Obsession With Size

One of the women on Stitcher's Guild wanted to know how the sweater went with the plaid skirt. The three pieces are part of my SWAP (sewing with a plan). The sweater looks good on and looks "will that fit" off, so I wore it to knitting yesterday along with the skirt.




I'll have to run this image by my husband and see if it's just as good as with the other skirt. Too funny Bev that your husband liked that last outfit too. I guess I know what to wear if I want attention.

On Saturday, my friend and I were discussing the question what is the thing that you think about all the time? I don't mean literally all the time but what in your life is a consuming passion. For her, it's work. She a musician and works in the arts, loves her job, is fabulous at it, and gets paid very well. It's a lovely mix of ingredients.

We talked about my fabric collection and about how sewing fashions has moved into that thing that I think about all the time position since closing the business. Before, I was a workaholic. Now, I am a sewaholic. More than at any other time in my life, I am REALLY enjoying sewing fashions in part because I have made time for it and in part because I'm very comfortable with who I am, my body, and my style. These combined with intellectual curiosity and a well developed skill set are also a lovely mix of ingredients - LOL - although minus the "paid very well" part.

Not all mixes are healthy. One that dominated huge portions of my life for far too many years was my weight. Yesterday, I read Carolyn's guest post on Gertie's blog with great interest. I grew up in a family of plus sized women who were unhappy with their weight and had an obsession with size. I learned about every diet plan known to mankind and about slicing, dicing, weighing, and counting calories at a young age. I learned that food was bad and absorbed a way of thinking about "being fat" that was definitely not healthy. I became anorexic. It took a really long time for me to arrive at a place of peace.

I'm 5'4" and have been both underweight at 98 pounds and overweight at 175 pounds during my adult life. At both extremes, I was more emotionally unhealthy than I was physically unhealthy. When I was underweight, the comments were jealous and when I was overweight, they were judgemental. By medical standards, I'm still twenty pounds overweight. Oh well. I don't really care about the number on the scale anymore. I care about being healthy in a holistic way.

The turning point came the day I was talking on the phone with my personal trainer asking her why I'd been working out for almost two months and hadn't lost any weight or inches. She wanted me to record everything I ate, what time, the quantities, and a whole bunch of other statistics. As she talked, I became angrier and angrier - unreasonably angry. When she asked if I could do that, I said I'll think about it. When she inquired how else can I help you, I said, I need to decide if I want to be helped.

It took me a few days to realize why I was so angry. Enough with pills, programs, and payments. Enough with an external judgement of my worth. Enough with living in a body I was ungrateful for and critical of. Enough of walking by my scale, getting on it, and feeling shame. Enough. Obviously, I was not going to wake up one day and be done with this obsession. I decided to be done.

I put away the scale and stopped focusing on and berating myself for my weight. I began to speak kindly to myself, thank my body for what it did each day, and pay attention to healthy decisions. I worked to accept my size and, without the fixation on dieting, stayed that same weight for several years. At one point, I went up a size and continued to speak kindly. It was amazing to exist in a body that I didn't criticize and to develop a radically different awareness of health and physicality.

My decision to be done changed the course of my life in both strange and wonderful directions. There was a reason why I went up a size and I never would have discovered it without the focus on being healthy, on paying attention to my body's reactions. That led to the discovery of allergies just over a year ago which in turn led to my current weight loss which is leading to a physically healthier me. My physical health is evolving just as my emotional health did. It was only when I put my whole health ahead of everything else that I have arrived at a peaceful place of healing.

After reading Carolyn's posting yesterday, I thought about my weight journey and especially about feelings of entitlement. On some level, I felt entitled to a thin body and angry that the circumstances in my life had "forced" me into a fat frame. I was not entitled. I was blessed to be as whole and as healthy as I was (am) and had been given numerous opportunities to care for my body that I ignored. I wanted a magic pill. There isn't one. There is personal choice.

It's my choice how I care for my body whatever its circumstances. I had to mean it when I said I was going to put my whole health first as opposed to thinness. I couldn't pay lip service to being healthy. I had to actually do the work from an internal "this is the best choice" place of being as opposed to an external "this is what you should do" one. It's not always easy. Yesterday, I would have gladly eaten anything that wasn't nailed down especially if it was creamy, spicy, or tangy. Oh well - suck it up princess!

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - Carolyn's posting and her inspiring blog. I appreciate her sharing her sewing journey.

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Personal Growth - the above paragraphs about my weight journey are about personal growth in one area of my life. Today, I am thinking about feelings of entitlement and how those feelings (do I have them, what are they) impact my actions and expressions of success. I'm asking myself what are the expressions of success in my life and are they what I want them to be? It's an interesting question.