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Saturday, January 06, 2007

Body Image

The truth is, I've always thought I was fat whether I weighed 135 pounds or 160 pounds or 200 pounds. No matter what I see when I look in the mirror, I always see fat. Do I engage in eating practices that are probably unsafe? Sure, sometimes. Have I gone without eating in the past? Of course.

I wasn't prepared for how pregnancy would change my body. I knew that I would expand but I thought magically my body would return to its former shape. I weigh less than I did when I got pregnant, but my body is no where close to where it was. My boobs are bigger (38D instead of a 36C) so my prepregnancy shirts are all to short. I have stretch marks. Lots of stretch marks. And extra skin that beautifully hangs over the top of some of my tighter pants.

My measurements are the same as before I was pregnant, but clothes that looked good before look good no longer. I have worked very hard to lose the 32 pounds I gained while pregnant and then some (to date I have lost 54 pounds), but the truth is, I am still not happy with my body.

Usually I do very good watching what I eat and stopping when I am hungry, but when I am around my mother it all falls apart. Too many times while growing up she said to me, "You don't need that. You aren't hungry. You don't need to eat that." How could she know if I was hungry or not? Her comments made me feel bad that because I was the size I was, I was fat. I started not eating much at meals and sneaking food to my room to eat in peace.

When I left home, I started losing weight. I could eat when and what I wanted without having to feel guilty or listen to nagging about it.

It is hard to feel good about a normal post-pregnancy body when you see celebraties that lose the weight as soon as the child is born. I guess, if I could afford a nanny, a personal trainer, and an abdominal plasty, I could look like that, too. But, because I can't, I have to deal. I found a website that I think is amazing.

http://theshapeofamother.com/home.php

I wish I could be that proud of my body.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think that sometimes it's hard to feel good about your body no matter what size it is. A few years ago (thanks to Weght Watchers) I lost a ton of weight and hit goal weight and made life time membership status and got an award and wore a single digit size. I found more wrong with my body then than I do now. Yes, I'd like to lose weight. But I really don't want to deal with the pressure that comes along with it. I'm pretty certain that a big reason why I gained the weight back was because I was so sick of people asking "Can you eat that?" "Should you eat that?" "Why are eating that?". Just too much to deal with.