Last week, on my other blog, I answered someone who suggested that maybe I should consider combining my two blogs. I said, "I kind of like keeping my diet self separate from my main self." Since then, I've been thinking that maybe that's a problem. Not the idea of writing two separate blogs, but the idea that my Diet Self is compartmentalized from my Main Self.
It's as if my Diet Self is the ugly stepchild I don't want to introduce to anyone. Back when I was thirty pounds (!) lighter, people would ask me my "secret" as if I could dispense magical favors. I was never totally comfortable posing as a real life diet Success Story. Especially when the focus was on my body and how "skinny" I was.
That attention bothered me for several reasons. First of all, I was raised to be excessively modest. (No two-piece bathing suits for me as a child!) That philosophy was reinforced by the unwanted attention I received as a pre-teen girl after my body developed early. Suddenly, I had a figure (in fourth grade) and no one else did. I wore my winter coat all during school in seventh grade to deflect attention. What is the opposite of "flaunt"? Me, in middle school. And junior high and high school.
Second, more recently I was uncomfortable with attention to my "skinny" body because it seemed like the compliments were weighted on the other end with unspoken observations: Wow, you were sure fat before! I am a half-glass empty kind of girl. For every exclamation about my weight loss, I figured it was shadowed by silent judgments about my body before my weight loss. How embarrassing.
Anyway, I started this blog as a separate endeavor because I was hired to blog on a particular topic. I liked having my Diet Self parked in its very own blog, separate from my Main Self.
But now that I've recognized that Diet Self and Main Self are not holding hands and skipping off into the sunset, it's time to acknowledge that I am just one woman, one woman who gains and loses weight sometimes. Also? No one cares about my body as much as I do. People might notice it, but they don't just see Diet Me, I hope. I think they see Melodee first and my body second.
I know that's how I see my friends. As people, just people. I don't whip out a tape measure to check whether their waistlines are expanding. Friends are simply friends.
So am I. One self, one body, one soul. One friend.
One me, not two. Diet Self, meet Main Self. Welcome to the body.
