Fertilehealthy

You know how we always have a whole list of reasons why we want to lose weight?  Like not having to ask for seatbelt extensions on flights, not worrying about dropping dead any moment, being able to do our own pedicures, improving our fertility and not having to eyeball the sturdiness of furniture before we sit down.  Well, for me that’s all just garnish.  The main reason I want to lose weight is this:

I WANT TO LOOK HOT!

Yes, that’s right, my friends!  I want to look good.  I want my husband to not be able to keep his hands off me (which would, just between you and me,  improve my fertility a great deal to boot).

When Craig and I met, I weighed more or less the same I weigh now.  He’s never seen the “real” me.  I always feel uncomfortable when we spend time with his friends, because they must wonder what he sees in me (their wives are hot). 

I think deep down I never really believed that losing weight can make such a difference.  I mean, I don’t know what I’ll look like when I’m thin.  I know I’ll have some loose skin, saggy boobs and a roadmap of stretchmarks.  But that’s allright.  What counts is how I look in clothes.

I visited with my friend Charlotte on Saturday.  We met at a cell group about 7 years ago and had an instant connection.  We were the fat girls.  Fabulous in our own right, but fat.  In all this time, we’ve been telling ourselves, each other and the world at large that we really have to lose weight.  Year in and year out.

About a year ago Charlotte, without much fanfare, went on a diet.  And she stuck to it.  We’d see each other every few months or so and she’d be thinner. 

I almost fell over backwards when I saw her.  Gone are the long flowing dresses!  She was wearing a pair of hip hugging distressed jeans, a wide belt and a striped tank top.  Holy mackerel!  If I were a guy, I’d go for her in a heartbeat!  She’s hot!

Talk about inspiration!  I want to look something like that!  I have about twice as much weight to lose as she had (she’s much shorter than I though), so of course it will take me at least two years.  But Craig had better start taking his vitamins now! 

Charlotte and I had a long talk about her journey.  It’s not all moonlight and roses…  She’s had to actually face up to her emotions, where previously she could smother them with food.  She says she feels more shattered now than a year ago.  Her sense of identity has been challenged and she’s got to work at it daily.  She even “misses” her old self.  Her changing sense of self has brought about immense changes in her personal life.  She’s even contemplating a career change, following her dream of making a film!

It’s all about learning new skills.  So often we do well for a while, but then something bad happens and we fall off the wagon.  I think we have to realize that it’s inevitable that something bad will happen.  We will feel shattered, it’s completely normal.  The challenge is to cope in new and different ways.  Healing our brokenness is bound to be a painful process.

I think I’m ready.

Oh, and by the way, I am immensely proud of my gorgeous friend!

I could never have “enough”. In fact, I lived in constant fear of not having “enough”.

Enough what?

Enough food.

I used to study a menu in a restaurant and choose the most generous portioned dish(es). Often I would finish a meal at one restaurant and go to another restaurant for another meal. I could never buy just one sandwich or portion at the supermarket deli counter. I used to come home with a sandwich, a portion of lasagna, a portion of paella and maybe a chicken piece or two.

This goes back a long, long time. I remember at boarding school and at university that I used to finish the meals of everyone at my table. How dignified. Thank goodness I’m not famous! Imagine all these people crawling out of the woodwork and telling the tabloids how I used to eat their leftovers!

Before you think that I grew up poor and starving (this is Africa, after all), let me assure you that I had a comfortable middleclass upbringing. We ate three squares a day, were adequately clothed, had two cars in the garage and managed to go on vacation once a year.

So was my appetite just totally out of control? I use the word “was” here, because somehow I’m not doing that anymore. I got such a kick this morning when I bought just one sandwich and was fully satisfied. And I realized that it was never about the food. It was about that feeling of anxiety in the store, that feeling of “not enough”.

Enough what?

Enough love.

I was desperately craving loving nurture.

I never knew that my mother loved me and cared about me. Even before my sister came along when I was about three, I think my mother was too overwhelmed and stressed to realize that my needs went beyond feeding, clothing and amusing. My mother is very highly strung with a hair-trigger temper. The soundtrack of my childhood is being yelled at. When my sister arrived, I probably felt that I had to fight for any scrap of love and affection. After all, a baby is so much cuter than a 3-year old. I remember so well in later years how I schemed and plotted at every turn to get “more” than my sister. Most often that just translated into more food, bigger portions.

In my teens I rebelled. Of course. I’ll never forget my father telling me that they would never trust me again.

So, now I was not only unlovable, I was also untrustworthy.

If I couldn’t get love, I’d have to go for the next best thing. Food. (And booze and sex, but why depress you now?) I was a Plus-size-waiting-to-happen. Somehow I made it to my mid-twenties with only about 20 extra pounds, but the day I said “I do” to my loser absolutely-the-wrong-guy first husband and realized how far I’d deviated from my potential and the “plan” for my life, the last scraps of restraint disintegrated and I started stuffing myself with a vengeance. (”Vengeance” is quite an interesting choice of word here…)

I ballooned. I gained over 100 pounds in one year. And every subsequent year would find me another 10 pounds heavier.

I got divorced in 2000. Oh how much fun it was to be thirty, single and obese. I was so in demand! Yeah right. But of course this empty hole, where the love should be, needed to be filled. If the fat didn’t scare them away, the manic desperation did the trick.

Then, just over three years ago I met Craig. And he started really loving me. It’s quite strange, because to outsiders (people who are not me), he’s a very closed person. But boy, does he love me. Not only that, he’s given me the freedom to acquire the tools to learn to love myself.

Nothing happens overnight. But over these last three years, that huge empty cavern inside me that I used to have to fill with food so that the echoes wouldn’t drive me to a breakdown and/or suicide has been filling up with love. And more and more I find that food is just food now. Something to nourish me and something to enjoy. I don’t need it to nurture and comfort me anymore.

Sure, I still eat too much sometimes. But not every time. And that’s just because the food is so good! 

For me love was the answer. You don’t have to wait until the right person comes into your life. As Doctor Phil says:

Sometimes you just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.

Let’s all work towards finally having enough.

Something is starting to awaken in me…  At first I couldn’t identify this restlessness, this feeling that something is missing.  But now I know what it is.  I want to take better care of myself…  I want to stop this cycle of indifference and guilt.  I want to exercise and eat healthy.  My body is not coping with my present laisez-faire attitude and it’s affecting me physically, emotionally and mentally.

I’ve known for a long time what it takes to be healthy and functioning properly.  And I’ve been through periods where I’ve done what it takes.  But somewhere along the line I would lose the plot (and feel very guilty) and fall into apathy.

I an all-or-nothing kind of person and I believe that this is the reason why I struggle to maintain things. I get a bee in my bonnet and throw myself wholeheartedly into something, be it reading, eating, sudoku or whatever.  For a while, I live and breathe that thing.  I dream about it.  Everything else falls by the wayside.  Then the next thing comes along and I abandon my previous obsession and get carried away by a new one.  There is no balance.

But I think I’m learning.

I am ready to start taking proper care of myself again… and I propose to do it gradually and consistently.  I particularly like this quote by legendary tennis champion Arthur Ashe:

You’ve got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.

 

So, I’m gonna go for it!

I am now officially almost 40.

Alternatively I can call today my first 39th birthday.

Somehow it doesn’t make me feel any better. Those angry furrows on my forehead and next to my nose on the left side (why can’t I age symmetrically, for Heaven’s sake?) are crying out for… um rat poison. Not that I can afford Botox, but dammit, there is nothing graceful about this erosion that’s taking place on my face. My years of hard living are certainly catching up with me.

But there’s more than that going on. A lot more. By all accounts, at almost 40 I should consider myself a grown-up. But why then can’t I take control of my own life? Is there still hope that I can turn things around and get motivated to look after my health and my body? Why do I feel so powerless and unable to even make an effort?

I’ve been ill these last two days. I can’t eat more than a little bit at a time, or I feel sick and am in terrible pain. Eating gives me gas - I’m burping and farting like a man! It feels as if I’ve had a gastric bypass… My whole body is sore! If this goes on much longer, I may have to see a doctor.

If this is 39, I don’t want to know about 40!

A while ago I realized that I was in trouble. I was spending almost every waking minute at my computer reading blogs. Which meant that I wasn’t taking care of myself.

The whole purpose of not working is for me to get healthy, fit and fertile. I wasn’t even getting close. The hours that were being frittered away every day, were the days of my life. Clearly I needed to make some changes.

So I stepped back a little and took a broader look at my life. What I saw dismayed me. I was seriously missing the point. This journey for me was never about weight loss. Yet, I was hopping on the scale every day. When we decided to go to America this June, I declared that I had 5 weeks in which to lose a chunk of weight so that my trip would be more comfortable. It was time for bootcamp! Every day I “wasted” by not pounding my body into submission made me feel more guilty and more anxious. How is that healthy?

I needed to change the way I thought and the way I spent my time. I more than halved the number of blogs that I subscribe to. That left me some time for being good to myself. And no, I didn’t start the bootcamp! I never will.

I took the time to reconnect with my goals, dreams and desires. And very importantly with myself. I reread the books that teach the principles by which I want to live. And I changed my life in a few short weeks.

Now every day is an opportunity to be kinder and more loving towards my body and spirit. I eat the foods that are good and healing and avoid the things that strain, damage and throw my body (and emotions) out of balance. Some days I’m better at it than others. It doesn’t matter. I’m no longer demanding perfection. I’m learning and improving as I go along.

And my body is loving it! The scale, when I remember to get on it, keeps going down slowly but surely. My health is improving every day. I haven’t had a skin rash in weeks. My hormones did some heroic healing task which delayed my menses for more than two weeks. I’m sleeping well. I have more energy.

And with that increased energy I’m starting to get more active. My body is demanding that I work it. Previously I looked at things that needed to be done in the garden and told myself that I couldn’t do it. Now I tell myself that while I may not be able to do it all in one go, I can do something. Sure, it’s uncomfortable to kneel or bend, but invariably I do more than what I thought I could.

I haven’t gone back to gym yet, because I want my mind to be clear about what I want to do there. I want to my work there to be healing. I don’t want to feel as if I’ve let myself down if I skip a day. The call for more activity, for stretching and toning, running and swimming is getting stronger every day. My body is starting to crave it. I like that!

I’m also taking time to meditate, breathe and just be. My spirit is healing nicely alongside my body. I’m pondering my fertility, my life-choices and my future. And a path is starting emerge. I will be sharing a lot of my thoughts and dreams with you in the near future.

But for now, I’m good! In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’m almost at goal. My goal being to live a healthy lifestyle. That has always been the goal. The weight loss and increased fertility are just byproducts of that lifestyle. I am working with my body, not against it. The scale has ceased to have any hold over me, in fact I barely even notice it anymore when I go into the bathroom.

I won’t be significantly thinner when we leave in just over two weeks’ time. And while we’re away, staying with relatives, we won’t be eating what we normally eat, so I’ll probably put on some weight and throw myself out of balance in various ways. But that’s okay! It’s a minor detour in my life journey. We know what we want and it’s not something we have to attain, but something we’re doing already. I love that!