Hellobee

Hello! My name is Mrs. Carrot and I am a recovering dieter, “watching my weight”-er, “eating healthy”-er, former weight watcher, calorie counter and lifelong fat girl who has finally, at the ripe young age of 38, embraced her identity and has stopped trying to fix herself.

Before I go any further, let me say up front that none of what I’m posting here is meant to be a judgment on anyone doing what they feel is best for them when it comes to their bodies. I wanted to share my experience because body issues have been a lifelong theme for me, and finding a place of comfort and, dare I say, liberation from them has been transformative for me as a person and as a parent. My way isn’t the right or best or only way for everyone, and none of this is meant to be a recommendation, simply a reflection.

As is common for many women, I’ve spent many of my 38 years fixated on my weight. I was overweight from birth, and one of my earliest memories is my mom taking me to a medical specialist to figure out why I was heavier than my peers. This is especially notable because in Russia, where I was born and spent my childhood, specialists like that were very hard to come by, so this was a huge effort on my mom’s part and obvious investment in concern about my weight. While my family never intentionally made me feel bad about being a “big kid,” I always knew that I was not the “right” size. Over the years – which included a move to a new country when I was 11, having the typical fat kid experiences in school, relationships and then having a kid of my own – I’ve done nearly every iteration of “watching my weight.” While I thankfully never went to extremes, at nearly every point in my life I was doing something to control my eating, placing value on my food (good carrot, bad brownie), and defining at least part of my success as a human being by my perceived success or failure at managing my food intake.

The first step toward acceptance of my body came when I was in college. “Good in Bed” by Jennifer Weiner had just come out, and it was the first book I could remember that had a plus-sized heroine. In the book, the heroine’s weight is made an issue by an ex-boyfriend, and throughout the book, her journey through being defined by her weight was something that really resonated for me. Not surprisingly, just as the overweight book heroine does, I too could find love, have a fulfilling career and have friends even though I was fat. A few years after that, I read a book by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby called Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere, which was my first exposure to the idea that one can not only be healthy at any size, but also confident, happy and acceptable regardless of their size. It also was the first time that I started thinking about how society sets up expectations for women’s bodies in unrealistic ways.

I wish I could say that my struggle with my body stopped there, but it took another 10 years to get to a place where I finally felt like I was really at peace. In that time, I moved to a new city with my now husband, established a career, had multiple years of time where I could exercise and eat “well,” and still I was never quite successful at reaching whatever ideal weight state I was striving for. And then we decided to have kids, and went through two years of struggling to conceive, which I couldn’t help but blame on my weight, even though medical evidence was thin that my weight had anything to do with it. When I finally did conceive, I gained virtually no weight despite having no sickness or health issues, and my baby consistently measured two weeks smaller than estimated. The response I received from my doctors was that I must have miscalculated my conception date (I didn’t – who would after 2 years of intense tracking and failing to conceive?), and that it was no big deal that I didn’t gain weight because I was already overweight. It did not surprise me in the slightest when my daughter had to be evacuated at 36 weeks because she stopped gaining weight in utero due to IUGR. My placenta was barely the size of my fist and was not nourishing my child properly, but no one even considered the possibility because as a fat woman, not gaining weight was OK, according to my doctors.

My daughter is now almost 6, and what has really pushed me into the direction of real body acceptance is wanting to be the best role model I can be for her. I never watched my mother struggle with her body until she was an adult, but because she was so concerned about my body, I always knew I wasn’t quite “right” as I am. I don’t ever want my daughter to feel like she’s somehow not “right” because all bodies are right, period. As a child of two short, overweight people, my daughter is destined for a similar structure. She is currently in the 15th-ish percentile for height, and in the 75th percentile for weight, after being below every curve for the first 3 years of her life due to her small birth weight. She is a very active kid and a very healthy, non-picky eater, and she has a belly because she’s short but higher in weight. A classmate of hers pointed out to me a few months ago that my daughter has a “fat” belly, and in that moment, I had a choice to make. I could tell her classmate that it’s not a nice thing to say and made her feel like the term “fat” was something to be ashamed of, or I could normalize it. I chose the latter path and said yes, she does have a fat belly, and so do I, and that we all have different bodies, the same way we have different hair, eyes and the ability to curl our tongue and love or despise cilantro.

When Marie Kondo first burst on the scene a few years ago, I decided to apply her “joy” philosophy to my closet, because I really struggled to dress myself in a way that was truly comfortable, professional, and still minimized what I considered my flaws. I culled my entire wardrobe and left only things that made me comfortable and happy to be dressed in, and found that those things were all the things I also looked good in. I apply the same philosophy to everything I buy now, and I have never been happier, and I have extended the same approach to my daughter’s clothing. She doesn’t own a single pair of jeans because the way her body is structured, buckles and buttons hit her belly and bother her, so she wears mostly leggings and jeggings. She prefers dresses that don’t cut off at the chest or waist, because she doesn’t like seams, so for this summer, I am buying her mostly A-line dresses and tons of soft shorts and t-shirts for camp. When we talk about bodies, we talk about how our bodies should be cared for – with good food that gives us energy and joy, activity that we love doing and that makes us feel happy and strong, showers (kid hates showers!), tooth brushing, doctor check-ups, flu shots, etc. When we talk about food, we talk about trying everything once, eating everything in moderation because too much of any food, including her favorite cucumbers, makes our bodies feel yucky, and most of all, stopping when we’re full and enjoying the experience until then.

For myself, I am now finally in a place of practicing what I am preaching to my daughter. For me, it’s a much more complicated process because, as most of us tend to do, I’ve starved and overfed my natural instincts toward food for so long, I need to figure out how to listen to them again. I love food and the experience of eating and enjoying food, but I also tend to be a distracted eater, an emotional one, especially when I’m stressed, and someone who overeats because I simply don’t think about the process anymore. I am working on practicing more intuitive eating, paying attention to my signals of fullness and hunger, and most of all, I am working on taking away the value and judgement I attach to food and to my body. Yes, I am a fat woman. That is my identity and for the first time in 38 years, I am embracing it, accepting it, and living it, rather than forcing myself into an identity that doesn’t belong to me.