Freedom and Resolutions

It's been a week since my last post- there's been a lot going on that I can't post about (yet) and then there's also been so little going on there wasn't much to post about (simple weekend, another hike, getting back in the work routine), and then the new Kresley Cole "Immortals After Dark" book came out yesterday so I had to drop everything and read it (Lothaire- SO GOOD!). But today I'm wearing my ruby red heels, a black pinstriped pencil skirt, and a white button down, and feel sufficiently powerful and lawyerish that I'm sure I can accomplish anything, including finishing and publishing posts that have been languishing in my drafts folder. Like this one about my 2012 resolutions.

I tend to make resolutions whenever I think of them, so January 1st doesn't usually bring anything new to my list of Goals and/or Things To Work On. I actually feel really good about where I am, and where we are, in terms of most of our goals from 2011. We spent a lot of the past year talking about what we wanted and how we were going to get there, and then getting there and reevaluating what we wanted (i.e., wanting JP's full-time employment, getting there and setting a whole new set of goals for how we were going to make that goal work in a way that didn't ruin all our other goals). But reading everyone else's resolutions has made me think about one that is noticeably absent from my more recent lists (that was always number one on my old ones): losing weight and/or working out. In part because I've given up and accepted that I'm never going to work out in my rare and precious free time, but it's in larger part because I am at peace with my body. Yes, I miss feeling as fit as I used to, and my stomach is so squishy that Claire can lose her whole fist in there, and I miss lifting a weight at the gym while looking in the mirror and thinking "I am making my body stronger." But it's okay. I'm active, I almost never sit down when I'm not forced to (like at work on a deadline), I eat well, I lift my kids, I hike and run and play outside with my family. I use my body, even if the physical benefit is now a side effect instead of the whole purpose of whatever I'm doing.

But by far my biggest change has come in my relationship with food. I love food. I consider chocolate chip cookies to be one of my hobbies and eating one is often the highlight of my afternoon. But food does not control me. Now, I eat cookies because I love them, not because I've done something special to "deserve" them or because I've eaten badly and thrown the day away so I should have a bunch or because I ate less at lunch and now "need" to fill that caloric hole or because of anything other than the fact that cookies taste delicious and I like them. If you're someone who's never had issues with food, you can't imagine the power of that sentence.

Food used to have such a hold on me. For the most part, I came by it honestly. Starting in 8th grade I swam 2-4 hours a day and I was hungry All The Time. Swimming itself wasn't the problem, I was just always starving and I didn't make good choices to fill the pit in my stomach. I weighed more than I should have and trying to eat less always failed because I was so hungry. I had major hip surgery in 2001 and had to stop swimming for several months. The thing I remember most from that was waking up a day or two after the surgery and realizing that I wasn't hungry. My first thought was not about breakfast and the rest of my thoughts weren't dominated by what I could have for lunch and then dinner. It was so freeing. I lost 10 lbs. in a month. Two years later, I was 20 lbs. lighter and completely obsessed with every bite I took. I flirted with throwing up when I ate too much (one of the only things I've tried in life and utterfly failed at), restricting what I was allowed to eat down to almost nothing, and obsessively tracking the number of calories I was eating. My college notebooks are littered with tiny numbers lined up in totals in the margins- calculations of the calories I'd consumed that day, with subtractions for the calories I'd burned by working out. The goal was always for the net to be under 1,000. I wouldn't waste exercise running or hiking outdoors because I wouldn't have been able to know the exact number of calories the machine said I was burning and then I couldn't subtract it and then how would I know whether or not I could eat more at dinner? I got better and worse and better again over the next few years.

Then Landon was born and my world was no longer about me. I couldn't control it and I couldn't plan ahead for anything. Rather than cause me to buckle down even tighter on my eating, it freed me completely. Finishing my lunch did not mean obsessing over what was for dinner. Finishing lunch was an accomplishment (making lunch was an accomplishment) and then I was busy with my fussy baby until I was able to make and eat food again later. I also fully realized that I was an adult with a car and a credit card and, theoretically, I could go get whatever food I wanted whenever I wanted it (at least after the baby woke up). This also freed me. I didn't need to eat 10 bites of dessert if I was full after 2 because I could go buy that dessert again one day in the future. And, since I didn't feel compelled to eat every bite of that dessert, I didn't need to feel bad or guilty after the meal, and then I didn't need to work out to lose that certain number of extra calories. I could just eat, or not, based on whatever my body wanted at the time. Freedom.

I haven't worked out in a gym since 2005. I haven't weighed myself regularly since 2007. The scale on our bathroom floor has had a dead battery since my pregnancy with Claire. I have actually forgotten the number of calories in the average apple and every other food on the planet. And despite this lack of focus on food or exercise- or perhaps because of it- my body is now the size and general shape I always wanted it to be. I drink a glass of wine almost every day, but rarely drink two. I love margaritas and have one almost every Friday. I eat the food I want and whatever meal is in front of me and I enjoy it. I don't worry about the next one- what it will be, exactly when it will be, and what I should do in the meantime to earn it. I don't snack, because I don't get hungry between meals, no matter how many articles say many small meals are better than fewer big ones. I don't eat breakfast because it gives me a stomach ache. I eat a huge lunch because I love the feeling of being full around noon and eating gives me energy rather than making me feel sleepy. I eat a smaller dinner because I don't like feeling full when I go to bed. On the mornings I happen to wake up hungry, I eat breakfast, because not eating breakfast isn't a rule, it's just usually what my stomach wants me to do. There aren't any rules to follow any more. When I'm not hungry, I don't eat- because I don't have to eat just because it's a meal time, I can eat when I'm hungry. Food is always available to me if I want it. Just the same, if I'm hungry and it's not a meal time, that's okay too. There aren't any rules.

I'm not sure I can adequately describe how freeing all this is- how impossible my 2003-era self would have found it- or how much I hope Landon and Claire can adopt my more recent approach to food and avoid my former one. I think the best JP and I can do (JP has always had a healthy attitude toward food and eating; his is basically the one I have now- there is no censure in eating, ever; it is a part of life and a fabulous one at that) is to live by example, avoid negative comments about other people or ourselves, and share our love of food.

So if I were to write them out, I think my resolutions for the year are to spend more time outside, to continue going on adventures in and around Austin, to try yoga, to read more legal-type articles and headlines (and probably less paranormal romance, though seriously, the Immortals After Dark series is super fun), to learn how to cook chicken, and to get back to shooting my camera in manual. Meeting those goals would be great; failing at them won't affect my self-image or my self-worth. Freedom.