Facing One's Weight in the World

Returning to the body requires facing your own weight in the world.

Think of all the associations you have with ‘weight.’ Because I sit with the Quakers sometimes, I hear a positive connotation in their phrase, ‘weighty elders.’ They use that phrase to describe those with sufficient gravitas and levity, presence and practice to have seen most all of the human condition and to have withstood it in grace and compassion. Weighty elders. Most of my associations with 'weight' are negative though. Particularly if placed with a possessive pronoun: my weight, her weight, his weight.

The Americanized expansion of ‘size’ conditions this in me, from the outside, while my own stories of shame condition it from the inside. I remember going to the local Dairy Queen to get a mini-blizzard sometime last year. (I’m one of those whose sweet tooth is fairly small. It allows me to enjoy a couple bites of an ice-cream or sweet treat and be more than satisfied. Bread and pasta? Those are my insatiables!) My husband and I sat, savoring our sweets, and noticed the mural on the wall. It was an old photograph of a crowd of people, all ages, gathering for the opening of an ice cream shop. The picture was blown up to cover the entire side wall of the Dairy Queen. The year looked about 1950-something, judging by the dress and cars that were in it. Because it had been suggested by some dear friends of ours, we looked at the mural with intention and noticed what they had, which was quite startling. Every single person in that photo was slender or of solid build. Not one obese person was in the entire photo, a picture of a large crowd. Perhaps it was a statement that the shop had just opened, so no associations of stress relief had had time to be drawn with the product to be sold there! Not one overweight person appeared, in a random old photo of the joint. Fast forward to today, in Midwestern, economically-challenged Ohio? It’s a rare thing to find a slender person, especially over the age of 30. Weight today brings immediate association of over-eating, neglect of the body, a tone of judgment. Weight. Too much. Overweight.

I’m conditioned from my insides to condemn my own weight, or condemn myself for my own weight. I’ve listened some for where this comes from. Some of it comes from my mother’s indirect and direct narratives about her own weight. I remember a ‘cute’ story told of me when I was probably 4 or 5. Mom came downstairs with an announcement, “I’m 145!” Wanting to join in what appeared to be a celebration, I (apparently) asked, “Is today your birthday?” After the howls of laughter subsided, the exchange went into the little orange book that held all the cute and silly things my sister and I said while growing up. But there was a collision of weight, age, and womanhood that happened at some deep level. I learned that 145 lbs was a weight to aim for, even though I'm well over 5'10''. Some of the condemnation or shame comes from growing up with a physician father, professionally inclined to care deeply about weight and its relationship to health. I don't remember him ever judging my weight, but I felt a judgment, which I probably transferred on him, from whatever subconscious energies that were in the house. This energy was often imposed upon him, however, by patients of his we would see at the local Friendly’s on Sunday lunches, after church. “I didn’t order the sundae,” they would say, passing by our table on the way to pay the bill at the front door. Rarely was there a “Hello” or a communal inquiry, “How are you?”, but “I didn’t eat any ice cream” with a nervous laugh in front of a doctor and his family. Mostly, this negativity comes from a long-conditioned dislike and embarrassment of my abdomen, already well represented in my blog-pages. Reclaiming this well of creative energy in my body, in my life, I’ve found a better balance of acceptance and transformation here. I’m getting more adept at catching my internal critic, gently thanking her for her voice that, when shrill, did bring my attention to issues of weight and health, but then asking her to quiet her fear while accepting my pleasure at my build, my size, my strength, even the abundance of energy stored there for all my needs. We are all finding a way to live together, my weighty voices and my elder wisdom. Weighty elder, perhaps I’ll become someday.

So how does one face one’s own weight in the world? Just that—face it. Face it, even grow it for balance of strength and flexibility in the world. I may have an overdeveloped enjoyment of all things bread or pasta, but I know that, and regularly check in with myself to see how deep the addiction has gone. I don’t withhold the breads from myself, nor do I gorge on carbohydrates, but I live with a healthy awareness of the aimed-middle, a complex rhythm of delight and measured moderation. I did find a good running habit, to make use of the carbohydrates too. I miss that cardio exercise in my life, so am finding the time again to walk, perchance to jog and run.

I’m facing my weight in a new way with the pull-up project. I’m holding my own, I guess you could say. What does it feel like to develop strength in my upper body, and learn to use the resources that I have, to play with my own weight? To hold it for short periods of time, pulling against gravity to feel my own strength developing, bit by bit?

What I can say so far is that I’m learning a new way to be in my own body, to be responsible for it, to care for it even as I develop more of it. In ironic fashion for most of my mental habits with respect to my body, I’m now bulking up weight, so I can hold this “more” of it myself. This “return to the body” is requiring me to make more of a certain kind of it—muscle, in back, arms, core—in order to be able to face it and consider it a strong point of myself, my being, my way in the world. I think I’m falling in love with physical strength, not just intellectual or spiritual strengths. Physical strength for its own sake? No. But physical strength that allows me to be as weighty in the world as I can withstand, can hold, can love.