Monday, Monday, Monday.

[dira]

1) Fun thing for Monday! Courtesy of @filamentmag, an awesome hobby I'd never heard of before: Bunny show jumping.

2) A thinky thing. Via Kristin Cashore, an LJ post by happiestsadist entitled Stop Telling People to Love Their Bodies. You can't shame someone into thinking they're a stone-cold fox.


I don't know that I can say I ever hated my body, exactly. My feelings have never risen to an intensity that I would quite call hatred. What I've felt toward my body has been mostly a sort of resigned dissatisfaction, since I was, I don't know... twelve? About twelve, yeah--maybe younger but certainly not much older. But I had a mom who told me I shouldn't try to change myself and I went to an all-girls high school and had friends who didn't diet or wear makeup, and anyway dieting was this horrible bogeyman of teenage tragedy, an automatic step on the road to anorexia, right? The girls who dieted were the girls who drank and smoked and dyed their hair and had sex with older boys, and I wasn't one of those girls. So I didn't ever diet.

And by the time I got to college, and the Freshman 15 was joined by the Sophomore 15 and so on, I had completely internalized the forward-thinking, woman-positive, body-positive idea that what was wrong with my body was that I didn't love it enough. Low self-esteem, I told myself. And that was true, that was absolutely true. I didn't like myself much. But I thought that if I could just will myself to think I was attractive, then I would be, and that was the only way I would be. There was no other recourse. My body was just the way my body was, and it would never change. My body--my body which was generally healthy and able and not even all that fat, objectively speaking--my body was a locus of total helplessness for me, because I hated exercise and liked food, so my body was just going to inexorably get heavier and more out of shape and all I could do about it was try to love it more.

And then I went to grad school, and then in grad school I got a job at a high-powered law firm in a high-powered city and I was surrounded by skinny, well-groomed women in pencil skirts and tailored suits, and I felt fat and horrible and miserable. I'd come a long way since college in the department of liking myself, but my body hadn't been magically changed by that. And then one day, sitting miserably at my desk at work, hating myself for not being a size 2 attorney in a pencil skirt, I read The Hacker's Diet and realized I could lose weight if I wanted to. I could change my body if I wanted to. Loving my body didn't factor into it; choosing to change my body, and following through on the work required to make those changes, meant I could make my body different. I could make my body more or less what I wanted it to be.

And then, over the course of about a year, I lost 46 pounds. And it was the most empowering fucking thing I've ever done in my life, because I finally gave myself permission to feel that my body wasn't perfect just the way it was. And then I could do something about it.[1]

So, yeah. I agree with that post above, a lot--because just telling people it's their personal responsibility to love their bodies, in the face of everything in the world, be it the rest of the media, be it their own state of health/fitness/etc., be it a sedentary lifestyle, whatever--just telling people to ignore all that and love their bodies isn't going to make them love their bodies. All it did for me was make me more ashamed.



[1] Yes, I was lucky as hell, privileged as hell, that the something I chose to do about it was as easy for me as it was. For lots of people it isn't; even for myself I haven't been able to maintain it and have had many difficulties trying to get back to that point. Still, the original experience was amazing for me.

Comments

[cofax7]

I read The Hacker's Diet and realized I could lose weight if I wanted to. I could change my body if I wanted to.

HAH! Yeah, this is pretty much what happened to me. I'd always been reasonably athletic and relatively thin, but after I hit my 30s, between the metabolic downshift and the hours and stress of the consulting gig, I started putting on a pound or two a year. Seven years: 15-20 lbs. I tried to diet, but I never did anything systematic about it, and I refused to do Weight Watchers or anything like that. I thought that if I could just run more, it would magically go away.

Except for a working professional in your 40s, it's pretty much impossible to exercise off the weight, not without changing your diet. And then one day about four years ago I read the Hacker's Diet, and went, "Ahah! A quantifiable system that makes sense!"

And I lost 15-20 lbs in four months [insert here the same qualifiers you use: it was not that difficult for me, all things considered]. I've mostly managed to keep it off since then, without having to be too obsessive about my intake. But like you, it was immensely empowering to realize that I could be in control of what my body looked liked. I can almost see what the appeal of anorexia is, because you are in control, and all your decisions are reflected in direct, physical ways.

...which does not mean I'll ever be anorexic: I like to eat too much.

Anyway, so yeah, I didn't have the shame issues to the same extent, but my body was not what it had always been and I wanted that back. And I was able to bring it back, and that was awesome.

(Of course, a 45-yo body != 30-yo body, but I can live with that.)

[dira]

Right? It was a revelation to see somebody strip away all the Why You Are Fat emotional analysis and all the Magical Food/Evil Food insanity and say "input/output, period." And then there were CHARTS! It was really pretty incredible.

[amalthia]

so is this Hacker's Diet plan online? or is it a book about what hacker's eat?? I'm kind of trying to eat less and lose weight but it's not quite working...and my husband is grumbling about me not doing enough and it's actually all rather stressful.

[dira]

Oh, I'm sorry that you're stressed out and feeling pressured! Here's The Hacker's Diet--it's kind of an engineer's approach to losing weight, so it involves gathering a lot of data to help you figure out what you need to do to have success. I hope this helps you!

[amalthia]

it's all cool! Thanks for sharing the link. :)

I think the main problem is I moved from Texas (where I'm used to the heat and etc) to Alaska where I refuse to leave the house and there is no outdoor swimming at lakes. I'm much less active when I'm cold and I eat more. Not a great combo. Almost everyone I talked to says everyone gains ten pounds when they move up here.

[dira]

Oh, man, that does sound tough! And come on, doesn't everyone need a little extra insulation up there? :)

[amalthia]

the extra insulation helps! :) last winter wasn't nearly as bad as the previous. :)

[gloriamundi]

how did I not know about the Hacker's Diet?

There, right there, it tells me what no other diet scheme has mentioned -- that because I am five foot nothing I burn fewer calories than the 'recommended calorie intake for women', which seems to be based on somebody five inches taller than me.

Armed with this information, I suddenly understand why I have difficulty losing weight on other schemes, despite exercise and 'sensible eating'. Indeed, I hardly need to read on. (But I will, because I want to be able to get back into my favourite dress. And yeah, I'm kind of ashamed of the belly.)

Thank you for this post!

[dira]

I am trying to work my way back to my favorite jeans, so I understand the feeling--and seriously, between that insight and the one about filtering out the signal/noise from weighing yourself regularly, it is AMAZING. ♥Hacker's Diet♥

love it or change it?

[(Anonymous)]

(Have bookmarked Bunny Show Jumping for daughter. Loved watching a rabbit balk at the water hazard -- but it was able to stop cold and then make the jump anyway! Though I saw that the high-jumping rabbit was off-leash and made a good fast run at the fence.)

This was a fascinating post for me, because the love-your-body stuff was my salvation from being paralyzed with self-hatred. Turning off the body hatred made it possible for me to see eating well and exercising as pragmatic choices rather than ethical obligations I was eternally failing, and took my general goodness or sinfulness off the table. It never occurred to me that body-love could mean feeling obliged not to try to make changes. But having read this, and the comments, I see that I missed a lot!

Re: love it or change it?

[dira]

I'm glad that the message helped you, though--there are probably lots of people who hear it that way, the way it's intended. I guess there just really are two (or more) sides to everything. :)