Making Taking Care of My Body a Priority in the Craziness that is Grad School

This semester has been SO crazy. I am loving it, doing all the things I love most (reading, writing, reading about writing, writing about reading, you know the super fun stuff), but I am busier than I have ever been with Livy and Aaron and ATLOS to think of on top of school and work.

Somehow in all the insanity, my healthy habits have gone away. I am never home during the week, so I don't cook. Instead, I've been eating fast food in the car and bar food at school WAY too often.

Instead of my long walks of last semester, I have been sitting on my behind, writing and writing and writing. When I have a break, instead of getting outside, I find myself frantically checking things off my to-do list. I'm getting about the same amount of sunlight as Aaron, for god's sake, and he's a computer programmer.

I've gained weight, and I feel yucky. I am pushing myself harder than ever before, and I am not fueling my body properly or exercising to relieve stress or sleeping enough.

So, I am making a change. I am unable to make a big change because I have way too much to do. But I am making small changes to get back on a healthier track.

I started a yoga class, which is active and also gives me some much needed stress relief (thanks, Tori!). I've been going one day a week for 3 weeks and like it so much that I am thinking of adding an extra day a week. As soon as Aaron sets up the DVD player in the new introvert-proof living room, I will add some weekend yoga with Livy.

I am going to start taking some shorter walks during my school breaks. Walks that I can do in 30 minutes. Walks that I can do in nice slacks or a dress. I do not have to walk for hours to make it worthwhile to do it. The perfect is the enemy of the good when it comes to walks (as  in so much else).

I am going to start packing food for the day. Today I brought a cooler with lunch and dinner in it, simple stuff that doesn't require cooking. I may have to live with less variety if I am not willing to cook, but at least it will be healthy food that can fuel the pace of this semester. Today, I have ham, cheese, veggies and hummus, a frozen hamburger patty, and a salad. Not perfectly paleo, but a lot better than Taco Bell.

I am going to try to get more sleep by going to bed earlier on Mondays and Wednesdays (the days before my earliest days). It's hard to do that and still see Aaron much, but even an hour would help.

I'm trying not to focus on the weight I've gained or how I want to look or how I want my clothes to fit. Those things are fine, but not the most important. In a semester this busy, I only have time to think about the things that I value most and ruthlessly cut out the other. So body image issues have to go. Instead, my focus will be on giving my body the food, exercise, and sleep it needs to make me the brainiest, most energetic teacher and scholar that composition theory and writing center studies has ever seen.

Adventure in Dresses

Today's adventure was a shopping adventure. I bought my first strapless dress. I have always thought, "If only I had smaller boobs, I would love to wear long, strapless summer hippie dresses." Finally, I decided that my boobs are still big and noticeable when I wear dresses with straps, so if they are gonna be big and noticeable, I might as well wear the pretty dresses that I want. So I bought a strapless bra and a strapless dress. Do I look like a fashion model? No. But I don't look like a fashion model in my other dresses either. And people who aren't fashion models get to wear long, strapless, summer hippie dresses if they want to.

The next adventure will be wearing it. I think I'll be afraid, but I think I'll love it, too.

What Can My Body Do?! Wouldn't You Like to Know!

The second day of the five star challenge is to list five things my body can do.

1. My body can (and has) grown an entire human being, given birth to her, made and delivered breastmilk for more than 3 years (a year of that without other food), and carried her for 3 years on my chest, back, or hip. My body is a sweet, fertile, baby-makin' machine!

2. That same body can (and has) driven men (and women) crazy. My body is capable of feeling the most intense pleasure and giving it too. And that pleasure has only gotten better, even after all the effects of #1.

How bout we skip the picture here? :)

3. My body can do awesome athletic things. It can do gymnastics, keep up with teenage boys in a pickup basketball game (yesterday at homeschool co-op), tear it up on the dance floor, squat, snatch, even manage a few double-unders, flip off the diving board, hike miles and miles and miles, and run/walk a 5k.

4. My body is a germ-fighting machine. Constantly bombarded with viruses, bacteria, half-spoiled food, etc, my body hardly ever gets sick. My skin is super amazing at keeping all that crap out, and my stomach is like a tank. Seriously, if there was ever a person suited to be the king's food tester, it's me. I'd eat it, say, "Wow, this tastes funny. I wouldn't eat it, if I were you, Your Majesty," and then go about my business (which might include a pickup basketball game with the royal pages).

I wish I had a picture of me happily eating poisoned food while those around me are dropping like flies. Sort of.

5. My body helps my mind relax. A massage, an hour lying out in the sun, a good long walk, a glass of wine, a piece of red velvet cake, a roll in the hay, a new hair color--all these bodily experiences make my life so much happier and make my mind calm and clear and ready for thinking.

Crossfit and Body Image

Tonight, leaving the Crossfit gym, a very young, attractive, and fit woman commented that she was getting ready for swimsuit season, that last year she hardly ever wore one because of how her butt looked in it, and that she was "disgusting." My first reaction was to be a little hurt and offended. I mean, if she is disgusting, what must she think about me, so much less fit? And why make a comment like that in front of me?

But I know she wasn't talking about me; she's wrapped up in her own stuff the way all of us are. She sees herself more negatively than she sees other people (all this body stuff isn't rational, after all), at least that's what I have always done. Other people were okay, but I was just awful. I still slip into that thinking sometimes when I look at less than flattering pictures of myself. Other people just took a bad picture, but I I must really look like that. Thinking of her wasting her youth on all that unrealistic cruelty to her own body made all my hurt and anger morph into pity and sympathy. I've been there, and thinking like that becomes way too normal. It doesn't even feel weird anymore after a while; it's just the way you talk to and about your body.

How is it possible that such a pretty little thing and such a tough Crossfitter could feel that way? What does it say about our culture that she would really avoid fun, active summer activities because she thought she looked fat in a bathing suit? How could all that negativity about her body be on her mind after doing a hard workout really well? I hate this about our world. I hate that she isn't feeling how strong and useful and pretty and healthy her body is. I hate that there are so many women like her who feel that way every day of their lives.

So, I got to thinking about Crossfit and the way it makes me feel about my body. I have suffered from terrible body image issues in my life (how many women haven't?), but I am in a good place. I like the changes that I am seeing. I have made peace with stretch marks and boobs that aren't as perky as they once were. I value my assets, like my legs. I can look in the mirror naked and see me, outside and inside, instead of seeing an enemy and a stranger. Crossfit is a piece of that, I think.

At our gym, there aren't a gazillion mirrors, reminding me of how I look every second. It's not a place for being pretty or for thinking about being prettier. It's a place for sweating and grunting and looking like crap because you are the warrior Boudica, not some china doll, ornamental princess. The workouts are focused on functional fitness, not on building specific vanity muscles (*cough* bench-press *cough*) or losing fat in certain places. My workout is for getting strong and flexible and tough and being able to live better. I like that the focus in on using my body for work and play, not on making it into something to look at.

I love that our coach, Chris, didn't talk about me losing weight when I signed up. He was all about jumping into the workouts at the level I could do and doing my best. I have lost weight, and that's a good thing, but the weight loss is a side-effect of doing what bodies are made to do, what makes them feel good and work right.

I'm glad to be in a place where no matter what I look like this summer, I will definitely kayak on the Chattahoochee, go to the pool and Whitewater, and lay out in the backyard in the very smallest amount of clothes I can get away from. My body is for living my values, even the ones that require a bathing suit, and Crossfit is for making those values easier and more fun.

I have written two other posts on body image that may be interesting to you: Musings on Age and Body Image and Body Image and Gymnastics.

Body Image Part 2: Body Battles

As I was changing the profile picture on my facebook today, I hesitated. It was a new picture of me at the hospital with Ella, wearing her in my sling. I look at my face and I saw how much it had widened with the 56 pounds I gained during pregnancy. The width of my waist. The size of my arms. My heart clenched and all I could think was how fat I looked. How my post-pregnancy body looked like that of a sumo wrestler in training. I didn't want to share this picture with everyone because then they would see how...gasp...FAT I was.

Last month, Meg wrote about nursing and body image. I could relate to her post, not because I felt bad about my breasts but because I feel about every square inch of my skin. There isn't a body part I can't complain about. Believe me, I'm a professional hater of my own body. And it's exhausting. It's exhausting to focus on how much I dislike my body and it affects my relationship with my husband AND my kids. It affects my nursing relationship, even though I try not to let it. When I lift my shirt, I see my stomach, and the rolls I have. If I take my shirt off and I'm just wearing my nursing tank top, I think about how big my arms are and wonder if people are looking at them. When I'm looking down at my daughter while we're nursing, I think about my double chin. I'm serious...it's sick. I think about nursing in public after Ella comes home and I WILL do it because I believe that my baby shouldn't be forced to wait to eat, but I fear not so much the looks of people because I'm nursing in public but because of my heft.

Prior to pregnancy, I lost almost 40 lbs and I went from an 18/20 to a small size 14. I was really feeling good about myself but with this pregnancy, I was nauseas the entire thing and carbs were the ONLY thing that helped. Then I got PIH which later turned into severe preeclampsia and oh my God, did I gain. I gained about 25 lbs of water retention in a few weeks. At the end, I was gaining sometimes 3 or 4 pounds a DAY....in a matter of hours sometimes! One day, while in the hospital, I gained 4 lbs in 12 hours. I have new stretch marks and loose skin from the rapid weight gain. It just adds more fuel to my abusive relationship I have with my own body. While I've lost almost 30 lbs of the weight I gained during pregnancy, I still have a long way to go and the loose skin isn't going anywhere without plastic surgery. I have some big girls in my family and it's a constant battle against brownies and genetics to not blow up.

Ella and I getting ready for our first walk in the ICC

This is a really difficult thing to write about. It's easy to hide behind an armor you put up, calling yourself fat so that someone else won't do it but to come right out and admit that it's how you truly feel and how you truly see yourself as well as just how much it affects your life is very difficult. I just hope that as I work through these issues, even if I never get back down to what I was pre-pregnancy or smaller as is my goal, I won't let it negatively affect my nursing relationship with Ella or worse, my relationship with my 2 girls, and later on their own image of themselves. I constantly worry about how my own body image will affect them emotionally and psychologically. It's something I know I need to work on.

What's your battle with body image and nursing, or even not nursing, just body image in general?

Lots of Excitement and a Musing

Well, I'm back to normal life (for two weeks anyway until our next trip). I'm very very very glad. Aaron's parents visited, my mom visited, and we went on a roadtrip to Washington, D.C. Just to shock and amaze you, here is a list of all the things I have done and seen since my last post:

• Atlanta Botanical Gardens
• walk through Piedmont Park
• High Museum of Art
• fancy lunch at the museum restaurant, where Livy was served iced tea in a real grownup glass without us having to ask, which made her whole lunch and (I think) got her to eat pickled beets because they are grown up too
• the library
• Greenville, SC to have dinner with an internet friend, now known in the flesh
• drove up the Blue Ridge parkway into Virginia (absolutely lovely!!)
• Monticello, Jefferson's home
• National Air and Space Museum
• Holocaust Museum (gruesome and graphic, but very wonderful museum, nonetheless)
• National Portrait Gallery
• American History Museum (for a minute only, we didn't like it)
  
• walking tour of the Mall and surrounding monuments (Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln, Korean War, World War II, Washington monument)
• party to welcome a friend who is visiting our Atlanta Objectivist group
• 6 hour float down the Chattahoochee River on blow up rafts

So yeah, I'm kinda tired. The fridge is empty. The laundry is piled up to the ceiling. I am looking forward to this coming week, hanging with Livy and Ryan and Morgan and Sean and Rational Jenn a lot (we missed them tremendously), doing some housework, mowing the grass, and being at home!

And here is my musing:

At the aforesaid party, a friend of mine, a lovely attractive woman who would be admired by any man with any sense, mentioned that she was upset by her boobs sagging. It got us talking about changing bodies. Here's my two cents: There is nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty and attractive, but there is something wrong when we don't accept the reality of being 30ish and 40ish. Our boobs are gonna sag. Our faces are gonna get wrinkles. We'll probably all gain a few pounds as we age and our metabolisms slow. I think that's okay. If a man wants to date a woman with maturity and experience, he's gonna have to accept that those women have wrinkles and boobs that sag a bit. If he wants perfect boobs and flawless skin, he's gonna have to choose a person who hasn't lived and loved and learned sex techniques and made progress on career goals and traveled and has lots to teach him. The thing is, I don't think most of the pressure really comes from men. I've spent most of my life on the heavier side of our society's ideal, and yet, I've never hurt for very wonderful men in my life. My boobs that sag a bit have been greeted by men with that stupid (yet lovable) smile that they always get when faced with breasts of any size or age. I think that men (in general) are much kinder to our bodies than we women are ourselves.

Earlier this year, I made the resolution that this year, I was going to stop resolving to be something other than I am and making myself miserable. I've kept that resolution by ending my obsessive and dangerous dieting cycle and by practicing talking nice to my body and the bodies of other women. I'm trying to think more about other things about me and the women I know and less about our looks. There is nothing wrong with noticing someone's looks, but I, and many other women, focus on looks way too much.

So, my final word on this is: I am not a mannequin, not a teenager, not a Barbie doll. I am real 30 year old woman who has had a baby. I can't be bothered about stretch marks, sagging, and my first wrinkle. I have way too much living to do for that. :)

Observations about Gymnastics

I quit my gymnastics job to be home with Livy this summer, and it was incredibly hard for me to leave. I'm sure every competent person feels that their workplace cannot get along without them when they leave (no matter how well they usually do get along), but I felt it doubly because I am taking the only bit of outside perspective away with me. I did not do gymnastics as a child, and I think that has given me some advantages, as well as the obvious disadvantages. I do not immediately think of the way I was taught a skill; I have an easier time breaking out of the traditions and finding new and better ways to teach. I am not attached to the reputation of our gym in the same way; as long as the girls are learning and having a good time, I am not too concerned whether people think the gym has gone down since the good old days. The best advantage for me, though, is that I came into gymnastics with the attitudes about sports that I picked up from basketball, softball, and martial arts. They are much healthier attitudes.

Here's the way other sports work: There are several different levels. There are kids who play just recreationally. There are kids who compete on school teams or private teams who work a bit harder. There are people who are going to do this professionally, or at least at the Olympics. Not in gymnastics. The attitude is that if you are not going to work really hard and strive to be the best, there is no point in even competing. The competition can't be just for fun. There are recreational gymnasts, and there are competitive gymnasts who are super good. There is no room for people in between. There are teams of mediocre gymnasts, of course, but then people say, "Why even compete?" It's ridiculous.

Then there is the body image problem. In order to be really good at gymnastics in the modern world, you have to be a man, or at least you have to starve yourself completely until you don't get your period and your ribs stick out. Most kids at the level I teach do not do this. But the coaches once did, cause they were good back in the glory days. There is an unspoken (usually) criticism in the gym of hips and breasts and any amount of fat. When the rumor gets around that someone is throwing up in the bathroom after lunch every day, I am the one of the few who thinks that is horrific and scary and a sign that the child needs help. It's not that the other coaches don't care; they just see that kind of thing as normal. Talk about being too fat is bantered around by the girls all the time. It kills me to hear a 12 year old with amazing muscles and lines say that she is just so fat, and she is never going to have another cookie. Of course, she does have another cookie sometime- the child is 12 - and then she hates herself for it. Perhaps this body crisis is happening in adolescent girls everywhere, but I think sports should make girls feel better about their bodies, not worse. In soccer, you have to be really fat before it harms your athletic performance and before it shows in your uniform, and even then, I don't think it would be said behind your back (by some of your coaches) that you are too fat for soccer. But in gymnastics, even the normal body changes of puberty ruin your performance, not to mention if you gain some fat, and if you gain any weight, start to grow mosquito bites for breasts or get a waist, everyone knows. Leotards display every tiny imperfection and sign of impeding adulthood.

I would like for there to be team gymnastics for girls in the middle, the ones who are talented, but not extremely. I would like them to compete and enjoy the thrill of a meet, just like girls in other sports do. I would like to take girls who can do the skills, but who are too old, too fat, too dainty looking, too flighty, too immature, just like every other sport does. I was able to bring a little bit of this philosophy into my workplace. I was the advocate for the teenager who wanted to start competing at a fairly low level (Why not? Does it matter if she goes much farther?). I was the one who insists that the girls are lovely and perfect when they complain about how fat and yucky they are. I am the one who thinks it is my fault when a child can't get a skill, not hers; I just need to find a different way to teach it. I hope I had a good effect on our gym because of my outsider's perspective on the sport, and I will miss trying to inject what I consider sanity into a sport that sometimes lacks it.