#FUCK OFF when i dropped lbs last time i LITERALLY starved myself like only ate 400-800 calories starved myself NOW i am being healthy so 🖕🏼

[princess-sweetybee]

Weight...Not Too Big To Be Little

So, I read this article when it came out last year, and tucked it away, and found it circulating on tumblr recently so I re-read it. This time, I really spent time reflecting on it, and myself, because so much it in feels familiar.

I considered where best to spill my guts and decided here, on my “little” blog, because it’s about as anonymous as it can be, so I can be as honest as I want, but also because my struggles with my weight are bound up in my identity as a little.

I’ve struggled almost my entire life with my weight, although in hindsight (and I’ve thought this for many years) I wonder if my weight in my adult life would never have become a problem if my family hadn’t poked at me when I was young. I’m Thai-American, which for me meant I grew up in the US but was still deeply enmeshed in Thai culture. From about the time I was nine or ten, right up until I married, my family and family friends called me หมูอ้วน (moo ouan) which literally translates to “fat pig.” It was an affectionate way of calling me chubby, I think (I hope) but also, since I have one foot firmly planted in the US and English is my first language, it dug deep because (see above) it actually means “fat pig.” But really, I wasn’t fat. I was larger then most of my family, yes, but they were twig thin with very different body types. I didn’t realize until later in life that I actually take after my father’s side of the family, with a sturdier, never going to be stick thin, build. And yes, the absolute number for my weight was a little higher, but that’s because I was all muscle, especially my legs (my 10-16 year old self didn’t understand that...I just saw numbers).

When I was in high school, my mom constantly harped about my weight. And everyone else in the family always commented on how chubby I was. Every single time they saw me. I was 5’4”, 120 lbs, 34-24-34 measurements. In hindsight, I probably looked pretty good. If I was that size/weight now I’d be thrilled to pieces...although I’d probably have another set of body issues...because most of us do. But I worried all the time about my weight, and when I hit college, my mom helped me go on Jenny Craig, because my weight had crept up to 130 lbs. And the cycle of cutting way back on calories to lose a few pounds, only to gain it back plus a little more, began. After doing that a few times, and being constantly (but sweetly) shamed for my weight, I’d go through periods of just “I give up” and would eat what I wanted, for comfort, which only compounded the problem - and yeah, I get it, that’s on me. But no one ever spoke to me about...hey, let’s not worry about the numbers, let’s just stay focused on eating a balanced diet (I was told “should you really be eating that?”) and staying active (yeah, my family was not active).

My mom was always telling me how to dress to hide all my flaws too (I was 13 when this started). Now that I think about it, what I learned early on was (1) everyone is looking at me, judging me, finding me lacking, and not wanting to see my fatness, and (2) it should matter to me, all the time, what other people think about the way I look. When I chose dresses or shirts to wear, they needed to have sleeves of some sort to hide my chubby arms (when this started, my arms were not chubby, but they were not twigs). Blouses needed to hit in the right spot to hide my tummy (I didn’t actually have one...I do now, that’s how I know I didn’t have one then). I came away from this struggling to ever feel like anything looked good on me, a problem I know lots of people suffer from. I can spend a literal day shopping for clothes, and not find one thing to buy because I can’t stand the way I look in anything. I ended up wearing clothes that were too big, in a sad attempt to hide myself. I got criticized for that too. I’m pretty sure my mom did this from a place of love, at least I hope she did.

She sort of figured things out by the time I hit my thirties. I had told her that she needed to stop picking on me about my weight. Then she was complimenting me if I looked like I lost a little weight. And encouraged me not to buy shirts that I was swimming in. But, when she shopped with me, she also made sure to help me by selecting styles that would hide my flaws, instead of just saying....wear what you want, wear what makes you feel good.

I still struggle with my weight sometimes. I look in the mirror and hate what I see, but am resigned to it. I focus on eating healthy, but I don’t deny myself the things I like to eat...I’ve learned over the last 30 years that that just leads to eating too much of it when I can’t take it anymore, after I’ve been obsessing about not eating it for however long. I’ve tried logging my food in a journal off and on for the past ten years. I understand the psychology behind it, but we’re not all the same, we’re not all average. What I find is that yeah, it might help me eat less for a while because it makes me mindful of what I ate, but it swings too far. I end up not eating, because I want to keep the journal fairly empty, and then all I do is think about food, and I’m starving. I mean it, my stomach growls from hunger all day long. And frankly, if I go too long without eating, my blood sugar drops, I get sluggish and crabby, and all that good stuff. There’s a reason “hangry” is a word. So now, I try to keep good, healthy foods that I like to eat on hand. And I’m trying really hard to exercise 30 minutes a day. And I’m feeling pretty good about it, because I can walk 6-7 miles in a hilly city, and not be ready to pass out.

So what does all of this have to do with being a little? I struggle now and then with the idea that I’m too big to be little. That I’m too chubby/fat to wear cute clothes. It doesn’t help that a lot of places that sell really cute clothes go up to XL, which equates to like a size 6-8 (I’m at like 16-18). Thank goodness for places like Torrid. My Daddy spends a lot of time reminding me that I’m a little and it doesn’t matter what I weigh, what I wear, or what I look like. Little is just who I am, who I’ve always been, all the time, and when I’m 70, I’ll still be a little (that’s a mind boggling thought right there).

Being here, seeing so many tumblrs here in the BDSM and DD/lg community who are so accepting and inclusive, has gone a long way to helping me reconsider how I think about myself, and also how I think about what others think of me. I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m getting closer to thinking... “I’m kind, and will always be kind to others, but I frankly don’t give a flying fuck what you think about me, or if I’ve sufficiently hidden my ‘ugly’ parts so that you don’t feel uncomfortable.” I’ve spent a lot of years not being in photographs, and not swimming in public pools (and I love to swim), and all the other things that the folks in the article talk about. My son is eight, and I’ve only gone swimming with him in public once, because I was embarrassed to be seen in a swimming suit. He loves to swim. We’re fortunate that when he was little and learning to swim, we had our own swimming pool, so I swam with him a lot. But now that we’ve moved, we don’t have a pool anymore, so our swimming is limited to public pools and hotel pools...and I’ve denied us the fun of swimming together. That stuff has got to stop. And thinking about stuff like this, and writing it out, is helping me to get there. So thanks. And maybe one day, someone will come across this post, and it’ll help get them thinking about stuff too. Maybe for themselves, or it’ll help shape how they relate to their kids, or other people.

#this is me #working on myself