It was the last photoshoot of our “How Much do you Weigh?” project. For the previous three months, photographer Sheila Daniels and I had opened the lens to 22 women of many different sizes, ages, and backgrounds. And each of these 22 women had told us their weight, with the full intent of having their pictures published right along with it. Owning that number. Dealing a firm blow to the taboo of weight and body size in this culture.
Now it was our turn to do the same. Fair’s fair, right?
I’d sat for a few test photos four months previously, so that we could mock up the image and number and get a visual sense of what we were doing with this project.
My number at that time was 128.
Test shot - 128 pounds
I was about a month shy of fully weaning my second child, but my weight had held steady around 128 for a long enough time that that just seemed like my body’s number. I had reported this number on my blog a month previously, which had mortified me.
Why? 128’s not so bad, right? Right. But I had no perspective. For most of my adult life, my weight fluctuated between 105 and 124. At 105, I was overly skinny; I didn’t feel attractive or womanly, and was often being told to “eat a burger or something”. At 124, I always felt embarrassed, pudgy, overindulgent. Now I was 4 pounds heavier and that was the weight that I was fated to report to the world.
So the embarrassment washed over me; I published it and I didn’t die. In fact, because I didn’t die, the embarrassment ebbed, and I could finally see it for the “no big deal” that it was.
But now, standing in front of the camera for reals, for the shot with which my weight would be published in book form, I was 130.
I had weaned my child, then quickly lost about 3 pounds. But then, also pretty quickly, I gained it back. And then a little more. When the scale first went to 130, I assumed that I had just eaten too much.
But it stayed there.
I wasn’t doing anything at all differently. Same basic daily intake of food, same basic exercise; same healthy lifestyle. It even cracked the low 130s on a few occasions.
And it stuck around and became my new number. My body had just settled after the birth and weaning of my second child at 130’s doorstep.
This is 12 pounds above my trusty pre-pregnancy weight of 118.
This is my biology in charge.
And I’m fine with it. Happy.
Our culture and its media seem to have gotten a firm handle on how weight is lost, and what we must do to our bodies in order to reduce their size.
But wouldn’t we all be better off if we also had a handle on how weight is gained? It’s almost as if our fear of weight gain is so strong that nobody seems to venture much into the territory of how and why our bodies gain (and retain) weight.
“Too many cheeseburgers” is just lazy or resistant thinking.
We are animals. We have a biology. That is wired a certain way from birth. That is optimized for our very survival. That has very many moving parts, all designed to keep us nourished and protected based on the genes that we received at conception; the genes that see us through all phases of life.
My weight fluctuates by the day and week, but 5 months after the shoot, I remain pretty solidly at 130.
I will not ever seek to weigh 118 pounds again. Or 128, for that matter. To do so would involve fighting with my basic biology, and pivot me instead towards an UNhealthy routine; fixating me on a number for direction rather than a way of life.
Instead, all of my focus goes to having and maintaining a healthy and happy lifestyle, knowing that I’m doing my best and the rest is up to my genes.
But I owe all of this confidence to the simple fact that I made my weight public. And in making it public, I owned it. That was my tipping point to allow me to focus instead on the all-important big picture, rather than the niggling insecurities fed to me by the fluctuations on the bathroom scale.
I am 130.
The book shot - 130 lbs. Notice a difference? There is none.
