Birthday hike 2012

Recently I was asked to participate in a blog series called, "Memoirs of a Skinny Bitch". Apparently some girl always referred to thin women as Skinny Bitches and frequently assumed we don't understand what it's like to be insecure. My friend that invited me, knew nothing of my genetics, habits, or feelings. She just knew I was naturally very thin, and thought I'd want to contribute. BOY DID I HAVE A LOT TO SAY. Women loving themselves for who they are, and what they look like is something I've been very passionate about. I've spent my whole life defending myself as a decently healthy person, without an eating disorder, and just wishing people would see me for me, and not wonder why I was the size I am. There are so many women who feel this exact same way, and struggle with finding a way to shield themselves from the harsh words of the media, friends, family, and others. So many women try to fit a mold that we think we ought to fit to please others, instead of looking inward and being the person we know we should be and loving every inch of ourselves for it.

Family, friends, and those who don't know me, this memoir is just a short version of what I've dealt with my whole life, and how I have felt. I have worked intensely hard to find the girl who I see in the mirror as a beautiful creation of God's, with as much worth as anyone else, despite and because of my size, (or lack thereof as so many people like to say).

I've pasted the memoir below, but for the whole series, please go to the original blog at http://embodyed.blogspot.com/ . The posts fill up the month of May. I highly recommend reading it. It is an eye opener into the world of women we deem as "perfect" and assume they have everything going for them in every possible way. I will be a (hopefully) regular contributor to this blog in the future, so expect to see more from me on there soon!

Here is my "Memoir of a Skinny Bitch". Please feel free to comment and share your struggles, opinions, feelings, etc.

Hi my name is Lana, I’m 28 years old, 5’7” tall, 125 lbs, and I’m a skinny bitch.

My entire life I’ve been what you would call a bean pole. In fact, everyone in my family is. I have a little brother who is 16 years old, 6 feet 6 inches tall, and let’s just say he grew so fast his muscle mass didn’t have time to start growing yet. He probably weighs 140. With all his clothes and ankle weights on. :) Mom is 6’1”, weighed 125 in her 20’s, and 30’s despite having 4 children. For the first time in my life, I am in the “healthy weight range” (besides as a big, fat, adorable baby!). I’ve been 5’7” since I was 12, and hovered around 110 for most of my late teens and 20’s. I have never had an eating disorder. I have never thought I was fat. This is just the size my body wants to be. I have always wanted to change my size though. I wanted to be bigger for so many years, so people would notice ME, and not just notice my size.  Yes, I’m a beanpole. While it does have it’s advantages -- I stay thin without exercise, and actually lose weight when I don’t workout regularly because my body requires less calories to function without exercise-- it also has it’s disadvantages.

Being skinny makes people feel that they are allowed to say whatever they want to me and assume that it doesn’t hurt my feelings, or self-esteem.

A recent boss told me I looked like a holocaust victim. Has anybody actually been to a holocaust museum or seen pictures of the victims? It is the most horrific sight my eyes have ever beheld. A walking, emaciated-to-the-skeleton, corpse. That is what I reminded him of. Funny... I actually thought I looked pretty that morning in the mirror. I didn’t laugh when he said it. He sure did though. I left immediately to lunch, I parked my car on a nearby street and cried. I felt uglier than I had in a long time.

On an almost weekly basis, someone checks out what I’m eating, and says “You should eat twice that much, we need to fatten you up”, or some other comment about how I’m clearly not eating enough and clearly not looking healthy to them. I went on a date once and the guy forced me to order something I didn’t want because he didn’t want me “to be one of those bulimic/anorexic chicks and waste his money”. I left the date early. Why even ask me out dude?

Here’s a piece of advice Americans... go to Italy, or France. I eat as much as they serve you at the restaurants in Europe. I am a size medium in Italy. In America, I’m a size small. Or a TOO SMALL as most people like to tell me. Why is my size never good enough for you? Why is it that most girls I know that are NOT much larger than me are always trying to lose 5-15 pounds? If you do, we’ll look the same, but to you right now I’m ugly? It has never made sense to me. 

Then there’s also the girl from my church that emailed me on Facebook one night out of the blue, we’d never really talked much before. She proceeded to tell me all about her bulimia, and told me that if I wanted to open up to her about my bulimia, she would be a listening ear and get me help with my problem. WHAT THE?! I wanted to respond with something nasty but didn’t.

In high school a couple of girls took it upon themselves to tease me. Sometimes it stung more than I let them know. I was 5’7” and around 105 lbs. If they saw me eating, or saw me heading to the bathroom, they’d either make vomit sounds, or ask me how long before I puked up my lunch. I’ve never thrown up unless I had the stomach flu (or extreme anxiety which I did suffer from off and on, and with that, I only puked when having a very severe anxiety attack). I also had to find new friends at age 12 because as they put it, “none of the boys think you’re pretty," which I interpreted as, "you’re too skinny”, and my girlfriends wanted to hang out with the guys instead of me, so I was kicked out of the group. Oh, and one of my ex-boyfriends offered to buy me a boob job so I “could actually look sexy” since I was “too skinny and flat chested”. Yeah, we broke up shortly after. WHY IS AND HAS MY WEIGHT BEEN SUCH A BIG DEAL TO PEOPLE? 

It’s sometimes hard. I rarely can talk about how I feel about my body to anyone but my mother. She understands me completely, because she raised me, and knows I’m healthy. Doctors have always told me my weight was fine, but even my best girlfriends weren’t people I could turn to. They all thought I was too skinny, and unhealthy, even though they knew how much I ate. I would get accused of “trying to watch my weight” because I didn’t want cake or brownies. I’ll be honest, I am not a fan of sweets. I think cake is gross most of the time. But give me a jar of Tostitos queso dip, and I’ll eat the whole thing in an hour. Please don’t try it yourself though. It makes you feel awful. Humans are not meant to eat that much queso at a time. I always regret it.

I had a fear of eating around new people for a while because I was so used to being judged on what I ate. I would panic a little that I wasn’t doing it right, and that people were going to think I was anorexic. It was exhausting. It would trigger anxiety, and then I wouldn’t be hungry, and then their negative thoughts would be confirmed because I wasn’t hungry, so therefore I must be anorexic. It was like no one saw me for who I was, they just saw my size.

I have had generalized anxiety my whole life pretty much. And it contributed a little to my small size. When my anxiety was out of control, it was really hard to eat much, and I would drop weight instantly. I would usually get it in check and gain back the weight I’d lost. I finally went through some therapy a couple years ago to fix it, and once I was much more mentally healthy, I actually gained 15 lbs. Which is where I sit now. My body likes it here. It stays here pretty much all the time now no matter what. But even when I gained 15 lbs, and had never had weight on my body before, I couldn’t talk to anyone but my mom about it.

My butt got jiggly, my thighs got bigger. My hipbones were far less pronounced. (Sadly my chest didn’t grow.) I had to buy all new pants and skirts, and some styles that always looked good on me, didn’t anymore. But I can’t talk about it to anyone because people think I’m one of those stupid girls who wants to be told she’s not fat. That’s never been what I am doing. I don’t think I’m fat or even big at all. I am just wanting someone to talk to about how I feel since I’m wearing a body that is different than what it’s ever been. I’m proud of my new butt. It fills out dresses, skirts, and jeans. It’s round. My boyfriend is kind of obsessed with it. When I turn to the side I don’t disappear anymore. And I’m proud of it because it looks more womanly and sexy than I thought I looked for most of my life. But it used to be cottage cheese-less. And now it’s totally not. Yep. I’m 5’7”, 125 pounds, and my butt has cottage cheese on it. You curvy girls should be grateful. Men love having curves to hold on to, with or without the cottage cheese.

I don’t wear bikinis because I have ribs that poke out and people always look at me like I’m sick. You should be so in love with the beautiful bodies God gave you. Trust me, I’ve been talked to like I’m a girl with severe issues my whole life because my body doesn’t store fat the way other girls bodies do. And many a guy has walked right past me and gone to the girl with killer cleavage, and a rocking booty because it’s sexy. Beanpoles aren’t thought of as sexy.

I will say this though, I can eat whatever I want, but I try not to. The recommended daily foods to eat are the best way to go. I rarely drink soda, it makes me feel sick. There is too much sugar in it. I rarely eat cake, brownies, cookies etc. I just don’t love how that much sugar makes me feel. I grew up with a master gardener for a mother. All of our meals included one or 2 vegetable options AND a salad. And she rarely filled our cupboards with junk. I prefer to drink water over any other liquid. Nothing beats a cold glass of water. I also try to exercise. I’m not the best at it, let’s be honest, it kind of sucks sometimes to run in place on a treadmill. But I try to keep myself healthy. And as long as you’re healthy, who cares if you’re a size 10 or a size 2.

Really though.

And another thing.... I really wish people would keep their negative opinions to themselves. I never walk up to a big person and ask them why they think they need to be eating a burger when they should be running instead. I have felt as ugly as could be because of people’s comments that I was too thin. How about this people... I’m the size I am. This is me. Take it or leave it. But if you leave it, just shut up about how you feel. I work really hard to love myself, and I don’t need you tearing my work apart on a daily basis.

Before the 5k. Notice my pale complexion?

So I ran a 5k yesterday. It is Mother's Day weekend, and the 5k was in support of the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation, and it was entitled "Race for the Cure". Everyone had a sign pinned to them announcing the reason they were walking or running. And these signs all said, "I race in celebration of..." or "I race in memory of...". Some of these signs were really sad. Some men had listed they were running IN MEMORY of their moms, and their wives. Some of them were funny, and said "I run in celebration of boobies everywhere!" or "I run in celebration of my wife's perfect chest." It was a lot of fun yesterday, and was my first 5k, and my first race ever! I pushed really hard through it and ran most of the distance, with just a few short walk breaks. My feet hate me today, but I am really proud of myself.  Also they had a large group of cheerleaders for the last block of the race which really boosted my tired, worn out morale and helped me push hard at the end. You can't walk across the finish line of a race! I told myself I had to run through it. I loved it. Every quarter of the race had a band playing fun music to keep our spirits up too.

I want to talk about the person I ran for yesterday. One of the mothers in my life whom I love very much, has battled and survived the nasty cancer this race was for. This is my grandma Franny. She is one of those women that just always gives to others. When I was a lot younger (in fact I don't even remember this happening), she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and survived it! She has never stopped being the amazing woman she is despite having to go through something so tough.

Here is an example of why she is so amazing ---- My entire life she's given gifts every year for Christmas to everyone in our family. Not only does she give a gift, but she actually thinks about what people might want and picks something specifically for you, and wraps it and everything. She puts a lot of effort into her gift giving and I have always remembered that. Rarely does she ever do a gift card or cash. When my parents got divorced and my mother remarried, she started giving gifts to my new step-siblings too. They weren't even her grandkids, she is my dad's mom, and these kids weren't connected to her in anyway. But she still gave them presents every year because they were my siblings, and she loved them. 

As I've gotten older, we've had some really nice, long conversations on the phone. She has told me often that she admires my strength. This means so much to me because we've talked a lot about things that I've had a very hard time with. She is such a booster of spirits, and a cheerleader for those she loves. She is always so happy to talk to me and always tells me what an amazing job I'm doing at life. Sometimes I really need to have a cheerleader boost my morale and help me through the finish line, and that's what she does for me when we talk. She is such a sweet lady, and I wish I had a picture I could put on here to show you her beautiful face. Unfortunately she lives a little out of the way, and so I am sad to say that I don't see her nearly as often as I would like to, and I think my mom has any pictures of her that we've taken. (I will have to fix that!)

Happy Mother's day Grandma Franny! You are such a wonderful, strong woman, and I love you very much!

Here are some more pictures from the race yesterday.

After the 5k. Solid red face. I need to get more in shape for my next one!

12,000 racers. Only about 10% ran. I had to weave in and out of them the whole time. See how they stretch clear down the road for blocks?