I can no longer count on my own hands the number of months I have been perfectly ok with my body and weight and how I look. Once I became pregnant, I didn't think of myself as my normal-free-to-criticize-my-body self. My body was doing important things! Like growing a giant baby. I hated being pregnant and felt huge and uncomfortable, but it's not like I blamed myself for that... I blamed pregnancy!
When all was said and done, I gained somewhere around 26 pounds. I think all but 10 or so were lost during birth. Within two weeks the number on the scale was my pre-pregnancy number, but I didn't look the same. A droopy, saggy belly had replaced my sort-of tight abs. But even then, I was ok with that. I mean, give me a break, I had just had a baby and I had much more important things to worry about... like how the hell I was going to get another 30 minutes of sleep at night or whether my boobs were going to run out of food for my gluttonous baby.
Now, almost 4 months post-partum, I'm starting to feel like myself again. It's like I'm waking up from a long, happy nap and facing reality. It's not a FAT reality, but I am suddenly more critical of the extra jiggle in my thighs and the pudge sticking out over the tops of my jeans.
I'm not crazy. I know that objectively I'm not fat. And don't fool yourself into thinking that this is going to motivate me to slow the constant ingesting of cookies, candy and vanilla soy lattes from Starbucks. I haven't been to a gym since May 12th, and while I would like to go workout, it's not going to happen until law school is over...at least. So this isn't like an obsession with my weight... more like I'm getting back to who I was before I got pregnant, for better or for worse. Is it just me, or is a reality of life for most women always having something to criticize about her physical appearance.
On the bright side, this makes me realize that I can finally pinpoint one positive aspect of pregnancy: ironically enough, it was a year of not worrying in the slightest about how my body looked. I just viewed everything as temporary and fleeting, even the fatness and weight gain.
1 comment:
I know exactly what you mean! And during the first trimester, when nobody noticed my expanding waistline, I realized that I was being way too hard on myself when I gained a couple of pounds and nobody else could tell. But now I catch myself looking in the mirror a lot more critically. Guess the lesson wore off.
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