The Good Body, cont.

I first read this short article (see previous post) by Eve Ensler in Glamour's December 2004 issue, when I was still at Middlebury and seriously anorexic. Ironically enough, I read the article when I was in the gym, ellipticizing away my meager lunch. It was that really awful time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, cold and dreary outside. My hair was falling out, my nails were brittle, my heart was beating irregularly, and I was having panic attacks every night like clockwork. And when I read the article, I started to cry. Right there. On the elliptical. My granny-like bones struggling to hold my shriveled body up. I was miserable, and Eve Ensler's words touched me in a powerful way that I will never forget.

Since then, I've saved the article, and even now have a typed-up copy taped up on the wall next to my desk, so that I read Ensler's resonant prose daily. Nevertheless, as much as I want to take her words to heart, to be able to say "Screw it. This is my body. The world can deal with it," and really embrace my body, I can't. And of my close friends, I don't know a single one that hasn't struggled with her body. Whether they've undergone serious eating disorders, disordered eating, or suffered from a poor body image, at one point or another, this preoccupation with food and weight has seized each one of them. It truly devastates me that we have wasted so much time and energy and purpose worrying about our hips, thighs, and stomachs, and counting the calories in a salad.

When I think about my relationship with my body, I can sum it up in one word: bad. I have a bad relationship with my body. Although my body has been wonderfully resilient after nearly a decade of bulimia and anorexia, I still have a serious preoccupation with food and weight that I will struggle with for the rest of my life (sadly, along with most of the women I know).

Right now, I'm especially hating my body, since I am supremely out of shape. While I know I'm still at a completely normal weight, for the first time in almost four years, I can really see fatty deposits on my body (sorry if this is too gross, but I refuse to gloss over any of this). I can feel the muscles in my arms, legs, and stomach atrophying. It is truly distressing and depressing. It's come to the point where I don't like to look in the mirror. I'm hiding my imperfect figure under huge shirts and loose pants, hoping that maybe the extra fat will just siphon off as I walk around.

The solution is a simple one: I need to get back into shape. The left side of my brain knows that it will make me feel better in every possible way: mentally, physically, emotionally. The right side of my brain, though (the one that I defer to 95% of the time), is complicating things. For the last four years, essentially, my workouts have had one goal in mind: lose weight. Thus, this idea of 'working out' for any other purpose feels very strange to me, and it's been enormously difficult to motivate myself to exercise.

Finally, this morning, I did Pilates. And while it wasn't the best hour of Pilates I've ever had, it also wasn't the worst. I realized that my arm muscles are still there (thanks for pulling me on our walks, Callie), my stomach muscles, although buried under fat, are there, and my leg muscles, well, they're ok...they need some serious runs to tone up, but they're there.

Granted, as I have my wedding portrait coming up in a week, vanity is dominating my decision to get back into shape at the moment, but I know I can be healthier than I am right now. I know that I can believe in my body more than I do right now. And I wish that I didn't spend as much time thinking about/hating my body as I do, but I have to believe that one day, when I'm not 22 and awkward, I will fall into my own skin.