Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall

by Kjerstin Gruys

  But getting back to work wasn’t the only thing on my mind. Feeling so calm and in balance—feeling so well and at ease with my body—made me want to turn some attention to my physical and mental health. Returning to my Top Ten Ways to Be Kjerstin list, item 4 reminded me that to be my healthiest I needed to “focus on healthy behaviors, not numbers on the scale.” It was time for a Health at Every Size check-in.

  As I’ve mentioned before, the Health at Every Size (HAES) movement fights to disentangle body size from health. It argues (with tons of supporting scientific evidence) that bodies come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, and that behaviors are more indicative of a person’s health than weight or BMI. Randomized controlled clinical trials show that HAES approaches to health are associated with statistically and clinically relevant improvements in physiological measures (e.g., blood pressure, blood lipids), health behaviors (e.g., eating and activity habits, dietary quality), and psychosocial outcomes (such as self-esteem and body image), and that HAES achieves these health outcomes more successfully than weight-loss treatment and without the contradictions associated with a weight focus. These are the main tenets of HAES:

  Self-Acceptance: HAES accepts, respects, and celebrates the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes; there is no inherently wrong or bad body size or shape.

  Normalized Eating: HAES rejects externally imposed rules for eating, in favor of eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger and fullness.

  Physical Activity: HAES supports finding joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.

  HAES saved my life, and had kept saving it over and over again, any time I felt anorexia creeping back in. When I’d finally decided to enter a recovery program to deal with my eating disorder, I was in poor health. My bones were slowly disintegrating, and my kidneys were showing signs of irreparable damage. Yet my BMI was in the “normal” category. I remember thinking, Okay, I’ll get treatment so I’m not so obsessed and miserable, but I won’t gain weight. I don’t need to. I’m at a healthy weight. . . . Probably not even thin enough to be really anorexic . . .

  My body disagreed, and I certainly was anorexic. I had to accept that my healthy weight didn’t fit into current official BMI standards. In other words, at five-feet-five and 155 pounds, I was technically a smidge overweight (BMI of 25.8), yet healthy, or fat and fit, if you will. And I was not alone in this designation. According to a 2008 study from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, more than 50 percent of “overweight” adults and 30 percent of “obese” adults are metabolically healthy. This means that they have no insulin resistance, diabetes, high cholesterol, or blood pressure issues, and no increased death risk compared with metabolically fit “normal weight” people. Conversely, nearly 25 percent of normal weight people were found to be metabolically unhealthy and at greater risk of death. In other words, it’s healthier to be fat and fit than it is to be thin and unfit. And trust me, when in the throes of anorexia, I was both malnourished and unfit, despite my “normal weight” BMI. This is where HAES stepped in to save my life.

  While in treatment, and in the still-recovering years after, I slowly learned to eat a variety of nourishing foods in response to feeling hungry, and to stop when I felt full. Rather than eating what the latest diet books were suggesting, I started eating based on what tasted good and what made me feel energized and adventurous. Of course, I also learned that there’s no such thing as “perfect” eating, and that for the rest of my life I will probably need to be more mindful about food than most people, to ensure that I don’t fall back into old habits.

  I learned to exercise for the joy of being active, or for the pride of finishing a race, rather than as punishment for eating too much or as a get-out-of-jail-free card for a planned binge. I began to focus on making my body stronger and more flexible instead of thinner, and I found out that a mere twenty minutes of moderate exercise in the morning could improve my outlook (and my writing!) for two days!

  I discovered that sleep is medicine, and that sleep deprivation makes me feel really negative and bitchy. I gained a little weight when I stopped restricting food, and then I gained a little more when I finally found an antidepressant that helped me feel like my best self. And I had to be okay with that. It took some adjustment, and a lot of patience, but I finally realized that I’d rather be happy and healthy than thin, sick, and miserable. Of course, this is not what our culture teaches us to think. Most people, myself included, were taught that it’s impossible to be happy unless we’re thin, and we believe it; rather than being fat, women have expressed preferences for being mean, stupid, losing limbs, being run over by a truck, and even death (assuming that the truck didn’t kill you first, I guess).

  Anyway, the weeks after I returned from my honeymoon felt like a perfect time to reconnect with my body, by checking in with my eating, by getting back into a regular exercise routine, and by catching up on sleep. I began by focusing on one healthy habit each week, ranging from “get more rest, activity, and nourishment” to “drink more water” and (Michael’s favorite) “have more sex.” For each week, I intentionally emphasized welcoming more of these good things into my life, rather than trying to avoid bad things. So, for example, I’d tell myself things like “Eat more vegetables,” instead of “Eat less junk food.” I’d already spent too many years of my life trying to get by on less of what my body needed; now it was time for more. Little did I know how important these healthy behaviors would soon turn out to be.

  • • •

  ON THE SECOND DAY OF NOVEMBER, I RECEIVED A PACKAGE IN the mail. I knew what it was and that I probably shouldn’t open it. The package contained the electronic files of my wedding photos (YES! YES! YES!), which I’d been planning to not look at until the end of my no-mirrors project (NO! NO! NO!).

  Back when I’d established the rules of my year without mirrors, my readers had decided by vote that I could look at my wedding photos if I wanted to. But then Hanna promised to throw me a huge party at the end of the project if I could resist.

  I loved my sister, and didn’t want to disappoint her. As an added bonus, Hanna and her boyfriend, Nick, were known for throwing amazing parties. So when she challenged me to stay away from my wedding photos, I knew that I ought to try my hardest. Besides, I’d been feeling so at peace with my body and happy with my newly rebalanced life in general that it seemed plain foolhardy to risk backtracking on all of my progress over a bunch of photos that would certainly be waiting for me at the end of my project.

  Resisting these photos would require the utmost self-control and determination. To make matters worse, Michael was out of town for work, so I didn’t have the option of asking him to hide the package from me.

  I was very good for two hours. I tried to hide the package from myself by shoving it out of sight in a random drawer of my bathroom dresser. And yet, surprisingly, I managed to “find it” again only a few hours later. I held the thick yellow envelope in my hands and sniffed it, smelling the scent of paper and packing tape. I traced the edges of the tape with my right index finger, noting an upraised tape edge near the envelope seal. At first I tried to smooth the raised edge down, to restick the tape and reseal the package. But it wouldn’t stick. Suddenly this bit of unstuck tape became my obsession. The asymmetry was intolerable. If the edge wouldn’t stay stuck, I would have to remove it from the package entirely. I was compelled.

  And so I picked at the tape with my nails. Soon enough, the offending piece was off. But then there were others. I wasn’t opening the package, I was fixing it, I justified to myself.

  But then, suddenly, the package was open. The only acceptably symmetrical tape pattern was one without tape at all. I decided to just . . . open the box . . . a little bit. I could do this without looking at all the photos, right?

  But then I caught that first glimpse of a forbidden photo, covering the customized DVD case o
f our wedding slide show. I saw brightly colored flowers contrasted against the white of my wedding dress, and my curiosity took over. (Oh heck, it had taken over from the moment I started picking at the tape.) I took out the DVD case and held it up to the light.

  I look pretty awesome! I thought, taking in the fascinating site of myself dressed in white, dolled up to the max, holding hands with Michael. Wow, my hair really was big! I noted, with amusement. But Mandy was right—I’d pulled it off.

  But I felt guilty about this peek. Hanna was going to be so pissed at me! I forced myself to stop snooping. The DVD remained in its beautiful case, and I willed myself to go to bed early just to avoid the temptation. I couldn’t sneak more peeks if my eyes were closed.

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY I MET UP WITH HANNA FOR LUNCH. OVER A healthy feast of vegetarian bolanis from Costco, I casually mentioned that the wedding photos had arrived. I was fully prepared to guiltily confess my peek at the DVD cover. Instead, Hanna asked me how they looked. I gave her a look of confusion and reminded her that I wasn’t supposed to be looking at my wedding photos until my no-mirrors project was over, an agonizing five months away.

  “Oh, right. I forgot about that,” Hanna said nonchalantly. “Whatever. You should look.”

  Whatever?

  Of course. Whatever!

  Suddenly whatever made sense. My sister’s nonchalance was the encouragement I needed. Why choose to hold myself to higher standards than what my sister, or the bulk of my blog readers, expected of me? Indeed, what better way to get an extra body-image boost than to see photos of myself on a day when I felt particularly gorgeous and loved? I believed that looking at my wedding photos would make me feel happy, so that’s exactly what I did.

  I went home after lunch and threw myself a little wedding photo viewing party. It was just me, a mug of tea, two cats, and over a thousand beautifully captured memories. It was the best party I’d been to since, well, my wedding! I saw—no, not just saw, actively and intentionally looked at—photos of myself for the first time in months. It couldn’t have been better: My makeup was lovely, my dress fit beautifully, my hair—big as it was—looked elegantly chic. Most important, I looked just as happy as I’d felt.

  While looking at these photos I felt surrounded by wonderful memories. As fun as it was to see photos of myself for the first time in ages, I took just as much pleasure in seeing everyone else having a good time. I relived snippets of time throughout my entire wedding day as I went through each and every photo in chronological order: my bridesmaids covering the mirrors; the smell of my dad’s aftershave as he walked me down the aisle; the hilariously teary grimace on Michael’s face as I walked toward him; an image of my beautiful mom and handsome brother laughing together during the ceremony; the laughing spins on the dance floor that I’d taken with my grandfathers; my toppled wedding cake, which had tasted so much better than it looked; and finally, the end of the evening, the moment that Michael and I shared alone in the moonlight, staring at our friends and family celebrating the night away. Looking at these photos hadn’t turned into an exercise in determining how great or awful I’d looked; it was about remembering how happy I had been. It made me happy all over again to relive it.

  I still felt a bit guilty, but only because I hadn’t had the patience to wait until Michael returned from his business trip before diving into the photos. I’m sure he would have preferred to look at them together, but I was glad I’d had the time to do this alone. If Michael had been there, I would have felt self-conscious about my reactions, and I was glad that they had been unfiltered. I wondered if I would feel the same way about seeing myself in a mirror for the first time again.

  Of course, seeing photos of myself did have some impact on the way I felt about my looks. It was a pleasure to see myself looking happy, loved, and glamorous; it relieved any lingering sense of paranoia about what I’d looked like on that day, or in general. I had evidence that I still looked like me (albeit, me in a big white dress with lots of makeup, poofy hair, and sparkly jewelry), and that was nice. I gave myself permission to stare until my tea went cold. It felt indulgent, but not in a naughty way. It was more like self-care, a way to check in and assure myself that absolutely nothing irreparably bad had happened as a result of giving up mirrors.

  • • •

  SEEING MY WEDDING PHOTOS, COMBINED WITH THE CALM confidence I’d already been feeling, made me feel additionally relaxed and brave. Having the wedding behind me took a major edge off my concerns about appearance. I found myself skipping my makeup on more days than just Mondays and picking increasingly comfy clothes, even on days when I was scheduled to work at About-Face. Some might accuse me of teetering on the edge of “letting myself go,” but it didn’t feel that way. I wasn’t letting myself go, I was letting myself back in. I was taking more risks and feeling more forgiving of myself.

  Leading up to the wedding I’d been too scared to use my usual prescription Retin-A as part of my skin care routine. I’ve known for years that this is a great way for me to keep my skin clear (and wrinkles at bay—bonus!), but it also makes my face peel and flake like crazy. The only way to deal with the flakiness and peeling had been to notice when it was happening and then exfoliate my face in the shower using a washcloth, followed by gobs of moisturizer for the next day or so. It scared me to worry about having a flaky face on my wedding day, so I’d stopped using it full-stop when I did away with mirrors. In other words, I’d wussed out.

  As soon as I got back from my honeymoon I’d started using it again, applying a pea-size dab to my face on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Almost immediately, my face started getting flaky again; every time I washed my face I could feel the surface skin peeling away under the pads of my fingertips. But it didn’t bother me anymore. I wasn’t about to be the center of attention at a wedding. Instead, I felt blessed to once again be just another normal imperfect woman in a very big and overpopulated world. So instead of worrying about it, I began to just exfoliate as best I could each night, using a washcloth, and then slap on some moisturizer before heading to bed. No wusses here! I thought to myself.

  Next, in an act I consider to be pure genius, I finally solved my never-ending struggle to find perfectly fitting jeans that didn’t cut into my midsection. My solution was (drumroll) maternity jeans. Yes, you read that correctly: maternity jeans. I’m sure a lot of women would absolutely cringe at this idea, but let me tell you this: They’re all missing out. Big-time. Don’t knock it until you try it, folks. Here’s the thing: My body is not the perfect hourglass all those “built for curves” jeans are designed for. I have a rounded tummy. That whole “tiny waist, wide hips, round booty” thing makes sense on me only if you think my waist starts directly below my boobs. Because of this, even my best-fitting jeans have always felt like they’re cutting me in half every time I sat down at my desk to start writing. I’d get the dreaded muffin top and struggle to keep the back of my pants from sinking down into plumber-butt when I kneeled or sat down. All that fidgeting and frustration to get comfortable—especially since I was never actually able to get comfortable—was stupid. I was fed up and tired of trying to fit my body into my jeans, instead of finding jeans that fit my body.

  I remembered the freedom of my three-year-old self, and thought, Damn, I wish I were still a little kid so I could wear elastic-waistband jeans! Those were so cool and comfy, I didn’t even have to zip or button them, I could just pull them right up and then go out to play. Despite the current jegging trend, I still hadn’t been able to find a pair of jeans that felt as good as that, until I decided to think outside of the box, realizing that millions upon millions of women in America get to wear elastic waistband pants during pregnancy. I went to the nearest Gap Maternity location with Liz, and was overjoyed to find that Gap’s size 10 maternity jeans with a “demi panel” were the most comfortable jeans I’d ever worn in my entire life. The best part? According to Liz, as long as my shir
t covered the elastic “demi panel,” they looked exactly like non-maternity jeans. And so, in the months after my wedding, wearing my elastic waistband maternity jeans became my secret weapon for feeling comfortably at ease all day, every day, especially days spent sitting in front of my computer. I felt like a genius, and stopped caring so much about the labels on my jeans. I felt outrageously comfortable; that’s all that mattered.

  • • •

  ON THE THIRD WEEKEND IN NOVEMBER, MICHAEL AND I won a lottery. Okay, okay—not the kind where you get rich, but we were (kind of) randomly selected to participate in a national health study, specifically the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES. Only 520 residents in all of San Francisco County were chosen, and 70 percent of those were Asian-American (called “oversampling”), so the fact that Michael and I, über-Caucasians, were picked was extraordinarily unlikely.

  For the past fifty-two years, the NHANES has been conducted yearly by the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). NHANES is the nation’s most comprehensive study on the health and nutritional status of Americans. I’d run across numerous academic articles citing NHANES data in my own research, so the opportunity to actually become a data point for this study was totally intriguing to me!

  When we were asked if we could be interviewed in our home, and then to come to the study site to participate in numerous medical tests, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Michael acquiesced, even though this wasn’t exactly his idea of a fun Sunday afternoon. But I pointed out to him that, in addition to the pure coolness of the experience, we would be receiving a lot of (free) medical tests and would be paid a few hundred dollars for our time and participation.