“This is the package I come in.” It’s a mantra I recite to myself in my struggle to come to terms with my negative body image. I’m over 50, and despite my efforts to eat better and move more, the things I preach about, I still feel woefully embarrassed about how I look.
At my age, I’m at a loss to explain why I still struggle with my body image. I stopped caring about what people think about me a long time ago. But when it comes to my opinion of myself and how I look, I’m hugely critical of all that jiggles and is not firm.
My imperfect body
My body is imperfect. Most of it is result of genetics I cannot change; some of it a result of lifestyle choices that have come home to roost. There are very few aspects of my physical appearance that I like. This is what negative body image does – I pick apart near every aspect of my body.
I’m vertically challenged, standing only 5’4” tall. I have a shorter torso and I carry most of my weight here. The bottom bone of my rib cage and the top part of my pelvis are only 2 inches apart. My standard joke is that I’m 3 vertebrae shy of a waist. These are the genetics I can’t fight.
I have rolls of belly and back fat. The depth of the creases of my back fat rolls are a clear indicator of the weight I gain and lose. How much big my muffin top is, another. My waist has never been smaller than 32”.
I have a very ample bosom. I’ve been as large as a 40DD and as small as a 38D. When I lose weight, ‘the girls’ are the first to give it up. Thanks to age, gravity, plumpness, and a short torso, my boobs rest on my belly when I sit.
My thicker upper body sits atop skinny legs. Yes, my legs are the only thing on my body I will ever call skinny. My legs are the only part of my body that show some muscle definition. But no will ever hear a ZZ Top song playing in their head when they get a load of these gams. I have no ass. I have no hips. Again, genetics at work. I’m not the person that looks attractive in a pair of leggings.
I once caught sight of myself walking towards a reflective surface and thought I looked like a walking fireplug. The size of my chest on a stocky upper body with bean pole legs was unnerving. The image is ingrained in my brain.
These imperfections make me feel like a failure, and for me, that is what my negative body image is all about.
What is body image anyway?
Simply put, body image is how you see yourself. It’s not only related to appearance but also encompasses your health, functionality, and acceptability.
Your perceptions of your body image start to form in childhood and continue as you age. Feedback, whether direct or indirect, received from your peers, family members, teachers, coaches, friends, and strangers, influence your body image and what you believe to be acceptable or desirable.
It’s not just adolescents, teenagers, and young adults who struggle with negative body image. It extends to every age group, and although men experience it as well, it’s primarily women who feel it the most.
As women age, negative body image engulfs not only how we look but how we move and function. Our still youthful brains exist inside older bodies that creak, crack, pop and snap as we move about. Even if we exercise and eat as well or better than our younger counterparts, menopausal changes dictate how the results represent themselves on our bodies.
I thought I was alone is how I felt about myself. “I’m the only middle-aged woman who feels this way!” Turns out, there’s an army of women around my age who feel the way I do, and there’s someone talking about it.
Amy Porterfield is a business guru I’ve been following in my quest to become a blogger and entrepreneur. Despite her massive success, she struggles with this same issue and started a podcast called “Talking Body”. Amy’s not a psychology expert, but she brings in those who are to talk about the issue of body image. Her own story and authenticity are what resonates with me.
How do we develop negative body image?
Negative or distorted body image happens when we have an unrealistic view of how our bodies should look. How it happens comes in a variety of ways:
- A teenage girl told by the coach of a cheerleading squad that she needs to lose weight so she can perform better
- A history of teasing, bullying, criticism, or ogling for how you look
- Social media messages and images about what a healthy body looks like
- Cultural tendencies that judge people by their appearance
Messages repeated over time sneak into your subconscious and we begin to internalize them as our own dialogue.
How I look as a reflection of my success…..and failure
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to look like a fitness model. If I simply eat better, exercise more, smarter and harder, and do all the things I am supposed to, I can achieve the same perfectly sculpted physique. I bought books and followed exercise and diet programs designed to help me realize that goal.
I did have success with weight loss and reshaping parts of my body. But never to the degree where I looked like a fitness model. Turns out you have to make some pretty drastic changes to look like a fitness model. Genetics plays a role too.
Still, I never gave myself the grace to be proud of what I did accomplish. Instead, I beat myself up for what I still didn’t look like. I lost 20 pounds and dropped 4 sizes and I didn’t look like a fitness model.
Grading myself on size and weight
The size of my clothing and the number on the scale dictate whether I’m a failure or not. That’s pretty harsh thinking and something I know I shouldn’t cling to. Yet I do. At this age, I know my focus should be on how my body feels and what it can still do, and not how it looks or amount of space I take up.
I’ve been as heavy as 155 and as light as 131. I’ve worn pants size 4 through 12, shirts size M – XL and dresses size 10 – 14. Even at my lowest weight and size, I still didn’t feel any better about myself. And I never thought I looked any better. The muffin top, back fat and belly rolls are all still there.
To look at me, you’d likely never think of me as fat. I’ve learned to dress for my body, and I cover my imperfections well. A pendulum swing on the scale of 5 pounds either way shows up like white on rice. People notice and indeed comment when I lose weight. I should take it all as a compliment, but I internalize it as “Lose weight, look smaller = good! Gain weight, look bigger = bad!”
How did I develop a negative body image?
I don’t recall a time when I ever felt good about my body. I do remember being embarrassed or feeling inferior because of my body.
As far back as elementary school, I recall being sad because a boy I liked ended up dating someone else. The difference? Her butt looked nice in Jordache jeans and mine didn’t.
These big boobs didn’t appear overnight. By the time I hit 9th grade, I was a 36B. There was a specific moment when I was made aware of the oddity of my oversized chest. A boy whom I was friends with was walking towards me down an empty high school hallway, stopped me, and placed his hands on my shoulders. Looking me straight in the eyes, and said, “Jamy – you can’t walk that fast down these halls. Your boobs are shaking all over the place.”
My ex-husband always greeted my boobs before he greeted me. He referred to my belly as a buddha-belly. The comments about harpoon marks were the beginning of the end, hence the “ex” husband.
While some of these things happened decades ago, some occurred in the not so distant past and still to this day.
I’d moved the cross country away from a place that I loved and felt grounded in my soul to live with a new boyfriend. Only what I didn’t know is during our entire long-distance relationship and even up until a year after we moved in together, he was soliciting naked pictures from and sexting with old girlfriends. Girlfriends who looked nothing like me. I’d never been betrayed like that – ever – and it shook me to my core. “This is the package I come in” no longer meant anything. My logical brain knows this is more a reflection of him, and not me. We’ve already seen how much influence my logical brain has.
We confronted the issue and moved past it. Or at least he did. I still feel very unattractive. I rarely let him see me naked, and when he does, I cover my belly or cover up quickly.
My mother always comments on my weight, and although I know it comes from a place of motherly concern for my health, it stings. When my face is thin and I’m eating right, I’m a good girl. When I’m not, I’m a health care crisis waiting to happen.
Yes, I’m in my 50s and I still suffer from negative body image.
It’s not you, it’s me
My negative body image is all about what I think of my body, not what anybody else thinks.
The logical part of my knows that I am more than my body parts. I am more than my skinny legs, muffin top, big boobs, bat-wing arms, and buddha-belly. While I’ve outgrown caring what people think about me, I am even more critical of how I look – or don’t look.
Perhaps it’s because I’m actively trying to live and portray a healthier lifestyle as I move into the next career chapter of my life. Indeed, this blog is for people just like me who are striving to improve their health, fitness, and mobility. Yet I struggle to not come off as a hypocrite when I suggest cutting back on junk food while I’m double-fisting cupcakes. But a cupcake eating me is the authenticate me. I’m asking people to embrace my authentic self while fighting how badly I feel about how I look.
“This is the package I come in“
Somewhere in the last few years the mantra of “This is the package I come in” became more subdued. Whereas I used to wear it like a badge of honor and a giant “f- you” to those who judged otherwise, it now feels hollow and fake. I don’t believe it like I used to.
However, if I stop for 5 minutes, quiet my mind, and think about all the other things that make me “me”, I can hear and sometimes feel, the power those words used to hold for me. It’s the flames of those whispers I need to stoke into the fire of a roar if I’m to break the chains of the negative body image that feels all consuming.
How I go about doing that is what I must determine. There’s a clue to examine and a theory to test. Quieting my mind. I spend a lot of time in my head, racing from one thought to another, without taking the time to digest, understand, rationalize and feel the impact of those thoughts.
When I take that quiet time, here’s what I do know, emphatically and without a doubt: I am more than what I look like. I am a strong, confident, smart and independent woman. I am driven and successful in more ways than I am not. A number on the scale and the size of my clothes do not define me.
No, my body is not perfect. It bears the scars and wrinkles of a live well lived. I am not a hypocrite for eating cupcakes while espousing the benefits of eating whole foods and exercising daily. That is what real life is like, and that’s what I want my audience to know. I am not perfect – and you don’t have to be either.
So, what’s my plan?
This was my plan. Writing this article has been cathartic for me. I’ve put on weight since I blew out my knee, and it’s sunk my confidence while pumping up my negative body image. Writing about it has been helpful to get it out of my head and on paper where I can look at it objectively.
Next is to spend quiet time every day to myself appreciate what my body can do. I am back in the gym, starting from scratch and lifting weights again. I may not be where I was, but I am back. This is how I appreciate my body and what it can do.
Yes, I still want to lose that extra weight, and I realize it’s something I can’t shotgun. Just like everything else I do has a plan, so must losing the weight I’ve gained. For me, that means meal prepping, and weighing and measuring my food. No, it’s not something I enjoy, but I’ve also demonstrated that what I’m doing now, which is guesstimating, isn’t working for me.
I will still two fist cupcakes, but I won’t punish myself for it. I will accept it as part of my authentic self and move along. If it becomes more than a passing thing, I’ll take that quiet time to remind myself that maybe eating all those cupcakes isn’t really how I want to honor myself. Because after all, I am more than just cupcakes too.
I am a strong, confident, smart and independent woman. And this is the package I come in.