The F-Word

As mentioned in the post below this one, yesterday, I had a lovely day out to the beach with my friend Meghan and her daughter, Roz. I've known Meghan since 7th grade, though we fell out of touch after high school (we graduated in 1996) and didn't see each other again 'til 2009, when we met up at a Coldplay concert (gotta love Facebook for getting back in touch with old friends). That was when I met Roz, who was then about eight years old. This was a few months after I started my Great Weight Loss Odyssey, so Roz, now eleven and navigating middle school, has known me since I was 200 pounds and has, over time, seen me slim down and shape up--a lot.

This year, in particular, I've seen myself go from "overweight but in decent enough shape" to "just a little overweight and kicking booty." I'm a fitness nut, a (mostly) healthy eater, and I talk--a lot--about my journey.

Yesterday, it really hit me how careful I have to be, however, when I'm around Roz.

Roz is a beautiful girl--she'll be tall like her mother, and slender, too. She is bright and precocious, an avid reader, a trombonist in the school band, insatiably curious, silly and often hilarious. She will turn 12 this year, and puberty is hitting in a big way. I've seen her get snarly with her mom, heard the minor horror stories from Meghan about raising a preteen girl, and yesterday, my heart cried a little when I heard Roz use the F-word.

"I'm fat!"

I hate it for girls and women in this society that we are expected, almost, to be cookie cutters. Just as I struggle to stop defining myself by a number on a clothes tag or a digital read-out on a scale, but rather focus on the awesome things I can do with my body, I see Roz looking at her own body, seeing the parts of it that are supposed to be there, and hating them because she doesn't look like the latest super-skinny model du jour. And I hate it that I found myself a time or two yesterday, wishing I could swallow the words I'd just said, about my clothing size, or the "little bit of flab on my belly," and just focus instead on celebrating the fact that I made a decision to get up and get healthy. When I spend time around Meghan (also a fitness-lover) and her impressionable young daughter, I want to be a positive role model, and someone who celebrates all women, with all bodies. It's the message I want to send to my students--that I do what I do not to "be skinny" but to be healthy, and strong.

And also, that it's more than okay to be a healthy eater, but still make time for ice cream on a sunny day at the beach.

Roz fell asleep on the way home, and Meghan and I chatted. I told her how I wished a couple of times in the day I could have taken back things I'd said about my body, how it broke my heart to hear Roz call herself fat. Meghan said, "I hate it when she says that, and I'm trying, all the time, to tell her that she's just perfect the way she is." She acknowledged, however, that it's a losing battle, with peer pressure and skinny movie stars and magazines devoted to achieving an ideal most of us will never attain.

I plan to do another "Loving My Body" post soon--I have some fabulous arms to show off. They spent some time this weekend being sore as all get-out because M.'s Friday workout for me had them working. Thing is, they're awesome arms, and they did it. So stay tuned. This blog is about loving my body and celebrating it...and from now on, I will be monitoring each and every word I say in front of young Roz.