I remember the day I stepped on the doctor’s scale and weighed in at 139 nearly 3 years ago. I was there for a follow-up appointment, to get a renewed prescription for meds to treat my postpartum anxiety.
It had been a month since I begged them to work me in as quick as possible because I thought I was surely dying… of cancer, of a heart attack, of something. A month since I admitted to myself and a medical professional that I was dealing with some serious intrusive and obsessive thoughts nearly 9 months after having my 2nd baby.
One. Thirty. Nine. I hadn’t seen that number on a scale since high school. My first thought, which I said out loud, was, “do you think something is wrong with my thyroid? I mean. Wow. That’s… I haven’t even been working out.”
So, and I am sure this was mainly to appease me and ease my overactive concern, they ran some tests. Nope. Nothing wrong with my thyroid.
I was just, well, I was the thinnest I’d been in a long time, size 6 skinny jeans sagging off my non-existent butt, because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating. Not enough, I guess. I was living off of coffee. I wasn’t purposefully starving myself. I wasn’t aiming to lose weight that way. I had NO appetite.
It was all a part of the illness I was clawing my way away from. I was the thinnest I’d been in my adult life at a time when my life was the most scary it’s ever been.
I know this.
So it really makes me pissed at myself when I step on a scale these days, weighing a good 10-15 lbs more than that, and hear my inner dialogue tell me, “Remember when you were 139? Why can’t you be that skinny again?”
Hey, me? Shut the fuck up.
Because I knew the signs of postpartum anxiety this time, I caught on much earlier that I was back in that place again after having my 3rd baby a year ago. I started meds for it when he was 6 months old. I didn’t let myself get to that place where I’m living on the edge of a cliff. THANK GOD.
So the meds are working, and I am hungry, and I am enjoying life, and I’m sleeping.
The weight isn’t just falling off of me this time. Rationally, I know this is a GREAT thing. I’m not standing in front of a mirror, looking at my hollowed out cheeks, not able to recognize myself.
There is a pudgy tummy, and my butt is much bigger. My arms are thicker, and my chicken legs are less chicken-y.
It’s not a bad body. It’s a great body. I look good in most clothes. I’m mostly happy with it.
It’s not a skinny 139 body, though, and for some reason there is still that voice that pushes me to achieve that again. And I keep trying to tell that voice that that wasn’t achieved by going to the gym 3x a week, like I’ve been doing. That wasn’t achieved by running the fastest 5k I’ve ever run, which I did last week. That wasn’t achieved by decreasing the amount of crap I’m eating AND increasing the good stuff I NEED to eat.
I’ve been working out more in the last couple months than I have in a long time. It’s been hard to put in so much effort and feel like I’m seeing so few results. I would love to tone up, to slim down just a little more in a HEALTHY way, nothing too extreme. I’d love to have some real muscles. I’m working on it.
I am fighting that voice in my head that holds that 139 body up as what I should be striving for. That 139 body was sick. It was weak.
I want to be strong.