Well, it’s THAT time again.
Summer is still a ways off, judging by the weather today, which is cold and rainy in my neck of the woods. But, thanks to my daughter, I’ll be leaving soon for a tropical location where the temps are in the 80s and the water is aqua blue.
I’m quite excited, as you can imagine. However, it’s been a few years since I purchased a bathing suit. Any swimming I do now happens while visiting family in Florida. I suppose this is because I hate putting on a swimsuit.
It wasn’t always that way. During my elementary school years, I resembled a bean pole, all arms, and legs. When puberty arrived, my body filled out nicely with curves in all the right places. Fortunately, I remained slim, able to eat anything I wanted without gaining a pound.
When I had my first baby, I stood 5’4” and weighed 120 lbs. I gained 40 lbs. during the pregnancy, but by my six-week post-delivery checkup, I was back to 120.
Easy-peasy. Breastfeeding helps with losing baby weight. My breasts were the only part of me that got any regular exercise (nursing around the clock), but I’ve often wondered if sleep deprivation helps one lose weight.
Baby #2 came 19 months later, and it’s true what they say: nursing IS NOT a reliable form of birth control! Once again, I put on 40 lbs., but this time I didn’t get back to my starting weight. I fluctuated between 130 and 135. My days were incredibly busy. Breakfast was multiple cups of coffee, and in those days, it was cream and sugar, please. Little Debbie cakes made lunchtime fast and simple: no prep and no cleanup. Dinner was the only decent meal I had, but snacking at night while watching TV, become a habit.
We weren’t raised in a house that promoted a healthy diet. My mom always cooked dinner, but I remember eating something called ‘sugar bread’ (white sugar on white bread…can you imagine??) It was a once-in-a-while treat, but sugar was a staple in our diets. It was sprinkled on cereals, fresh fruit, and anything that needed…sweetening. No wonder my parents both had diabetes. They ate whatever they wanted, smoked and drank in their younger years, and didn’t really exercise much. I’m still amazed they lived into their 80s. Good genes, I suppose…
I was working retail full-time, which meant being on my feet all day. Taking care of the kids and house during my ‘time off’ left me with no desire to go to the gym. Baby #3 came and gifted me another five pounds that stubbornly settled onto my midsection and refused to leave.
A couple of decades later, menopause came to call, and that effectively shut down my metabolism. The once-efficient burning of calories became a distant memory. You’d think with all the heat that kept building up inside me, some form of fat melting would’ve happened. But, alas, it did not. When one’s metabolism slows, the weight gain speeds up.
Needless to say, my body went through a lot of changes through the years. I needed to address the gradual weight gain and other issues as they occurred. Unfortunately, my life choices led me to believe that I wasn’t worthy of self-care. I had neither the time nor energy to meet the challenges of growing older, which should have included a healthy diet and exercise.
I’m not as bad off as some folks, but the need to lose 20 or 30 pounds is real, from a fitness standpoint as well as appearances sake.
I planned on using the same bathing suits that I’ve had for several years. Luckily, I decided to go shopping and try on some new styles. Good call. I went up a size.
It took three separate trips into the dressing room to get the correct sizing and styles to help camouflage those ‘trouble spots.’ (The best option for that would be a wet suit.)
As I squeezed in and out of various designs, I couldn’t help overhearing two young girls in the next dressing room. They giggled non-stop, and their boisterous exchanges were punctuated with whispers…and then more giggles. The conversations were funny at first but became distracting due to the subject matter. Did they not realize other people could hear them?
Finally, they departed the dressing room at about the same time as me. They were circling a rack of clothes, still talking boisterously. I noticed that their too-large voices were coming from bony, rail-thin frames. Were they victims of the body-shaming we see so much of in society?
I remember shopping with my girlfriends, but the only memory I conjured was hanging out at the pizza shop in the mall. We didn’t have much money to spend or the same pressures to be super thin back then.
Rachel Toll’s beautiful watercolor (above) encourages us to ‘love the skin we’re in.’ It’s sage advice for people of all ages. Obviously, if our BMI1 reaches a dangerous level (either too much or too little), we should seek professional help. But, we should also consider our ages and life history that got us to where we are today.
Hating ourselves for not doing what we should have done YESTERDAY will prevent us from taking positive steps TODAY. We shouldn’t define ourselves based solely on our physical bodies because we’re so much more than that.
It’s never too late to love the skin we’re in. And it’s never too late to make improvements that will help us love it even more. But the key is to keep loving ourselves and continue our efforts to become the best version of ourselves.
And as I mix up a morning protein shake, I keep reminding myself that it took a long time to get to this point. I must be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day!
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
LIFE MATTERS is a reader-supported publication (No Ads or Affiliate links). So please consider SUBSCRIBING to / and SHARING if you enjoy this weekly newsletter. Or, consider UPGRADING TO PAID to receive Private-Subscriber Only Posts + Bonus Content while supporting small independent businesses. Thank you for your consideration.
Loved every word, Ms W! 🩱👙
I commiserate with the bathing suit shopping. It’s a chore.