Buy Walking VideosPostSecret: The Body She Left Behind
This postcard from PostSecret is one of my fears of finally getting to goal.
It reads:
I will never miss the person I lost when I lost 100 lbs. +, but I will always live in constant fear that no one will love the body that she left behind.
What if I get to goal weight and I don’t like that sagging skin any more than I like that fat tummy? Sure, I can hide it with clothing, but will it make me feel any better about myself? What if I hate my body just as much when I’m skinny as when I was fat?
I finally decided that it doesn’t matter.
I’ve always hated my body. I’ll probably STILL hate my body, even when I’m finally at goal weight. The difference is, I’ll be treated better. I won’t be discriminated against by employers, health insurance companies, doctors and strangers. I will be healthier. I’ll be stronger and more able to do strenuous activities that are fun. I’ll finally be free of the shackles of binge eating. All of that is more important than loving my body.
Someday, I might be able to finally love my body, but I’m not waiting around for that to happen before I allow myself to get to a healthy weight.
PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.
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March 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 am
I feel sad that you don’t love your body. I also feel glad that you are taking care of yourself anyway! It reminds me of my goal to take care of myself even when I don’t feel like it. My mantra: “My health and happiness is important.” While I’m at it, I think I’ll just repeat that a few times: My health and happiness are important. My health and happiness are important My health and happiness are important My health and happiness are important My health and happiness are important My health and happiness are important My health and happiness are important My health and happiness are important My health and happiness are important! 🙂
April 30th, 2009 at 8:39 am
“The worries about your weight do not decrease no matter how much weight you lose. Rather, they grow. And the more you worry about your weight, the more you are willing to act on that worry…You stop seeing your body as your own, as something valuable, something that totes you around and does your thinking and feeling for you and requires an input of energy for this favor. You begin seeing it instead as an undesirable appendage, a wart you need to remove. ‘I HAVE a body, you are likely to say if you talk about embodiment at all; you don’t say ‘I AM a body.'” -Marya Hornbacher
Take this into consideration. If you hate your body, you can lose all the weight you want and you will still hate your body. Your body and your brain are attached, and therefore without a healthy body, you cannot maintain a healthy mind. Please don’t think I’m being pretentious; I just know all too well how the “I hate my body” complex works. I had an eating disorder for four years; I plummeted from 150 pounds to 99, and I still hated my body with every ounce of energy I had left.
This applies to anyone without an eating disorder as well. Most girls I know portray “disordered eating” rather than an eating disorder, and while the two differ in defintion, they go hand-in-hand in terms of the dangerous effects they have on your mind.
Another quote I’d like to share:
“There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn’t one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.”
Read ‘Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia’. Take it as a warning, a guidebook to show you what you can do to yourself if you keep this mindset, this notion of hating your body.