Feeling Good in Your Own Body…

Before I started rebuilding my health, something happened that I've never quite been able to shake.

A family member — six or eight years older than me — came over for dinner. We hadn't seen each other in a long time, and in those years I had gained weight.

She had changed too. Botox, a couple of procedures, the kind of upkeep that costs money and time. We'd both been rearranged by the same years, just in opposite directions.

We were at the table, halfway through the meal, when she looked over at me and said:

"Are you pregnant? What happened to you? Look at me — I'm 50."

I sat there with my fork in my hand.

I didn't say anything.

It wasn't only that it hurt. It was that my body had just been set down on the table next to hers to be measured.

Here's the part I don't usually admit: her words didn't make me want to lose weight. They made me want to stay exactly as I was.

For a long stretch afterward I thought, I'm not changing just so she gets to be right. Some stubborn part of me wanted her to see me again unchanged, as proof that my body was none of her business.

It took years to understand that the stubbornness wasn't really about her.

It was about what judgment does to a person.

People tell themselves that being blunt is a kind of generosity — that someone has to say it. But shame has never once moved me forward. It makes me angry, then quiet, then very good at digging in.

And the truth is, she was fighting the same thing I was. Time. A body that changes without asking permission. She'd just picked a different tool for it. I think that's why the comment came out the way it did. It wasn't really an observation about me.

There's also this: we are simply built differently, and we don't get to choose which cards we're handed.

I'm 45, and my skin has aged pretty well. I can't take much credit for that. No Botox, no fillers, no complicated routine. Genetics just happened to be kind to me in that department.

Weight? Completely different story. My body can gain it remarkably fast.

That's the strange thing about bodies. We all get handed something. One woman fights wrinkles. Another fights weight. Another is dealing with exhaustion, hair loss, hot flashes, or something nobody looking at her would ever guess.

We don't all get the same body, so comparing results never made much sense in the first place. Sitting across from each other at that table, we were each looking at the thing the other one didn't get.

The older I get, the less I assume I know about what someone else is carrying. The woman whose body has changed might be three years into caring for a parent who doesn't recognize her anymore. She might be in the middle of menopause. She might be on a medication that reshaped her without consulting her. She might be perfectly fine and just built differently than you.

I still notice things. Everyone notices things. But noticing something and appointing yourself the person who says it out loud are not the same act.

When the weight finally did start coming off, it had nothing to do with her.

I stopped asking how do I lose weight. I started asking why I hit a wall every single afternoon — the kind where the only thing that sounded survivable was coffee and a Z-bar, or whatever pastry was in reach. I'd eat it, feel fine for twenty minutes, and then feel worse than before. I wanted to know why some meals left me needing to lie down and others didn't.

Those questions got me somewhere the other one never did. Slowly, I started working out what my body actually wanted instead of arguing with it.

I also let go of the idea that exercise has to look identical every day. Some mornings I'm up at six and genuinely want to lift. Some mornings I open my eyes at eight and the honest answer is rest. Both are allowed.

Some days it's weights, some days a long walk. And some days it's "We Will Rock You" on the kitchen speaker, my kids and me stomping on the tile hard enough to rattle something. If I had to keep only one, it'd be that one.

I've stopped grading my health on what other people think they can see. What I go by now is duller and more useful — whether I sleep through the night, whether the stairs feel like anything, whether there's still something left in me at the end of the day.

I wish women gave each other more room than we do. "How have you been" costs nothing and asks for a real answer. "What happened to you" only ever asks for an apology.

Maybe the goal was never a body that impresses anybody.

Maybe it's just getting to the mirror in the morning and thinking, without arguing about it: I feel good in this body.

That seems like enough to build on.

Maria-BananaMamaLife

P.S Your body is not a problem to solve.

It's the home you'll live in for the rest of your life.

Take care of it.
Be patient with it.
And be kind to it.

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