My Body is a Cage

CONTENT WARNING: this post includes a semi-NSFW photo of me, and discussion of eating disorders. You’ve been warned.

I grew up an average weight. At the time, however, it didn’t feel like I was average. Looking back, I was pretty normal. I wasn’t heavy, but I wore – *gasp* – a size 12, and in that time, that certainly wasn’t skinny. After graduating and going to college, where I chose my own meals and didn’t have mandatory phys. ed classes every day, I gained a bit. A year later and three months of working on a cruise ship, and there was more weight. Eventually, my inactivity and depression caught up with me.

I won’t get into what happened or what changed to get into my current physical state. Suffice it to say, it was a lot of fucking work. And it’s still a lot of fucking work. Sometimes I crack jokes like “this isn’t even my final form,” but they’re not really jokes, not entirely. I feel like I will never be satisfied with how I look.

It’s that unhappiness that brings on this post. Over the last four years, even though I’ve lost nearly half my body weight, I still look in the mirror and see things that I could improve.

I see a little bit of fullness in my hips, or a bit more jiggle in my thighs. Maybe my jeans feel tighter across my ass then usual. There’s the saggy skin of my abs. My once giant chest has been reduced to what could be described as two plastic bags filled with melted ice cream.

So I look at these things, and is see them as flaws, and I resolve to do what it takes to make me love myself again. I work hard, but there’s always something. A forbidden snack – which is only forbidden because I say it is, not because it’s necessarily bad for me – will have me anxious for days, wondering when I can fit in a workout to make up for a stray 100 kcal if I opted to have raisins on my oatmeal or peanut butter on my English muffin instead of butter.

My food choices for the week can depend on the availability of workout times between work and appointment schedules; an unplanned trip out for a weekend lunch has sent me into a panic attack because it “ruined the numbers”. Then comes the inevitable rebound, where I restrict myself, only to binge on something later.

I know my disordered eating habits have scared him. In some ways, and as terrible as it is, I blame him for the way I am. I may have started my weight loss for myself, but when I discovered his infidelity a little over a year later, my brain suddenly needed to maintain that weight loss. If I didn’t stay thin, he’d do it again. Maybe even leave.

Now, I won’t say this is a thing of the past, but I have gotten better. I don’t, and never have, eaten an unhealthily low amount of calories. My problem is mainly over-exercising, with a bit of restriction thrown in for good measure. My workouts are limited to about 30-45 minutes during the week. Most of the time, he comes upstairs and works out with me. Other times he’ll just keep me company so I don’t spend my workout worrying about what’s happening downstairs. That alone could be an entire post itself.

Nor do I place as much blame on him for the way I feel as I used to. The last few years have shown me that regardless of how I may have looked over the years we’ve been together, what he did was his own decision. He made his choices on his own and certainly would have done it no matter what size I am.

In the same vein, I take ownership of my own issues. I know that weighing everything and then eating cake batter and cookie dough doesn’t make sense.  Even if I do feel loads healthier doing it (for again, a post in itself), skipping breakfast and calling it intermittent fasting is just another way of normalizing my problem.  I rationalize things and say “it’s not an eating disorder, just disordered eating habits” or “if I’m not starving myself or jamming my fingers down my throat, it’s not an eating disorder”. It’s a fucking eating disorder.

My body is a cage, my brain is my warden, and I’m working on my escape. I need to take back my power. I’m so tired of being a slave to my thoughts.