I'm struggling with body image - I know, at this point, I'm well into the "athlete" range for leanness...and I've lost 9 inches off my waist - my waist is now the size it was when I was in high school, and I was thirty or so pounds lighter, then. I'm all thighs and butt and back...I look like I do the physical activities I do.
Even my mother doesn't think I'm fat (the last time she thought that I wasn't fat was when I was starving myself in high school). I'm down over thirty-three pounds, and I still think of myself as fat. Part of it is having internalized the stupid BMI - which just doesn't work for someone who is an athlete in a sport based around strength and rate of force development, and who is a martial artist - but I think part of it is a really fucked up body image.
Even when I was starving myself, couldn't regulate my body temperature, and would collapse if I stood up too fast, I thought of myself as fat. That was high school. After high school, I went to college, got depressed, and ate my feelings, literally, and used being fat as armor for well over a decade. I could act like I didn't care and used food to feel better. Getting healthy, fit, and lean, in some way, has made it harder - because now I care, and no matter how much someone compliments me on improvements to my health, on my strength, or on my looks - I dismiss it and minimize it. I'm tired of watching every bite of food that goes into my mouth - like, I need, very soon, to say "my body's good" and let myself relax about it sometimes. Drinking a glass of wine or eating a couple squares of *gasp* only 75% cacao dark chocolate and feeling guilty about it is no way to live.
So much of what I have to work on right now is mental - I need better body image, I need to not be afraid to pull myself under the bar (which is seriously holding me back - as soon as the weights get heavy, I stop pulling under the bar fast), I need to be realistic in that...I'm 32. Even if I had the potential to ever be competitive in a serious way as an olympic lifter (and I'm talking "qualify for nationals" competitive, not "olympian competitive"), I should have started over 15 years ago, more like 20. Now it needs to be about personal fulfillment and personal improvement - so I need to not give so much of a fuck about finding the best weight class for me, or finding how absolutely little fat I can carry before I fall apart as an athlete. I need to just eat healthy most of the time, lift, do Aikido, and enjoy the athlete and non-athlete parts of my life.
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