Today marks 8 weeks since my 3rd knee surgery.
And my 2nd day back to my workout class since July 1st...over 3 months ago.
Here's the skinny, loyal readers... (reluctant sigh that depicts my hesitation in what I'm about to say)...I care about being skinny. It's true. I can't help it. I don't want to. I'm a role model for young teenage girls, I'm about loving yourself and feeling good, and I think it's freaking AWESOME to have confidence. I don't think you need to be skinny to be happy. I don't think YOU need to think I'M skinny. But I would be bold faced LYING if I said I didn't care about it when it comes to my own body.
Body weight (especially, but not exclusively, for women) is like the forbidden fruit. We all think about it, but we can't really talk about it. We can't even really care about it. Out loud, at least. Media, society, and American-saturated culture tells us that skinny is desirable through visual sensation, but verbally tells us that there is no perfect body. We are all beautiful. But look at all these skinny pretty people.
The issue is..."skinny" is subjective. Do eating disorders produce skinny people? Or do skinny people produce eating disorders? Must the two go hand in hand? Is there an "appropriate" skinny? Chicken or the egg, right? Does blogging about my weight perpetuate the unrealistic ideal body? It's possible, though I'd hate to think my effervescent blogging has some sort of vigilante power to destroy some while helping others.
There are better, and perhaps more "PC" words to use. "Toned." "Healthy." "Strong." "Fit." Hell yaaaa, I want to be all of those things! But you better believe when I put on an outfit, I check the mirror to see if I look skinny. Not strong. I'm sorry. Have I been socially constructed to feel this way? Have commercials through a plethora of media sources, barbie dolls, and female celebrities taught me that I'm not my best physical self unless I'm a certain size? It's quite possible. Do I want YOU to be skinny? I've never given it two thoughts.
But this isn't about you. This is my self-fulfilling blog, and I'm gonna rip through some paradoxical qualities and characteristics that I embody. I'm going to talk about my confidence and my cowering insecurities. And I'm going to hide some personal details. Because I can. There's no better poker face than a computer screen sharing about the topics that I can usually only dance around. Hold on tight, it's gonna get real skinny.
Gaining weight through my recovery from this knee surgery is and has definitely been a fear of mine. The moment it happened, I felt like it was this cruel prank the universe was playing on me. Like...oh you think you're fast and strong and skinny? BOOYA. Try and maintain that whilst building new ligaments out of your own and dead people's body parts! Good one, universe. Challenge sadly accepted.
I gained weight during my first knee surgery, but it was mostly depression weight, as it came on the heels of some other "tough stuff" that life threw out at the time. My attitude was essentially "I can't win." So I gained weight. But I don't blame that exclusively on the recovery. It didn't make gaining weight any better, but. Hindsight is 20/20. This time, I have more of a "I will beat the $h*t out of you in order to win" attitude.
I pretty much maintained during my 2nd knee surgery, which came after I had lost pretty much all of the weight gained during the first; but the recovery was shorter, and I lived in a studio without a kitchen, where I consumed mostly coffee and popcorn, and worked grueling days that allowed me to skip way more meals than should ever be accepted. In other words, I was unhealthy to a liveable extent. In an average world, an average town, and average societal measurements, I was thin. Unfortunately, average doesn't exist in girl world, so I got pretty excited once I was healed enough to start exercising in a more athletic context, thus balancing out my sweet tooth and general love of food. I could get my kind of skinny. Sans the diet. We're all clear here, right? I don't like to diet.
The truth is. I DON'T have the metabolism of a 12 year old. Just check out my Freshman year in college. I have hidden these pictures from all social media and I'm still cringing looking at myself in them. Regardless of your standard or anyone else's, the photos from this time depict a sadder, fatter, me. I think it's typical (though that doesn't mean acceptable) to fall into a series of life questions and poor decisions when you're first out on your own, but don't get it twisted - I still wanted to be skinny during that time too. I just. Wasn't.
You know how they say it's good to have relationships that suck? Because then you can really know what you want and need for your future suitors? Well, I'm going to go out on an unprecedented limb and compare that to feeling fat. Knowing what that felt like made me know that I didn't like it. And I needed to feel good. Yes, doubters, good = skinny. At least in this contextual paragraph. Skinny, does not, however, necessarily = good.
The great thing about weight loss for competitive people is that we generally enjoy working out. When I found a program where I could excel and challenge myself, feeling exhausted, sore, and ridiculously accomplished, I knew I had a home for my inner aesthetically-fueled narcissist. I liked the trainers, the structure of the workouts, and the people IN the workouts with me. And you better believe, I liked the way my body felt. It felt all of those things that I mentioned - strong, toned, healthy, and fit.
And skinny.
But like I said, skinny is subjective. And unfortunately, when we think of "skinny," we almost always think of "fat." So if we're not feeling skinny...you guessed it. We're feeling fat. Who is we? All of my personalities and faces, and probably many of yours too. Let's be honest. The trainer of my workouts likes to say "the weight loss is the bonus." In other words, you feel good all around with healthy practices. In my mind, that's feeling skinny.
So during these 3+ months without my workout class, 2 of which followed the actual surgery, it's felt like a race of patience. Pushing it won't help me recover, so can I hold on until it's time to go back? How much time and weight gain manifests between now and then? I can't go back full-throttle, so is it worth it to enter back in as a modified, weaker, less-abled version of skinny me?
The answer is yes. I didn't want to step on that scale today when it came time for "weigh-ins." It's not mandatory, so I thought about opting out. I didn't want to confirm what I had feared - that I had gained weight after blasting this damned ACL. That I couldn't stop my body from reacting poorly to stepping outside of my routine. I thought about what I would say to a girlfriend if she told me she was going to AVOID the scale after a 3rd knee surgery to pretend like changes hadn't happened. My response is inappropriate, so I'll just tell you that it deterred me from chickening out, and I jumped on that scale. Are scales a direct indication of being skinny? No. Have I gained weight? Yes. I have. Have I felt fat? You betcha. Have I devoured half a bag of chocolate chips dipped in spoonfuls of peanut butter when I haven't even had an appetite?
Uhhhh...maybe?
But I haven't given up. There was not a moment in my mind that I wasn't coming back to this workout class. The trainers showed zero shock in seeing me either. I'm not even sorry that I care about being skinny. Maybe I was 1000 words ago, but I changed my mind. My subjective skinny means I'm happy with my body, which ultimately means I'm treating it well. My skinny means I feel strong and fit and toned and BADASS. I got back into workout class EIGHT WEEKS after knee surgery. No one freaking threw me a pity party and held my hand through it - I just showed up and got my hugs and smiles the same as I had gotten sans the knee brace. That weight I gained? Maybe it's a pound or maybe it's 20. Go ahead. You roll your eyes. Think of me as "that girl" who feels fat yet doesn't really understand what that might feel like. Cast me as a victim of society's deprivation of diversified beauty and quality. Guilty as charged. But I already feel skinny.
And my skinny is about me. Do I think compliments should come in the form of "you look skinny/thin/tiny." No. I don't. I do believe that casts us as physical beings rather than successful and healthy ones. But we all have our own skinny version of ourselves. Maybe mine's already back. Maybe "fat" me is really just unhappy me. You can choose to read between the lines or take it for what it is. All I know is that stepping foot back in a place that reminds me that feeling "skinny" is just my way of feeling proud of myself.
Don't hate skinny until you define your own version of it.