42 is the Answer

At the end of September 2020 and in the midst of the Covid lockdown and hellish online teaching, I made a decision to take better care of myself and try to undo years of neglect. Sure, I had been exercising and even worked to the point where I could run around a 12 minute mile and run three miles without slowing to walk — my lungs and heart felt great — but I couldn’t ignore that I hauled 232 pounds around on my 5’9” frame on a daily basis. How better would I be at running and hiking if I didn’t carry that extra weight?

But then my internal rationalizer started reminding me that I should love who I am and where I am at. Numbers don’t define me, right?* The scale. The size 16 pants that were getting tighter and tighter. Those don’t matter! Body positivity! Love the skin you’re in! Hug those curves, right?

And of course, telling myself that I just have a large frame and that I’m curvy. But I wasn’t always that way.

Once upon a time I was a teenager who thought her 135 pounds was 20 pounds too much. Once upon a time I had killer abs I didn’t even have to work that hard for (just ask my sister).

What happened?

Well, like many people, I had children, grew older, and my health changed. I focused on nurturing my kids and focusing on my career. I accepted where I was and justified it with every excuse I could muster.

Now… before you think I’m going to get all self-help positive preachy on you, remember that I’m the queen of self-deprecation and sarcasm. My classroom has a cheeky sign that reads: “When you wish upon a star, you’re about a million years too late. That star is dead just like your dreams.”

But what I’ve found interesting in the past year is how we live and think in extremes rather than embracing the area where both seemingly diametric realities actually coexist in truth. I can be body positive while also changing my body.

And now looking back, I see how I believed my own lies about myself for so many years and thought I felt better than I really did. I had become complacent.

So, last September I did something about it. I originally intended to be on a strict plan to keep myself from gaining a bunch of weight during the lockdown. I really didn’t expect to change that much — maybe lose 15 pounds and plateau like usual. But then 15 turned into 20 and 20 into 30… and soon I found that maybe my pie-in-the-sky goal of losing 80 pounds could actually be a reality… and I kept going. Longer than I wanted, to be frank. In February 2021 I remember planning to reach my goal by June 2021, but June came and went. Plateau. Summer and the 170 pound plateau continued into the stress of returning to in-person teaching.

Sooo… here I am. November 2021. Over one year since the change began. Not at my goal, but still pushing forward. Sure, the fat may be gone from my cheeks, revealing wrinkles that had been stretched out for so long, but that’s a small price to pay for feeling great about myself again. And I can’t help it if now I roll my eyes a bit when I hear people spouting body positivity mantras—been there done that. I have always loved my body, but I refuse to use that as a mask for not facing what I don’t like about it.

With the holidays approaching, I’m not going to fret. Just keep doing what I’m doing and realizing that this last 20 may or may not happen—and that’s okay. I’ll know when I’m ready for the next change and the next and the next. I know the answers have been inside me all along, but it just took a while to remind myself of that.

It looks like year 42 really has been the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

*Additional explanation: Thanks for all the positive feedback from this post. I truly appreciate it. To clarify, I want to stress that your body weight IS an important number, but it is not the only one we should fixate on. Our overall health and well-being is made up of so many measures — most of them are numbers. So let’s not be dismissive of keeping track of our weight while also not obsessing on the number. I can keep track of my pant size while not obsessing on it — the same way I can keep track of my blood pressure, resting heart rate, calories consumed, and miles walked. For a while I supposedly embraced who I was and focused too much on my “feelings” rather than the facts, which led to the realization about the useless weight I was hauling around in the name of “body positivity.” To all things, there is a balance. So kick some ass, keep an eye on your numbers, and make incremental changes. The journey is long, but the view is worth it.