Letting go of Ashley the "Skinny Bride"

So are you still training for that race? 

No, I am no longer on the training plan I mentioned before. I stopped because I felt pressured to spend my fitness time in a more "productive" way. I started doing HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts, specifically Insanity. After a few weeks I stopped my Insanity workouts, and am now back on a running plan. 

If I didn't like HIIT and Insanity, why did I do it in the first place? 

This really is the tip of a much bigger iceberg in my journey of body acceptance. I felt I needed to do HIIT because these workouts are the fastest way to build muscle mass and lose body fat. If you are unaware, there is a really big day coming up in my life in which over a hundred people will all be staring at me. I felt pressured to "look my best" which pressured me to do workouts I don't like, and diet, which I don't want to do anymore. 

Well, I am officially done. Consider this a public service announcement on all issues of my body and my wedding. 

I, Ashley Thompson, am officially giving up my since childhood fantasy of being a skinny bride. Many girls have their dress, colors or flowers picked out for their wedding long before they have a ring on their finger. The only thing I dreamed about was being a skinny bride. I used to think marriage was a milestone that represented that your life was coming together. You were growing up, starting a new chapter of your life, and had a least some of your shit figured out. I thought that once I grew up, and had my shit figured out I would magically be thin, too. Now I realize that the together-ness of my life has nothing to do with the size of my body. Finally I feel ready to give up fantasizing about being something I am not, and learning to nourish and love what I am, body included. 

If this isn't what having your life together looks like, I don't know does. 

Compared to my current weight, I have weighed more, and I have weighed less. I have spent LITERALLY  spent the last decade of my short life dieting. For once in my life I am going to make a commitment to myself to nourish and take care of my body and love it, not matter what shape it may be. 

For friends and family who think commenting about my weight, or my exercise/eating habits is appropriate - stop. 

It has, and will always, negatively impact my ability to accept my body. Talking about my body does not motivate me to lose weight or improve my health. If anything it fuels self destructive behaviors. Trust me, I literally have a degree in health behavior, if there was a magically way to make people lose weight, I would have heard about it. Also weight loss is not the same as improved health. I am continuing my commitment to improve my health, I am just no longer using the amount of weight I can lose as my measure for success in this endeavor. In my attempts to lose weight I have picked up some healthy behaviors and some destructive behaviors.

All in all, I do have my shit figured out, it just looks different than I thought it would when I was younger. 

I have a job that I love, I spend my time reading about issues I care about, I have an amazing fiance that I am excited to start a family with, and I have my whole life ahead of me. I have yet to figure out the how-to-eat-without-dieting thing, but I am working on it. I do know that being obsessed with my weight has not improved my physical health and definitely has negatively impacted my mental health.


I do know trying to lose 30 pounds before my wedding will not help improve my ability to accept my body or improve my health. 

In case you are still a little confused, here is a recap: 

• No, I am not dieting for my wedding. 
• Yes, my body could change, but that is part of my current journey to find a weight I can maintain without dieting. 
• No, you are never allowed to comment on my body or my physical activity/eating habits, even if you think what you are saying is a compliment. It is not a compliment, by the way. 
• Yes, health promotion is still an important aspect of my personal and professional life. I have just learned that promoting health looks different than I originally thought and a healthy me might look different than I originally though. 
• No, I have not yet learned how to eat without dieting, and accept my body, but I do now those two goals are what will lead to improved health, and happiness in my life - not dieting/weight loss. 

Phew, that feels good to get off my chest! 

Out of my hands, off my shoulders

My biggest ah-ha moments tend to be after/during exercise. Maybe it is the lack of oxygen to my brain or something, but for whatever reason, when my body starts moving, so do the gear upstairs.

Point being – had an ah-ha moment today while working out. I started my evening with a little ashley-robics. I hope you don’t think I just made Ashley-robics up. They are in fact real, and I do them quite often.
Anyways, after jumping around my room for a little while I decided to cool down outside and headed outside for a walk. It rained a lot today, so everything looked glassy, with a blue and black tint. Kind of like in those film noir movies, when you see the lead character walking down the street alone at night.
In that moment, while walking around feeling my heartbeat slow down, I appreciated that while my exercise method of unconventional, it was effective. This made me think about another forms of exercise I love – running.
I love running, but there is something deeply competitive about it. Each time I set out for a run I am hoping it will be “good.” I guess good means fast, and pain free. A lot of runs aren’t good. My chest feels tight, my feet hurt, or something else in my body isn’t working right. In all of this I feel guilty.
I guess I never realized I felt guilty about my bad runs. This guilt comes from the fact I have a strong belief that I have control over my life. If I study hard, I will get a good grade. If I work hard, I will be able to find a job. If I treat my partner well, our relationship will work. This is all rather “pull yourself up from your boot straps-y” for someone as progressive as I am! I guess I allow other people to have flaws, but not myself.
Anyways, in that moment I realized, Ashley, you aren’t always in control, and therefore, you aren’t always to blame for mishaps.
For some people this revelations might feel like, well duh, but for me its huge. I have spent far too long worrying about what I did wrong. Somethings are out of my control, and all I can do is my best.
Maybe that pill I easier for other to swallow, but for me, it took an post-dancing sweaty haze to get it. A little Adele in the background helped too.

Finding balance

This past weekend I spent time reflecting on my work life balance. One thing stuck out to me – I know how to be happy, but I am not doing it. I am going to start moving back towards a life that makes me happy with a few small goals. I will explain more later.

Source

First set of goals:

• Schedule a weekly planning session on Sundays to plan and review my week
  
• Track food and fitness on My Fitness Pal
  
• Shoot for 8 hours of sleep a night
  
• Journal 4 days a week focusing on emotions, challenges in balance, and positive thinking

This is all about making me a priority again, and learning how to reorganize my life as working girl Ashley, not student Ashley!
and your moment of Zen, Ashley getting down with the foam roller.

Foam rolling, the best part of the day!

My Big Bliss experience

Whenever I got to Toledo I watch unnecessary amounts of TLC and HGTV. After a long week, I love vegging out to an episode of Say Yes to the Dress on a Friday night. I could write a whole book (and maybe somebody has) detailing feminist critiques of that show and wedding culture. Regardless, its my guilty pleasure.

         
(source, source)

This past weekend I was in Toledo and enjoyed my usual dose of cable TV. Friday night after a few episode of Say Yes to the Dress a new show came on. It was a spin off of Say Yes to the Dress featuring plus size brides, called Big Bliss.

I felt so angry watching this show. Woman after woman came into the shop and express their inability to find themselves beautiful. They would put on amazing dress after amazing dress and still look in the mirror and feel terrible.

They hated the way they looked, hated their bodies, and in turn, hated themselves. I found all of them beautiful. I understand beauty is subjective, but still in each woman I saw grace, elegance, and style. No – I saw a PERSON who had value and deserved dignity. It was literally painful to see the self hate.

Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss Clip

(source)

The whole thing made me angry. 

I was angry at a wedding industry that says only thin brides are beautiful. I was angry at the fashion industry that doesn’t make clothes that fit all people, and perpetuates unreal expectations of beauty. To me the world needs to change not these women, yet I am sure other viewers felt exactly the opposite. I hated that other people are watching this show and victim blaming. I can see them now saying to a friend, if only they would lose 50 or 60 pounds they wouldn’t have a problem. Even the comments on the video posted above made my blood boil.

These women don’t need to change, the world that creates stereotypes, stigmatizes, and disenfranchises people based on the size of their body needs to change. This is blatant discrimination and should not be tolerated. In my rage I vowed to never let anything, a dress, an industry, or a society make me hate myself and my body. I am, like every other person, too valuable to be minimized in this way.

I haven’t mentioned this lately on this blog but personally my body has been changing. I have alluded to the terrible eating and inactivity habits I adapted while trying to finish school and find a job. My clothes fits differently so I was aware my body had changed, but this weekend I became strikingly aware to the magnitude by which my body had changed.


(source)

This realization came at the mall. I went to the mall to spend a coupon I received for my birthday. I was excited to go to the mall and find some new clothes. When I got there I grab literally two arm loads of clothes, and rushed to the changing room. There were so many things on the rack I loved. I thought that I had hit the jackpot.

But then, shirt, after pants, after dress – nothing fit. Not one item I brought in fit. I knew my body had changed, I even made sure to get bigger sizes than I would have 6 months again, but still not one item fit.
I was paralyzed. Less than 12 hours ago I watched women go through these terrible shopping experiences that inevitably fueled their body hate. Less than 12 hours ago I vowed never to let something as silly as a dress make me feel less valuable. Yet there I was, exactly in their shoes.  I was ashamed, frustrated and sad.


I went back out to the store floor determined to feel better. I grabbed more clothes, in even bigger sizes, and even grabbed clothes that wouldn’t traditionally be considered “flatter” for a woman my size. Specifically I grabbed a white dress. I got a size I knew would fit, and rushed back into the dressing room.

Some of the clothes looked ok, and they now fit, but there still was no wow. The usual rush and excitement of new clothes was gone. I was too far in the hole by this point. The last item I tired on was the white dress. It fit well and was comfortable, but still all I saw in the mirror were my flaws. The rolls of fat on my back, the bludges around my hips. There I was, in a dressing room, in a white dress, feeling exactly like those women on TV, also in a dressing room, in a white dress.


I don’t have any answers or profound statements about this experience. I am still processing all my emotions and perceptions.

I guess I wanted to share this story because I know I am not alone in these feelings. I hope to keep thinking about this experience and figure out where I can grow from it. Right now I still feel hurt. I am hoping that time will bring wisdom, and I can share that wisdom here.

I guess the only advice I can give, and am giving to my self, is to not give up. I need to stand strong in my beliefs and figure out how I can use my skills in self reflection, self care, and social justice to address this problem. If anything I hope sharing this story makes others feel less alone, and make people aware that if you feel this way, there is someone with you in your corner trying to find a way to make things better – whatever that means.

Time for grad school recovery

The last few months have been all consumed by grad school. During that whole process I felt  like this:

And I had to see things like this, which I hoped to never see again.

Oh silly pre-grad school Ashley would probably see that stack of books and think, oh wow cool! I want to learn those things! Post-grad school Ashley mainly thinks, OMG vomit, get those out of my face.

Anyways as of yesterday all my paper work has been turned in and signed. I am done. D-O-N-E baby, yeah! Now I feel like this:

If you are wondering, yes that is my computer mouse in my hand. I am sure there is some fancy way to time photos with my webcam but I haven’t figured it out yet.

Please, stare at those for a long time. They get better the more you look at them.

Now that I am done with grad school I am left with the sad sack of human that was chewed up and spit out by the fine institution I attended. Needless to say during the process of …

• Getting a new job
• Fighting the federal government trying to take away healthcare from women
• getting another new job
• conducting and analyzing research data
• writing my culminating
• writing my culminating again after getting it chewed up and spit back in my face by again that fine institution I attended
• Doing other weird things – lobbying, testifying and so on

… there was little self care. I went from a 85% vegan to a 100% pizza, fast food and whatever else was cheap and would fit into my mouth kind of eater. I also went from 8 weeks into a marathon training plan to absolutely no exercise.

Correct, NONE. That is pretty impressive really.

Now it is time to pick up the pieces and make my next moves when it comes to self care. During this whole process I learned a lot. I have changed my views about healthy living, well really living in general, and thus also what the purpose of this blog will be.

I am off for a run to try to get myself back into some regular fitness schedule. Look forward to more posts about my adventures in trying to figure out how to live like a human being again.

And now your moment of Zen, a sparkly GIF in honor of my shiny new degree. PS – nothing says higher education like sparkly GIFs!

(source )

Poem Alert: Keep Going

complex, tired, pushing, searching

I am complex, and have many dimensions to my wholeness

I am tired from the heartbreak of a world unfair

I push each day to make the world better

constantly searching for truth

to be whole is to be complex

to be whole is to be tired

to be whole you have to wake up each day fighting – pushing, searching

I might not care about whether there is a god, or is not a god

but I am for damn sure – I have faith, in the beauty and possibilities of the world we live in.

Being an adult

Lately I have been trying to find comfort or acceptance during times of transition. I think that is a valid goal, and that patience is a skill worth learning.

But …

I start to wonder, will life ever feel more complete? I guess, what does that even mean?

I went to school, with the hopes of a pretty traditional future: school, work, family (I know the patriarchy, exclusive/flawed family values, but that is not the point here). In theory I could have graduated from school, found a job, did some type of 9-5 thing, had free time, and started a family.

Now, a lot of those pieces are there. I have a degree, like 1.85 as of now. I choose a career I am passionate about, and find incredibly reward. I met and fell in love with my amazing partner. The love was mutual, and we are engaged.

All the pieces were there, but I still feel like I am waiting.

I am almost done with school, but not quite. I am engaged, but am no where near a wedding, and the whole thing is still really over whelming. I have a job in the field I studied and that I love, but it is part time and temporary.

I am living in the training wheels of adulthood.

I don’t regret any of the decisions I have made about school, work, or love. While surely this post sounds on the “woe as me” side, I really am fortunate for all I have. In all that I do, I give my all and follow my heart, and that has brought me so many amazing things in life (oh, and I have massive amounts of privilege, but again, a different post).

During the journey, sometimes you just wish all the pieces would come together. When the future is fuzzy, it is hard to remain faithful and motivated.

In the end though, I continue to let my passion, dreams, and skills lead me. I have no idea when I will even set the date for my wedding, let alone the actual date of said event. I have no idea how I will be earning money in three months.

This is one of the times I tell myself to, buck up cupcake, and get to work. I try to stay focused and on point. In the end though, it is still always a little scary.

Oh my god, I feel like I will continually write this post throughout my life. Consider this time 1.

This is where I have been so far …

(please note, this post rambles a bit, and I don’t feel like proofing, so deal or don’t read)

This is where I have been so far on my journey to healthy.

The first moment of my life I was aware of my weight was in the 1st grade. I remember before going to school for the first day giving myself a little prep talk. I told myself, you are fat and people will make fun of you for it. If you are nice and don’t cause problems no one will have a reason to be mean to you, and you will be safe. Looking back in breaks my heart that someone at the age of six would already be aware of the social implications of their weight.

My struggle with my weight continued as I got older. Growing up my weight was just part my identity. I was the fat girl and I completely understood how that impacted my life. I had the usual teasing but I don’t look back and think of myself as unhappy because of my weight, but I did always desired to be thin.

Here and there when I was younger I tried to "diet" (i.e. eat only granola bars, terrible idea) but my weight loss journey really began when I was in the 8th grade. January 2000 I began weight watchers with my mom. The whole experience was amazing. I was losing weight and I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was physical incapable of losing weight, but now I was. I hit my goal weight of 144 pounds sometime during the summer 2001, which was the summer before my freshmen year of high school. That fall my crush all through junior high asked me out, I was more outgoing at school and I felt more confident than ever.

Then that winter I moved to Ohio. This was the first time in my life making friends came easy. People wanted to talk to me and get to know me. This was a strange comparison to the way I had been treated in the past.

 

I internalized the idea that it was easier for people to accept me as a thin person. I think this impacted my opinion on weight gain. As silly as it sounds, it made me wonder, if being thin made me likable, what will I be if I gain the weight back? Maybe my change in self-perception is what made it easier to make friend. Maybe the fact that I as older, and people were more accepting at 14 then 12.

 

This question was answered my senior year of college when I gained all the weight, plus 10, back. This experience was well worth it. I learned that when I gained weight, my boyfriend still loved my. I was still able to do everything I did as a thin person, and the people who mattered didn't care. This is an important lesson to learn. While weight has an impact on the way others view you, it doesn't have to impact the way you view yourself, or the way you live your life.

 

Even though this experience taught me that I could be any weight and still accomplish my goals, I still wanted to return to a healthier weight. Losing weight the second time wasn't the same as the first time. When I was younger it was easier. I really didn’t have a negative relationship with food. Weight Watchers gave me the tools to lose weight and I could use them with ease. My mom was on program with me, I had a GREAT support network, and mainly ate at home. In high school new challenges came. I started to harbor resentment and self pity. It wasn’t fair other people didn’t have to think about what they ate. I wanted to go out with my friend, and do everything everyone else did without worrying about my weight.

 

College added a lot of new challenges as well. I was eating in the dining halls, away from home, and really pushing myself academically. My freshmen year I did great, but as I got busier and more involved managing my weight became increasingly difficult.

 

Now here I am. All the experience I have had with food up to this point has led me to where I am. I think the best sentiment to explain how I feel is something I read from another blog. One commenter said, you didn’t get unhealthy overnight, and you don’t get healthy overnight either. I really I identify with that. A lot of the habits I have developed over the years are good while others are not.

 

Also at this point in my life I am tired. I am tired of being told I am the problem and being told If I wanted to lose weight, I could just go do it. Trust, life is not that straight forward, in this matter, or any other matter of self reflection or development.

 

Also I harbor resentment. I resent the diet industry, even Weight Watchers, something that gave me so much hope growing up. While I wasn’t living a balanced lifestyle when I was overweight, I also wasn’t living one at my lowest weight, yet I still received external positive feedback for my “accomplishment.” The whole Weight Watchers thing is a whole other post!

 

Its funny too, I think my insecurities around weight is what lead me to health promotion as a career. I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me, but I ended up completely changing my perspective. As a student of public health, I know all the facts about the relationship between weight and health outcomes, yet there is more to life than that. There is more to life than just finding every way to reduce your risk for certain health outcomes. While maybe diet culture and body shaming brought me to public health, in the end public health brought me to feminism.  My growing ideals and beliefs about feminist and size acceptable (as aspect of feminist theory) have influenced my opinion on healthy living.

 

I know weight loss was never just about reducing my risk for ill health. I feel shame and guilt when I gain weight. I don’t feel shame and guilt when I forget to floss or wear my seat belt. Therefore, it isn’t just reducing risk, it is about something else.

 

My personal experiences from this story reflect a belief that to be loved one must be thin. While my experiences have also discredited this belief, culture constantly throws the message back into my face and faces of other women. See, there is the feminist in my talking.

 

All in all, I am just trying to figure it out from here. I don’t want to be part of the diet culture, but being active and learning about healthy eating is something I genuinely enjoy. I love running, and to run the distances I want to there is a certain level of self care I need to engage in. Being skinny, not so important, fueling properly, a little more important.

 

It is dirty work trying to dig through emotions, beliefs and ideas to find what you truly care about, and what someone over and over has told you to believe or think about yourself (cough socially constructed ideas of beauty, cough). Obviously I am a nurture over nature kind of girl when it comes to the social sciences.

 

Therefore, all I can do is try, and that folks, is what this blog is all about. I thought if we were going to chat about all the crap I have going on in my mind about food/weight/dieting/exercise, I might as well catch you up to speed.

2010: Time for learning, time for change

2010 has been a CRAZY year for me. Lets take a look back …

(source)

Basically January till July I was exhausted from school and teaching group exercise. July till September I lost hope in my dreams of working in reproductive health advocacy. September through November my passion for advocacy was rejuvenated, but I was exhausted from the election, school, and being away from Kevin. November till now was all about wrapping up the loose ends.

At the beginning of the school year I had to make some difficult decisions. I had to decide to leave Columbus sooner than I originally planned. I had to quit my job, and begin trying to find something new. I was scared. I knew my way around Columbus, I had a job there, I had school, volunteer positions, and friends. In the end I had to decide what was important to me, and in the end decided the “easier” choice wasn’t the “happy” choice for me.

I hope to write a post about my experience with weight watchers and weight loss this past year. This was another point where I had to make a decision between what I was comfortable with, and what would actually make me happy.

I also will write a post on my engagement experience. It was an interesting transition going from girlfriend to fiancé, and it taught me a lot about myself, about my partner and my beliefs about relationships.

A lot of these experiences taught me to follow my heart and do what is best for me, no matter my own expectations.

Some of my good fortune this year was luck. Getting my job was part luck, but it was part me too. I can’t control what jobs are out there, but I can control my background of experiences, and the connections I have. I think if you work hard, the luck/being in the right place at the right time all comes together.

Also I had to take risks this year, I had to do something with out being certain what would happen. I am a girl who likes to plan, so doing something with out a plan scares me to DEATH, but I took a chance and everything turned out great.

In the end, I am so happy. I really do feel like the girl who has it all. While there are new challenges ahead, I just want to take this moment to feel completely and utterly thankful for all that I have in my life, and the amazing journey I have taken the past year to get here.

2011, here I come!