Loss and Gain, Against the Grain

By Maria Padhila

I have issues with cereal. It’s expensive, processed, not so good for you (even the hippie kinds), and usually involves milk of some kind, which is another problem. I mean, cereal was invented to keep people from masturbating! That’s at worst evil and at best misguided. And we eat this stuff — voluntarily consume it? What is wrong here?

As Ceres has passed through my 12th and 1st house, I’ve had to once again dance through my relationship with food and nourishment. The grain goddess’s asteroid of course had much to do with the recent issues with genetically modified wheat, which will probably have an effect on world trade and might be another one of the ‘uncoverings’ that are drastically transforming our lives globally.

And I’m just trying to get myself and my family off the cereal addiction. Got nothing against whole grains, steel-cut oats, that kind of thing. I know a raw diet would be preferable, but I’m dealing with a mix of tastes and digestive issues, and I’m too old to take it myself. Cooked whole grains work fine. And Kellogg was actually onto something with theories of intestinal bacteria affecting health. He just had some other not-so-great ideas.

But I am not happy about my body just now, and cereal is part of what’s bothering me. That and fear.

Warning: This post is going to be a little more straight-woman-directed, because we’re the ones who are constantly getting the barrage of messages about body image. But men and queers of all kinds are catching up, you bet! Soon we’ll all be equal in self-critical not-good-enoughness!

I haven’t read a single woman blogging or heard one talking about her poly or open relationship experience — not a word on a forum or in a discussion group — where she doesn’t at least glance on the body image topic. It usually comes up as follows:

• I was worried my boyfriend/husband/sweetie would like women who are skinnier / bigger busted / in better shape than I am…
• I’m not comfortable taking my clothes off in front of people until I know them well…
• I thought my husband would break off with me to be with someone in better shape…
• I was worried he just wanted someone with a better body…
• I don’t have some kind of great body, I’m not that hot, so I didn’t know if I’d meet anyone to have a relationship with…

Most of them have managed to get over this (except no one should have to take their clothes off anytime they’re not in the mood to, of course). I think people in poly come to a sort of “yep, it’s weird, this body thing, but I’m not going to let it stop me. I’m not going to sit around and worry about whether my body is acceptable to others. I’m going to keep exploring.”

Excuse the hetero-normativity, but the majority of straight men are going to get at least mild enjoyment out of the sight of pretty much any naked woman who isn’t mad at them. Sometimes I think all the women’s magazine advice on “how to please a man” could be reduced to just a few simple ideas: don’t be mad, don’t accidentally stab him with a spear, that sort of thing.

(And if you’ve got good reason to be mad, what are you doing trying to have sex with him anyway? Get your clothes back on and leave, girl!)

I discovered “Fat Is a Feminist Issue” and other feminist ways of looking at weight and size way back in the 1980s. Over the years, I gradually realized the ways I had to take care of my body (and how they deviated from conventional medicine). Now I look around at a world full of surgeries and designer vaginas (the “Barbie!” I’m not making this up!) and want to cry.

(To stop crying, check out “The Great Wall of Vaginas.” Is yours normal? Hell, yeah!)

In some ways today, women and men are feeling more free and comfortable and accepting of their bodies; witness the fit-and-fat and fat acceptance movements. But I worry that we’re also accepting a level of disease and bad health that doesn’t have to come along with loving your body however it looks.

On the same day in my Facebook feed, I’ll see one meme that I love that says: “How to get a bikini body: Put a bikini on your body. Get your body ready for the beach: Put your body on a beach.” And I’ll see a comment from someone else telling a friend who is working a serious and difficult body transformation to “keep the thought of that swimsuit as inspiration!” Gaaahh.

Gastric bypass surgery is a case in point. It’s the only technique proven to help obesity, which I believe is an environmental illness (and a lot of the evidence coming in is backing that). Yet it’s dangerous, painful, too expensive even with “good insurance,” and the “side effects” go on for years and seriously compromise quality of life. This would be absolutely unacceptable for a treatment for a heart condition, for instance, yet it’s seen as perfectly OK when it comes to “fat,” because, you know, that’s a character flaw, not an illness. People deserve better.

The problem I’m encountering during my recent bout with body transformation is that it was part of a larger issue of holding myself back. I was blasting myself with messages like: You’re not hot enough to go out and see people. You’re not a good enough writer to write. You’re not a good enough mother, so stay home until you get it right. You’re just a big mess. You need to prove that you’re good enough to be alive, through trying to meet everyone’s expectations. Then, maybe, you’ll be allowed to set your own course.

In essence, I was telling myself that I wasn’t allowed on the beach until my body was “ready” for it. Like the women who told themselves they weren’t allowed to experiment with relationships or ask for what they really desire because they weren’t hot enough… yet. Someday, I’ll be hot enough to ask for what I want from life! And the “ready” and “enough” are, of course, according to someone else’s standards. (And we never get to see the Great Wizard setting these standards. That’s what keeps the game alive! Rest assured, he’s a chubby, balding, insecure guy behind that curtain — but he could be loveable if he’d find a new way to spend his time.).

After more than six months during which I rarely got up from the computer, I’m looking forward to getting myself very fit again. I like it now when I bend over in yoga class and feel real muscles in my legs again. Changing one’s body is interesting, sometimes exhilarating and encouraging, but like all change, scary at the same time.

I have a personal conviction that the body holds on to a lot of emotion and memory, so when you change and rearrange your body, you tap into and release a lot of that. I’ve never been able to change my life without changing my body in some way, and vice versa. I think that desire leads to people getting new hairstyles and colors, too.

The change in the hair or another aspect of body appearance — breast augmentation, for instance — I think doesn’t change one’s life in the same way as changing the body composition through the steady medicine — or the yoga, if you will — of what you ingest and how you move. (People — athletes, for instance — often use synthetic medicines as part of this process. I can just say you get what you put into it there, too. Shortcuts shock the system, for better or worse.)

If you’re looking for that sort of transition, I can tell you a few things I’ve learned:

• Expect stuff to come out. No one tells you this about weight or fat transformation. You’re using stored energy, and just as with burning fossil fuels, you can end up with a lot of waste product that can be toxic. You need to be aware of this and keep up with ways to contain it, to recycle it safely, to transform it into yet another kind of energy. I’m not talking about pooping, though that’s part of it. It’s about emotional energy, and mental and spiritual energies.

• You may lose good stuff as well. Be aware so you can mourn it, recapture it, keep it from leaking away. This is another reason why self-hate is a bad place to start from when you want to make a body transformation. I really dislike having places on myself look not firm or not strong. If you dislike parts of your physical self, all I can say is: learn to love them before you let them go, or they’ll be back in some other way. You’ll get shrill about diet, you’ll get mushy about boundaries, you’ll get hyper-protective about your emotions — all the things those shadow fat cells were doing for you will get done one way or another, unless you make your peace with these functions you were letting them carry. It is a struggle for me to honor my fat for what it does and has done for me.

• It’s everywhere. The changes will cascade. Change what you take in and give out, and you’ll become aware of everything from the constant food advertisements to the way others around you are medicating with substances like modified wheat and sugars. You’ll start to hear or smell the hormonal distress signals beings (animal, vegetable and even mineral) are sending out all around you. I know how woowoo that sounds, but if you aren’t aware that hormones are messengers and that we’re communicating through their use all the time, you might think this is some kind of personal emotional crisis. It’s not. It’s everybody’s crisis. This also applies to the way you’ll get pushback from all around you as you want to change. “You’re going to eat that?” “But what’s wrong with wheat/meat/milk?” “I’m worried because you seem obsessed / are losing weight too quickly / too slowly / you’re not yourself.” You know the drill. Be aware, be compassionate, and keep making the change you have determined you want to be.

• Ingestion means ingestion. There’s an old joke about the sex worker who couldn’t lose weight until the doctor instructed him/her to “count the calories in every swallow.” While counting calories can be educational, it’s mostly a fool’s game, but the point is that even the air you breathe, even drinking water, counts. It all matters. It’s all medicine, and it helps or hurts you as you choose to work with it. Program in an awareness of your energy exchange with the universe through whatever awareness techniques are best for you, and you’ll be able to make the transformation.

The reason my body transformed in the past half-year is that I let go of this awareness. I fell into someone else’s life and requirements, and left myself behind. My days turned into chasing what others wanted, my nights into sitting in front of the computer working and doing unconscious eating to stay awake. I have a cupboard full of quinoa, there’s goat yogurt and lentils in the fridge, and the freezer is full of wild salmon and frozen self-picked and foraged berries. Yet I am proof that you can gain 12 pounds — 12 draining, dull and toxin-filled pounds, not 12 happy, nurturing pounds — even with nothing but “healthy” food in the house.

In the end, it wasn’t even the eating that was the problem — it was lack of sleep, too much sitting, too much coffee, and lots and lots of resentment and fear. Lose the fear, and you lose the weight — that there is that “weird old tip” the Internet keeps trying to sell you.