How I learnt to stop worrying and love my size. Pt 3: Womanhood and Motherhood

This is my third post about fat acceptance.
If you want to you can read about my childhood in part one here


Adulthood

I did not exercise between 17 and 23 or 24 years old. The hatred and disdain for exercise was just to overwhelming. To many bad memories. But after moving from one city to another I had very little money. In fact, I was dirt poor. And I survived on pasta and canned mackerel. It is not a good diet, it is not a joyful diet. But it was doable and at times, tasty. I didn't own a scale, and quite frankly did not care since if I could eat and pay my rent it was a good thing. But after looking at pictures a couple of years later i realized how malnourished I must have been for dropping so much weight in so little time. I have a picture somewhere of how I looked, but I can't find them. But my clothes did not fit.
Now, analyzing this for this blog post, I think I got a lot of male attention but then I always attributed that to my large décolletage and my straightforward attitude. Since I did not feel like my body had changed I did not make any kind of connection between being thinner and being more attractive.
I found this picture taken the next year.

I'm 23. I am a pirate

As for exercise I don't even remember what happened. I told my partner we were going to go to the gym. And we did. We started out going together and I continued on my own. I paid the gym fee on my student loan. I imagined Madonnas biceps. I had fun at the gym enjoying the identification with "people that go to the gym". Along came protein shakes and creatine powders (which for me increased my stamina). I was also quite annoying with pointing out what was in peoples food (I cringe writing that now, but I was new to the "health"-thing). My goals had nothing to do with being slim, I wanted to be STRONG. I fantasized about the HULK and SheHulk. At the live action role plays I took part of in summer I choose to play strong, durable characters.

25 years old. I'm a vampire

But alas. With time my interest waned. I still did it for 3 years but less and less. I had other thing occupying me. Going to the gym, while nice when I was there, took time and money from me. I didn't really feel I was "getting anywhere" so to stop doing it was no big deal. Being fat was not a problem. There really wasn't a downside to it. I had love no matter how I looked. My friends were not the kind to comment on weight. My job as a temp and my studies were not impacted by me working out or not.

I'm 27 years old. Just prior to conceiving.

Motherhood
I've read it a couple of times.
How much better some women felt about their bodies when they had become mothers.

I like my body. I liked it more at times, a little less at other times. I have at some moments in life hated it. Sometimes I haven't believed in it, doubted it's capacity, belittled its capability.

I don't do that now. My ovaries matured an egg that was fertilized in my uterus. A child grew in my womb and I gave birth to her after many hours of high impact fat burning labouring. My prolactin levels rose and my progesterone levels fell and I started lactating to feed my child. It was, and is amazing. I am very happy that it worked out so very very well for me. For us.

It makes my body awesome.

In the first few months of pregnancy I couldn't eat. I didn't feel sick or throw up, but I lost any kind of aptite and the weight fell off. I lost 15.4 pounds (7 kg) and that's not good. But it changed and soon enough I was a very hungry mama! All that wonderful food makes me happy just to think about it. In the end I gained an average amount of weight for a woman my size and gave birth at about 203 pounds (92 kg).

28 years in this awesome body.

Most of that weight stayed on and I did not care. I remember sitting in my midwifes office saying the weight stayed on, and she looked at me with kind eyes and asked me if I believed something was wrong with that. I paused and said, a bit thoughtful that no, not really. I was eating a fair share of food, and I was still hungry for more. I did not feel like scaling down my portions and I certainly did not feel like exercising. My BMI said obese and for the first time in my life it came over me....I was a happy fatty.

But breastfeeding slowly worked those extra fat reserves into milk. And November 12th 2009 I found myself talking to a friend about running. He was running to keep fit for his military job. Do it he said. There is no reason why you couldn't.

And I listened and realized that of course I could do it. The leering voices of childhood gym class had all but faded away. I believed in this body.

I could run.

So I ran.

This post was inspired by I'm giving up on diets and Fuck you, Fat shamers from Look Left of the Pleiades and was made possible at this time in my life by meeting Arwyn from Raising my Boychick on twitter, you can read her post On fat acceptance and fitness