First, the update: the second round of infusions WORKED and my iron levels are GOOD and I can actually WALK UP A FLIGHT OF STAIRS WITHOUT FEELING DIZZY and if the all-caps don’t express it well enough I’ll just say outright that I AM SO RELIEVED. Of course, it’s not over yet, because we don’t know if/how quickly I’ll drop back into anemia – my levels are already lower by about 2/3 just three months after the initial post-infusion test – but for the moment I’m back to being human, and that is an amazing feeling.
Now, the thing I came here to write about, which is not so good: I’ve been backsliding pretty badly into negative body image, and that’s due in large part to the fact that my body itself has changed. I had already gained some weight by the time we moved up here three years ago, but this past year of forced inactivity has really escalated that. Not only am I wearing the biggest size I’ve worn since high school, but I’ve lost all the muscle mass, endurance, and flexibility I’d built up over six years of yoga. And unfortunately yoga is one of the few things that helps with my body image, so starting from scratch with that has led to a pretty vicious cycle of negative body image, failed attempts to do ‘enough’ yoga, and self-flagellating for my weakness/fatness.
The other thing that’s made this all extra difficult, paradoxically, is that I’m so much less fatphobic than I used to be! I’ve been working on myself for years now, diversifying my social media feeds and reading fat-positive books and just generally examining my internalized fatphobia, and it feels so good to genuinely believe not only that everyone deserves equal rights and respect, regardless of their body size/shape, but also that fat people are attractive – that’s a change that took a long time. But taking that knowledge and applying it to my own body has proven extremely challenging, and in this moment all my fat-positivity is just another stick with which to beat myself. I can’t be fat-positive, really, if I don’t believe in it for myself too. Or so my inner critic tells me.
I’m lucky to be working with a great nutritional counselor, who’s helping me stay away from diet culture and figure out what works for my body and mind, but right now the demons are rising up so hard that I don’t even know if she can help me. A few days ago, I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror in our bedroom, and a wave of fury and disgust like I haven’t felt in years washed over me. All I could think about was restricting my diet; I started running an inventory in my mind of all the ‘bad’ foods I’d been ‘indulging’ in since the pandemic began. And then I turned on my nutritional counselor (inwardly, of course): she’d encouraged me to eat what I wanted, including fruit snacks and potato chips and string cheese…shouldn’t she have reined me in when it was clear I was taking this whole ‘intuitive eating’ thing too far?
I know what she’ll say when I tell her about my doubts: “Why is control so important? Why don’t you trust your body when it tells you what it needs?” Then she’ll tell me again about how sugar helps our brains function and no food is either good or bad. And I know she’s right. I believe her that my body will level out where it’s healthy, once it’s healthy. And I know that right now it’s recovering, and I should be patient with it. But I’m really struggling. I don't fit in any of my favorite clothes, and I don't recognize myself in photos, or even in the mirror. I haven’t been this big, or had a belly like this, or been this weak/unable to do 20 minutes of yoga, in so long – I’m impatient to get ‘back to normal.’
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