The Weight is Over?

Bryan and I have decided to join Weight Watchers. With my weight scarily approaching What I Weighed the Summer I got Fat, I decided it’s time. Time to stop being a chubby newly-wed, and most of all, time to stop the damned fluctuation! Seriously, I can gain ten pounds quicker than you can say boo.

But this is because I have a long, sordid history of weight issues. Penses are generally thin people. I used to call my dad Kermit because of his skinny legs, and I inherited his metabolism, or so I thought.

Really, I should begin with I am a dancer. Even though I don’t perform anymore, I still look at the world through a dancer’s eyes, which is to say I’m incredibly critical of my appearance and incredibly well-practiced at studying myself in mirrors. When I was fourteen, I had a brief stint as an anorexic, partly because my dance friends were anorexic and partly because my life felt out of control, and it felt nice to control how many calories I consumed. After that, I gained back a few pounds, but was still thin. Skinny, actually. I remember when Mrs. Hale called me into her office after Highsteppers one morning and told me I was looking too thin. I laughed and told her I was addicted to peanut butter sandwiches and not to worry.

Then, I went off to college as a dance major. Everyone was thin and beautiful at OCU. And disordered. The first thing one of my college roommates said when she met me was “How much weight did they tell you to lose in your acceptance letter?” The truth was I hadn’t been told to lose any weight. Because I was skinny. I was the only girl in my quad not sentenced to lose five pounds before company auditions.

And then I started dancing six plus hours a day as part of my degree. In front of a mirror. We also had to weigh in three times a semester in front of God and everybody. Our weight was factored into our ballet grade. Our weight was factored into everything. When I went home for fall break, my parents told me they were concerned. Truthfully, I was fine; I was living the life of a dancer, which means eating healthy foods paired with tons of physical activity.

The summer after my freshman year, I got boobs: nice boobs! The next summer, I got an ass; the Pense women’s ass, which my best friend once described as an upside-down heart shape. The whole time, I was still dancing, still active, but slowly growing tired of the dancer life. My senior year, when it was time to audition for company for the last time, I didn’t make it. It broke my heart. In two weeks, I lost five pounds by running on the elliptical machine an hour a day, eating only one serving of carbs at breakfast and taking laxatives. When I still didn’t make company at the second audition (with my leotard hanging from my ribs... my BMI at the time was a 20), I decided to screw it.

For the rest of the semester, I ate whatever I wanted and I didn’t attend mandatory weigh-ins. And I cried a lot. I wasn’t in ballet or company, so my weight didn’t really matter, however, I’m pretty sure that shirking those appointments with the scale was what cost me the Senior of the Year Award…

That summer, I moved to Wichita, where I was miserable and depressed. I got up, went to work, came home, made dinner, laid on the couch to watch TV or read, had a snack, and then went to bed. My weight sky-rocketed. That was The Summer I got Fat. I didn’t look like a dancer anymore.

I went one whole year without stepping on a scale. It was like I was deeply scarred by my experience, and it took that long before I could look underneath the bandage.

The next year, after moving back home and reclaiming my emotional health, I worked my butt off to lose the weight. I did pretty well, getting back into my pre-fatness size. Then I gained it back at Christmas time. Then I lost it again for the wedding on the South Beach Diet. Then I gained it back again on the Blissfully Married Diet.

What’s sad is I’m 24 years old now, and I still don’t have it figured out. It’s like I can’t grasp how to navigate this non-dancer world where I have to sit at a desk all day, and then when I get off work at five, I don’t feel like working out. But I desperately want to be the same skinny person that I was in my other life.

So, Weight Watchers, you are my last hope. My sister Beth had a similar life experience, in that she was tiny her whole life and then got fat in college. I’m not sure if she had the psycho dance mind games along with it, but I do know that after she got married, she got motivated. She lost more than forty pounds on Weight Watchers and has kept it off. She looks great. So, bolstered up the weight-loss success of my kin, I’ve decided to give it a try.

Wish me luck. While you’re at it, wish me balance. I threw away my pinks tights long ago, so it’s probably time to throw away that mindset, too. But, somewhere between pink tights and where I am now is where I hope to find myself. And stay there.