I want to live in my body

I have not, for a very long time, cared very much about what I put in my body. Oh, I didn’t keep sweets and junk around, and only had fast food 3 or 4 times a month, but I rarely ate fruits or vegetables, just what was easy. I am now going on the ketogenic diet — again, this is just me, I am not purporting that anyone else do this — it’s just that I’ve been on every diet known to woman, include Weight Watchers more times than I can count, and these thing just do not work — for me. And it’s not just about going on a certain kind of diet, it’s about wanting to be in this body at all. Being sexually abused from 4-18 fractured me. I have long felt like my mind and soul were traveling through time and space together with my body bumping along behind me on the ground. I have not ever thought that I hated my body, I am just somewhere between terrified of it and disconnected from it. I am making slow gradual changes moving into keto, reading and studying, but the huge thing is that I finally care at all.

I have not wanted to make any promises to myself. I am not going to share here what I am eating or how I am doing it or what I weigh or how much I’m losing. Somewhere down the line if I have been successful I will likely do before and after pictures, but right now I am just moving through my days learning what and how it is to live in a body, what it means. I used to always be bruised or hurt from bumping into things, not paying attention, or even falling down. I was so not in my body I didn’t even notice it until I tripped over it. It is just unimaginable to me that some people love their bodies, move in the world with a kind of ease and grace that comes only for those who are comfortable in their own skin. And it’s not about how much some women weigh. The most beautiful women in the world, if you ask me, are women that most of the world think “should lose some weight.” I love goddess images of ample curvy bodies. But my body went way past that when I wasn’t paying attention, and I became less and less interested in having a relationship with it, and I began to hide more and more from the world.

I have only recently realized that much of my agoraphobia comes from not wanting to be looked at, being afraid and feeling unsafe in the outside world, knowing that people are judging me, or maybe not noticing me at all. Just one more “large woman” in a sea of them. So many women are suffering. It hurts my heart. All of a sudden it matters to me that I am able to go out into the world with confidence, feeling good about myself. I don’t know how much I will weigh then. I need to lose a good chunk of weight but I have no desire to “be skinny.” I want to feel womanly, and sensual — not sexy, I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about the kind of woman who just moves through the world with confidence and ease, both physically and emotionally. I want to feel good being me. I have not felt good about being me for so long I can’t remember when I did. Or rather I do remember but it is way back in the mists of time. I want to feel that way again in the years I have remaining to me. I want to Celebrate Myself! Sing Myself! as Walt Whitman wrote. I haven’t had anything to celebrate or sing about in a very long time.

It’s amazing that I am even at a place in my life where I want to do this. I think I can honestly say that while I have gone on diets and lost weight before and felt good about it, I was never doing it for myself. I was doing it because of what other people thought about me, or thought I should do. I believe that this is the first time in my life I am doing it just for me. I am sitting here, kind of shy, in a state of awe and wonder. I don’t know what it all means, or how it will turn out, or who I will be by the end of this 365 day project but I know that I will never be fully happy unless I take care of all the bits and parts and pieces of me. It’s not just mental illness I deal with, it is this mind/body split, this weight that I carry around like an albatross around my neck, and I’m not at all talking about wanting to look like a fashion model or follow the latest trends — I never have and I never will — it’s about being able to walk down the street all of a piece, not with my body bumping along on the ground separate and apart from the rest of me.

I think I’ve said enough. I think I’m having an awakening. Nothing earth shaking, just quietly finding that I want to live in the world as a whole woman, inasmuch as I’m able. This is new for me. I will share thoughts along the way, not so much about the diet and what I’m eating, more about the way getting better situated in my body in a healthier way feels. I will say it again, this 365 day experiment may end up being the most important thing I’ve ever done, it is touching every part of my life, slowly, but surely, things are changing, incrementally, I think people won’t notice very much for a good long while but someday maybe those I love and I will wake up and say, “Well gosh, look at you, something’s different.” And it won’t be simply about weight loss, it will be because I will have become a woman who glows with self-love, a woman who has reconnected with the goddess within, a woman who has finally determined that she will do what it takes to reach her full potential.

I never thought I’d be here. I am so happy that I have finally begun…