yes, and...

I started WW today; weighed in at home this morning, and then again at the office as soon as I got in. My scale is pretty danged accurate, which is good to know. It helps that my cube-neighbor is the meeting leader, so I can weigh in when it works for me. I like to do it first thing in the AM, before breakfast and coffee.

I was up in the middle of the night last night, thinking about this resolution and my feelings about HAES. I still believe pretty strongly that I can have a healthy body at any size, particularly when the markers are things like blood pressure, resting heart rate, cholesterol levels, energy and so on. I was irritated as hell by this Time magazine article that felt the need to put the word healthy in quotations simply because it was next to the word obesity. That said, I also know my knees, ankles and back are being stressed by carrying more weight. I'm not interested in reaching WW's goal for me, but I am interested in dropping enough that it doesn't hurt to be active.

I'm examining the need to apologize for this, or to frame it with HAES. I think I'm still feeling the sting of that Fitocracy group that disallowed ANY discussion of weight that included losing it. I went from feeling like I had safe space in HAES groups to feeling like there was none, particularly given that the moderator dug through old, dead threads to find my relatively innocent question about age and the body's response to increased activity (i.e. does getting older mean the body doesn't respond to training for a half marathon and eating healthy with weight loss - if so, cool, I'm normal, but if not, should I check with a doctor?).

Balance, of course, is the key. It's okay to recognize that MY body will act differently if I weigh less. It's okay to want that. It's okay to have a goal that includes healthy weight loss. And it's kind of ridiculous that I have to walk through this litany almost hourly.

I have long maintained that a person's journey to health is highly individual. There are general guidelines, but I really feel that each person should listen closely to their body for the best advice. And maybe that's the REAL problem here. People - and women in particular - are so used to giving away authority over their bodies and how they work, that they look externally for answers to how to be healthy. Science is a great place to start, but it's nigh unto never that any study has a 100% effect. It's important to remember that. It's important for ME to remember that.

I started out this year thinking of health as a journey, one both inward and outward, and I'm going to end it that way too. I'm going to remember there's more of "yes, and" than "yes, but." And I'm going to listen intently for the wise voice inside.