Hello, Belly!

Adjusting expectations as I enter my 5th decade

I was born in 1970. That means I turn 50 this year — the big half-century mark. If I’m lucky, I’m right around half-way through this ride.

Like many women, I’ve struggled with body issues over the years. I embarked upon my first diet in middle school. Learned to ride the big combers of calorie deprivation and binge eating in high school. Hopped on the aerobics train, then cultivated a running habit in college.

My weight waxed and waned. At times I felt amazing, and at times I loathed my body and myself for allowing it to grow so big. When my great-grandmother complimented me at my college graduation party by saying, “You’re finally putting some meat on your bones!” I went into a near-starvation phase; sure, I dropped 25 pounds pretty fast, but it was just another swing in the yo-yo cycle that would dog me into my mid-30's.

Learning about nutrition — not diet for weight loss, but the actual nutritional content of food, how the body metabolized different nutrients — began a much healthier phase for me. Except for the near decade of bulimia, coincident with my endless divorce and custody battle, I was doing pretty well...

Yes, the irony is intended, but there’s also truth there. At the same time that I was struggling with an eating disorder and exercise addiction, I was also educating myself about nutrition and fitness and feeding myself and my family more healthfully than I ever had before.

Because of the bulimia and exercise addiction, I dropped another 30 pounds and was the thinnest I’d ever been. Too thin. Not dangerous, but I drove that bus right up to the edge of the cliff.

I knew I was sick. I knew I was dealing with trauma in a way that would hurt me, eventually. I got help. I got better.

I eat great food now. I exercise reasonably, and adjust when necessary, as demanded by life and my aging body.

Ten to fifteen pounds heavier than I was at my littlest, I’m maintaining a pretty optimal weight for me.

And I have learned so much about the horrible messages I bought into about how I should look, what made me good, valuable, attractive, successful. I have countered them, boxed them up and put them away. I know how to answer them back when I hear them thumping around in the attic of my mind, protesting when I walk past a mirror or enjoy a piece of cake.

The new challenge

But there’s something new that’s come along, and I can feel a big learning curve looming before me: accepting my body as it ages.

Specifically, how it looks.

Not it’s weight; that metric is loosing meaning, because the same weight today doesn’t look like it did even five years ago. It’s Mother Nature in action, and there’s nothing healthy, safe or reasonable I can do about it.

Lumps. Bulges. Wobbly bits. Sagging bumps.

I read that and I want to shout, “Duh! Everyone ages, you know this, and all of that comes along with the package! What are you even writing about here?!”

My answer: I’m writing about making peace with what has begun, and what is to come, so that when I look in the mirror I can love what I see.

Self-loathing is a horrible, toxic companion. I’ve danced to its ruinous tune before, and I don’t want to do it again, especially around something about which I have no control — like the way my body will age.

So I am barring the door. I hear it pounding away in its box, its thumping echoing in the dark corners of my mind. It wants to be let out. It wants to tell me that I’m ugly and worthless if I can’t make myself sleek and smooth again. I know its song well.

But no.

A loving, positive outlook

Instead, I am cultivating a friendship here. I’m working on seeing my body as the chronicle of a whole life of experience, whose stories and adventures are showing up on the surface. There’s no hiding the years of yo-yo dieting, intermingled with two (very large) pregnancies. The years of bulimia and over-exercise are there too, in some places overlaying other decades, other scars, telling their tale.

We must all learn to see our bodies as Truth Tellers, Revealers of life stories that have innate value: things to teach, stories to tell, and we should soak up every lesson, learn from every part of them.

As a society, we need to see the beauty in our aging bodies— not barbie doll beauty, easy and immediate and shiny. The kind of beauty that you have to work for, the kind that comes with depth and knowledge.

The struggle continues

It’s hard. Those boxes rattle pretty loudly sometimes. Once in a while, one of the old destructive mental habits escapes, and I have to chase it around, fight with it for a while, before putting it back where it belongs.

But if I am lucky enough to have another 50 or so years to go in this body, I don’t want to waste any more time abusing it, either physically or mentally. It’s time to learn to embrace — and yes, celebrate! — what it is and how it’s changing and the direction it’s moving in.

Hello, belly! Hello, lumps and bumps and wobbly bits! Tell me your stories, teach me pride in where you come from, help me cultivate love for this form and all it’s done, all it can do, and everything that lies ahead!