Whole30, Day 26 & on Crossfitting and the Female Body

So this thing ends Wednesday morning. Rather than push another 30 days, I think I'll just keep going until Saturday. I think I'll still do the weights and measurements on Wednesday morning to get the 30 day results, but I'm saving "treat" days until Saturday anyway, so rather than have a "treat" on Wednesday just because I can, waiting until the weekend is certainly not going to hurt me.

After my post yesterday, I realized that even though I'm trying not to focus on pre-baby weight number, I'm still focused on pre-baby size (under the guise of not wanting to have to buy new summer clothes for the third summer in a row), and I realized I'm just substituting one for the other, which is still not the healthiest attitude because the focus is still on size.

Am I happy with being a size 8 when I was a nice 4 right before I got pregnant? No. I am not. I worked really hard to get to a place where I was comfortable with my body, with being slender but not skinny, with having a shape rather than being a rail. While in theory I'm happy with how I look in general, that changes when I catch my reflection in a door or window once I leave my house. Then I see how wide I still really am, how much cellulite I really have, how much my belly still flops. And it's really hard to see the other mothers at the gym able to get their pre-baby bodies back quicker than I am. Now, I am a good 12 years older than most of these girls, and I do try to keep that in mind. But even so, even as smart as I am, as self-reflective as I am, it still really bothers me. It bothers me that it's not coming off fast enough and that I'm focused on that. It bothers me that I'm constantly like just "1 good food and work out week away" from fitting in my size 6s, like that's the focus. Do the 8s fit much better? Yes. Is that a start? Yes. Is it enough? No.

I think this is all coming from in part the profusion of "fitspriation" memes that people from my box post on FB. "Strong is the new skinny." "Lifting heavy doesn't make you fat; cupcakes do." All of course accompanied by women with six pack abs and incredibly cut legs, arms, and backs. Usually with a message, too, from the box poster about how if you're not looking like this or not seeing this kind of definition or body change, then the problem is you and all your "reasons" are just excuses. Here are my reasons why I can't look like that, which I don't think are excuses at all:

1. I won't work out if I've had less than six hours of sleep.
2. I am not willing to get up at 4:30 am (and therefore go to bed at 8pm) to get to the 5 am class if that's the only one I can make that day. Does that make me a slacker or not committed? No, it makes me practical and reasonable.
3. Am I willing to have to compromise my workout to share resources with 22 other people in a small space at 5 am? No. If I'm going to workout, I don't want other people really in my way. It's not fun for me at that point. 
4. Am I willing to spend 10 hours a week at the box in order to look like Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet? Right now--no. Because honestly, that's what it would take to do so. Probably more like 12+ hours. And does this make me look like a slacker in the eyes of many people at my box? I think it does. 
5. Am I willing to sacrifice what I need to get done to make tenure and be an effective professor in favor of extra time at the box? Not right now. Perhaps once I get tenure, I can shift my priorities.

 Do I want to be fit and improve my capacity to lift heavy? Yes because it makes me feel good and strong and it helps my body image tremendously. Do I have the desire to win the CrossFit games anymore? I don't think so.

Here's what I do want to work toward:

1. Strength. I want to be strong physically, mentally, and emotionally. I want my daughter to see someone who is confident in all areas of life, someone who is fit but not obsessed with appearance and looks (or even health for that matter--I don't want her to have some warped sense of food and eating but rather a healthy aspect). I want her to see someone who excels at her job, who generally likes what she does but isn't consumed by any one part of her life. So with strength, I want her to also see balance.
2. Not obsessing over size or weight or appearance. I don't ever want her to hear me say "I look fat" or "I look ugly." I know she'll never think that of me, and that doesn't ever mean I won't say it, but I don't want her to hear me say it. 
3. Not making food a big deal. Yes, it many ways it is, but I want to work toward an automatic just sort of eating well but not making a big deal of "Oh my god, this is so bad for us! We shouldn't be eating this!" but to make sure treats really are treats, that we all have a healthy wide variety of foods and all share in meal times, and that even though I don't want to make food a big deal, I want it to be associated with health and good things rather than shame.

Of course much of this obviously revolves around what I want for my daughter--I don't want her to have some warped sense of self and it take her 38 years to try to gain some sort of confidence. And that may happen anyway but I don't want her to be like me and going on diets at 11 because she thinks she's fat or she sees me on one.

It's true; I am disappointed that 8 months later I'm still trying to get the rest of the baby-weight/baby-size off of me. I thought, as did everyone else who kept saying, "Oh, it'll be off by October; It'll be off for sure by Thanksgiving/Christmas/first of the year...", and here it is almost March, and I've not made any more real progress since October. This means that I need to accept that I very well may not be able to fit in my size 6 summer clothes. This may very well mean that I must buy summer clothes that fit. And I have to be okay with that. I still want to strive towards 5 days a week of CF and working on improving steadily. I need to reframe how I think about my performance in the box:

It's not because the food I eat and the weights I lift are designed to give me the perfect body. I eat this way and workout this way because it makes me feel good about myself and that is all that matters.