Taking control of your body: weight loss and weight gain

Photographer: Lucy Feng. Model: me

This is  another post about dieting and changing body shape. I find it fascinating, as a topic. I love it when women decide that they should take control of their bodies. It's not the mindless dieting one is indoctrinated to do, because 'you should'. It is the dieting that accompanies life changes and signals to the dieter that the body, and  therefore one's life, can be controlled and steered in the right direction, whatever that may be.

I recently went for yet another hammam experience. I am definitely sold on the thing, I need it and crave it and am looking for the perfect hammam outside Morocco. As I was relaxing in the very hot steam, mud all over my body, another woman walked in and began comparing herself to me.  I never like such comparisons, they are meaningless. She concluded she needed  to lose at least five to six kilos. Fair enough, it was her decision, I was not there to judge anyone. She also said she needed to exercise more and asked which gym I went to. 'I don't go to a gym anymore' I told her, I exercise at home, doing the barre. She complained about this, about that, I lost interest and just lay very still, enjoying the heat.  She sounded like someone that was afraid to take a decision and stick to it and desperately wanted me to tell her what she should do. I cannot decide for others!

Casa Spa, Arabian Hammam

Whether you want to lose weight or put it on, it   is entirely your decision. Some people really make an effort, others do not, they believe it just happens.
Two friends of mine recently decided to lose a lot of weight. I asked them to tell me why and what their experience was like. Did they do it because they were trying to conform? No, both of them said they did it for themselves, and one of them especially relished exercising control over her body.
This is S. 's testimonial:
"My recent weight loss is a bit of an oddity to me. Having steadily gained a lot of weight over the past 13 years something shifted for me last summer. I began to look at my life and stopped doing the things that were shrivelling my soul; I stopped spending my evenings on the sofa watching awful television while stuffing my face with endless food and started to play music and dance in my house instead. This coincided with stopping the antidepressants that I'd been taking for decades and with the end of a long relationship that was not making me happy. I took a look at my body and realised how much weight I had gained and how I had drifted into an unhappy middle age where comfort eating had been my only real friend. It was my change in attitude that really altered. I have not been on a diet nor consciously tried to lose weight but back in September I wrote in my journal that I thanked my body for the weight gain and the protection I felt it gave me at the time but that I no longer needed it, it was time to let it go and live again. Since then I have lost over 50 pounds with none of the usual calorie counting or restrictions I used to employ to try to slim. I just found that as I moved and danced instead of vegetating in front of the television my appetites shifted hugely. From continually eating junk food I swapped to healthy meals without effort and stopped feeling the desire to fill my body to bursting with junk food. I eat much less than I used to, but I don't even think about food much now, I eat whatever I want to eat whenever I want to. It turns out that I'm in effect doing intermittent fasting, though it was not by design. I go for long periods when I have no desire to eat, then when I feel hunger I eat I feel at home in my body again after many years when it felt like the enemy".

Photographer: Lucy Feng

Thanks S. you have articulated it so well. Moving away from food as comfort is a big decision. Far too often we are caught  into  this 'eat to feel better' trap. I have done it too, I occasionally still do it but I monitor myself and when I hit a certain weight I know it's time to do something.

C. on the other hand emailed me the following comments and I really find them food for thought:

"Dieting is an intervention on the body. It can stem from a positive attitude and a balanced idea of 'getting rid of fat and toxins' and 'letting in only good nutrients' or it can feel like pushing the body and the self to behave differently than before, to break habits and patterns.  In this case a level of self criticism is required. If emotionally balanced that criticism is accompanied by self empowerment. But at times of emotional strain my attitude is to push myself to look and feel stronger/leaner/ better/younger. More more more. A race. 

I usually stop eating for two days. I only take water and nuts or one banana for the third day and thus close up my stomach and start appreciating flavours that come from non fatty foods. I usually do that for a month or 40 days and can lose up to 5-7 kilos. I am quite disciplined once I really decide to diet and I only do it for aesthetic purposes, fit into tight dresses and not to feel sluggish. People always comment on my slim figure and I find this quite motivational. I feel more assertive, in control and powerful, when I am slim. I like my body fuller but I feel that I need to work harder in choosing flattering tailored clothes. When slim I can wear inexpensive clothes and look younger. 

I don't like it when I succumb to stereotypes of female slimness imposed by the media. I try to focus on my own image of what a healthy toned body is and  I'm in control of what my figure and  myself could look like rather than compare myself to  models. But these images are everywhere and are hard to ignore. I have internalised a look of an elegant white dancer type like Audrey Hepburn that I try to achieve. As an almost 40 year old mother of two this image becomes trickier to achieve and I don't want to push myself in a punishing way . 

The quality of my skin has changed and I found that when I lose weight rapidly the skin gets shaggy which is an added concern. I tend to have to  add an exercise regime for my abs and buy creams to improve elasticity or collagen tablets to help my skin cope. 

Photographer: Lucy Feng

At the moment I feel good doing this. I feel I am active in coping with me turning 40 rather than let the "mother " lifestyle take the best of me. Slimness is associated with youth and this is a visual culture of slim idols so the real effort for me is to balance my psychology, accept my age and the demands of being a parent of young kids and my desire to look my best. Of course my "best" is an illusion created by culture and photoshopped images. So I guess I diet and try to detox of self hate and sexist anti feminist discourse at the same time. It is a balancing act on a tightrope. Most women dance it. Some fall and there is no safety net. Some choose not to climb the rope. Damned if you diet and damned if you don't. Even those who are naturally given a slim physique have to make some diet changes as they get older and the metabolism changes. We now know more scientific truths about weight loss but our psychology can still be fragile and the culture market around us as forceful as ever. Slimness is a cultural capital.  And this is capitalism at the end of the day. Beautiful me can be a rounder me and the moon is equally beautiful when slim as when full. Mental diet from junk inflexible notions of beauty is part of a healthy regime but I don't always achieve that".

Thanks C. for saying  it so eloquently. We all know what you mean.