The Journey from 2 to 8
I was originally going to call this post: Confessions of an Ex-Thigh-Gapper. But I thought that sounded a bit too mean to people the size I once was. In high school I ate terrifying amounts.
Moving on… Why am I writing this? I don’t know because weight is such a bizarre topic and I feel like the opinion of persons like myself are few and far between. Not that are views are especially important but eh, what are blogs for? A friend of mine posted this from Women’s Health on Facebook was what began the thought process about this post. I was glad to see number 3: Amanda because she never got huge but she got bigger. When I was in elementary school I was all elbows and knees, and short. Watch out, or I will murder you with my pointy chin. This one picture my arm just looks alien as I hug my cousin. I was about this age.
I knew I was a nerdy and awkward kid but I was okay with it. I was a bizarre mix of being a bit of a tom boy while being utterly unathletic. I am sure that there was barely a muscle on my body until I started high school. I still stayed incredibly thin, but now I was doing theatre so there was at least some strength. I dressed in unisex t-shirts and baggy cargos. My few fitted shirts had a bit of goth flair. I wore the same tennis shoes everyday. I was that girl. I hated wearing shorts because my legs. They were so skinny, but I felt like they looked giant when I sat in shorts. I was very conscious of my shoulders and my hair.
Even going in college I peaked at about 120 pounds. I am 5 feet 4 inches so especially when I was more fit that was still darn skinny. I think in college I started to blossom a bit more. I still think most photos of me are terrible, but even just out of high school I wore better clothes. I make terrible faces when I know my photo is being taken.
In 2010 I started dating the Bear and if you ask him he will tell you that he felt like I was underweight. At that point I had been pursuing my Masters for a year, so my activity level had drastically dropped. These two were early in our dating.
Since then I have been more and more sedentary. Sure we’ve played paintball but that is a here and there. I’ve never had to work out in my life. I’ve always been able to eat whatever I want but I really feel like it was hitting the age of 26 that everything really shifted. They tell you your metabolism will change but you never really believe them. I’ve been building a nice little gut. Keep in mind that paintball gear does not flatter women…
Most of my weight has gone to my stomach, or at least the things I don’t like. That I guess is my real point. Most of it I don’t consider bad. I have a butt now. There is a skirt I bought in high school that I literally can’t get over my rump now. I don’t have a thigh gap, but that is because my thighs are proportional. My arms wobble a little bit, but they don’t look like toothpicks anymore. I just divided my closet by what I can currently wear and what I can’t. It made me cry because I like my clothes. I need to work on my stomach so I kept some things in case I can get to wearing them again, but I realize I might not. There should be no shame in not being a size two. I think I’ll probably be at least a size six when I hit my ideal. And it is just my ideal because you can’t aim for a shape, biology will spite you, and aiming for a weight is just ridiculous usually. You change until you like where you are and then you try to stay around there. I suppose it would be easier if I could just stay this cute forever.
It’s not that easy. Nothing is easy. My father spent a good portion of his life being unfairly picked on about his weight. My mother worries about her weight and my weight, but honestly I think we all do pretty darn good. Everyone struggles. I’m trying to learn to eat from my Mom. I’m trying to find time to exercise in a house where no one else has weight issues. The important thing is that we have a blast. There are more important things in life than fitting into all of my clothes and being able to wear things from college.
So what do you think? How do you deal?
