The weight 11/22/2010
I don't remember ever being unaware of my weight. I'm sure I must have been, at one time. I must have been unconscious of it, as children are supposed to be. I just don't remember. What I do remember is that even when I was too young to think of weighing myself at home, I took note of the weights and measures quoted to my mother by my pediatrician. I worried about them and what they might mean. At age ten, Grade 5, my doc logged me in at 72 lbs. "Too much," I thought at the time. 72 lbs was already much too much. I don't know why this happened to me. I don't know what made me worry.  It is strange... to hold in your head an encyclopedic memory of weight. The numbers are there, but I'm not sure what they mean. September 14, 1990: 72 lbs. October 22, 1993: 117 lbs. July 17, 1996: 125 lbs. December 25, 1999: 130 lbs. September 1, 2007: 173 lbs. I remember other people's weights as well. My mother, for example, weighed 78 lbs on her wedding day. She is 5' tall and was living in India at the time. She had Malaria. My sister, 5'2", dropped down to 90 lbs during the first trimester of her first pregnacy. She had terrible morning sickness. After my 72 lbs weigh-in, I waited until I was alone in the house and slipped my mother's wedding dress out of her bureau to try it on. It smelled of the Irish Spring soap she keeps unwrapped in the drawers. The buttons wouldn't close. I have wide shoulders, a broad rib cage and a wide back. Even at my thinnest, I need a bra that's close to 38 inches around. And I've never had Malaria. Nonetheless, I felt like a failure. The fact that the dress didn't fit seemed to say something about me. Something bad. I stripped it off and went outside to smash rocks with a hammer. I turned stone after stone into piles of glittering grey-blue dust. Then I blew it all away.  High school was... traumatic, as it is for so many of us. I went out for track, my signature sport, but didn't even come close to making the team. Girls built like gazelles seemed to sprint past me in the heats with no effort at all. I did make the swim team. Just barely. I had no real training, but I liked the water and copied the other girls' smooth strokes. At practices, I was slotted into the slowest lane with an unfortunate, unpopular girl named Bopinder. As her body brushed past mine in the water, I'd shrink away. As if she might rub off. Once, in the locker room, a girl talked about her body, her pool-white hand pressed across her flat, speedo-covered stomach. "From the side, I'm perfect," she said, "but from the front... ugh!" I jumped in, eager to make a friend by way of shared experience. "Me too," I said, "But I'm okay from the front and fat from the side." I demonstrated, twisting to reveal my rounded mid section. Even Bopinder laughed. It took me ages to understand. Those girls were smarter. They saw it right away. We were all women, all young, but we were not the same. In those early days of high school I dropped from what I considered a disgusting 125 lbs to a borderline-acceptable 115 lbs in less than three weeks thanks to my first short-term starvation diet and fanatical exercise in the pool. I swam every morning at 6 a.m. I ate celery sticks exclusively, and only when my stomach literally ached with hunger or when I felt too dizzy to stand. At night, my pool-sore arms spazammed and shook. Besides the celery, after each practice, I'd down a half-litre of Gatorade. The most delicious thing I'd ever tasted. By November, I'd quit the team. At my first meet, I placed last in the 200 metre butterfly. I didn't really know the stroke. My goggles came off on my dive, scraping over my cheeks. I thought I might drown. By the time I finished, the other girls were already out of the pool. Looking at myself in the changeroom mirror, I remember thinking that my arms looked muscled and huge. I was built "like a freight train" said my very first boyfriend, also a swimmer. He was paying me a compliment.  In University, I was okay at first. I didn't own a scale. But when I realized I was back up to 130 lbs, I immediately went on something called the "Ultra Fit Diet" -- an idiotic thing that involved drinking protien powder and eating as few as 500 calories a day. I made it back down to 115 lbs, at which point my boyfriend at the time said, "I'm afraid I'm going to break you," which was exactly what I wanted to hear. I left school and stumbled through my 20s and my weight crept up, keeping pace with my growing anxiety. In 2004, right before I moved in with Darrell, there was a constant churninging in my gut, a steady stream of fight or flight adrenaline in my blood. Eating until I was full -- too full to move -- helped slow my fast-beating heart. In early 2007, I weighed 170 lbs. I lived entirely on simple carbs and alcohol. I had new, angry-red stretchmarks around my belly button. Concentric circles of ragged skin, a result of repeated rapid weight losses and subsequent gains. When I couldn't fall asleep, I'd think obsessively about my stomach and the way it sloped down to rest on the mattress. And I'd cry.  Back in Toronto, alone in my new, singles apartment, I lost 30 lbs quickly, eating approximately 800 to 1000 calories a day and playing sports five times a week. But in 2009, I had minor health issue and went on a medication that comes with weight gain as a common side effect. In less than 6 months on the drug I zoomed back up to nearly 160 lbs. New budgundy stretchmaks appeared below the faded white ones. And it's making me crazy. Because for once, I'm actually healthy. I eat things like quinoa and kale in normal, human amounts. I exercise occassionally, but not obsessively. My partner thinks I look great. But when I see myself, the first thing I think of is "fat." I think of the numbers on the scale and want to cry. "You are disgusting." That's what I hear in my head. That's what I've always heard.  I NEVER think this way about other people. Never. I don't even like the word fat. Intellectually, I think of it as a kind of hate speech. I only do this to myself. I only have the capacity to be this mean to myself. I'm not a stupid person. I know it's crazy. But the knowing doesn't seem to translate. Why am I like this? How did this happen? And how can I keep it from happening? That's the most important thing. It's the thing I think about even more than the weight itself. How can I keep this from happening to my own little neice, my own someday daughter, every other sad little girl? How can I keep them from being like me? Do you know? * All images from Stock Xchng, by (in order of appearance) Rockelle Munsch, Phillip Collier, Marcelo Gerpe, Stephan Fleet, Alfonso Lima. Comments11/22/2010 09:55
We can't help think about this as the holidays approach. As for the rest of the year, it's bombardment of ads we see our whole lives. Lee Nicholson 11/22/2010 10:01
Great post & scarily enough I remember crushing rocks into sand as a child. 11/22/2010 10:16
Thank you for this post. It was extremely brave of you this with us. Rebecca 11/22/2010 10:16
I don't think there's a solution for this in our society. I think that all we can do is try to love ourselves a little more, and to teach our daughters, nieces, friends, aunts, and mothers, to love themselves too. Hopefully it'll rub off... Shawn 11/22/2010 10:43
I wonder if there is a woman out there who remembers not being aware of their weight? As the years pass and the weight creeps up (and down, and up, and down) I always find myself looking back at the low end pictures of myself thinking "she looks great, too bad she didn't know it," and I wonder if it will ever matter if I weigh 120 or 170. Jen, thank you so much for sharing. I actually battle with the same issue, and my inner dialogue is often so cruel. I am my harshest critic, and I also have gained due to a medication recently, and relate completely. 11/22/2010 11:42
(Sorry about the blank comment) Cailin 11/22/2010 18:50
Thank you for posting this Jen. I sometimes feel very alone when dealing with my weight issues. Your post actually really helped me. We are not alone and we need to stop thinking this way. We are all beautiful inside and out (as cliche) as it sounds. But it's true. Thank you for this post, you have no idea how much I needed to read it. Melissa 11/23/2010 04:10
Thank you for this post. Elaine 11/23/2010 07:27
Jen, sometime I think you've crawled into my brain and written about my personal thoughts. This is one of those times. Thank you for posting this. Sarah 11/23/2010 08:55
Jen - a beautiful, honest, thoughtful, revealing, hard, painful post. Thank you for posting this! Unfortunately, I, and too many other women I know, share this idea about weight. Other women can look great regardless of size, but we are so hard on ourselves! I agree with a previous comment that looking back, I have always wondered why I thought I was overweight when I was athletic, young, healthy, etc. Now I wish I'd been kind to myself, not crash dieted at 15 or spoken negatively about my body. I would have walked decisively away from relationships with people who suggested I was right, that at 5'9", 130 lbs., I was "gross." Being asked, "Do you ever eat?" is not a compliment (as I thought), it should be an alarm! Just an update to tell you that, while looking at yesterday's metrics for the site, I realized that this post brought in more people and more comments (here, of Facebook and on Twitter) than anything I've done in years. Vanessa 11/26/2010 10:35
Thanks. It's good to know I have company, even if I wish none of us needed to know that there are others who feel like this. 11/26/2010 13:22
Great post. I too wish I could go back in time (and 25 pounds)to high school / university and appreciate my weight then, rather than feel fat, like I did. Interesting how I now have a way better self body image, so many pounds later. Sasha 11/26/2010 20:33
Great post Jen! Really well written and interesting! 11/30/2010 14:52
I'm a little late commenting but just had to stop by and say thank you for an honest and heartfelt post. It must have been difficult to write but I'm sure you feel lighter now. I never had weight issues but did struggle with the way I looked through high school. I'm really careful about what I say about my looks/weight around my daughter because I don't ever want her to worry about that and they are little sponges! Take care Jen. 12/16/2010 09:28
This post is so moving and powerful. It took a great deal of courage to share this. I admire you all the more for it. I also, like so many others, can easily obsess about my weight. I used to be very thin growing up. I never dieted, never had to. In fact I often tried to gain weight, stuffing myself with Quarter Pounders with cheese, but I didn't gain an ounce. I was so self-conscious because all anyone could ever talk about was how bony I was. (Somehow, even decent people who'd never call someone fat have no problem with telling a skinny person how they look "too, too skinny". I hate it when a "normal" person accuses a thin person of being a restrictive eater or worse, as if anyone knows what anyone is going through). Well, a few decades have passed and I'm still thin-ish, but not bony. I have age and childbearing to thank for finally slowing down my metabolism. But now I find myself worrying about it slowing down too much. I still don't diet, but I don't eat Quarter Pounders anymore either. It's crazy. Do you know what's funny? I went from thinking I was too skinny to now worrying about getting too heavy as I age, and I don't remember ever being a size that I thought was just right. Huh. ania 02/01/2011 06:35
This was such a well-written post. Loral 02/01/2011 22:13
I can't remember a time when weight was important to me. And no, that's not a typo. Other women have told me they were always worried about their weight, but I wasn't. I was worried about my size. Not quite the same thing, but close. I was a very (very) tall girl, head and shoulders above everyone I knew until the end of middle school. As if that weren't enough, I was broad shouldered and sprouted breasts earlier than my friends. I always wanted to be shorter, skinnier, less developed, because then I wouldn't stick out so much. Then high school came and everyone "caught up" to me. I'm still tall, but not freakishly tall. I still have broad shoulders and hips, but it's not as unusual for a woman as for a little girl. I just wish there was a way to make girls understand that they're beautiful, that no one is judging them that harshly. Hello to everyone who found this post (and me) via Dr. Stacy of "Every Woman Has an Eating Disorder." I'm so glad you're here. Grace - sure thing. You are welcome to link or write about the post on your blog. No problem at all. Thank you all for sharing your own experiences. I think the more we talk about this stuff, the better we'll all be. Maya 02/05/2011 16:17
I'm another one who came here via Dr. Stacy. I just cried reading this. I recall trying on my mother's and sister's wedding gowns when I was married at 21...we could not zip them up! THAT was my beginning of my ED. 30 years later I am still muscular while they gained fat. I still fit into my size 10 gown, but it comes with plenty of anxiety. They can enjoy desserts without finding it necessary to get on the treadmill. I envy that. Carol VanderKloot 02/11/2011 07:12
Jen: I am a teen and have been battling an eating disorder for the past 4 years. The feelings and thoughts you described so vividly are exactly what I think and feel everyday. I too would never call someone fat, yet I tell myself everyday that I am fat and, therefore, I am a failure. Your words, while sad, are also comforting to know that someone else went through exactly what I'm going through. I am a teen writer for the blog Radical Parenting, which is a parenting blog with advice from teens. I recently wrote an article about my experience with an eating disorder found at this link: Maike 02/12/2011 05:09
I can relate to your story so much. I went exactly through the same struggles as you did. As I read your story I was amazed at how accurately it described my weight problems and anxieties throughout my life. The ups and downs of weight, bingeing, dieting, excessive excercise, stretch marks. Crying myself into sleep. Now I am 27 years old and after I regained some weight I decided that this craze had to stop. Although I find it very very hard accepting my body and not succumb to hateful self talk, but there seems to be a part of me that wants to heal, one side that is so tired of dieting, of obsessing about food and that is somehow in charge now. So my eating habits are quite "normal" and pretty healthy now. I don't obsess over "bad" or "good" foods anymore, but I can't still look at myself in the mirror without hating what I see. Somehow deep inside I still believe that I will magically lose weight, that the universe will make up for all the pain I had to go through. When really, I guess I just have to learn to love myself the way I am - which is by far the hardest thing to do. 03/08/2011 06:44
I do remember not thinking about my weight, but that would have been 1960 or so-- I was about seven, and a memory surfaced of wearing a bathing suit and not caring. I consider this a blessing, both that I had the experience and that I could remember it. 04/04/2011 07:53
Jen what a wonderful post! I've always had issues with weight but the opposite of yours. I was admitted to hospital at 18 months old for malnutrition. I struggled to gain weight for the first 22 years of my life. Olivia 04/15/2011 13:15
I can't even begin to tell you how much this post means to me not only for my sake but for the sake of my daughter. Thank you so much for sharing such personal feelings. You Jen, are a true hero! taylor 05/13/2011 17:32
i wish somebody had told me this a few years ago, that i wasn't completely alone. thanks for writing. Danielle 06/17/2011 08:24
This made me cry. I wish we didn't feel like this all of the time. Caroline 09/06/2011 15:51
I'm coming reaaally late on this one, but just wanted to add one more thank you, from across the Atlantic (sorry about the rusty English). It is sad to see how many of us can relate to what you wrote, and how thin the limit is between pathology and "regular" anxiety... Megan 12/10/2011 23:46
I am also very late to this post. The heading 'The Weight' just happened to appear on my computer as I was tweeting/facebooking etc. Immediately, not knowing what your post was about, I was drawn in. Leave a Reply | ABOUTJen Selk Speaks is the personal blog of ... you guessed it - Jen Selk! Random musings, self-indulgent rants, tmi moments, whatever your voyeristic pleasure, you'll find it here (within reason). Once in awhile, the blog may even contain something substantive. TAGSAll ARCHIVESFebruary 2012 |
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