Mirror Mirror on the wall

Once upon a time a girl looked into a mirror and was satisfied with the reflection that shone back at her. She had defining face shapes, no double chin and while she was curvy, she was just the *right* size. Exactly where she wanted to be and she did not care if other people thought she should lose weight because she was happy and she loved every single aspect of her body.

Then one day she returned to that mirror and she did not recognise the reflection. But worse of all, she hated it.

Girls. This is my story.

I used to love my body. I was large but I was proud. I was fit and active and strong. My spirit reflected out of the mirror and it was incredible. Sure, I had bad days but I felt so secure and happy with the view that I went and bought dresses. An item of clothing I had vetoed wearing as a teenager because I did not find them to be suitable, wanting instead to hide my garish body that no one should see.

And now I am back to that place. Back to buying overly bulky clothing to hide everything. To crossing my arms across my chest to try and feel smaller and take up less space than I know I already do. Of hating to have her photo taken so the world sees just how large and bulky and ugly she really is.

I know what changed. I got ill. I lost my fitness. And I ate my feelings.

My energy lowered and lowered and cooking for myself became too hard so I gorged instead on takeaways and microwaveable meals and now I am at a place that I hate. Because I can not look into a mirror and feel pride in my appearance. But the more I look, the more I hate; the more I eat.

And I don’t know how to stop.

I still have no energy so I know that too much exercise will destroy me. But I cannot stop eating because I don’t know what will be left of me if I do. Shouldn’t I still love my body even though it is larger now?

Society has drummed it into us that skinny is pretty and I have always thought back against that stereotype. I think larger girls are beautiful. I admire them so much. Curves are wonderful and brilliant and I would not change that for the world. And I used to love my own. But I seem to have lost that feeling. It's almost as though societies views on larger women has been drilled back into my brain again.

I am once again wishing more than ever that I could be a different person, that I could live in a different skin. And it is depressing me more than anything because I want to love my body. I know there is nothing wrong with my size. I know I am loved. I know I have more qualities to my personality than just who I am in the mirror but for right now, that just doesn't seem to be enough for me.

I just… I’m at a loss and I thought the best thing to do would be to share with you my thoughts and feelings so maybe you could help me bring the love back?

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Big and Beautiful?

I am a fat girl.

I haven’t always been a fat girl. As a teenager I fluctuated between a UK size ten and twelve, it was only when my agoraphobia developed and I started taking antidepressants that I began to pile on weight. At my largest I was a size 22 and as of right now I am a size 16-18. Since putting on weight I have never really been comfortable in my body and have felt that it is something that I should be ashamed of and try to hide. I’ve avoided the bright and fashionable clothes that I wanted to wear in favour of dark tunics that hide my figure, there are fashion trends that I haven’t tried because I didn’t feel like I could “get away with them” and there are jeans that I’ve bought in a smaller size to entice me to lose weight.

Big and beautiful are two words that you never see together in a sentence and this year I’ve been really challenging why that is. What is it about being a bigger woman that is so unacceptable in our society? After a lot of research and questioning it seems there are two main reasons society tells us that we cannot be both big and beautiful.

1.) Being fat is unhealthy 

2.) Fat people are unattractive

Last week I went to see my doctor for a check-up, he asked me to step on to the scales so that he could update my medical file with my current weight. Turns out in the last few months I’ve lost almost a stone. My doctor, a medical professional, praised me for this weight loss and told me to keep up the good work. He did not ask me how I had come to lose the weight and if he had I would have told him that it was through a month of barely eating anything because my anxiety and depression were so bad and because stress would make me physically sick every day. As far as my doctor was concerned this weight loss was good and healthy, but was it really?

There is a lot of misinformation out there saying that fat people are lazy, that we eat too much junk food and are unhealthy but I have come to learn that that isn’t always true. I can’t claim to have the heathiest lifestyle ever but I do eat well and I do exercise. I eat fruits and salad for breakfast and lunch, I don’t drink alcohol or caffeine and every day I exercise when I take my dog out for a walk or run. I am not unhealthy and I’m not the only person who is carrying some extra weight whilst still living a healthy lifestyle - check out Faye’s brilliant post on the subject here. Assuming that every single fat person is unhealthy is like assuming that every thin person has an eating disorder. Bodies come in all different shapes and sizes that aren’t necessarily influenced by lifestyle. So is being fat always linked to being unhealthy? I’m gonna have to say no.

Body shapes and sizes go in and out of trend as much as fashion. In the fifties society thought it desirable to have a fuller curvier figure like Marilyn Monroe. In the nineties a thin straight up and down frame came into fashion with the arrival of Kate Moss and now in 2016 women are paying money to have the curves in all the right places look that the Kardashians are so well known for. What this tells me is that the “perfect body” is always changing, so doesn’t that suggest that there isn’t one superior body type? That every size is perfect and has been celebrated at some point throughout history? Despite Marilyn, Kate and Kim having very different bodies they all have one thing in common: confidence. They have each stepped out into the limelight rocking their body shapes unapologetically. I think that the confidence in their own skin is what’s desired here, not the actual body type and that the two things often get confused. So are bigger ladies really unattractive? Again, I’m going to have to say no.

Upon realising that the reasons most commonly given on why big can’t be beautiful are totally false and inaccurate I took a long hard look at my own body in the mirror. It was like taking off this lense that we’re all conditioned to develop and for the first time I saw myself for who I truly am and I liked what I saw in the mirror. Before, if a stranger was to ask me how I would describe my body I would say "curvy" or "full figured" to try and soften the image of what my body looks like. The F word was big and ugly and undesirable and wrong. But now I am learning to reclaim what it means to be fat in the same way that homosexuals have reclaimed the word queer and made it into this word that they identify with and how nerdy people have shown that being a geek really just means being smart and passionate. I think it’s time that we did the same thing with the word fat. I’m reclaiming it as my own by being unapologetic about who I am showing that fat means confidence, fat means healthy, fat means happy. When being fat becomes reconditioned in your mind to mean all of these wonderful things instead of what society tells you it should mean it suddenly takes away the power that word has to hurt you and turns it into something beautiful.

This year I have been on a journey in coming to terms with who I am and loving all of me, not just the parts that society deems acceptable. I’ve learnt that it’s okay to love the parts of you that society says are not worthy of love. Flip them the bird and show them that a big butt looks awesome in jeans, that you can rock the latest trends no matter your size, show the fuckers that you are beautiful and most of all worthy of love, self-love, the best kind of love that there is.

I am big and I am beautiful and no matter your body type you are too.

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Being Large and Loving Fitness

One foot. Another. Breathe in. Breathe out. You can do this. You've got this. You're nearly there.

These are the kind of thoughts that rattle through my brain when I go running. Sometimes other thoughts get in too, sometimes I just count, one, two, three, breathe, one, two, three, breathe, and sometimes I sing along to the music blaring into my head. When I swim, I count my lengths as I go and sometimes count my breaths but often I then just think about what I'm doing or just about life in general. But mostly, I focus on what I'm doing. I can easily let worries escape me when I'm exercising and it's one of the biggest reasons that I love it.

Another reason is that I just love being active. It's hard to describe but there is something so freeing about exercising. A release of endorphins. A build up of muscle. A wave of emotion. I can't really describe how it feels when I finish a run with a personal best, or if it's a run I'm struggling with, how good it feels to push through until I feel satisfied. I love so much about exercising. I have always been a very active person. Even as a child. I was always the first one to run off, to climb the monkey bars or do the hop scotch. I loved PE, especially Netball and Rounders. Ironically I used to hate cross-country running when I was a teenager, but that's mostly because I was always the last person across the finish line.

And I still feel that way. Because no matter how much exercise I do, no matter how hard I push myself and beat my own personal bests, I have never been the fastest. I've never won a race or a swim, I've never been able to go to gym classes and do everything for the whole hour. It does not matter how much I do, I have never been better than other people. But I'm okay with that because despite that, I still love it. And it's probably why I'm one of those odd sport lovers who is the least competitive person ever.

But the problem I really find with exercise is that no matter how much of it I do, I find it incredibly difficult to lose weight. This essentially means that I'm a fit individual* who can run without stopping for over an hour but I still fit in the "obese/overweight" BMI category. It means that I feel, ultimately, self-concious every single time I walk into the gym or an exercise class because it feels like everyone is judging me. It means that I, essentially, hate the way I look. I hate that I can't seem to do anything about it either.

The biggest way I feel insecure while exercising, aside from feeling like everyone looking at me and thinking it must be my first time in a gym, is the fact that it is very difficult to get exercise clothes in the right size for cheap. Apparently when it comes to fitness clothes, they only make clothes for people who are already skinny, not for those who are just trying to shed a few pounds. I have never been able to find clothes larger than a size 16 and this is completely demoralising. And it sends out a horrible message as well. I really hope that one day soon this changes because everyone deserves the chance to workout in clothes that actually help you exercise because they're designed that way.

And then there's that look I get when I tell people how much I exercise. That dubious look. Because surely there is no way I look the way I do and still go to the gym three times a week. I can't possibly be honest when I explain that I have an active job that has me going up and down four flights of stairs for the majority of the day. Because if that were the case, I'd look slimmer. I should be slimmer. But I'm not. And I've come to the stark realisation that I also probably never will be. I do fluctuate in weight and I know that at the moment I'm more on the heavier side than I have been, but it means I will probably never have a flat stomach and look model-thin. And I'm okay with that. I just wish other people could be as well.

*This may not be entirely true any more due to currently not being as active as usual for personal reasons but I'll be talking more about this in a few months. Let's just pretend it's correct for now. ;)

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