Fishfingers
I was a skinny child, not by choice, but rather because I did not like a lot of the food I was given to eat. At primary school, I would throw my packed lunches out rather than eat them. During dinner I used to hide food behind the radiator (I have no idea how I never got caught doing this) and empty it out afterwards. I was in a bad way.
No one knew back then, because I only recently got diagnosed, but it was an autistic thing. The texture and taste of food had to be consistent. I would happily eat certain foods, but only from certain brands. It drove my parents nuts; I’d often be forced to keep going until my mum had deemed, I’d eaten enough. Maybe they were worried about how skinny I was. I’d sit there gagging, sometimes crying, trying to swallow down food I couldn’t stand the texture or taste of.
One time at a cousin’s place, I swallowed a bone in an unfamiliar brand of fishfinger, and I seriously believed I was going to die. I don’t remember much apart from the abject terror and quietly crying at the table.
I was chronically underweight. The pictures of me back then are a bag of bones with a huge head and a long, unruly mess of hair.
Mastering Control
Then the teenage years started and I got interested in clothes. But not in fashion, rather in the making of clothes. I bought a few items I liked, got a second-hand sewing machine for my fourteenth birthday and started hoarding scraps, old shirts and such from charity shops. I cut and made a lot of my clothes. Badly. Skirts without hems, tops with wonky necklines and so on. But I wore them anyway.
I did improve and started to produce clothes that you might dress a scarecrow in on a good day. And then I got better and my clothes began to take on their own uniqueness that I was proud of. I was getting compliments on them from random strangers, and I felt like I’d mastered it as well as I wanted to, so around seventeen, and overnight, I stopped producing clothes.
This is one of my autistic things. I get thoroughly interested and passionate about something until I feel I’ve mastered it, then I drop it. This blog would have been another example, if the psychiatrist who diagnosed me hadn’t challenged me to rethink giving it up. I’m glad she did.
Anyway, I digress. Throughout my teens, I was still struggling with eating. Often lunch at school would be skipped, or it would consist of a can of Pepsi. I was a UK size eight to ten and remained that way until I reached seventeen. That was when I discovered my next new passion: cooking.
Cooking as Therapy
This new passion was a godsend. I discovered lasagne, stir-fry, and Madhur Jaffrey. And for the first time in my life, the real pleasure and joy of eating your own self-cooked food. And while editing this, my autistic hindsight glasses have flashed again. I believe I needed to be able to have the control over, and understand how things come together, to actually allow myself to be able to eat more diversely.
My family were of course very happy with this new discovery of mine. I remember making my parents a curry for their wedding anniversary and my dad stated that it was the best curry he’d had since 1972. I’d substituted dried chilli for fresh in a manner I felt was appropriate. It was far too hot for my mum to manage, and she’s not shy of spice. She did however appreciate the dessert I’d made.
The upshot of this new passion, and my secret discovery of the magical and wonderfully interesting drink called Strongbow, meant that for the first time in my life, I had passed a size ten and was veering unwaveringly towards a twelve. Clothes got tighter. Breasts got bigger! And I suddenly had curves. I was definitely not upset by these developments.
But someone in my life was. They began to warn me that I was getting fat. On a regular basis. And this was not someone I could get away from.
The Shame Arrives
Once, this person announced loudly to some people who would remain with us in our lives for a long time, and within my hearing, that I’d put on a lot of weight recently. So much, that when they saw me wearing those loose trousers, they thought I must be pregnant. I was completely mortified. This person continued criticising me for a long time, and it has had a huge impact on how I view myself.
I began to yo-yo. My early twenties, saw me slim and lithe. Mid-twenties were a curvy time. Looking at the pictures of myself then, though I felt enormous at the time, I looked pretty, healthy and vivacious. Then I discovered the gym, and by thirty-two I was back to a size eight again.
At this time, I shared a house with someone lovely, with whom I’d been in a relationship for years. The relationship for various reasons had gone south, and we had a house full of accumulated clutter and a cat.
Germany
My man and I had been friends for a while by now, and when he visited, things escalated fast. Within six months, and with my belongings whittled down to just four boxes (including shoes and clothes), a gaming laptop, and a cat, I moved to Germany.
The shock of the move sent me into autistic freefall and depression. After a few weeks, it got so bad that I tucked myself away for safe-keeping and did not leave the flat for months. Nor did I exercise. In my safe space, I ballooned my way all the way up to a sixteen. I was unhealthy and depressed, though paradoxically ecstatically happy to be with my man.
Then I got a grip on myself and threw myself into “mastering” *cough* the German language. Through courses, I met a whole load of other immigrants like me. I found my bubble. And because of the courses, I found a job in a small hotel. At first I was ein Mädchen für alles. It was not exactly rocket-science, but it felt so good to have a job and be appreciated. And the physicality of it all got me down to a size ten again in no time. I started exercising; got myself a mini-trampoline and some weights.
Then my man got a job up North and it made sense for us to move.
It was a catastrophe for me. My social bubble collapsed. I had a six-month autistic burnout. Despite this, I kept up the exercise and had found my way out of the flat since the beginning this time, so it was nowhere near as bad as previously. Though there were some terrifyingly dark episodes.
Corona
I picked myself up again and started a year-long course to get an actual German job qualification. It was going well; I was acing the mini exams. But then along came corona, and the course was paused. During the second lockdown, I lost the support I needed to continue and had to give up the course. This destroyed my confidence and my weight took off again, before long I was as heavy as I’ve ever been.
This time I decided I wanted to try and do something about it properly. I started exercising; biking, trampolining, barre. For the first time in my life, I tried a diet. This is really important: the diet gave me clear control over one aspect of my life, in the crazy world that was Corona, so I embraced it and it succeeded.
We moved again, this time into a small house with a garden – where we live now. With this last move came happiness and security for my autistic brain. This time, we only moved a few kilometres, so the small social circle and the beginnings of the new life I’d built did not need to implode.
Confidence
I got a job; cleaning, this time in a hospital. That summer was hellish hot and wearing a full FFP2 mask while sweating your ass of cleaning is not fun. I continued the diet and got down to a size ten within months again.
Corona restrictions improved slowly, and with it, my confidence began to soar. Although this was partly because I did some calculations and realised with unpaid overtime, I was working for less than minimum wage and I got exceedingly angry about it. But that’s another story. The upshot: I applied for an office job in the city, and I got it. My first office job since I’d left the UK. Yay me.
My weight slowly but steadily increased over the next two years. Now it’s not fluctuating much anymore, and I’d say I sit between a size twelve and a fourteen, sometimes pushing in one direction, sometimes the other.
Me, These Days
But the thing is, I’m over fifty and a good deal of the way through perimenopause, and I’ve noticed the weight gathers in different places to when I was younger. It sits around my middle and more on my hips, and the distribution is not flattering. Sometimes I see myself in the mirror and I think, yeah, that’s actually okay. Not bad for a fifty-year-old woman. Not bad for a fifty-year-old woman, the irony is not lost on me and I berate myself. But it’s what we humans do.
When I look in the newspaper sometimes, it is depressing. The paper I read is left-wing progressive, but when they have articles about this or that, the pictures are still predominantly young women or men who are the “ideal”, yet they offer audio on the topics of male and female body image issues and such.
I wish that normal people would be portrayed. When we’re constantly being bombarded by this stylised ideal of beauty, we get so blinkered. It becomes hard to see beauty where it is, just as deserved and just as real, regardless of the shape or size, or sagginess of one’s back.
Other Bodies
This is part of what I like about my bubble in the Fediverse. I’ve somehow fallen into a bubble of wonderful, open people who share images of their totally normal and very beautiful selves regularly.
I confess though, when I share images of myself, I am so concerned about the areas that I’m less than pleased about, that I just crop them down to focus on the parts I’m happier about.
A few years ago, I told myself I wasn’t going to listen to these inner voices anymore and it has gotten a lot better for me since I did this, but I’m still susceptible. I can get so focused on the parts of me that I don’t like that I sometimes fail to see the whole anymore and I feel miserable and tell myself I must lose weight.
One thing that does please me is my attitude towards owning my age. I’m not upset about grey hair and wrinkles, rather bemused. Having read a lot about perimenopause, bone-density issues and aging in general, I have taken up weight-lifting. It is supposed to slow down loss of bone density, among the other great benefits. I started in February after a series of illnesses and some depression in January. Though I could be more consistent with it.
I do notice the differences in myself, how much stronger I am, how when I walk or climb stairs, it’s lighter now. I can swing my heavy wooden dining chairs onto the table without any twinges when I want to hoover.
But best of all are those moments when you notice your newly toned muscles. On the sofa in the evening, stroking over pert thighs that used to be pancakes. Or in the mirror, seeing the shoulders flex and oh my god, there’s my collarbone. Haven’t seen that thing in a couple of years. Hell, even my armpits look better.
So I have a belly and an ass. So what.