One thing I don’t write about that much, probably out of shame and embarrassment, is my relationship with my body. It is complicated, as it is for many people, and it has been that way since I was five. Yes. It all began when I was in kindergarten.
Every night my mother would ask me what I’d eaten for lunch that day, and every night I’d tell her, in elaborate detail, about the hot lunch that had been served, when in fact what I’d eaten, as I did every day, was peanut butter and jelly on white bread or peanut butter and jelly on Saltines. Why I felt compelled to keep up this elaborate facade is unclear, and it could have gone on forever, had it not been for a friend who’d come over for a playdate one day. When my mom asked me about lunch, and I launched into my usual routine, my friend looked at me like I’d lost my mind and said, “You had what you have every day. Peanut butter and jelly.”
I don’t really remember what happened next, but I’m pretty sure I got in trouble. What’s interesting to me now is the fact that my mother was angry about the lying, but it never occurred to her to ask herself why I might be lying to her about what I was eating.
I went on my first diet at age 10. In fact, on my tenth birthday we went to the doctor so that I could get my ears pierced and talk to a nutritionist. And so it began, a series of seemingly endless up and down cycles that I hope have, to some degree, ended. For what I have learned after all this time is that the more I try to control my body and my food, the less willing to be controlled they are. For example: If I become convinced that I’ve gained five pounds and try to lose them by eating less or not eating or exercising more, I will in all likelihood gain 20. Seriously. That has happened.
A year before I had Eloise I started doing Pilates regularly. It is my favorite form of exercise, aside from walking, and it is one that I have done on and off since 2003. Generally I go off because I discover something else I think is going to make me skinny, and then when that doesn’t work I return to Pilates because I enjoy it. In the fall of 2021, I treated myself to a private lesson with a teacher who told me once she started doing Pilates three times a week and stopped doing all the crazy bullshit, she ended up with the body she’d always hoped to have. And so I was like, okay, no more trying to lose weight. The only goal from here on out is to feel comfortable in my body.
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