by Barbara Berkeley
I love Lynn’s description of her “green house”: a living space that’s not perfect but one that she’s come to love nonetheless. The very imperfections that bothered her most at the outset are the things that now define a unique environment. All green houses have their beauty.
It’s easy to see that our imperfect bodies represent some version of the green house. No one over age 40 has the Architectural Digest version of the human form (except maybe Christie Brinkley, who at 50+ still appears to be a Barbie doll straight from the package). Although we all know this, it seems to be much harder to make peace with our physical imperfections than with the fact that our car is beat up or our house paint is peeling. After all, our bodies are so incredibly personal and are so intertwined with the vision of self that we present to the world. And while it’s true that no individual has the whole package, there is always some friend or acquaintance who has a better version of whatever body part is bothering us on any given day. Her jaw hangs less. He’s got actual abs. Her legs don’t have any spider veins.
Do we have to learn to love our own green house? Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be love. But at the very least we need to be fond of the old thing. I believe we can get to a happy acceptance through gratitude and humor. What are the things you can you do now that you couldn’t do prior to weight loss, for example? Be thankful that your new body has made them possible. That body was once abandoned and lay hurt and forgotten on the roadside. Now you’ve brought it in from the cold. By providing continued care and concern, you can learn to love this stray…despite its torn ear, its bald patches of fur, its limp. It may be funny and even a bit absurd, but it’s kind of cute, isn’t it?
My own green house is no more perfect than Lynn’s. I think of it as sitting up on a hill. The placement of this physical and spiritual home means that I live both inside and outside of the world my friends inhabit. Most of them are not seriously trying to control their weight. I think of them as living down in the valley. I prefer to live on the hill because I follow my own rules when it comes to weight, eating and exercise and I can’t afford to be influenced by what the valley folk are doing. Over time, I’ve developed a sense of pleasant detachment when I interact with them . I can be with someone at lunch, but I withdraw to my hilltop when they order dessert or reach for the bread. I can attend a valley wedding, but I’m up on the hillside when everyone else is raiding the buffet table like a marauding army.
Some people have used the acronym SAD for the Standard American Diet. I think that’s apt. I understand the forces that are causing SAD eaters to make their choices, but I really don’t want to be pushed around by those forces any more. In fact, I refuse. I’ve learned to switch into this hovering, dream-like detachment whenever my eating or exercise style is challenged. I’ll give vague answers. Sort of smile. And go right along following the rules I’ve established for myself. The sunshine is so nice up on the hillside.
In a recent post to Lynn’s weight loss blog, a five-year maintainer described the process of keeping weight off as “groping in the dark” and referenced the trial and error that had led her to a still tenuous success. All of us who intend to keep weight from returning have experienced this feeling. We have the sense that we must do something very different in order to keep from being pulled back into an inevitable decline. But what to do? We should all talk about this. I’ll be happy to share what I’ve learned if you’ll do the same. Whatever strategy we employ, one thing remains certain. We can’t do what the rest of the world is doing. If we are successful, it means that we’ve found some rules that work and have most likely moved out to that little community on the hill.
Successful maintainers are warriors. They are relentlessly devoted to remaking their lives. They battle for information, search for answers, use trial and error and refuse to be driven backwards. This makes for a pretty heroic little group.
Our hilltop community is still small, but I am convinced that it can grow at a rapid rate if we only exchange ideas, strategies and successes. If you have not yet considered a move to this territory, let me encourage you to look at the real estate. The air is clean, the food is simple and the view to the future looks just great.