About a year and a half ago, I took a photo of myself in a newly purchased bikini from J. Crew. I was getting ready for a lovely vacation in Hawaii (thanks, Chris, for getting married there), and I wanted to see just what I looked like before the whole world (read: a handful of people who honestly probably didn’t care what I looked like) saw me.
The result wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either. More
than anything though, I felt frustrated. I had tried on occasion since college
to find a workout and stick to it, but I never really lasted more than a couple
weeks. Though I hate to pin this frustration on being sick, my battle with
getting back in shape has been one of the biggest challenges for me
post-surgery and chemo.
Chemo taught me wonderful life lessons about appreciating my
body and all that it can do. I sent an email out a few months after finishing
chemo, around Easter, and included the following in my takeaways:
*Even
if you think you're not the bravest or the strongest, trust that life will make
you braver and stronger than you ever thought possible.
*I'm
forgetting diets and counting calories. I intend to enjoy food. Enjoy being
able to eat food that tastes good, that doesn't make you feel sick. If I get
hit by a bus tomorrow, I don't want the last thing I think to be: "Damn I
wish I had eaten that cheeseburger."
*Along
the same lines, being skinny isn't all it's cracked up to be. If you want to be
skinny ask your doctor for abdominal surgery followed by chemo. It makes the
couple extra pounds afterwards seem not nearly as bad.
I snuck these in casually with other thoughts so that they
probably didn’t seem like a big deal. After chemo, however, I took a very
different approach to food than I had in the past, and so these takeaways were
indeed pretty noteworthy, because I never actually believed them up until that
point. Though I’m loathe to admit it, past food and exercise options included working
out excessively, restricting what I ate a fair amount, (thankfully) a very
brief attempt to see if diet pills worked, and (also thankfully only for a very
brief time) throwing up on occasion after meals. I was never actually “good”
enough at any of these habits for them to stick around for too long—I didn’t
let them get to the point where they interfered too much with life, but these
habits crept in on occasion when I was stressed. I also loved a yummy steak
dinner with friends and family or a great meal at Taverna Tony’s in college,
and I didn’t have the “strength” to push that great food away.
I walked away from chemo with a newfound appreciation for my
body. Don’t get me wrong, I still felt frustrated at times or didn’t love the way
I looked in things, but I reminded myself that my body had been reallllly good
to me and perhaps I ought to return the favor. If my body could kick cancer’s
butt, I shouldn’t push it to its limits in unnatural, unhealthy ways all to
feel/look skinny. Sometimes this is easier said than done, but I will however
say that I can proudly attest that none of those awful aforementioned habits
have reared their heads since.
Back to the point of this post, though, that initial photo
in the J. Crew bikini.
I had worked so hard to love my body and not to feel ashamed
of it—and yet I felt so frustrated as I stood in front of the mirror and
snapped that photo.
Frustrated by every time I had started to work out and
realized that getting back in shape wasn’t going to be easy.
Frustrated that even though I was young when I was sick and
was able to recover quickly, it didn’t mean I was going to bounce back physically
in terms of exercise.
Frustrated that any strength I’d had in my arms and abs seemingly
had disappeared after having an IV in one arm and having had pretty intensive surgery
on my abdomen.
Frustrated that I waited so long to get back to working out
that sometimes it felt like I never would.
And so while I have felt so damn proud of my body for all it
has done for me, I have also felt so frustrated whenever I’ve tried to work out
and realized that the strength I once had has faded.
To be 27 and have anxiety walking in to a workout class because
I was worried I might not being able to do simple things was not easy to
overcome. Amid all this were the consistent reminders from friends and family
that I looked great—that I was thin and skinny. Words I’d heard before and didn’t
believe I now (for the most part) trusted. I knew I wasn’t overweight, but I
also knew what everyone else didn’t see: that this normal-sized body couldn’t
do normal things.
The slow process of finding a workout began.
I tried a couple barre classes, then yoga, then Pilates. All
of them made my body ache, but each time I walked into a studio I felt a little
less anxious and a little more brave—it took me a while to commit though. For
about 4-5 months I took a couple classes each month, and then I decided that
Pilates was the workout for me. I wasn’t limited by my horrible flexibility, and it
targeted something I was very much so determined to get back: core strength. So
in February I started signing up for more classes.
There’s no magic P90X story here—90 days later I was not
ripped, and much the same way that my abs did not magically appear, my frustration
did not magically disappear either.
But I decided to go all in.
In April, I knew I could commit to a boot camp which had
been recommended to me by a friend. I took a private lesson and then signed up
for that boot camp, 3 days a week for a month. It seemed manageable, but I also
knew it would be super challenging.
It took me about 2.5 weeks to make it through class without
stopping.
However, as I had learned (and even though I’d heard others
say it before), no one in the studio judged me for stopping—and I didn’t get
dirty looks for being the girl who wasn’t in as great of shape as everyone else.
By my 3rd and 4th weeks, I, as the typical workout story
goes, looked forward to class. I started signing up for other Pilates classes,
and I was officially hooked.
Tomorrow will be nine years since I found out I had cancer.
Nine years ago I didn’t realize I was headed down a path to being proud of my
body for all it’s been through and not depriving it of the food it very much so
deserves. This year has been a long time coming—a year where I’ve regained
strength and also see a much stronger body in front of me.
I’m not about to post my before and after photo for anyone and
everyone to see (text me, maybe I’ll be brave enough to share it; sorry,
strangers and internet creepers ), but it’s kind of crazy. Today I put on a
different bikini (one that actually in theory is less flattering) to compare my
photos side by side. I weigh roughly the same I did when I started. I wear the same
clothes. But I have abs. And a waist. And an even firmer belief that life will
indeed make me stronger than I ever thought possible.
On that note, I don’t have much else to say to wrap this
post neatly (let’s be real, it’s kind of a rambly mess anyway), so I’ll be over
here drinking a glass of wine in that bikini celebrating nine years and feeling
proud. Cheers.
♥a
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