawned on me – if I don’t want to dissect baby pigs, why am I still eating them? So that day I figured I’d stop eating animals in general. This is the recurring story about how I became a vegetarian. I remember my first meal after that was a Lean Cuisine frozen dinner with the grilled chicken taken out. I didn’t mind about meat touching my food, as long as I didn’t eat the flesh itself. I also didn’t mind handling meat. It’s the same way today. I was still not eating optimally healthy foods, just was discouraged from eating a variety of junk food which had meat in it. That was the year I bought ice cream for lunch, mind you.

I weighed myself in soon after when my mom and I were living in Winnipeg. After seeing that I was 152 lbs, I was shocked. I knew I was a size medium on top and a size 8 in the jeans, but I didn’t know my exact measurements which expressed how it factually was. This was when I was about 15. Beginning high school threw me into the loop of true information and a meaningful reason to change. For years now, my fainting stopped, and I didn’t want poor health to be a reason to pass out again. For Christmas I received a pilates kit to exercise at home with, and alongside using the Goodlife gym membership my mom got for the both of us, I’d use it as many times a week as I could. One night, I sat down at my pre-fab desk and began a health journal, which included an entry about the makeover I wanted to get. I wanted to be a super sexy rockstar, so the image was what pushed me to overhaul everything, at least little by little. Soon after, I bought 10 lbs dumbbells and a yoga mat, and when we moved into our new house the next year, I got a Wii Fit for the following Christmas. By then I got the hang of it, and did home exercises, hopefully becoming fit and slender by the time I started university. I began buying my favorite fitness magazine about each month, even if it did take up some bookshelf space. I was definitely better than what I was a few years ago. I can certainly say the progress was slow, but it made me happy and more confident nonetheless. I got to pick my own courses for high school, so I definitely chose health class and gym class as a few of them. Oddly enough, when I started these classes, I believed I already knew most of what it was teaching. Calories, body mass index, avoid McDonalds at all costs, etc. When I had to go to the doctor because of an ache around my kidney area, which was simply resolved by eating more fibre, they assessed me and said I had an athletic body type. I was slightly amused.

In May of 2011 while trying on my prom dress, I fainted in the front area of the tailor shop. This was due to not eating before rushing to get to the appointment and also probably the tension of grad coming up. Being taken away in an ambulance, I strangely remembered my postal code when the paramedic asked me for my full address, maybe to keep me awake. When the doctor analyzed me using quite the machinery to monitor my heart and circulation (sticky pads and wires everywhere), he came to a conclusion – I had hypotension, the condition where blood pressure is naturally very very low. If it goes any lower than that, fainting can occur, which if not taken care of by raising the blood pressure, can lead to a coma. So there’s that.

There were a couple years where I didn’t exercise when I began university. I’m not really sure as to why. After my break-up with my boyfriend and getting over it a little bit, I tapped into what I used to be doing and bought more gear. A goal-weight pair of fitness shorts (I lost the fat, but needed to tone up), fitness gloves, hand grips, and gym t-shirts. I took up running around parks and hiking trails, running off and on as I can’t run for a full 2 km just yet. What pushed me to do that even more was my interest in entering the Navy. Now my goal was to train for that.

A fellow fit friend encouraged me to try the on-campus gym which was free for full-time students, and was $50 for the summer break. I took that advice and poked around to see where the entrance was, what it might look like inside, what the facilities had, and what the hours were. I slowly but surely started going there, and therefore had my first time exercising in front of guys. Before going there, I knew what exercises to do with weights, but I still had a few machines to try… and somewhat fumble around with. Back in high school whenever I did use the gym membership, I’d go directly to the women’s only section past the female change rooms.

A couple summers ago, I got a gym membership of my own to Goodlife. This was when I was full-time at work and thought I could afford $50 a month while in school later that year. Nope. Couldn’t. Yet, while it lasted I kept up my “training” for the entry requirements for the Navy. By now I already knew I’d rather be strong than skinny. Muscles felt a lot more attainable and more “me” than trying out for super skinny and calorie-obsessed. This flat-out worked.

I don’t have entirely too much left to say, but what is current and ongoing. My main motto for entering any gym or beginning an exercise is to go in and slay it no matter what. Walk in with your sword, shield and wings, and do it like you’re a warrior. When you’re done, you’ll want to roar with confidence. I notice that my muscles are getting bigger and my body is becoming “jacked” a little bit. Still, I’m not near where I want to be precisely.

I hit a little brick wall last fall where I took an ex-soldier’s advice and started using skim milk powder. I didn’t mind the taste at all, but it did make me bulkier a little too quickly. I noticed this from not being able to fit into the jeans I could fit into a couple months before. So I stopped that and got a lean protein powder, so now I’m good. I still carry on with my gym stuff and squat with just as much weight (my maximum is 160lbs at the rack, with supports at the bottom of my squat).

I still have this habit of looking at my body in the mirror pretty much on a daily basis. The idea that I want a makeover is still there, I’m just closer than where I was before. Lately I struggle with what I like to call my “kanga pouch”, which is my front lower pouch from where I lost 30 lbs. Because of this, I’m still a size 8 in the jeans if it’s going to fit properly. In contrast, my top is a size small, even if I do have my current muscle mass. My naturally thick thighs I now embrace, maybe because of fitness competitors like Larissa Reis, who wears them like they’re HERS. My mom was also curious as to why my top part is “tiny” but my bottom half is still like it always was. Yup, I have “kanga” to blame. I scheduled an appointment with my family doctor, and once I got into his office and showed him my flab, he said that there’s definitely something going on there. He referred me to a cosmetic surgeon and now I await the letter giving me my consult appointment with her. It also affects my hips, and is said to be 15 lbs worth of excess stuff. I knew I wasn’t nuts. I conceal it a little well, but whenever I sit down, it’s pronounced, and it does accentuate a little more than I asked for sometimes.

Last night I bought new underwear so I can feel comfortable while “kanga” is still around. I do hope the surgeon doesn’t get rid of my beauty mark on my pelvis. That I wanna keep. The surgery might be either a tuck or liposuction, and is going to take a little while to heal completely. Once again, the idea of a makeover comes to mind as I’d be revealing what I’ve been working for all these years. I still wouldn’t be “skinny” by any means, just proportional. I’m quite okay with that! Especially after a level of acceptance which I’ve established of myself, where I cannot change what my body truly is rather than take care of it and enhance it.

These same mirror sessions still give me the same picture each time, just with more progress in them. I see a lot of difference, with the exception of the kanga thing. I still have a very fair complexion, acne scarring, stretch marks, body hair, blemishes, and excess skin. It’s funny how when I stepped back today, it’s like I’m taking it easier and going “whoa, hold on there”. Because I stepped back, I see something different than what I’m always used to seeing. The imperfections were so close up that anything I should be proud of gets blurry. This is my body, and has been my friend since I was born. I always had it in mind that I should appreciate what I have and learn to love my body, but it’s so much different than actually having the feeling go through you like a time bomb.

Today I weigh about 125 lbs, which is 7 more than what my goal weight was when I was 16. And you know what? I completely content with it. I can’t hate my body anymore because today it tells me I made it through everything, and that I keep waking up every day and that I have the energy to succeed. Even with the surgery that is in due time, whenever it happens, it’s no longer about hating the way I look. It’s to represent myself for what it is today, and slough off a quite physical part of the past. I’m still a whole person with or without makeovers or surgical procedures, and I have no regard for keeping this idea to myself. Yeah, I have plans for my body in mind. Why should I be ashamed or discrete? I might miss “kanga” once it’s gone, but it feels like it’s time for that necessary change. I just want people to know that your body isn’t a thing you are chained to… it’s you. One thing I can say is that if you support your body, it certainly will support you. 

It all started with looking into the mirror, like I usually do. Except this time, it became a story of my body and health. This is what I have to say about My Body.

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Embrace-the-Flames's avatar
Our body is ours. Just that. In the end, we control for the most part, how we want to be. Naturally, I'm built like a brick. Through my younger years, I slowly developed into a body that was raised for martial prowess. And it fit me nicely. About twelve years ago is when all of that went down the drain. Knee got messed up from kickboxing, back wasn't in great condition. And because I couldn't work out, I spent the next decade retaining some muscle while getting out of shape. Still am.

But as I'm getting older, I'm also doing things to try and take better care of what's left of me. Better diet, avoiding fast food when I can, substituting a fruit smoothie for lunch. And it's helped somewhat. Now that I've had knee surgery, I feel like I might be able to get back into shape finally. Not fighting shape, mind you, but getting to a healthy weight and maintaining it. Funny enough, my goal will see me lighter than I've been since middle school. But, I love my body. I wouldn't trade anything for it. I embrace all the scars, the squishy bits, the firm bits, all of it. Because in the end, it's me. All the scars and scarring tell a story, from the patch of beard missing, to the scale formed hands. You are beautiful regardless of where you are at in your goals. Just remember, do what makes you happy. Whatever it is, be happy, and be confident. No matter what. Because at the end of the day, we should all be comfortable in our own skin. We may wish to improve ourselves, but if we aren't comfortable regardless, we may never find comfort. And you've always got support. :)