Body By Christ!

 Me looking snatched (dancer slang translation=reallllly skinny) in my ballet days.

Photo cred Simone Ghera

I have a great idea for a business that you'd better not steal.  It's a gym franchise called Body By Christ!  I think it would do really well in the south.  There would be workout classes and nutrition classes and Bible studies, and a lot of community support and prayer before and after workouts.  I already have two mascots picked out--my sister (who is a professional ballet dancer for the New York City Ballet) and my future brother in law (who plays for the Giants).  I also have a few ideas for great t-shirt designs, which as I see it is half the battle when starting your own business.  Anyone interested in investing?? ;-)

Body By Christ.  It may sound flippant, but aren't all of our bodies "by Christ"?  In a completely paradoxical way, that must mean that you're perfect just as you are, but it also doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement.  I often wonder what I'd look like and feel like if I'd never eaten a single junk food in my entire life.  I don't think honoring God's gift of a body means feeding that body donuts and twinkies.  Instead, I'm sure God wants you to treat your body with the utmost respect and by doing so, you can become the closest thing to what He meant for you to be.  But as with anything, there's an art and a delicate balance to it.  If you are only eating lettuce because you want to be skinnier, are you really respecting your body?  If you eat a perfectly healthy and well-rounded diet and get plenty of great exercise, yet hate yourself and berate yourself every day for the way you look, are you really being healthy? 

I've struggled with body issues in the past, and I continue to struggle today, but for completely different reasons.  As a dancer, I was repeatedly told that I was too fat.  Eat less, get more exercise--calories in, calories out--was what I was told over and over.  As a teen, the starvation diet strategy (and the inevitable binge that followed) caused me to become chubby and lose muscle tone, despite being in the studio every day and working out at the gym just as often.  I hated myself with a fiery passion--and what's more, I consciously fueled that hatred in the belief that it would motivate me to eat less.  In my early twenties, I finally found a "healthy" diet that worked for me.  I shed all the weight and at one point I even made it down to my goal weight of 109 lbs.  I actually felt confident and happy and energetic.  When I stopped getting regular periods, I was secretly elated, because I had finally reached athlete status.

Fast forward five years to my first appointment at a fertility clinic.  I was "retired from the stage" and was pretty much a completely sedentary person (constant school and work in front of a computer), and because I didn't have to stare at myself in a leotard daily, I barely paid any attention to what I was eating.  Strangely enough, after five years of being sedentary, I'd only gained about four pounds from my average dancing weight.  For the first time in my life, I honestly didn't care about how thin I was, and I thought that that meant I was healthy and normal.  Until I heard the words coming out of my doctors mouth that I didn't think I'd ever hear from anyone ever in any universe: "You're rather thin.  That could be one factor.  I'd like to see you gain some weight.  Also, you should probably cut back on your exercise regimen."     

I knew he was crazy because I was getting zero exercise.  But my mind was spinning wildly, and the old familiar hatred was creeping back in.  I've spent my whole life trying to be skinny.  Have I ruined my chances of having children because of some crazy diets I did when I was growing up?  Was it a supplement that I took that did it?  Too many salads and not enough nutrients at age 12?  I've always thought that going on a strict diet at 12 is the reason why I'm shorter than my sisters.  But what if the damage is worse than that?

Insecurity and self hatred must be just as commonplace in infertility circles as it is in the ballet studio.  It's just incredibly easy for women to hate their bodies, for many reasons.  The way they look is often the first reason, and for women dealing with infertility, the way they work (or don't work) is yet another reason to add to the list.  I could look around me at the many women (and girls) I know who are able to conceive easily whether or not they want to, and I could feel broken and defective.  I could be feeling the same feeling I felt when I was the heaviest dancer in the room during pas de deux (partnering) class. 

I could give in to the old familiar feelings of bitterness, jealousy, and self hatred, but I am not 17 anymore.  I'd like to think that I'm smarter now than I was back then.  Instead, I've made the conscious decision to be grateful to God for the body that I have.  Just as I believed that telling myself I was ugly and gross would motivate me to change, I know that telling myself that I am a precious child of God and that I am fearfully and wonderfully made is a reminder that I am who I am for a reason, and that motivates me to care for myself responsibly and with great kindness.  When you stop thinking of your body as an extension of yourself and start thinking of it as something separate that belongs to someone else whom you love and respect (God), it becomes much, MUCH easier to treat it with the care that it deserves.

Don't get me wrong, I am still extremely conflicted when it comes to body issues.  Since it's summertime, I am excited to get out and run around and get as much exercise as I can, but now there's a little voice in the back of my head saying, "you should probably cut back on your exercise regimen."  I panic when I try on old clothes and they are tighter than they used to be, yet at the same time I know that I'm supposed to be putting on weight to prepare my body for baby.  So you can see where things could start to get confusing for me.  When I feel myself getting all mixed up, I like to remember something that happened to me ten years ago while I was dancing at the Houston Ballet Academy.

There was this modern teacher that we all knew and hated, not because she was a bad person, but because all ballet dancers hate modern.  It's hard for us to do and we look stupid, and we hate looking stupid.  Modern teachers like to say stuff like, "it's not supposed to be beautiful" and "let loose and stop trying so hard", and MAN do we hate that.  Anyway, we had just finished a particularly awful modern class, and the teacher had us stand still and face the mirror.  She told us to close our eyes and then she shut off the lights (typical weird modern teacher thing to do) so that there was only natural sunlight pouring in through the windows.  Then, she told us to open our eyes and look at our reflection.  To study our bodies, every muscle, lump, curve, color, curl, wisp.  And then she said something that I didn't expect to have such a huge impact on me, but is nevertheless something I will never forget:  "Be kind to this body.  It's the vessel for your soul, and it's the only one you will ever have.  You will never have another person's body, a new body, or a younger body.  Every day you will live within these walls.  You might as well choose to love it.  Look at everything you are, and choose to love it."  And for one second, I was actually able to do it.

Then I remembered that she was a modern teacher in a ballet world.  What did she know?

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/819-George_Balanchine

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/819-George_Balanchine

 "The mirror is not you.  The mirror is you looking at yourself."  George Balanchine