Hello, all! This is a piece I wrote a couple months ago and submitted to a website. I was waiting to see if they'd publish it before I posted it here, but sadly, I received no response. But no biggie! It just means you're reading my revelation a little late. Enjoy!
Today I did something huge: I went to the gym.
For a lot of people, this is not a big deal. Going to the gym is a regular sweaty part of the week. But I have never had that healthy relationship with exercise simply for the sake of exercise; it has always been this bizarre and alien concept whenever I’ve put it into practice. I’ve always known and accepted that it works for other people, but for me, exercise has always been accompanied with a mantra of self-loathing so deep that it is like an infection of the soul. Dramatic, I know, but that’s honestly how it feels.
And of course, as a lover of written expression, I needed to write about this. But it isn’t just for me. I know what society I’ve grown up in, and I know that I am not alone in this struggle. I can’t be. So as a lover of education and validation, I needed to write this for you - anyone who needs to know that there is no shame in shying away from the gym, even if you are body-positive. We have long been faced with a number of obstacles on the way, from paradoxical social attitudes reaching out from the eyes of fellow gym-goers to the deeply rooted self-hatred that comes with having an othered body. And I say othered rather than fat because while my only experiences come from my perspective as a fat woman, I know that my struggle is not restricted to larger proportions. But I don’t have the authority or the experience or the voice to pretend to know what any other-bodied person goes through, so please bear in mind that this is simply a perspective from my own experience.
As I racked my nervous brain for any excuse to skip (did i forget my headphones or my socks or my water bottle?), I started building up this list of all the bad things that could happen as a result of going to the gym. While I’ve been body-positive for about four years now, I know I’m still fragile. I know that there are things lurking in the back of my mind, waiting for a weakness to appear. I am in control of my disordered eating. I am in control of my obsessive need to control something (haha!). But I am not foolish enough to have hubris - there’s always a possibility that somewhere along the line, something will happen, and I will slip back into old habits. I always tell my students that slipping back into old habits is not a reason to hate yourself - in fact, it makes sense that if you’re in a difficult place, it is easy to go back to whatever you used to rely on to make you feel safe. That's why learning new coping skills is so difficult, and why even when you think you have it down, you sometimes slip up. What matters is how you feel about it - reflect on why the coping skill didn't work this time, and how to make it work next time.
One of my biggest triggers that sends me into the zone of NEEDING obsessive control: weighing myself at home. Sure, it sounds simple and it starts out that way. I could weigh myself once a week to track progress. But then it turns into twice a week because I need to track my progress on my way to tracking my progress. Then it turns into a daily occurrence, and the balance of my whole day hangs on the line; if I’ve lost weight, it will be a good day, if I’ve gained, it will be awful. But when it is really bad, it is damaging. Regardless of what the scale says, I start counting calories and slashing here and there where I can. Then, when I can’t stand it anymore, I eat anything in sight at my house. As soon as the hunger is sated, that’s when shame takes its usual seat behind the wheel and settles in comfortably. It is an endless vicious cycle of compensating for that binge. Not by purging, though. I did that as a teenager, but as an adult, I simply wouldn’t eat the next day.
So why would I voluntarily throw my still-fragile self into this world? A week ago, I went to see my doctor for some potentially thyroid-related issues (I have hypothyroidism), and I came away with the difficult knowledge that weight loss would help my issues. I have always been a supporter of the idea of Health at Every Size, so the idea that my fat body, which had been fairly healthy until now, was now needing to become less fat in order to remain healthy, was very difficult for me to wrap my head around in a positive way. It took several days for me to accept it.
So I went to the gym. I joined a planet fitness two months ago in a funk about my body, but I never worked up the courage to go. I chose planet fitness solely for the way they handled a trans* issue, because that is also important to me. When I pulled up, my heart was racing and I had even started to sweat. I was so nervous that I sat in the parking lot for five minutes, hosting an internal battle of "go home!" "stay!" and it didn't help when the only people I saw entering and exiting the gym were very fit individuals. I had my key in the ignition, ready to go, when she changed my mind. All it took was this one woman, a woman with a body that looked like mine, coming out of the gym after a,work out, looking sweaty and big, but owning it with a radiance of satisfaction. Immediately the go-homes vanished and were replaced with we've-got-its. I went in and sheepishly explained to the desk lady that I joined two months ago, but had never been there before. Without any inkling of judgment, she got me a t-shirt and a card and gave me a quick rundown.
As I worked out, instead of repeating my old mantra of self-hate, I tried a new one under my breath: you're okay this is okay you're okay this is okay. And it worked. I don't know if you've ever been to Planet Fitness, but they have the most encouraging messages inside about no judgment. And the fit people I saw going in and out? They were there, in the sea of all bodies of all ages and types and sizes. And everyone minded their own business. It was like my own personal gym heaven.
My understanding, my narrative, my language of weight loss has always been negative. It has always centered around the idea of perfecting an endlessly flawed vessel. So now I am trying to recenter my language around a loss of self-hate instead, and move to a language of love about my body and my health, no matter what that means for me. I am once again reminded of how lucky I am to be aware of my body and my love for it, when so many others are not.
-WW-
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