A Love Your Body Buddy

I’ve heard people advocate having a gym buddy… somebody to motivate you and another way to hold yourself accountable to some sort of physical rountine/regime. Generally, not a bad idea. Sure. But sometimes it’s hard to coordinate schedules, and besides… sometimes I don’t want company when I’m in get-it mood at the gym (I don’t need another witness to my crazy… my judging eyes can be more than enough). Similarly, when trying to “eat right”… that is refrain from wandering down the gluttonous path I am want to do… it doesn’t always help having somebody there to monitor your failure, point out what you already know, make you feel worse. If you are that friend, trusted with the task of keeping a buddy on track, you might notice them build a mild resentment towards you… mild turns to major… and next thing you know, you’re hearing rumors about yourself wherein you’re described as some sort of food nazi, gym drill sergeant, mad monster (all true, but still).

Language is a funny thing, a dangerous thing and a redemptive thing. Instead of a gym buddy, to whoop my ass into shape (or whatever other pertinent sadistic metaphor we’re often inclined to use), I charge my Love Your Body Buddy with keeping my thinking on track. When failing to eat super-healthy and hitting it hard at the gym are at risk of feeling like crime and punshiment, my Love Your Body buddy, puts things in perspective, reminding me that I am in fact human and not some sort of automated mistakeless machine. So on guilt-ridden days where words like sabotage, pigging out, demolishing, bad, losing (and not in the good way) or failing seem most relevant, she encourages me to re-think my word choices and thus my perspective.

The idea with a Love Your Body Buddy (LYBB - if this is starting to feel like a mouthful) is not to have somebody by your side shepherding you towards coronary heart failure or helping you to construct and maintain delusions wherein unhealthy choices have no consequences. Whether it's true or not, with self-love ought to come self-care. So being kind to both the inside and outside of your body necessitates a healthy and active lifestyle and mentality; working out and eating well become part and parcel of loving your body. Sometimes my LYBB and I meet at the gym super early in the morning, sometimes we go for long runs, frequently we encourage each other while navigating this vegan-vegetarian lifestyle kick we’re both on (more on that another time). But we neither police behavior nor unhelpfully sugarcoat reality. When it comes down to it, instead of becoming that person to dodge and detest, my LYBB is just the kind of person I love to keep around.

Boys Will Be Girls

This cracked me up so much...

I love the biggest loser... hopefully I don't ever sound like this.
I also love frozen yogurt. They're wrong though... red mango > fraiche > pinkberry

Fall Down

Fall (autumn) is that time of year when the coats and boots come out, and the body disappears from public view for a potential five to six months...only to resurface in March, April, not exactly looking how I remembered it. With cold weather out come the puffer jackets and the down coats, a whole array of outwear threatening to substitute inner care.

When everything around me is cold and grey, I struggle with keeping up a routine, be it working out or eating right. When I first moved to America in September 2003, I was excited to experience my first winter… SNOW! (Highly overrated). I quickly discovered that after the first day of fluffy whiteness, winter means less sunshine, less smiling, less moving, more eating, more drinking, more random sadness. My life in this country fluctuates from fun-filled and social, to cold and lonely. Up and down. Though undiagnosed, I’m pretty sure I suffer from seasonal affective disorder (hilariously acronymable to S.A.D)… and that’s pretty much how I feel when the weather changes. When sad, I find I conduct long debates with myself wherein I weigh the pros and cons of actually moving. The cons, the nays, offer really compelling points… such as… “coz no.” Braced with such a valid argument as to why I shouldn’t move, the task of even considering the gym or thinking about a run feels like a tedious chore. So it’s at times like these that I turn to my trusted friends... Nike.

What precisely are the folks at Nike on about with their little mantra… Just Do It! Do what? What is It?!

For me, It’s different every day. Some days, It’s putting on my running shoes, some days It’s entering the gym, some days It’s leaving my house, some days it’s leaving my bed. It’s whatever feels undesirable, impracticable, hard. It’s whatever feels necessary, albeit tedious. It feels challenging when I think about it, doable as I’m doing it, and not bad in the end. On days when I don’t feel up to it, or feel over it before it’s even begun, I channel Nike, get myself to the door, to the road, out of bed, whatever… and just do it. And when I’m down, doing something right, giving my body a workout, always feels good and brings me up, even if only for that little while.

Fat-shion!

One thing that drove 232 crazy was the frightening lack of imagination that hit designers as soon as they conceived of bodies over and above “the norm.” Even though the average American woman is a size 14… many stores that cater to young women (say Express or H&M) either stop at a size 12 or in some lucky instances struggle to make it up to a size 16 or 18 in their uber-super-duper limited collection. And it’s a stretch… For women audacious enough to be large, clothing found in the “Women’s” section of department stores tends to be spandexy or shapeless, paisley printed or beyond bland. It’s like the tailor gets cloth that he imagines to be large enough to throw over the woman, cuts a hole for the head, and voila! Ugh. Ugly.

I was a size 22. And at 24-years old, fatshion was frustrating. It was hard to feel amazing when I knew deep down, even in a large version, my curves were hidden by the frock-like quality of plus size clothing. It was hard to feel confident when I looked in the mirror and knew what I saw, what other’s would see, failed to reflect or express who I wanted to project (let alone who I was).

A little before my 24^th birthday, I discovered a plus-size store called Torrid and felt that at last, I didn’t have to be dressed in clothes designed for women above the age of 65. At last… booty shorts, skinny jeans, shapes! A woman I went to college with started a blog that I followed youngfatandfabulous and it introduced me to a whole other world of glamour and fat fabulousness. Big women could be fashionable and sexy… so long as they weren’t on a budget.

A desire to be as fashionable or tasteless as I pleased, a desire to look wild and whacky or modishly chic, a desire to affordably dress my best served as a major motivator. As I lost weight, my milestones were clothes sizes. I’d celebrate each dress size dropped with a mini-shopping spree and be sure to get rid of the larger sizes so as not to be tempted to backtrack. (Unfortunately, as I’ve gotten ride of my larger clothing, I can’t offer the canonic whole body in one pant leg photo). 

Today, I wear an American dress size 6 or 8. While it means I can no longer shop at Torrid, and because I have neither the talent nor time to design plus-size clothing, I relish the options the world will now give me. But uh… really… the world could stand to be a little more generous to bigger bodies.

SuperSize ––> Moderately Mad Me ––> SuperSkinny

During my weight loss months, I would tune into an American T.V. show called The Biggest Loser every Tuesday and follow the progress of a group of morbidly obese Americans dieting and exercizing their way to health. America has just about every type of reality show under the sun, covering all the usual juicy topics that promise to give us a glimpse into a range of lives: from rehabbing druggie celebs to maximum security prisoners to predator pedophiles. The reality of reality television is the more scandalously sensationalist the better. So naturally, my favorite genres of trash t.v are shows delving into the world of obesity: The Half Ton Man (1000 pounds!!! 450 kilograms!!!), The 650-pound Virgin, True Life: I’m Morbidly Obese, Too Fat for Fifteen, and so on and on and on. Did I find it empowering? Nah (except for The Biggest Loser). Did it make me feel good about my 232? Sure. Perspective… makes just about everything look good.

 But there’s one genre of reality show that America has yet to capitalize on and that is the other side of morbidly obese, the morbidly underweight. Now, had it not been lodged into yet another obesity program, I probably would not have tuned in. But the U.K T.V show Supersize Vs. Superskinny has just the right blend of bizarre, amusing and disturbing to get me hooked. For the large part of each episode, we follow a person who is usually over 350 pounds (160 kgs) swap diets and live in a house with a person who is usually under 80 pounds (36 kgs). I forget precisely what the objective of the diet swap is (aside for our entertainment). But we certainly get a glimpse into two extreme relationships to food. And we see how both exist along the same spectrum. But the other day it dawned on me… I might just fall somewhere along that spectrum. And that might not be the greatest thing.

There are a disturbing amount of things I have in common with both the morbidly obese and the anorexic.

The SuperSkinny. Usually women, but occasionally men, tend to have a disturbing relationship to caffeine. In order to have energy and zest for life as they undereat by 2 to 3 days worth of food each week, these people juice up on coffee and sugar-free redbulls and sometimes even chocolate for that sugar-high that keeps them going. I had quit coffee for a while there, but am back on it, and pretty much drink ridiculous amounts of energy boosters before I work out or when I’m feeling an energy dip during the day, instead of a good carby fruit or something. Some of the superskinnies approach their food intake and energy output in the same way that I have done over the past year and more. They know kilojoules in and kilojoules out, and they restrict or expend energy accordingly. I kind of do the same thing. Now, granted, my daily caloric intake is significantly higher than theirs, but still, we have a comparable relationship to eating and exercise. It’s all math for us.

The Supersizers. Bottomless stomachs… eating past full… eating to pass the time… eating because that’s what they do… hating that about themselves. The supersized are compulsive overeaters. But like alcoholics, taming the compulsive overeating beast, is a choice we make daily. The predisposition has not gone away, I just choose differently each and every day.

So here’s my confession: sometimes I feel like a supersized in a moderate’s body, curbing my enthusiasm with superskinny tactics. When I consider all things at the end of my day: my actions and behavior average out to that ever-proselytized and coveted “moderation,” but the thought-processes and brain energy that go into producing that result often belong to the extreme world of the supersized and superskinny. 

Flip-Flopping Fears

In 1988, a 145-pound Oprah came onto the set of her show wielding a cart full of fat and looking the smallest she would probably ever be. By 1992, she found herself carrying more weight, only this time not on a cart; Oprah was back up and at her all-time high of 237-pounds. And then she lost weight again and we were elated, gained it back and we were like… um; but then she lost… but then she gained, and lost and gained and lost and gained and with her body flux went my faith in weight loss. I was a believer, then a non-believer, saw the light, found the darkness, was converted, then I don’t know. On the one hand, if Oprah can lose weight (granted it helps to be a super-talented billionaire with personal trainers and chefs and maybe a humongous private gym or private strip of beach to run uninterrupted for miles or whatever), then surely I can! But on the other hand, if Oprah can’t master the maintenance game, Lord have mercy on the rest of us.



I must confess: sometimes I imagine there’s an expiration date to my weight loss. Like, I only have a few more days, or weeks to be this size and then midnight will strike, my carriage will turn back into a pumpkin, which I will eat as I make my way home to plus size. 


"I don't have a weight problem—I have a self-care problem that manifests through weight." -Oprah 


Do I have a healthy relationship to food and exercise? Probably not. Okay fine, not at all. Not yet. “Maintaining,” has turned out to be a silly little game of adding and losing unsubstantial numbers, minor flip-flopping. Sometimes maintenance feels like unsuccessful weight loss… all the work, but the number stays the same. I love working out, I get high on it, but I also feel as though I need to work out as ridiculously hard as I do just to have a functioning metabolism! I think about food and its nutritional value, way more than I talk about it, which is a lot (at least a lot more than I want to… I generally find people who like to talk ad nauseam about nutrition eye-rollingly tedious… I can’t be that girl). 


Each time I dropped a clothes size, I donated the larger clothes to charity. And being that I am not working with Oprah’s budget, if my clothes begin to feel tight, I step it up at the gym. I can’t afford to gain that weight back, emotionally or financially… or socially, apparently. These past two week in Uganda, I was showered with comments, compliments and concerns regarding this new body. As I’ve mentioned before, Ugandans are brutally blunt, so the most recurrent reactions mirrored this particularly memorable one: “Amen, THANK THE LORD… You were sooooo FAT!!!!!! It was terrible. Now you finally look your age and attractive.” …Ummmm… Thanks?  


While I can't currently conceive of losing the drive I have to keep up the work of  being less than 150-pounds, it's a fear that festers. But I appreciate Oprah's philosophy: "My goal isn't to be thin. My goal is for my body to be the weight it can hold—to be strong and healthy and fit, to be itself."

The Skinny Gene/More Loss

Some people find themselves genetically predisposed to be big. This was not the case for me; I was the outlier. I come from a family of pretty trim, quasi-athletic East Africans, which means back in my obese days, my size was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. Now Ugandans, not particularly inclined towards subtlety, would love to pass the time positing explanations for my “abnormality,” not all too complex in nature: “WOW: you love American burgers? You’ve become a big baga! Hahaha!” …um… noooooo… rude. So it seemed aside from my size inhibiting a true claim to the family name… my very nationality was on the run. In Uganda it feels like: to be obese is to be American; to be fat is to be rich; to be slim is to be sick (“sick” mean you have HIV/AIDs). So, it’s a tricky look. Like most people, places, cultures, your body is a canvas, the larger your canvas, the more you’re apparently trying to say, and the more folks seem to want to read it, read into it, read onto it.

Sure, sometimes there’s a story to read onto a larger than average body, and sometimes it’s really not that deep at all. I have several friends who have gone through bouts of depression or on the flip side the complete euphoria of coupledom or something, and consequently expressed their bliss or sorrow through weight gain or weight loss. I watched my first episode of the U.K T.V show Supersize Vs Superskinny, and an anorexic girl spoke about growing up in a single-parent household frustrated and miserable and equating eating food with rewarding positive feelings. It seemed a little bizarre and unfortunate that each day she felt she’d only earned half a piece of toast and some baked beans. In any case, it was clear she was unhappy, and a little weird, and her body was a canvas, with a Salvador Dali on it rather than a Monet or anything.

But the thing is, sometimes eating, such an ordinary activity, seems like the most ridiculous thing to do during abnormal times. Or sometimes it feels like precisely all that can be done.

If my body is my canvas, and if I am emotionally distraught, then food is my paint, a fork my paintbrush, and I find myself deciding between minimalist expression, or one of those hectic and questionable pieces of “art.” At least, that would have been the case on the plane today, until I realized, I was my own audience and nobody was studying me. And with nothing but time, over 500 movies, one book and my laptop, for the 15-hour flight from San Francisco to Dubai, the 13-hour layover I’m currently in the midst of, and the 8-hour journey to Uganda tomorrow, I figured I might as well reflect.

My father died yesterday. Dad had been a force: strong (I would cling to his leg like a Kuala bear as a child, and he would give me “lifts” around the house); athletic (I watch him workout at Parklands sports club in Nairobi four to five times a week); health-conscious (I can’t remember when I discovered that brown rice also came in white). His body fought and survived more health issues than most of the bodies I know. The past seven years had been hard for him as he slowly shift-shaped from a pinnacle of strength to the epitome of frailty. Now on my journey back home, to eat or not to eat seems like the stupidest question. My tears, my sadness, is that not enough, or must I wear my grief like a supersized or superskinny? The eating, denying, indulging, feels a little too much like an easy outlet to express my sadness. So, I'll try my best to find another way.