Love Your Body (Already) Day

I found out from Elizabeth that today is Love Your Body Day. I figure that makes it as good a day as any to write about my weight.

Yesterday I hit my highest weight in four years. When I first started treatment, my mother clung to the idea that getting me back to a certain weight would mean recovery. We've both realized it's more complicated than that. Just because I weigh X pounds now doesn't mean I will cease thinking about food, quit dividing to find the calories in a single cracker or pretzel, or venture too far from the soup and salad portion of the menu. Food is complicated, messy thing for me, and that's not going to disappear just because my BMI is finally "normal" (not that that means jack).

But what does it mean, then? It means that I'm not in immediate danger; I haven't been for a long time. It means that I have a more realistic idea of what my body needs to get through the day, and I'm willing to give it that. It means I can resist that urge to prove to everyone that I'm so driven and hardworking that I don't even have to eat. It means physical changes, too. There's "give" where there wasn't before. My legs are bigger, and my stomach, as I've written before, is no longer concave. Other people tell me I look better.

Still, I fall far short of what today is meant to encourage. There are times when I admire my body - when I get up in the morning and actually feel rested, when I crack a sweat at the gym, when I climb one of Athens' many hills. But love? I don't think so. When I'm reminded of my body, there's an initial discomfort. I focus far too much of my perceived flaws to love my body.

I'm not giving up, though. Gaining weight has been a long, arduous process. Since I really don't know what my body's "set point" is, I don't know if I'm finished gaining, even. But I hope that as time goes on and I become accustomed to the new things going on with my belly and thighs, I'll eventually come to like them. Maybe even love them.