Pardon me...!

When is commenting on another person's body appropriate?  

This isn't really a trick question... although you may be thinking of instances in which someone commented on your body and how that made you feel. 

I was very lucky growing up-- I can't recall an instance when my parents ever made comments about my body or my weight.  When I refer to myself as dealing with "childhood obesity" both of them roll their eyes... I admit, I tend to be a bit dramatic in my word choice.  I was a kid that had a round face and "baby-fat" until I hit junior high when I started to grow taller and slim down a bit.  My freshman year I was on the swim team and that leaned me out even more, but after swim season was over I still ate like I was swimming 2-hours a day and ended up having to buy a lot of new clothes to fit my bulkier body.  Then as I got older, I slimmed down again.  Still, my parents never commented about it to me.  I know this is not the case for all people.  

I've been aware of my weight for a large percentage of my life.  As a pear-shaped person, it was tough growing up in the 90's when the "waif" look was in, and again in the early 2000's when being slim made you more attractive.  Then came the 2010's when "strong is the new skinny" and Biggest Loser was on Primetime TV.  It's been a wild ride where I've felt that my self-worth was directly related to the number on the scale and the lower that number was, the better I was.  I've tried numerous different eating strategies-- low carb, no carb, no grains, Weight Watchers, Whole 30, "real food", auto-immune paleo, no sugar, and one plan where I drank juiced celery every morning in an effort to "cure" my thyroid issues.  Typing that out now makes me be like "WTF".  I have friends who do intermittent fasting, and I'm still trying to figure out the difference between that and anorexia-- and I'm not saying that as a joke.  It seems to me that strictly limiting the time in which you're allowed to eat means you're not eating as much food, right?  So you only eat lunch-- there's no way you're getting 2,000 calories a day in that 1 meal unless you're eating a Blizzard from DQ, which I'm sure is off limits.  

There is no shortage of misinformation out there about food, dieting, and exercise.  It's a huge business-- get people to buy in to whatever BS thing you promote and <BOOM> instant millionaire while people continue to search, unhappily, for the one thing that will make them feel whole while decreasing their BMI (insert juicing celery here).  

Late last year I started working with an actual nutritionist who charged a lot of money to help me understand my relationship with food.  From her I learned that most women don't eat anywhere near enough food to support their daily caloric needs, which makes losing weight harder because it taxes all of your systems (especially your thyroid, which controls so much).  So she gave me meal plans to follow which required measuring, weighing, and math if I wanted to go "off-plan" but still stay within my allotted macros.  At first, I was like "This is great!"  I was eating real food at every meal (like brown rice, lean meats, fruits and vegetables, quinoa, overnight oats, eggs, almond butter).  Then it became another way to get down on myself when I went "off plan".  It was exhausting.  

I haven't even talked exercise.  When we lived in Charlotte I think we were much more active than we are now.  I used to run after school several days a week in a city park, I swam on a master's swim team, we hiked with friends, walked to restaurants, and went to outdoor festivals.  I did those things because they brought me great joy, not as a punishment for poor eating or drinking.  I miss swimming so much not only because of how it made my body and mind feel, but also because of the team I was part of.  But because of that increased activity, my weight was pretty steady and I was pretty happy with how I looked most of the time.  When we moved here, though, we took fewer opportunities for fitness.  The pool and lifeguard situation here is a joke.  That's worth an entire separate post.  The weather isn't always conducive to outdoor activities, so we worked out often at the wellness center at the college where Meg works.  That was great for awhile, until the lifting plan I was doing puffed me up so much that literally none of my pants fit.  Needless to say, that sent me into another spiral (which finally led me to get bloodwork, which identified that I had Hashimoto's disease.  No idea where that originated or why it came out when it did).  The result of that, though, was giving up gluten and dairy to alleviate some of the stress my thyroid was dealing with by processing those foods.  More food issues.  I was doing yoga pretty consistently after my diagnosis and when I got pregnant to help my mind more than anything, but I did it so much in 2020 that the effects of it kind of wore off and I stopped.  The recent spring weather has really jump started my desire to move and be outside, so I just started a Couch to 5k program.  Two runs in, I'm loving it.  I used to really enjoy running, and plus I got a brand new pair of cute Brooks that make me feel amazing.  Hopefully I'll be able to add yoga back in soon when it gets warm enough to do it outside consistently, which I really love.  

So all of this background is going somewhere-- and we've finally arrived at the point of this post.  Pregnancy.  For someone who has lived by the scale for most of her adult life, getting pregnant and being weighed in monthly, then bi-weekly, then weekly was not easy for me.  Along with that, the nurses and doctors praise you when your weight gain isn't "too high", and they scare you when it is.  2 days before I delivered I went to the midwife for a check and I had gained a grand total of 20 lbs.  As wild as this sounds, I was elated and proud of myself for not "losing control" during my pregnancy.  Truth be told, I never limited my calories or food intake while pregnant.  I ate and drank what I wanted (sometimes that included Diet Coke, often it included hot turkey sandwiches on gluten free bread -- see previous post about microwaving deli meat-- and after every doctor's appointment we ate lunch at Panera which always included one of those flourless double chocolate cookies.  YUM.)  For some reason, my body functioned really well during pregnancy, I delivered a perfectly healthy baby, and my thyroid numbers were perfect.  But during those 10 months, the two things I heard most often were "You are so small!" and "You look great!"  (Also, "How are you feeling", which was very kind.)  One of my good friends told me she gained 70 lbs with one of her kids-- she's a tiny person, like 5'3.  But her doctor said to her, "The body does what the body does.  Everyone has a different experience."  And this is what I told myself, while my subconscious was like "Woo hoo!  Being small is better!"

A week before I delivered, after a doctor's appointment, a cashier at Hobby Lobby (which I am calling out here because I can't stand that company) commented on my belly and asked me if I was having twins.  When I assured her that no, I was not in fact having twins and I had an ultrasound pic in my purse to prove it, she looked down her nose at me and said "Are you sure?"  I could have punched that B right in the throat.  But who the hell cares what some middle aged lady at Hobby Lobby making minimum wage with no access to birth control thought about what my body looked like?  The greater question is, who the hell gives strangers the right to comment on another persons' body?  Particularly at a time when hormones are whack and being uncomfortable is just a fact of life?  There are only two appropriate things to say to a pregnant woman:  "How are you feeling?" and "You look great".  That's it.  No questions about weight gain, no opinions about bump-size.  

But of course, this is chicken and egg.  Which came first-- people making comments about others bodies, or people feeling insecure about their own bodies?  I don't know the answer.  But I want to break the cycle.  The last thing I want is to raise a little girl who feels that being small is more important than being smart, or kind, or funny, or bold.  When I think back on my life, did I ever feel that way?  Unfortunately, my answer to that question is yes.  I definitely felt like my self-worth increased as the number on the scale decreased.  I thought having a baby "cured" me of those thoughts, but I was wrong.  After O was born, for some reason I got super skinny.  I think my body loved breastfeeding more than it loved being pregnant, and as such I fueled my body with tons of food (including an abundance of sugar.  I may have gotten caught in the pantry eating handfuls of sprinkles at least once).  But, at my lowest, I was 14 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight.  And do you know the types of comments I heard?  I'm sure you can imagine-- "You don't even look like you had a baby!"  "You're so lucky!"  So this praise led me to be concerned again about my weight and focused on staying small so that I could receive more praise and feel better about myself.  When I stopped nursing and my weight started to go back to normal, I felt like a failure, and I still feel insecure about it.  And I stopped getting comments about my body.  That's part of what led me to the nutritionist late last year.  

Because of all of the above, I make a conscious effort to not make comments on other people's bodies.  Of course, I don't always succeed.  Last year a friend and I were talking about our pregnancies and I asked her if she was pregnant again.  I wanted to punch myself in the throat after that one.  We also never know what someone else is going through-- maybe the unexplained weight loss has to do with some underlying health condition we don't know about.  Or maybe the person, like me, doesn't want the comments about her body because of her long battle with food and weight.  When I see someone who looks great (maybe due to weight loss, maybe due to a new haircut) I try to make more general comments like "You look so happy!"  But, is that the right thing to do?  It's still acknowledging something different about them... maybe the happiness is due to the number on the scale. 

What's the ultimate goal?  To not pass all of the above onto my sweet, fearless, happy child.  Anyone have any suggestions?