I am still THIS person, the person who wears a tutu on her head for her Princess Son!
“ If women told the truth, the world would crack open,” Audre Lorde
This morning, I got an email that I knew would come. I did not know who would send it, or when it would come, but I was sure of its eventual arrival.
When I first started thinking about losing weight/eating better/etc, I remember being afraid of a backlash. Thinking that people who enjoyed my “fuck you society!” posts about being fat would be disappointed in me. Worried that if I wrote about something so mundane and trivial as weight loss and food, that people would think less of me. That I was “bowing down to the man” or selling out.
Several of my friends thought I was ridiculous to think that this would happen. All of those friends were thin. My fat friends knew exactly what I was talking about.
So this morning, I basically got the “Heidi, I am glad you are trying to get healthy, but why are you writing about it and posting your weight and focusing on this and I am sad to see you become this. You were an inspiration to me and now I am sad.”
And it hurt, but like most things, it hurt because it was true.
I AM writing about weight loss, and posting my numbers, and any petty thoughts I may have. I AM writing about being hungry and how it feels to wear smaller clothes, and the battle that goes on in my heart in regards to my love of being mobile and there for my children that sometimes seems at odds with my love of my curves.
But this is the price I pay for living “publicly” – when you put your thoughts and actions out in the public arena, people are free to comment on them. And I understand that.
But the focus on my weight is only the flip side of what was a false confidence about my weight. I have never thought I was ugly – NEVER! This is not about that. But part of the reason I focused so hard on building my identity into that of the “happy fat girl” or the “outrageous fat girl” was so that I would not have to deal with REAL ASPECTS of myself.
I am vain, just like thin women. I worry about my looks, just like thin women. But I am not losing weight just for a looks issue. In fact, I am still adamantly into not only my own curves, but the curves of other women.
And I want my identity to revolve around the whole of who I am, and not just one piece.
I started losing weight as a side effect of a drug. I then decided to continue it to increase my health, and decrease pain in my knees and my herniated disc. Both feel much, much better.
I am making all of this public is because I benefit from working my issues out online. I always have. But in doing so, I expressed fears that people would react in just this way – that I would be seen as giving up something huge in my identity to fit in better.
But here is the thing – I still have ALL the same values, ideas, opinions, faults, strengths, and weaknesses I did before. I am the same person, albeit one who is in a headspace about losing weight.
Is this ok? Am I allowed to do this? Am I allowed a moment to be human where I worry about the health consequences of high blood pressure and pre-diabetes – especially in the same year that my father died at 61 years old due to congestive heart failure.
I know that many people considered me a role model in “fat positive” issues, and loved my sassy fat self and the way I seemed to be above the trivial issues I am now writing about.
But I am not above it. A very dear friend told me that my persona was a huge suit of armor I was wearing, and he was right. I am human, I am weak, but above all, I am a work in progress.
Part of me wants to explain that MY weight loss is different because it is based in self-love not in self-hate, but then I realized, by saying that I am judging everyone else who is not like me.
My journey now allows me to focus on the food issues I have hidden and suppressed for so long. If you need to hide me because it triggers you, bores you , saddens you, infuriates you, or simply makes you go “meh – bring back the anal sex!” then certainly hide me.
But I am not a movement. I am not a symbol. I am a woman who wants to feel good, look good, and live long enough to see her great grandchildren become as goofy as their ancestors.
And I am still Heidi Marie Anderson.
And when I get to where my body wants to stop losing weight, I will make and wear this t-shirt:
sorry i am late to this but congratulations of thinking of yourself and your health… especially so you will be around longer for Hollis and Max. Your emailer friend is welcome to their opinion but i don’t agree with writing the “dear Heidi” email. i don’t care what subject you write about… i would read it :D
Thank you Catherine :)
It is interesting that people want you to tell your story, unless it conflicts with theirs.
But, at least now I am watching more carefully for that myself.
Love you guys!
As a feminist atheist skeptic bi-dyke who is formerly fat and still considers herself very fat-positive, I just want to say, Right on, sister! I went through a lot of these same issues when I lost about 50 pounds over a year and a half (now maintaining the loss for about 8 months). The whole freaking point of feminism should be “our bodies, our right to decide,” shouldn’t it?
Besides, I had to face the fact that there were aspects of the fat-positive movement that were downright denialist and anti-science. As a rationalist and a skeptic, I had to go where the evidence took me. And I know my health is better now: knees, back, strength, stamina, libido, mood, everything! So you go on with your bad self and know that you are not alone.
Hear, hear, Heidi! I’d say more, but I’d pretty much be saying what Nurse Ingrid said, so I’ll just say again: Hear, hear.
Oh, and also: When you make that T-shirt, can I buy one?
Go get ‘em. Be kind to those that are scared b/c you are changing. When someone looks up to you…they model themselves in your image.
Now that your image is shifting, they are scared they can’t keep up.
Fear, it’s a bitch.
:) But congratulations on taking care of yourself. Make sure it’s in a kind, loving way :)
I’ve just found your blog and this post, thus the lag time in commenting. None of us should have to explain ourselves – you have betrayed no one, only been true to yourself. It would be lovely to be AUTHENTICALLY immune to the pain that many of us feel living in a fat body in our culture as it is currently constructed. But I sure don’t personally know anyone who is immune to it. Wherever this journey has taken you, I hope you are at peace with it.
I am reading this post well over a year since it was written. I tried like crazy to love my body when it seemed to balloon from around 120 lbs in 20 years to over 190, but I had internalized the message of fat discrimination. I hated shopping. The only things I enjoyed buying were shoes, because my “curves” were not nice ones. I had huge boobs, but my body is kind of straight up and down at any weight; and when I’m heavy, my belly is so distended that jeans that fit around my waist are like clown pants down to my ankles. I’d watch teeth whitening commercials on TV, and realize that no matter whether I had whiter teeth, a better haircut, applied makeup or got new clothes, nothing was going to make me feel pretty until I got down to a weight that was appropriate for my height, whatever that means. There are pretty plus size models, but that was not what I looked like.
But I also like to eat – and I don’t deal well with deprivation.
At our aunt’s memorial service in Spring of 2011, I was talking with my cousin who was on Weight Watchers. I mentioned that I’d tried WW, but that I couldn’t stick with it. She told me it’s all different now – there is no hunger involved – in fact, WW has set up a weight loss system measured in points in which you can eat all the fruit and (most) vegetables you want for zero points. There are weekly meetings and weigh ins, and a groovy little iPhone app, and sociability. I’ve reconnected with a college friend and we talk about WW, trading helpful tips – and I have figured something out. The meeting leaders are motivational speakers, and some of them are better at it than others. The thing I heard a few months ago that has reverberated with me is this: Losing weight requires the will to change; people resist change because it’s painful. When the pain of obesity is greater than the pain of making change, the will to change will emerge. I’ve lost 40 lbs since June – pretty painlessly – and plan to lose 20 more. I will look OK to myself at 135.
WW is not the only way to lose weight – a friend of a friend has lost 200 lbs on Low Carb – there lots of ways to skin a cat — but is my self esteem better than it was six months ago? Yes. I don’t think I discriminate against others who are bigger – I get it that some of us have genes that predispose us to efficiently store calories as fat, and that has nothing to do with whether the person is smart or good or loving. But I was discriminating against myself – and while losing weight will not solve all my problems, I will no longer flinch when I see pictures of myself that I label as unattractive.
I was lighter on my feet after losing the first five pounds – I have hit milestones that would be hard to understand for a person who has never gained weight: fitting into clothing that I had outgrown; regretting giving away cute clothes that I thought I’d never be able to wear again; obsessing over lipstick instead of sighing because I thought it wouldn’t improve my appearance.
In one way I wish I could have embraced my fat self – considered myself lovable and sassy and smart and funny — Heidi is a great role model. But that wasn’t my experience. Instead I wanted to hide out at home and focus attention away from myself – let my words online represent me rather than my image in person; have my hard work be recognized because my self esteem didn’t have anything else to prop it up.
I will be healthier, endure less pain in my ankles, knees and hips, and have greater self confidence. As I once heard, you can lose weight, but you can’t turn back the clock. I’m still old, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing I can do about that.