#+ if they explicitly tell me they want to organize a meetup

[misskamelie]

Also, maybe it's because it's the end of one academic year but I feel slightly better about planning for future stuff. As in, I'm already blocking out days and a mockup of a timetable for next semester/academic year

[leahgolubchick]

On Weightloss and  Selfcare

In the last three days I have read Roxane Gay’s Hunger, seen various takes on the Huff Po obesity article (both very for and very against and nothing I completely agree with), and saw Weight Watchers is rebranding by dropping “weight” from its name, with early backlash already at work. I also spent two days at a writing retreat focused on trauma informed practice. So I’m feeling reflective and there’s a lot of weight-related stuff going on in my head.

A bunch of friend have noticed that over the last year and half I lost some weight. Many people my age don’t know how to bring it up politely because there isn’t a good script for that and we’ve been trained to never bring up people’s weight unless you’re about to lift them. Even then, probably don’t. Women of over 45 have shouted at me from across the room. Generation gaps, vive le difference.

Two years ago, I was unhappy. In 2016 my work place exploded with a sexual assault case that was featured in Scientific American. In retrospect, that case prepared me and a lot of my coworkers directly for the #metoo and #believesurviors movements right now. But in 2016 it was a lonely, scary time. There was palpable fear in my workplace, resentment, defensiveness, and what I’d later understand was behavior fueled by retraumatization across the board, especially in Leadership. People were leaving, angrily. People were lashing out. And because when you look for elephants you find them, we were improvising the role of social worker when students came forward needing help from sexual harassment and assault. We helped them while suffering our own reflective trauma. There were ZERO resources in place for a seismic change in my work culture.

Two years ago, I was unhappy. I was drinking too much. Having a monthly bar event about sex gave me an exciting combination of working through the poison of rape culture AND excuse to drink heavily. Guess where we planned events too? I was overwhelmed and depressed. I wasn’t setting a lot of boundaries about my life because when you feel hopeless and powerless, what’s the point? I’d go out, I’d connect with friends. But I wasn’t caring about myself. I was also 200 pounds.

Two years ago I reached out to some friends who had been going to therapy, I needed help. Help was there. I am grateful that this was my first therapist who focused on the present. Her work was about reshaping thought patterns, about questioning assumptions, about prioritizing selfcare. We used phrases like “parenting yourself” and “more will be revealed.” The first day of therapy she asked me “What do you do for yourself?” I couldn’t think of an answer, and I cried. By the time I left in July of this year, a lot had changed.

Six months into therapy human resources announced an open house of Weight Watchers at work. The program was free, and I had mock-enrolled about a year before (as in, I volunteered to weigh myself every week while refusing to do any part of the program in any form). I was unhappy, and that included my appearance. So I went. At the Open House I heard a lot of the language I was hearing at therapy. “Be gentle with yourself,” “progress not perfection,” this was a chance to take care of you, to do what feels good, to embrace #selfcare. So, I opted in.

I’ve never had to manage my weight in a real way. I’ve always been in a weight range that doctors and strangers don’t feel the need to comment on. My weight had changed when I moved to New Jersey, and I’d brushed with “Calories In Calories Out” (CICO) to try to drop a few pounds. That was a disaster. Turns out untreated anxiety and having to account for every random mouthful of food AND being a people-pleaser meant spiraling out of the range of reason pretty quickly. I remember one point completely unable to tell if I should eat a piece of fruit or a Twinkie because they have the same calories and I only had ”room” for one or the other. So CICO never lasted more than a week. Ultimately the problem resolved itself when we moved to Colombia and the suburbia weight melted away.

I can’t do “intuitive eating.” Maybe one day, maybe I never will. I don’t eat based on intuition. I eat because I like experiencing new things, I like textures, I like spice. I eat because its social and I want people to like me. And frankly, I like sugar, salt, and fat because my stupid monkey brain lights up when I eat them. But I don’t think housing a chocolate bar with a bag of potato chips is the holistic goal.

Joining Weight Watchers, I didn’t focus on my “goal weight”. Thinking about losing 45 pounds was overwhelming, and disheartening. So, learning from a family in recovery, I just focused on today. I didn’t think about every choice I had to make, I just thought about the next choice I had to make. I remember early on telling Sebastian, “Weight Watchers means we have to make some changes. So maybe we do bagels on Saturday and Bahn Minh on Sunday, but not both on one day?” (He agreed and we still do this). And slowly, very, very slowly, my weight changed. But that’s not why stuck with it.

The program, and my group leader, gave me permission to put myself first. Articulating my needs, informing myself in new situations, saying “no” and sticking with it because it was what I wanted was a radical departure internally. I had a vision of myself as a “cool girl,” someone who went with the flow and said yes. I associated “Yes” with adventure. I didn’t see chaos, or if I did I didn’t see it as a destructive force. About a year ago, I gave myself full permission to set boundaries concerning my food.

It is a basic right to decide what goes into my body.

I’m a feminist. I’m a sex-positive radical that hosted monthly sexual health and social science events. I am an educator who works to empower her kids. And it took a year of therapy and six months of Weight Watchers to get that basic-ass idea into my head.

Weight Watchers worked in tandem with therapy with me. It fit into my selfcare, when I followed the plan of fruit, vegetables, lean protein and whole grains, I felt good. Not “clean,” not superior, not “lighter,” I just felt physically better. Nourishing my body, moving my body, listening to my inner clues for what I needed helped me. It helped my mental health, it helped my self-confidence to know I was taking care of myself. And while the basics of how that was working are pretty obvious, I needed structure and reminders to keep me there. Tracking my food and my movement wasn’t a punishment for indulging myself, it was keeping myself in check. And when I didn’t stick to the plan, I still tracked. And some weeks I took a break and didn’t track at all. Some weeks I gained weight, some weeks I plateaued. And you know what? The times I ate high point/high calorie food and enjoyed the shit out of it were worth it. But the weeks where I said, “fuck it,” the days I ate whatever because what was point, or because stress got the better of me, I felt like crap. Not paying attention hurt me, but now I was in a place to notice it. So I kept coming back. And yes, it felt good to have clothes fit me in ways that I liked. It feels good to go shopping.

I’m not unhappy now. I am more peaceful, less reactive, more holistic. I’ve moved on from therapy for now. And I feel more comfortable being honest. I don’t second guess setting my boundaries. And I weigh less. Could I be happy and content and working on me while fat? My weight gain was a symptom of my unhappiness, so it’s hard for me to say. I’m able-bodied, I’ve lived most of my life as thin person, as a white person I don’t have to face the chronic stress people of color face in the US. I’m not arguing that my experience is universal. But it’s my experience for me. Weightloss happened because I made myself happier in a fundamental way.

I’ve had a hard time finding opportunities to talk about my experience. I had a conversation with a brilliant woman I’m friends with who sought treatment for an inflammatory disease though food management. Food as medicine in practice. As a side effect, she lost weight. A college friend accused on social media that her sudden weight loss and love of selfies were signs she was ‘no longer the feminist she knew.’ I haven’t seen a space in my feminist circles to talk about my relationship with food and weight loss that isn’t tied down by cultural baggage. A lot of health and fitness spaces are mixed with toxic diet culture and fat-phobia. I’d expect that. And a lot of the body positive spaces have been explicitly anti-diet talk. I once signed up for a meetup where organizers said you weren’t welcome if you were on a diet. Not talking about a diet, just following one. So I don’t know where to talk about this outside of Weight Watchers meetings, where the choices I’m making and the feelings I have seem right.

I get defensive when I hear people rag on Weight Watchers. The anti-diet movement writes about it as a shibboleth. The CICO fitness world seems to deem it a cheap gimmick to keep sheep hooked. In that way it’s a lot like Alcoholics Anonymous. There are plenty of people who hate it, or it didn’t work for them. But it works for those it works for. And I guess, like AA, I have to make my peace with understanding its not for everyone.

Losing weight isn’t happiness. Denying my body its rights and ignoring my health wasn’t happiness either. Sleep is happiness. Friends are happiness. Nourishing myself and moving is happiness. Understanding I have value is happiness. Being gentle with myself in an ungentle world brings happiness. The rest is a symptom. And I wish we talked more about what’s making people sick than how to get them to consume.

[ladymondegreen]

so like really personal stuff under the readmore, but i would actually really appreciate people reading and maybe chiming in if they can?

i moved to a new city a few weeks ago and things are kinda okay.  but i’ve been feeling kinda lonely and don’t really know anyone here.  (and there’s a whole huge racism tension thing going on with my roommates, and i’ve been confronting them as much as i can and my poor introverted social anxious heart can’t take much more but that’s not even the point of this) (probably a big contributor to why this post is happenning but i digress...) (also i do feel like i’m making progress so there’s that)

anyway, there’s like a women’s meetup thing on tuesday’s put on by an LGBT+ organization in the city, and i kinda want to go and meet people. but i’ve never really been involved in any sort of explicitly LGBT+ things, at least partially because i’m not really ready to be out to a lot of people, although lately that’s changing... and it doesn’t help that i kinda feel like asexual isn’t quite the right label for me, but it also is definitely the best fit and l;khkj;l and maybe i kinda want to date girls? at least as much as i want to date anyone, but admittedly picturing more than cuddling and holding hands weirds me out (no matter who or what gender i’m picturing there, which is super weird because i’m not even sex-repulsed or anything... but maybe i’m just more aromantic than i want to admit - which yes, is a whole other thing again, but at this point i don’t really want to think too hard on that side of things...)

but like, the thing says it’s for all women (lesbian, bi, trans, straight, etc.)? and the organization does have an ace group (that is currently disbanded, i think because of having no group leader, as they’re looking for a volunteer). so i’m not too worried about it being kinda ace exclusionary (and as far as i’m aware that’s mostly just an online debate anyway and not really a real world phenomenon...)

the other thing is, the meet up this week, is to play a game that is literally only played in my hometown and a few other places (which i’m not gonna name to preserve anonymity, it is that specific that with it’s name and my vague demographic info you could easily find me) which kinda feels like a sign that i should go?

so basically, if anyone’s reading this, i want someone to tell me that yes, of course i should go. or at least to talk to about it. also feels like maybe this word vomit has helped settle my thoughts a bit, so there’s that at least? (it’s super word vomit-ey, i don’t think i’ve ever written something less carefully thought out and worded, while simultaneously being something i’ve thought hard about...)