I am sort of obsessed with Before and After pictures. You know the ones, you’ve seen the ads for weight loss pills or protein shakes. I know many of these particular ads are scams. They pay slim people to gain weight and switch the chronology of “before” and “after.” The before pictures are really the after pictures and vice versa. The product the pictures are hawking often has nothing to do with these individuals’ weight loss.  Still. The pictures have a hold on me. And the ones from sites like Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, where I can be reasonably sure the pictures are authentic, are even more fascinating to me. (Though they're always asterisked with that little disclaimer: "results not typical." Funny that.)

I have a thing for transformation. I have a serious obsession with ugly ducklings and swans and everything that connotes. Going from “fat and miserable” to “thin and happy.” The culture does kinda promote this idea that if you just get closer to the beauty ideal, the world will be at your feet. (How many make-over shows and movie montages have you seen? I know I've seen a shit-ton.) But having been there and (part-way) back I also know better now than to believe thin = happy.

In high school I was interested solely in the Life of the Mind. I went to a very academically competitive high school and hung out with some very smart people. Awwww yeah! Where my nerds at? Up in the hizzy. Seriously- these people were serious. One of my high school friends went on to Berkeley to major in Bioengineering and he found he had too much time on his hands so he double-majored in English. I’ll let that sink in a minute. Double-major in Bioengineering and English. Yeah, whole lot of overlapping classes there. Absolutely a breeze. Not to mention Biofuckingengineering. What? Are you kidding me? So- yeah- these were the people I hung with. They were a little more concerned with school than, well, pretty much anything else. Sure they played tennis and basketball and violin too, but all of these were about the college application. All of these things were about getting ahead. Competing. It’s interesting how similar my very secular experience is to Gwendolyn Glover’s. Just exchange Education(or maybe more accurately Competition) for God  in her wonderful essay and you have my experience too.

So the life of the body was not of much interest. In fact, I looked down on girls who were outwardly interested in fashion and looks. Even though I was a pretty average teenage girl in a lot of ways, I had a secret subscription to Seventeen magazine, I watched movies and television. I knew what is generally accepted in our culture as “attractive.” How could I not, really? Pretty hard to avoid. But I prided myself on being “above all that.” I was interested in poetry and Music (I capitalize it because I was interested in High Art, people, not that Top 40 trash, ugh. Plebes.) Art and ideas. Yeah I was snobby. It protected me from being hurt by not being pursued by the opposite sex at that time, not being popular. My snobbery was a great shield and made me a judge instead of the judged. We all have to survive high school in whatever way we can.

Somewhere along the way I realized my body was of some use after all. Maybe not exactly after I lost my virginity, but certainly around the time of college and realizing I was not so freakish after all. Young men were, in fact, interested in me. (Wow- how long until I realized something so obvious? I never claimed to be all that quick, people.) I became more interested in my body, the way it looks and feels, what I like about it and what I don’t. Everything in high school was what I didn’t like about my body. I didn’t really want to have a body, I think. I would have been happy being a hovering disembodied psyche writing brilliant poetry that only the brightest people in the world could understand. Yeah. Insufferable. Since then I have come down to Earth and realized the delights of the body: the warm velvet of a good red wine, my daughter’s embrace, really fine dark chocolate, orgasms, the ache of my limbs after a long run. All of these are delightful to me and would be impossible without this body.

It’s strange how I was more interested in how I looked and more shallow as a teenager than I am now, even though I profess to be interested in my body and trying to lose weight, which many might consider vain or shallow. If you read my journals of that time I was always whinging about my fat butt or using “fat” as an insult against myself. More disturbing was how I used "fat" as a sort of shorthand for "lazy" or "stupid" or "uncool" or whatever other hateful things I wanted to throw at myself. Now I see “fat” as a descriptor. It is no worse or better than “short” or “blonde” or anything else I have little control over. Weight isn’t quite the same for me, though. I have exerted some control and I have had some success, but I am not the story that gets sold by the weight loss industry or programs like Biggest Loser.

I am not the ideal Before and After story. More like Before and After and Before again. Or close. I have lost twenty-five pounds and kept that off for over ten years. In a way, I am a success. But, right now, I don’t look like the traditional success story. I am still considered solidly obese. Is it success if you still look “fat”? One commenter said on my post about Precious and feeling like an eyesore that she didn’t think of me as fat. I know this was meant as a compliment, not to take issue with me, but I do look fat right now to a large percentage of the population. Here (deep breath) is the one of the pictures I was talking about in that post. The ones I hated and didn’t even want to buy for personal purposes (let alone post on the freakin' web what am I doing?!):

 Maybe not huge, but certainly not a "typical marathon runner." Maybe I'm smaller than you thought, but according to the BMI I am fat. I'm wearing size large running sleeves and they are cutting into my, apparently, larger than size L arms. We could get into an endless philosophical discussion of what really is fat. For some people you will never be fat enough to understand, for others, no matter how slim you are you’ll still be kinda fat. Well I’ve been "fat." And I’ve been “not fat.” I’ll leave the qualifiers out of it.

 I’ve been this (I'm on the far right):

This is me about thirteen years ago when I was at my highest (non-pregnant) weight. At 225, I may have been heavier than my six foot tall brother standing next to me. I have such a strange swirl of emotions when I look at this picture. It used to be only shame. I hated this picture and wanted my mother to get rid of it. She wouldn’t hear of it, of course. Now I feel love for this girl and pity, not in the patronizing way of “oh poor poor fat girl” but, genuine empathy for how sad she is. How her clothes are only to cover and camouflage, even though they do a poor job of this. I know she is suffering through the worst depression of her life. I know she is using the only drug available to her to cope: food. For some food is just food. You eat when you’re hungry and you stop when you’re full. Food will never be that simple to me. I’ve used fat and sweet to comfort myself out of some of the darkest times in my life. They light up pleasure centers in my brain that help stabilize my bad feelings. They don’t do it in the best way, the comfort is fleeting and so must be repeated often. I have discovered that running does the same for me as certain foods did, but in a better and more sustained way. That doesn’t mean I don’t still get pleasure from food, I most certainly do. But I realize I am kind of like an addict. I can slide off into insanity pretty quick if I don’t practice some moderation and have other things in my life. (I'm anxious to read Angry Fat Girls- a memoir by Frances Kuffel- she calls herself an addict too)

I haven’t been what the BMI deems “normal” since high school, but I have also been this:

I liked being that weight. I could run and actually achieve some lift-off. When you see action pictures of fast runners they often have both feet off the ground. There is a brief moment of flight in a fast runner’s stride. I had that and I want it back. And, yes, I am sort of shallow too. I enjoy feeling more conventionally attractive. I enjoy wearing the latest fashions. Shopping  in extended sizes is a drag. Fashion designers and clothing makers still disdain fat people. I think this sucks, but there is no way the industry is going to do a 180 in my lifetime (not that I won’t still raise my voice in hopes of it) for now it is easier to try to change my own shape. Which is, admittedly, not that easy. And I know now being thin(ner) did not make everything in my life suddenly easy and great like the transformation stories seem to want you to believe.

I completely support fat acceptance for reasons of feminism and how people of size suffer from discrimination, but for myself, I want to lose weight. I'm not sure if that puts me out of the club, but I think so. It’s not exactly that I can’t accept myself at this weight. I’m pretty happy most of the time, I'm not putting my life on hold until I'm a size 8 or anything, my husband finds me attractive and I’m proud of myself as a runner, but I remember speed. I want to improve my times. Most serious runners do and I am starting to think I may be a serious runner. Plus I think bodies change anyway. No one’s body stays exactly the same throughout their lifetime. Pregnancies, aging, participation in sports, disease, medications and many other things (for good and bad) cause changes in your body mass. I don’t know? Is that fat acceptance? I certainly don’t hate myself (though I struggle to feel great about myself all the time- who, besides the narcissist, doesn't?) or other people of size. I’m done with all that nonsense. My body is amazing no matter what it looks like. It has nurtured and birthed two lovely little human beings. It has run 26.2 miles. But  I do want to run faster while I still have some ability to do so. I want to give my body good wholesome food and the gift of running. I do know that I've stopped waiting for the magic of transformation to make everything better. I no longer want to look like Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie. I will not bend to anyone else's impossible standards.  I just want to look like myself, my healthiest best self.  Because this is my body.