Loving myself, working towards the body I want and other self-obsessed thoughts
For all the love-yourself-the-way-you-are sentiment that I carry around myself all the time, for all the self-confidence I have and the unadulterated vanity I can live with; for all the feminism I think I believe in, for all the women’s empowerment I want- I do still want to look good, wear the clothes I want to wear, I do still have serious body image issues, however disguised I might make them by telling myself that the motivations are health, fitness, energy levels, etc. Yes, we humans are tremendously delusional and I live with the constant sense of just how many conflicting and contradicting thoughts and feelings I walk around with. Of all the issues I feel confused about, hypocritical even, body image aka weight issues holds the first place.
I’ve blogged about this before, but really- What do I do when I just feel depressed about being fat, even though I know it doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things, whatever that might be! As I grow older, I get more practical about it. I can look at a garment and tell that it will be a frustrating experience trying it on, even in my size! I know that shopping time is over after 2 hours, 7-8 shops. I know where the enjoyment stops and the frustration begins. I have learnt to stop short of that point and avoid going down that spiral of self-obsessed self-pity that was such a familiar state in my 20s!
These past few months though, I have had the growing realization that dealing with the problem in my head is not going to make it go away! I am obese (and perhaps unfit too?) by any standards and I simply have to do something about it. What the targets should be and whether the strategy for reaching there should be drastic or tempered are matters of detail, but there had to be a structure to this process. So I made a small beginning today, in my head and in reality. No procrastination, Mukta! I have a target- to be as gorgeous as the image in my head by the time I hit 40. That is a few years away, but even so, having that target makes me feel a whole lot better!!
To hell with faux-feminism and pretend emancipation, if looking good is important to me, it simply is and I have to be true to myself first before being true to any cause! This is one of many battles to fight and I intend making it as fun as it can get.
Posted on January 15, 2013, in Personal and tagged body image, fat, fitness, self confidence, weight, weight loss, women. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
ramblinginthecity 
The secret is not to Lose Weight, but to think of the achieving the Ideal Weight. The secret to driving remains undiscovered for me 😦
Best of luck. I don’t claim to even remotely understand the psyche of a woman around appearance. But one thing that has worked for me is not about imagining looking a certain way, but being able to do certain things. I set out physical tasks and try and achieve them. This has been the best motivator for me. I tried the gym stuff, but soon realized that that whole realm involved constantly looking at ones physical self (and others) in terms of quantities that didn’t mean much (calories burn’t, miles on treadmill) in terms of physical achievement. I quit the gym and got into running, with simple task to see how far can I run; How long can I hold a yoga pose; or how many pushups could I do, without comparing it with any other person or metric. The delinking of my workout from quantitative metrics seemed to make exercising more enjoyable.
That is one way Bharat. Thanks for sharing. I dance as a way to do something I enjoy and exercise but unfortunately that had not helped me manage my weight. Anyway it’s always a work in progress but the year is the year I have to travel a greater distance!