legz

 

One of the things that you learn in life is that even the most beautiful of women have something they are insecure about regarding their body.  The most well adjusted of us all still have something that we would change about our body.

I am fairly well adjusted about my looks, yet there are things that I would change about my body.

My personal journey to acceptance and self love took a long time.  I am not immune to moments of self doubt but over all, I like my body.

If you’ve visited the Black Weblog nominated Vizionz from the Bottom Tumblr, you may know that it was first designed to be documentation of my weight loss journey.  That concept fell off over time as my life altered but the weight loss journey never did. In the past calendar year I’ve lost 46 pounds.

That is the reaction that I hate.

Yes I said hate.

When a fat person loses weight the applause begins and the compliments flow and try as I might I will never get used to that reaction.  I find it to be harmful and defeating and ignorant.  It is the validation of a body image that not everyone is designed to have and the rejection of beauty where it exists.

Fat people can be beautiful and healthy and that is not acknowledged.  Sure there are pockets of fat love, but overall if you are fat you are looked at as lazy, and unwanted and that does a number on the psyche no matter how together the fat person seems to be on the surface. It’s simpler – kind of – for men but for women fat is not where it is at.

Fat women in the United States have it rough.  Now, I am not asking you to shed a tear for them, but simply trying to convey that existing in your fat suit is a burden that need not be a burden.

My problems with losing weight are mental mostly.  I want to prove to someone, someplace, that I am more than my back fat and love handles.  I struggle with transforming my body into a smaller size with more traditional measurements because in my head that is a rejection of the person that I am today.  It is discarding all of the work that it took to make me love myself.  It is buying into the hype and conforming and becoming a part of the world that hates my fat.  That kind of mental block is difficult to overcome.

I bought a scale when I started that Tumblr, and within 2 months I threw it away.  The constant step on, step off, was traumatic for me.  My anxiety levels rose as the numbers went down and I found that I would self sabotage to keep the number steady.

It was important to me to show that weight loss could be done the old fashioned way, yet I could not lose the weight the old fashioned way while holding onto my mental blocks. Catch 22 anyone???

I watched as women around me turned to weight loss surgery to cure the fat and it hurt me to watch these women mutilate themselves to achieve….I don’t know what they achieved. They are no happier, they have deficiencies in vitamins and minerals that are difficult to overcome, they have hair and skin issues, they have more body image issues than they started with, they are still single [the hopes that a smaller waist would catch them a husband are crushed], and they seem no less angry at the world than they did before they went under the knife.

The problem? Now they’ve completed a medical procedure that can not be reversed. I wanted my Tumblr to be a testament to a different path.  One where you transform yourself from the inside to get to that point outside and be whole.

Frankly, I failed.  It was a task I was not up to handling.  I bite off more than I can chew at times, pun intended.  This was one of those moments.  I am not qualified to alter the hearts and minds of women who look to surgery as the answer to the questions they don’t know to ask.  I am qualified though to say, I get it.

I get the need….I just can’t change how one satiates that need.

As I struggle with the 46 pounds that have left my body, other women struggle with the last 5 pounds to get to that “perfect” place of being.

So few of us will achieve perfection…. because there will always be that one thing that we hate about our bodies.

Losing 46 pounds has taken me from morbidly obese to obese.  I’ve decreased my chances of getting diabetes, my cholesterol is back under control, heart attack & stroke chances have diminished.  I’ve done a good thing for my body, my spirit and my longevity.  Yet, I still mourn those 46 pounds and at times wish for their return.

For the first time in over a decade 200 pounds is within sight, and obtainable.  Shit, once I get rid of these fibroids I may not have to do any more, they really might be 20 pounds of yuck sitting in my uterus.  The CDC says I should top out at 141 pounds.  The CDC can kick rocks.  I can’t meet the struggle that comes with getting to 141…. I am barely wrapping my head around 200.

What I have learned though is that this is one cause I can leave to others.  Even though I want to speak out about the harm I see others going through to get results that won’t change anything for them inside…. until I can process my own shit in a healthy manner its a lost cause.

I can hop on my soapbox and proclaim forever why sexyshred, and the grapefruit diet, and WLS, and Jenny Craig are the devil.  It will make no difference though until I conquer my own devils within me.

 

 

Aphrodite Brown