Do I really have to talk about this?

I'm afraid I do.

I don't usually get into other pieces of my life here, but it's all twisted up in body stuff, so I will. I'm single and heterosexual. I do the online dating thing. I don't particularly like it, but I don't really have other places to meet men, so it's what I do. One of the horrifying things about online dating is that you can see right there in black and white that many, many men are very specific about what you need to look like to date them. Mostly, they don't want you to be fat. Some of them want to date someone between 5" and 6" but not over 130 pounds. Do they know what 130 pounds would look like on a 6" woman. Well, obviously not, since she'd be dead. Anyway, they're not all like that and while it does hurt my feelings sometimes, I am also aware that (at every size I've been) I am like most people in the world: some people will find me attractive and some people won't. Frankly, I have no interest in dating someone who doesn't find me attractive.

Only this weird things is happening where my body is changing and I look different and I had this online profile with a picture of me (a picture I like -- wind is blowing my hair in my face and I am laughing at something my little sister is telling me and I look like myself) and it no longer represents what I look like. So I changed the picture. I posted the one I mentioned awhile back. It's a nice picture. I am laughing at my nephew. I look like myself. And I suppose I look more accurately like myself now.

A few days ago, someone wrote to me, asked if I wanted to chat, said he'd like to know more about me. I'm usually wary when they don't say anything more specific than that, but I looked at his profile and he actually sounded like someone I'd like -- we had some interests in common, he sounded like a grown-up, he sounded kind -- so I said hello, mentioned that we had the same favorite book and said, "Ask me anything." He responded by asking me out to coffee. Sure. I'm all about a face-to-face meeting. I believe you learn very little by corresponding with someone you haven't met. So we made a plan to meet tomorrow morning and he asked if I'd send him another picture, "...just to be on the safe side." I assumed he wanted to be sure he recognized me. But then I had this dilemma: I don't have another recent picture. I have a handful of pictures I've used before -- the one that shows me laughing at my sister and two or three others -- but in all of them I am somewhere between 25 and 50 pounds heavier than I am now. I look different. And apparently the way in which I look different is a big deal to a lot of men. Ugh. I am at the same time vain, wanting to send a picture of me right now, not just thinner but fitter, happier, more at ease in my skin -- I think all of those things make a difference --and I am resentful that it makes a difference. I like those older pictures. I think I look good in them. Why should I not send a picture in which I look good? In any case, I didn't have the option of another new picture, so I sent an older one. In it, I'm about 25 pounds heavier than I am now, which is about 18 pounds heavier than I was in the picture he's already seen. I refused to mention the change in my size, but I did say that I didn't have another recent picture and that this one was a few years old.

I got an email from him ten minutes later: "I've changed my mind, sorry. Good luck."

I feel so icky about the whole thing. I mean, he's being horribly rude. No one has ever done that to me before in years and years of online dating. And I find it odd that anyone could take a picture so seriously -- I've done this enough to know that people just look different in person. I never know if I'm attracted to someone until I meet him. Part of me, even though I now hate this man and would never want to date him, is still insulted and kind of hurt. I don't like to think of myself as so unattractive that I'm not worth an hour in a coffee shop. I don't like to think that someone would find me attractive now or sometime in the future when I'm thinner than I am now, but would be repelled by a photo of me taken 25 pounds ago. I absorb that. I feel shame. I hate that I can still feel that.

You Know What's Hard?

Swinging a very large kettle bell for 45 minutes.

Which is how my week began. Okay, it's how my Tuesday began. My trainer is trying to teach me kettle bell swings, which is apparently an acquired skill, thus the 45 minutes of, "Okay, you're doing this part right, but you want to do this other thing differently." This was, mind you, a kettle bell two sizes bigger than the biggest one my gym owns. He brings his own. If done correctly, this is a lower body exercise. Because I'm still learning, I managed to exhaust every muscle I have. By the time I got to work Tuesday, I felt I would never be able to lift my arms again. Wednesday morning I went to power yoga (more on that another time), which felt good while I was doing it, but made my muscles more tired. Am only just now feeling mostly recovered after resting today. Damn.

I've been delinquent here. I'll catch up. This was what I could write today without doing too much thinking. Between the muscle fatigue and my world being completely covered in ice, I'm not much for thinking.

Trust

My goal for this week, (because, yeah, I do kind of have goals even though I try to be mellow about them) is to not gain more than a pound. After a few days of eating with abandon, I seem to have swung back to a more moderate place yesterday, and I have been working out as much as ever. I'm going to my trainer's class this afternoon. My weight fluctuates from day to day, but I go by my Weight Watchers weigh ins on Monday evenings. Right now I'm at about the same place as last week, so if the next couple days go well, I might even lose. Every single time this happens -- I eat in a way that feels out of control for awhile and then I work my way back to a place that feels better -- I am relieved to have made it back and comforted that it hasn't really damaged my efforts to lose weight. I feel almost, almost but not quite able to trust it.

As I wrote on Thursday, I am trying to banish the voice that tells me eating a lot of crap is bad. And part of that is about the fact that it's not bad. Bacon has no ethical value attached to it. Eating bacon isn't like torturing puppies or cheating on taxes or even driving a car. Gaining weight isn't bad. Nor is being fat. I'm working on that. But I also recognize that I am trying to lose weight. I want to lose weight. It's not necessary, it's not the right thing to do, it's not me doing good. It's something I want. So the other piece of banishing The Voice is trusting that a little setback like a craving for pizza or two parties in two days at which I choose to eat delicious food, does not derail my efforts to lose weight. It doesn't put back the 65 pounds I've lost, it doesn't take away my remarkable biceps, and it doesn't mean I will be eating that way forever. And even though I've seen it happen time and time again, I apparently don't quite trust it yet because I am still feeling that relief when I make it to the other side.

Voices in my Head

That said, regarding the bacon, I have been indulging in not so healthy foods a lot this week. I ate too many cookies on Monday (Trader Joe's Peppermint Joe's O's, which are entirely irresistible.) On Tuesday I ate pizza for dinner and gingerbread with whipped cream for dessert. Wednesday I ate leftover pizza for lunch and some cookies and later lasagna and all sorts of other delicious heavy things at a dinner party. It's funny to listen to my internal monologue while making decisions about what to eat. A voice says to make healthier choices and then another says to go ahead and eat what I want because thus far, that has worked out pretty well for me, has left me feeling indulged, not deprived, and then allows me to go back to healthy stuff. The first voice comes back then to say perhaps I should feel badly about what I've eaten and perhaps I should make extra healthy choices now, since yesterday didn't go so well. Voice two tells me that kind of thinking leads to feelings of obligation and guilt and that doesn't work for me. It tells me to eat bacon for breakfast because that's actually a good way to start the year. It tells me that I am happy in the grand scheme of things and that I am looking forward to my next workout. It tells me that the brunch I'm going to in a little while will offer more treats and that it will be just fine for me to eat them because after that, life goes back to normal and I'll be buying and cooking my own food and most of it will be delicious and healthy.

I love the second voice and I wish I could live without the first. I'm grateful to have come to a place that allows me to see that the first voice is unhealthy. I used to believe that the first voice was Right. I believed it had my best interest at heart and that by not listening to it, I was sabotaging myself. I know now not to listen to it, but I don't know how to make it go away. I wish I could recognize that I'm eating a lot of junk this week and truly, purely not worry about it. For now I will have to at least embrace my desire not to worry about it.

New Year's Bacon

I began the year this morning with bacon. It seemed the thing to do. Because I want my year to have bacon in it. And also cashmere, so that's what I'm wearing. These things feel symbolic -- creating the kind of life I want, the kind of luxuries I think I deserve, in the coming year. It's nicer than resolutions. We all know that resolutions beget failure and guilt and I am so anti failure and guilt. The closest I came to a real New Year's Resolution was sometime around Rosh Hashona a couple years ago I swore never to accept another plastic bag. I have kept to it and am pleased. But there was no emotional baggage (excuse me) attached to that decision and it didn't stink of "self-improvement." We don't need to improve ourselves, we need to figure out how to live better and happier lives. For me, bacon and cashmere are part of that. So are strength training and yoga and soup with kale. So is spending time with people I love and being kind as often as I am able. So is avoiding plastic bags and other disposable things. So if I were to resolve, I would resolve to remember what makes me feel good and do it more often.

Wishing anyone out there a joyful 2009.

My Prom Dress

As I write this, I'm wearing my prom dress. I find clothing sizes confusing, as they are different from brand to brand and year to year. Last March, I was wearing a size 20 or a 22. In October, I could wear 16s in most things, the smallest size I'd worn as an adult. Two or three weeks ago, I got a new winter coat. I'd been trying on Extra Larges but I was at an outlet and not everything came in every size. The one I really loved was only in Large, so I tried it on. It was a little snug, but not too, and I'm still losing weight, so I went ahead an bought it. I kind of thought it was a fluke. But this afternoon I went out to take advantage of our crumbling economy via sales at Macy's. It turns out I'm a size 14 now, or a Large in almost everything. I mean, I didn't like everything I tried on, but there wasn't anything that didn't exist in my size. It's an incredible relief and also kind of surreal. I remember that I was a 14 in high school, or maybe that 14 was a little too small for me, but it was always the biggest size -- I didn't know clothing sizes came bigger than 14. And I didn't want anything that fit me properly then anyway -- I was wearing oversize T-shirts and long flowing skirts with elastic waists. I wore men's jeans from thrift stores. So I'm not sure what size I really was and I'm not sure if a 14 then was like a 14 now. But my prom dress was made for me and right this minute, it fits perfectly.

I'm pleased to fit into it. But it's also bringing up stuff I don't want to remember about being a teenager. I thought this size, the size I am now that feels pretty comfortable, was disgusting. I thought I was so fat that everyone was ridiculing me, that no boy could possibly be attracted to me, that I couldn't try to wear flattering clothes because I would look like I wasn't ashamed of my body. And I was supposed to be ashamed of my body. It makes me sad to think that I allowed myself to feel that way, and that no one else tried to make me feel differently. A lot of it came from my mother, who was and is far too concerned with my weight. Some of it came from the usual public places -- fashion magazines, movies and TV shows that not only starred beautiful and thin actresses, but that openly ridiculed overweight women and girls. I lived in Los Angeles, where being thin is valued over almost everything. There was no other voice. I look around now and even though the actresses and models are thinner than ever and we hear about "The Obesity Epidemic" from doctors and journalists and kindergarten teachers, there is also another voice. There is a pretty loud fat acceptance movement. There are so many more places to buy decent and sometimes adorable clothes in bigger sizes -- not enough, mind you, but infinitely more than when I was a teenager. There are women of all sizes blogging about their relationships with food and their bodies. I think if I were seventeen now, or even twelve, I would be finding some of that. I would be hearing more voices, voices that encouraged me and accepted me and told me I was beautiful, I was fine, I was not alone. I wish I could give those voices to my younger self.

Not Recognizing Myself

I was looking through the pictures on my sister's camera last weekend during her birthday party. I wanted to see one she had taken one of me holding my baby nephew -- he was playing with my glasses and we were both laughing. As I clicked through all the photos, I passed the one I was looking for twice because I didn't immediately recognize myself. It's true that the viewer on her camera is pretty small and also that I wasn't wearing my glasses in the photo, which changed my appearance. But mostly, I just look different. I don't look as I expect myself to look. Sometimes when I catch my reflection in a mirror by accident, I don't immediately know it's me I'm seeing. It's a pretty disconcerting experience.

There's this whole mythology of transformation connected to weight loss in our culture. The ugly duckling becoming the swan. The ubiquitous Before and After photos. We are supposed to look like a whole new person after losing a lot of weight and that's supposed to be a good thing. And I'm not saying I'm immune to that -- vanity is certainly part of the reason I want to lose weight. I'm happy with how I'm looking these days and I was less than happy with how I looked a year ago. But I don't think it's a healthy part of this process to look at pictures of myself from a year ago and marvel at how huge I was, how horrible I looked, how grateful I am not to look like that anymore, not to be that person anymore. That attitude is so prevalent in our society -- in the weight loss industry, in fashion and fitness and celebrity magazines. Part of the story of successful weight loss is: I used to be fat and disgusting and now I'm a whole new, thin and beautiful person. We are supposed to be motivated to lose weight by how much we hate our fat selves, how much we want to get rid of that part of ourselves.

I look at pictures of myself at my very heaviest and I take comfort in still being exactly the same person. If I couldn't do that -- if I needed self-hate to be part of my motivation, I would fail. If I hated my fattest self, I would have to hate my current self and my thinnest self, too, because I know they are all Me. The truth is, I think I look better, but it freaks me out a little to look different. It's disturbing to look at my reflection or my photo and not recognize myself, even if it's just for an instant. I visit a pre-school class twice a month to read stories. Some of the same kids I saw last spring are there again now. This week one little girl said to me, "Miss Jamie, you look different," and it made me kind of sad. I'm not someone else and I don't plan on being someone else when I'm done losing weight.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to lose a significant amount of weight and feel uncomfortable about looking different -- to find it creepy not to be recognized. But I never hear anyone talk about it. I wish someone would.