Fat Friday, even though it's Saturday

I've decided to save up the bitching about my weight for Fridays only, which I will call "Fat Fridays" until I can someday call them "Skinny Saturdays". And that may be awhile, my friends.

My mantra, even back when I weighed 112 pounds, was "I'm so fat! I hate my thighs! My stomach is so GROSS!". I obviously was not fat at 112 pounds, and I still wasn't fat at 126, or 135, or even 146. (150 or 160 would even be okay with me. I have heavy bones.)

Griping about weight seems to be just one of those things high school girls DO. The boys work out like maniacs, the girls complain about their 'fat'. And then the girls go through the social exercise of replying, "No you're not! You look GREAT!". And as 115 pound little girls, we DID look great. And somewhere inside of us, we knew it. But most of us went through the routine anyway, because it's just not POLITE to admit that you're PROUD of your body!

So I learned to berate my body, and I eventually learned to believe what I was telling myself. I probably learned it from a thousand places. My granny, my mom, my friends, the television, my subscription to "Teen" magazine, my massive collection of "Sweet Valley High" books (where the girls were slim, tan, blonde, and perfect).

Making comments about my body became a bad habit. And it was also a self-fulfilling prophecy, because now I really AM fat. I have become the fat friend (girls, you know what I'm talking about). I have entered large women's clothing chains (and left crying, because some of the clothes FIT). My leftover baby belly can't be smashed into a bikini anymore. I've had people ask if I'm pregnant again.

I lost weight before having babies, but I quickly put it all back on, and more, once I was pregnant (oh, 150 pound body, I hardly knew ye). I wonder how my husband looks at me without gagging. He insists that he loves my body (and he knew it 50 pounds ago) and that my (stretchmarked, jiggly, extra skin) belly gave him his two beautiful children.

Every day I wake up with the hope that I will be thin! An overnight miracle! The gravity of sleeping on my back has finally flattened out my stomach! And each morning, I am disappointed when I must face that my pizza dough tummy is still there.

I spend money trying to smush it down with girdles, I spend hours trying on every shirt in my closet to try to disguise it, I rub in special lotions to make the stretchmarks disappear. I listen to my husband and friends say, "You look fine!" but I know they are just trying to not crush my delicate spirit. I stand in front of the mirror several times a day, viewing my stomach from different angles, seeing how much I can suck it in. I spend hours a day feeding it, or thinking about feeding it. My stomach and I, we are TIGHT. We don't need NOBODY.

But maybe things are changing. I really am trying to lose some weight, and hoping my tummy goes with it. But it will never be the same tummy I knew before babies. I'm coming to terms with that. And just like that, something comes along to help me learn to love what my body has done as a woman, creating and sustaining two babies...

Yesterday,a link to a new website: www.shapeofamother.blogspot.com. If you are into the airbrushed, photo perfect woman, this is not the site for you. If you are terribly modest, this is not the site for you. This is a site full of pictures of real mothers and their tummies, before and after child birth. I think it is beautiful. It makes me feel normal. It helps me accept that I am not the only one.

I have spent so many years ashamed of my body. I have hated myself for "letting myself go", for not just eating less and exercising. But after spending a while on "Shape of a Mother", I am starting to realize that while the state of my body IS partially my fault, part of it is just that my body, especially my belly, has been irreversibly changed by the beautiful miracle of childbirth.