Feeling like a Swollen Tick

I’ve had several bad body image days, strung together in a succession of about 3 weeks now.  And just as I started to hit my boiling point, I decided to be brutally honest with my coaches, and 2 of my close running friends who are also females and talented athletes.  I have been sharing how I’m frustrated and not understanding, but instead of bypassing “how are you?” and answering with the typical “Good!  Just trying to find the balance” I decided to say how I actually was, to be in the space that I was in, and not feel bad about it or to try and change it.

And as my experience has always yielded, it turns out that I am not alone.  I swore up until blurting my guts out that I was the only person who could gain weight by running more and eating the same and doing everything her support team tells her to do.  I swore up until sharing my truth that I was the only one who ever felt uncomfortable in her skin doing what she loves to do physically.  I swore up until just now that I was getting worse, and not better.

And as it turns out, that’s simply not true.  I am not alone in gaining weight and running more.  I am not alone in feeling uncomfortable lugging more of myself around, despite performing well and running efficiently.  I am not alone in continuing to pursue means of movement that bring me joy, despite the extremely compelling pull to do something different to better suit the mirror … right now.

See, the mirror changes.  The mirror changes based on what the number on the scale says (although not all of the time and that is slowly changing as I become more subjective and open to the process and unattached to my food choices and my subsequent gravitational pull toward the Earth).  The mirror changes based on my mood and whether or not I’ve had enough sleep or if I feel secure in my skin.  The mirror changes based on my emotional and spiritual interactions with the people in my life.  The mirror changes based on my results at work and whether or not I feel useful and purposeful and productive.

And because I know this is true, and despite the very real reflection projecting back at me every day, I know I can hunker down and stay the course and do the next right thing by my body despite how I feel emotionally.  Because I can tell you that I have felt like ripping parts off and tearing clothes up and tossing in the towel along with my macro based food plan that suits me perfectly along with pressing forward with my running and strength work along with my entire life as I have built it today.  Body image can do that to you.  It wreaks havoc on the things that seem to have nothing to do with it – your relationships, your work capacity, and most often your means of finding joy and freedom.

Body image is real.  It’s loud.  And it’s seductive.  It’s why I wrote a book and feel so incredibly impassioned to help others navigate this thorny ass path.  It’s why I share a vulnerable blog and keep putting myself out there, letting you know that you’re not alone and getting feedback in return that neither am I.  It’s why, despite the lore to go back to bodybuilding and working on one muscle at a time in front of a mirror and doing a strict and rigid fat loss cycle, I don’t.  It’s why I tell the people in my life, both of my coaches and my close friends and mentors, how I feel.  So I can be accountable to my actions and to my recovery and to this temporary but seemingly permanent place I’m in, and let it pass.

Because although I have decades of evidence that everything passes, including the thunderstorm that rolls through right now, my disease and the reflection I think I see in the mirror tell me otherwise.  My brain needs washing – every day, every hour, every minute.  It’s frustrating to think I go forward and backward all in the same rinse, but hopeful to know that I can today.  Hopeful to know that I can choose to do differently and that that choice will push me forward, one little inch at a time.  Hopeful to know that the pictures I saw yesterday of my eighth grade self, as a very not fat little girl who swore she was enormous, lends itself to me knowing that the fat adult I think I see in the mirror is not in fact fat, at all.  And that even if I was fat, it is no indication of my person, my stature, my capacity to do right in this world or my quality of a spiritual heart. 

My abs or lack of abs have nothing to do with me or with the rest of my life, and when I can follow that path all the way out, I know I run because I love running and I lift because I love supplementing my running healthily, transforming muscles and building a platform of strength so that I can do shit on my own.  Being bloated and water-logged has nothing to do with being a great girlfriend, loving daughter, available sister, reliable friend or kickass employee and overall human being.

So, just for today, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and trusting the process and trusting the path and trusting the people in my life that are helping me, not hurting me.  Including my body.

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