The Golden Rule

I know I'll never have what goes for an ideal, Vogue-ready body, and my eye has been too schooled by the media, my mind too clouded by others' opinions of me over time to be content with my reflection, but today I saw a little bit of me that I liked that I never used to like.

It was quite the revelation. I was looking at myself in the mirror, properly, as I do only very occasionally, not usually liking (actually more disliking) what I see, but somehow today I was in the right frame of mind to see something other than the stuff of my bullied-person nightmares.

Let me explain... When you lose weight after being very, very large for most of your life to being merely large, things change. Your body gets a bit confused, and your skin doesn't quite know what to do with itself. Before shedding the weight, your largest organ (yes, that's your skin, I'm not just making this shit up as I go along, you know. Well, not entirely) had been getting on perfectly well, perhaps feeling a put-upon at times, somewhat taut maybe, but apart from the inevitable stretch-marks, it was beautifully wrinkle- and blemish-free.

And then you lose the equivalent of a teenager in weight and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. An ‘average' teenager, I have to say. Not me as a teenager...

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[As an aside, my Mum was clearing out her airing cupboard the other day, and found an old skirt she made for me when I was maybe fourteen or fifteen. Had it not been too short for my current taste I'd be wearing it now! That was me as a young teenager. Size-wise, pretty much me now. A short, but large, albeit voluptuous, adult. Definitely not your archetypal teenager!!]

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Some of the put-upon epidermis does eventually tighten itself a little, but mostly it just can't be bothered so just sits there, wondering why things had to change. It's not the loveliest of things, the by-products of losing weight. The romance of weight loss that we are spoon-fed by media, lifestyle hucksters, and diet quacks stops short of revealing the ending. Or the never-ending...

And I've not finished yet. I still have a way to go. But I decided a while back that I'd only go as far as I could cope with the side effects.

And what was the little bit of me that I liked? One of those side-effects... A little concertina of tummy skin. I know, sounds gross, right? Instead of being disappointed at the me I saw in the mirror, I looked at it, and I accepted it as being part of me. And then I realised it represented an achievement I was proud of, and not the left-overs of something I hated. Because I didn't really hate me, not really, I just hated being treated like I should have hated me, amongst other anti-large sentiments, but had gotten into the habit of pre-empting comments, jokes, and sentiments before having them spewed to my face by others first.

By trying to lose weight, though, I did (and still do) feel like I was letting the Size Acceptance movement down by wanting to change myself - the one group of people who are actively fighting to give those of us endowed with larger bodies a fair hearing in the auditorium of life. How could I support something by trying to change the very essence of myself that was needing support? I then realised that it's not fat acceptance that is the key, but the more simple and general ‘Acceptance'.

Acceptance of the belief that everyone is different. Acceptance that it's also okay to change something about yourself by any means you prefer if it has been making you sad, mad, or ill. And accepting that's it's okay *not* to change anything, either, because you're perfectly fine just the way you are. And the reality that wherever you are in your own acceptance the number one thought should be that you must be kind to yourself.

That being said, I am still harder on myself than I should be. I do want to lose more weight, and I can be quite the self-meanie. I want to make good changes for myself and am constantly aware of the struggle to do so. But in saying this, it is in no way a comment on other people, their weight, their methods of being who they want to be, their lifestyles, their anything. How on earth can I hope to be accepted for who I am if I refuse to accept others they way they are? Without trying to come across as all sanctimonious or moralistic, I'm a great believer in treating others how I'd like to be treated myself, and acceptance and kindness must surely take priority?

Conversely, I think it's okay to have things about yourself that you don't like. I reckon that striving for perfection is folly most of the time, but striving to be a better person isn't. Once you realise that perfection is unattainable it can also mean that you might find something about yourself, about others, about life, that you find annoying, or reprehensible, or stupid, or embarrassing, or any number of negative adjectives that spring to mind. Because we are human, after all. There will always be things we don't like, especially about ourselves. But we can stop the self-dislike becoming more pronounced by accepting that this something-we-don't-like exists, instead of trying to fight it into oblivion. For that, at least for me, just emphasises what I don't like even more, and makes it an even bigger mental foe.

So I'm trying to think in different directions. This thing I didn't like about myself turned into something else once I accepted it as part of me, and I realised that disliking it was okay as long as I didn't beat myself up about it too much.

I guess sometimes it doesn't take much to flick the switch from dislike to like as long as we are kind to ourselves, and by extension, accepting of others.

And because some of this post reminded me of this video below, I felt I had to include it!