Sunday Weight Loss Update... and some thoughts about being loveable.

How did I do with week one of my 59 pound goal?

Well... the answer is, I did KIND OF AWESOME.

I lost 4 pounds this week.

Which means that I now want to lose 55 pounds in the next 37 weeks.


I'm really interested in the topic of health. I used to be a junky. I used to be black rimmed eyes and torn hems. It used to not matter when I died.

The moment I found out I was pregnant with Scouty, I became totally obsessed with living the healthiest life possible, for me. I agonize over vitamins. I prepare our food from scratch. I buy organic and local. I don't do any of the things I used to do.

Something that is important is that healthy choices and habits matter, no matter how much you weigh. Since we're so skinny minded as a people, overweight people have come to believe that being overweight equals being totally and utterly unhealthy. So, if we're not seeing our weight go down, then the healthy habits we're adopting don't matter. We might as well be fat and not exercise, since exercising isn't working to make us smaller, anyway. And everybody knows that the only way to be healthy is to be small, right?

Something else that is important is that, if you're overweight, you aren't living your healthiest life possible.

That totally is true.

It's also true that if you're skinny and you never exercise, you're not living your healthiest life possible. If you're skinny and you eat processed foods and refined sugar, you're not as healthy as you could be. If you're skinny and you don't get enough rest, you're not living your healthiest life.

The thing about weight is that it is absolutely an indicator, in a long list of indicators, of your overall health.

If you're overweight and you start exercising, hoping to lose weight, you might believe that exercise isn't doing anything good for you if you don't see your weight getting smaller. That isn't true. It is totally doing you good, even if it isn't changing your magic number that everybody is telling you IS THE ONLY NUMBER THAT MATTERS.

Weight matters, it totally does... but your fitness, muscle mass, sleep habits, food habits, your environment, the chemicals you're ingesting and your emotional and spiritual health matter, too. A thin person who stresses all the time and never works out isn't healthy, either.

It's a hard thing to work through, just because our world is set up in a way that you're supposed to be ashamed of being fat, especially if you're a woman, but you're not required to be ashamed if you're practicing any number of the other things that make you unhealthy. As long as you're thin, we don't care what you're doing with your body, as a society.

I know you've heard it a million times, but it isn't anybody's business what you're doing with your body. Just like we don't admonish thin people for depriving themselves of sleep or eating non-organic produce, we shouldn't admonish somebody for being overweight. It's nobody's business. The end.

Can I just say this, though?

When you love somebody, you want them to be healthy.

I know that it is so hard to love yourself. I know. We're women and we're Americans and we're so many things. We're expected to give away all of our energy and power. We're expected to nurture and take care of everybody, to wear ourselves thin making sure that our families are safe and cared for and thriving... and then we're absolutely assaulted with messages saying,

Look at you! You're fat and that means that you're a piece of shit. Since you're fat, it doesn't matter how smart or successful or tireless you are in loving and caring for people and accomplishing your goals. It doesn't matter how many wonderful things you birth into the world. You're fat, so you're stupid and ugly and a joke. Even though you do impossible, amazing things every day, you deserve to be made fun of and laughed at and insulted.

I know that it's hard to love yourself. I do.

Here's what I want you to know: I don't believe those things about you, or about myself. Maybe I don't know you, so I couldn't possible love you, but let me assure you that if you're trying your best at living your life... if you're caring for somebody or working hard every day to be successful, if you're kind and honest and fair; YOU ARE LOVED. You must believe that you're deserving of love; you are deserving of praise; you deserve to feel absolutely ecstatic over being who you are.

You're amazing! You do amazing things! As long as you're living in a way that is compassionate and that takes the well being of other people into consideration and you are TRYING YOUR HARDEST, you are living an amazing life.

I do love you.

I do love me.

That's why I want to lose weight. Not because I feel like, "Fuck, I hate myself for being fat," but because I am an amazing person. I care about myself. I care about being as healthy and happy as I can be. I care about living for a long time and sharing my life with my family and the people who need and love me.

My weight absolutely doesn't tell you anything about who I am and how I live, other than that I haven't mastered every single thing, in a long list of what it takes to have my healthiest body. That's okay. I haven't mastered other things from the list, too. I stress out and get afraid. I isolate myself. Sometimes I don't get enough sleep. Those things are just as unhealthy as anything else; and since I love myself, I'll work on them to try become the healthiest person I can be.