bearing blog

bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

Go Betty!

Betty Beguiles is now offering an online personal shopper service!

I We will begin with an hour-long phone consultation (or online chat) during which we will discuss your needs, budget, body type, and stylistic preferences.

II I will then spend the next week creating several outfit suggestions (all of which will be available for purchase online) that meet your requirements.

III Once I've identified pieces that meet your needs, I will present you with one or more “inspiration boards” (see below) that illustrate the outfits I’ve created for you. Accompanying the illustration boards will be direct links to the pieces I’ve suggested so that you can purchase the ones that most appeal to you.

I could really have used this help during my Year of Three Wardrobes (the size 6 wardrobe, the size 2 wardrobe, and the XS maternity wardrobe.) I didn't do a bad job on my own, but I bet I could have saved more than what BB is charging if I really knew what I was looking for.

May 11, 2011

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3 comments on Go Betty!
Maintenance: Will change help? (Acceptance #5)
(First post. Second post. Third post. Fourth post.)

In my last post I wrote about all the anxiety I've been having surrounding maintenance of my weight right now. I decided to take my own advice, step back, and go through the process of discernment that I outlined. The first step is to accept reality: to look objectively at what's going on.

As I wrote in the last post, the anxiety isn't causeless. My habits are indeed slipping from desirable ones to undesirable ones. My weight has changed just a bit, to a slightly higher (but still healthy) number; but it's clear that my attention is misplaced.
- I am anxious about my weight number, even though
  
  I cannot directly control it; and
  
  in any case it might be a perfectly healthy number for me.
- At the same time I am ignoring the slow infiltration of old habits, even though
  
  I can directly control them; and
  
  I already know they are not healthy habits for me.
That's the reality that I accept.

Let's see, what's the next step in my process of discernment… "Judge whether a change offers benefits."

Heck yeah. I managed to gain all that willpower and lose all my weight when I concentrated my effort on the habits. I never really did manage to stop being anxious about the number on the scale, but by emphasizing the habits rather than the numbers I was at least able to keep from getting discouraged. I could see myself getting better at self-control, and that was incredibly heartening.

So I'm not entirely sure whether it would benefit me to stop worrying about the numbers, but I am quite certain I would benefit by exerting effort, once again, on habits.

I think it's interesting that when I consider making a change at this level, it's the change in attitude and focus — not a change in eating. I think that might have been part of the reason I've been feeling so frustrated, with so many false starts — I've been trying to jump right back to "ZOMG must stick to my habits!!!!" I never considered where my efforts will reap the most rewards. And I never considered whether some of the habits that were useful in my first maintenance period might not be so useful anymore, now that I have four children including one toddler.
May 10, 2011

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No comments on Maintenance: Will change help? (Acceptance #5)
Maintenance blues: Acceptance, #4.
(First post. Second post. Third post.)

Here’s something I’ve been wanting to write about but have been having trouble putting into words.

It’s three years this week since my successful weight loss began. And lately? Weight maintenance has been hard.

I feel as though I’m slipping, right on the edge. I weigh myself every day and faithfully plot each point on a chart. The paper charts stack up in a drawer in my bathroom, one for every month since I reached my weight loss goal in November 2008. The zigzag lines rise up through my pregnancy and back down again after the birth of #4, not quite as low as I was pre-pregnancy but back to where I decided to be.

And lately I don’t like what I see. It’s not that I’m not still at a healthy weight. I am. But after reaching my postpartum target, my weight crept back up, and I’ve been on the high side of it for months now.

Worse, I can’t seem to bring it back down. Several times since just before the baby’s first birthday, I have tried to lose just one pound. Not because I needed to but because I wanted to see if I could still do it.

I haven’t done it. I haven’t sustained the effort for more than a few days. After about three days of sticking to my habits, I start feeling hungry and cold all the time, and shortly thereafter I find myself helping myself to a third plate of dinner, or eating all the kids’ sandwich crusts. I recognize this as classic “body defending its fat stores.” Still, it’s frustrating — I managed to overcome it once, what’s wrong with me now? Have I lost my hard-earned habits for good?

And that small gain since I reached my postpartum goal — it’s not bad in and of itself, but what if it is the beginning of a slow creep back up to where I was? My mind races. This is the kind of thing that, as I’ve said before, literally keeps me up at night.

+ + +

It’s only fair I write about this. Even though I never intended this to be a “weight loss blog,” weight loss is the most popular topic I write about. Probably every day, certainly every week, some person sits down at their computer and methodically clicks through every single post in the weight loss categories; I see it in the site statistics.

And this is part of it. That maintenance sometimes is frustrating and hard.

+ + +

Another reason I need to write about it is that writing helps me figure things out. I had a draft of this post up last week when I got sidetracked by the comment about acceptance, the one where I suggested a process of accepting — not the self, but the truth about the self; and accepting the sacrifices that are necessary to change the truth. Then I thought — why not take my own advice?

So let me look at the reality. Let me figure out what’s going on, and accept it.

+ + +

First of all: The numbers on the scale are still objectively good. I may be feeling panicky about them right now, but that is not because of what they are, it is because I fear they may change. If I could look into a crystal ball and learn I would be this weight indefinitely, I’d be happy, not disappointed. I am at a healthy weight. Or, to take the metric that Mark suggests is most useful (because it involves monetary expense), I don’t need to buy new clothes in a bigger size.

But what about my habits? Well. Let’s take a look at the background habits that I wrote about in the series on my “failure-free habit constellation,” almost exactly two years ago. Have they changed?
- I still drink mostly water, black coffee, and black tea. I have, however, been drinking more alcohol with dinner lately.
- I’m still eating lots of vegetables. More often, though, since I haven’t been specifying the kind on the grocery list, Mark’s been bringing home more of the “lightly sauced” kinds of frozen vegetables. The problem with this is that I lose some appreciation for real-food vegetables (plain or with real butter or olive oil).
- I’m still using small plates at home, and when I’m away I do remember to use only part of the larger plate.
- “Habitually wary of sugar and white flour?” I have definitely been enjoying more of those. I lost weight while sticking to a two-thumbs-sized dessert portion. For a while there, flush with my good fortune, I was testing the limits of maintenance — and in the meantime it seems I’ve gotten used to larger and more-frequent sweets.
- Only a very limited selection of snack food? This has definitely changed. It seems the children have been clamoring for a vast variety of packaged cookies for their afternoon snacks. And yes, I have been joining in. Novelty is not my friend.
- I still keep that jar of almonds in the car, and I still reach for them instead of hitting a drive-through when snacktime hits.
- And I still step on the scale every morning.
How about that constellation of weight-loss habits? When I was trying to drop the “just one pound,” was I really using them?
- Signal breakfast: Yes, I’m having the boiled-egg-and-tomato-juice for breakfast quite a bit. Not every morning, but then I never had it every morning. Today, for example, I had a boiled egg and two strawberries instead. (The kids were having strawberries and yogurt for breakfast and the strawberries looked pretty good.)
- Eating on schedule: Meals are still regularly spaced, and I’ve been having the snack at 3:30, but I’ve been skipping the 10:30 snack — and I’ve definitely been nibbling in between. Especially (yeah, I know) the kids’ leavings. Also, I’ve been having bedtime snack. I know darn well by now that I feel better in the morning if I don’t have the bedtime snack. And yet it’s hard not to join in when Mark and the kids are chowing down on ice cream.
- Control the size of the snacks: not happening.
- No seconds? I have been having seconds at dinner. I admit it. Including the second half of the sandwich.
- Control the plate. This has always been easy: the relative proportions of veg, starch, and protein on my plate. No problem there.
So, clearly, not all, but some of the habits of temperance are slipping and being replaced by habits that characterize my old life.

The summary:
- My vegetables aren’t as plain as I want.
- I’m eating larger, more frequent portions of sweets than I want.
- There is too much variety of cookies in the house. Especially Oreos. Grr.
- I’m eating at times I don’t intend to eat.
- I don’t know how big my snacks are. I would rather know than be ignorant.
- I am eating second servings that I don’t want, and that experience taught me is in excess of what satisfies me.
But just to be fair, let’s summarize the good news too:
- I haven’t gone back to big plates.
- I haven’t let my almond jar run empty.
- I haven’t avoided the scale, no matter how much I might worry about the number.
- I haven’t been having two- and three-egg breakfasts.
- My plates still look the way they ought to.
In fact, there are lots of things I used to do in the old gluttonous days that I have not even come close to doing, not even once. I have never again eaten a whole pizza by myself. I have never again gone through the drive through to get a hamburger just because I suddenly wanted one. I have never again binged on every leftover I could find in the fridge. I have not followed any impulse to buy snacks from the vending machine. I’ve practiced resistance on lots of occasions.

It is a little tempting to think that perhaps there is not really a problem. I am, after all, at a healthy weight. Perhaps I should not be alarmed that I am standing on a floor that is difficult to break through. Perhaps my body is merely defending its reasonably-sized fat reserves against my unreasonable desire to prove that I can force it to a slightly smaller weight.

But if I look at the habits, it’s clear that there is a problem: a behavioral one. Because I don’t want to have those habits of gluttony, even if they don’t make me gain my weight back.

So. I have to accept — once again — that the number on the scale is not the problem. My daily choices are. And if I choose to change that, I have to accept that I must once again accept some daily sacrifice.
May 9, 2011

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7 comments on Maintenance blues: Acceptance, #4.
Being seen by other women.

MrsDarwin writes in the combox to my post about vanity and physical fitness:

To be honest, it's watching my re-emerging contours appear that keeps me motivated in my weight loss. That', and the recent wedding/reunion I went to, for which I wanted to present an image of looking attractive and fit as the one of the set who got married right away and had a boatload of children. Vanity? Evangelization? Advertisement? It's all mixed, motive-wise.

I'd just like to add that as a mother of four children myself, I'm also really appreciative and grateful to the other mothers around me who take proper care of themselves — who dress well and look good.

It was five or six years ago, when we only had two children, that we switched to a parish a little farther away — we picked it because it had a perpetual adoration chapel — a parish that happens to have a lot of big families and a lot of growing families.

Some of you moms of bigger families are going to laugh at me for my naiveté, I know, but one of the things that surprised me and kind of astonished me — and enchanted me — was the number of really beautiful women in the parish who had four, five, six, seven, eight, even nine or ten children.

And no, that's not code for "every mother of many children exudes an inner beauty." Not every mother is objectively beautiful — sorry, but it's true; some people look tired and harried all the time, even in their Sunday best. It may not be their fault. My point is: when I mention beautiful women, I really do mean visually beautiful, at least as objective as my own opinion can be.

[what you hear is the sound of cackling as the blogger imagines her fellow parishioners reading this and wondering, "Which kind am I?!?!"]

Seriously, though, to a young mother of two who had not spent a whole lot of time with the mothers of larger families, and who was toying with the idea of having several more children, it was kind of a relief to discover women with five or more children — and not just occasional freaks but really quite a lot of women! — who looked good, dressed stylishly (at least on Sunday!) and were, well, really radiant and happy-looking. Not having known very many mothers of five-plus kids (although now that I think of it, the few I had known by then were and are beautiful women, too) I guess I had always assumed that you must sacrifice your looks for your children. But it's not true — and that was a revelation to me.

We all acknowledge that women mostly dress to be seen by other women. That sounds catty. But it doesn't have to be.

Sure, some women dress to make other women jealous. Still, they can't control how others really see them. The attitude of the beholder is what transforms the experience into one of inspiration or of jealousy.

So — a big thank you from me to all the good-looking women out there with lots of kids. It helps. ;-)

May 9, 2011

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5 comments on Being seen by other women.
The third post in what seems to be a series about “acceptance.”

In the first post, I explained why it's nonsense to ask whether one should or shouldn't "accept one's body."  (And I offered examples of some better questions to ask in the second post.)

To "accept" a thing is, essentially, to receive it willingly.  One's body is not a thing that can be accepted or rejected, because one has always had it; one cannot receive it.

There are, however, things that it is possible to accept. For instance, I wrote, it's possible to "accept" a discomfort (meaning to endure it willingly), or to "accept" a proposition (meaning to believe and assent to it willingly).

So here are some propositions I urge my readers to accept, instead of wondering whether they should "accept" their own selves:

    (1) Permanent personal change would require you to accept discomfort.

    (2) Today, there is a limit to how much discomfort you can accept and for how long.

    (3) With practice, you can increase that limit.

    (4)   That is: Accepting discomfort really can change you.   For the better. Immediately.

Readers: Do you accept these propositions?

May 7, 2011

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6 comments on The third post in what seems to be a series about “acceptance.”
Accepting the facts and deciding to act on them.

In the last post, I replaced the vague question of "should I accept myself as I am?" with a process of discernment of a decision to change.

It occurred to me that these decisions have long-, medium-, and short-term manifestations, so I thought I'd work through an example. Perhaps this will become a series.

Here's what I came up with in that post:

1. Understand and believe the relevant facts.

2. From those facts, judge whether a change offers benefits.

3. If a change offers benefits, judge from the facts whether they are possible to attain.

4. If there are benefits that are possible to attain, determine from the facts how they could be attained.

5. Decide whether you want to expend the effort to attain them.



LONG-TERM LEVEL

Understand and believe the facts: "I wear such-and-such a dress size, or I went to the doctor and he told me I risk diabetes if I stay at my current weight."

Judge if a change is desirable: "Yes, I want to have a smaller dress size, or avoid developing diabetes."

Judge if a change is possible: "Yes, it must be possible because other people have permanently dropped a dress size or lost weight or changed their risk of developing diabetes. Many of them have done it by eating less or otherwise changing their diets. I don't yet have evidence that this approach would not work if I made a similar change in my behavior. So it's possible that if I permanently changed my behavior, I'd permanently drop a dress size or avoid diabetes."

Judge how such a change is possible: "Well, I could sit down and figure out what behaviors I could change most easily. Then I could develop some strategies to remind me of my motivation. That would take some planning time. I'd have to practice the new behaviors. That means learning to do something that's hard, over and over again. I'd also have to learn how to deal with negative comments from people who notice the changes I'm making. And I'll have to be ready to respond to setbacks by making useful adjustments instead of just giving up."

Decide: "Do I want to do this?"

MEDIUM-TERM LEVEL

Understand and believe the facts: "I figured out that I habitually take second and third helpings at meals. I don't actually know whether I could be satisfied with only one helping."

Judge if a change is desirable: "Yes, I don't want to be ignorant about whether I can be satisfied with only one helping. If I knew the answer to that question, I'd know whether sticking to one helping would be an easy way for me to permanently change my habits in the direction I want to go."

Judge if a change is possible: "Yes, I could find out the answer by trying out the behavior of stopping after one plateful, and then seeing if I feel satisfied after the food has been put away."

Judge how such a change is possible: "I'd have to resist eating second helpings after I finished my plate, and then I'd have to pay attention to how I feel for a while after the meal, and maybe write down my observations. I'll need several strategies to resist the temptation to take seconds – I could try eating slowly so that I don't finish my plate until it's nearly time to clear the dishes, or I could have a stick of gum ready to pop into my mouth as soon as I finish, or I could have a cup of coffee after dinner, or I could get up and leave the table as soon as my plate is empty.   I'd have to eat this way at several meals — say, five or six dinners — before I could really come to a conclusion. "

Decide: "Do I want to do this?"

   SHORT-TERM LEVEL

Understand and believe the facts: "I told myself I wanted to know whether I'd be satisfied with one helping. Now I've finished my helping and I want to eat more food. I won't know whether one helping satisfies me unless I can get to the end of the meal to find out how I feel after only having had one helping. But I want to eat more food and it sucks."

Judge if a change is desirable: "Yes, I don't want to sit here any more looking at the food and wanting it and knowing I could have it if I chose."

Judge if a change is possible: "Yes, I don't have to sit here any longer looking at the food. I could eat it. Or I could escape this situation. Or I could change the situation somehow so I wouldn't want the food anymore."

Judge how such a change is possible: "I could get up from the table and walk away. "

Decide: Do you want to do it?

See how small the changes can be? Even the long-term example needn't be "do I want to lose fifty pounds" or "do I want to drop six dress sizes," but can be a much tinier goal: "do I want to lose some weight" or "do I want a smaller dress size."   It's long-term because the intent is for it to be long-lasting, not because it'll take a long time to achieve. The medium-term example needn't be "do I want to eat fewer helpings at dinner," but "do I want to find out whether I would be satisfied with fewer helpings at dinner?" The short-term example is the most immediate: shall I resist this helping?

+ + +

I made up those examples. Tune in next time for a real-life, real-time example from my own frustrations with maintaining my current weight loss…

May 6, 2011

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5 comments on Accepting the facts and deciding to act on them.
What do you mean, “acceptance?”
On the post about vanity and physical fitness, Delores asked a question about weight loss:

what do you think is the sequence for losing weight? Not accepting your body, so you change it; or accepting who you are and then from that acceptance just 'loving' yourself enough to change.

I replied that I didn't think body acceptance was all that relevant:

I would say that dressing properly requires accepting the truth about your body. You should dress the body you have, not the body you wish you had or the body you fear you might have.

But for me, losing weight required accepting the truth about my behavior, not my body. Accepting or not accepting my body was sort of irrelevant.

I read that over a few times, and I am pretty sure that it's true. But, I had to think for a while to be sure that statement wasn't reading back the story I'd like to tell into the past.

But did you notice my vocabulary sleight-of-hand there?

I'm not really happy with the vocabulary surrounding the debate about "acceptance." Should people accept their bodies as they are? Is the fat-acceptance movement healthy or not?    The reason I don't like it is that the words "accept" and "acceptance" are kind of weaselly — they are chosen and used because they have positive connotations (who will come out against "acceptance?") but more information is needed before you can pin down the meaning precisely.

First of all, "to accept" needs an object to make any sense at all. One doesn't merely "accept," one accepts a thing — or a person, or a place, or an idea. A writer who understands this property of the verb "to accept" won't make the error of describing a person as "very accepting." It says nothing of substance, only imparts a glow of positivity, until the writer specifies: Exactly what does she accept?

Second, the verb morphs its meaning depending on what the object is. Watch this:

"I accepted the job" = "I agreed to the terms of the offer of employment."

"I accepted the gift" = "I agreed to receive the gift and I received it."

"The college accepted me" = "The college permitted me to enroll as a student."

"I accepted that fact" = "I acknowledged that fact as true."

"The restaurant accepts credit cards" = "The restaurant will receive payment in the form of credit cards"

"The employees accepted the poor working conditions" = "The employees endured the poor working conditions without complaining"

What all these threads of meaning have in common is the notion of receiving willingly or agreeably.   A thing which is "accepted" is received, along with all its consequences, whether they be good or bad, with the assent of the will in some way.   But notice the necessity of the concept of "receiving" — something is grasped, or taken, or taken on, that was not grasped before.

So when you're talking about "accepting a person" the meaning is perfectly clear if that person has undergone a sort of a change, has been "received." When a college accepts a student or a team accepts an athlete, the meaning is that a person has newly become a member of a group because the group has agreed to admit him. When a son's new bride is accepted as part of the family, that means that — even though the other family members didn't get to choose her — the family nevertheless willingly extends "membership privileges," treating her as they would a family member. When we Catholics in our wedding vows agree that we "will accept children lovingly from God" we mean that we promise to welcome children that we don't yet have. All of these cases involve an act of will, but also an act of receiving. Even if the receiving isn't our choice (as in the case of the in-laws, or sometimes in the case of the children!), the act of will that turns it from merely "receiving" to "receiving willingly" – to "accepting" – is a choice. That act of will may happen much later than the act of receiving (perhaps the in-laws take some time to "accept" the bride) but the receiving is still implied.

So — here's a question — how can one "accept one's body?"   "I receive my body willingly?" That doesn't really work, unless personhood and will precede embodiment, a belief that I'm betting few or none of my readers subscribe to.    I have been embodied since my beginning. I cannot "accept" it in any literal sense, because I never "received" it.   I can accept someone else's body (as a woman, I do, repeatedly in marriage and temporarily in pregnancy; as a Catholic, I do, repeatedly, in the Eucharist) but it's nonsense to say I accept my own.

So when we say something like "body acceptance," meaning one's own body, we must be using "body" as a euphemism or as shorthand for the real object of acceptance.

One possibility is that we accept a physical condition that our body is in.    This has a connotation of "endure without complaining" — in the way one might accept a privation, or a punishment, or the "poor working conditions" mentioned above, or a disease.

But even this isn't really specific enough to say whether such "acceptance" is healthy or unhealthy. What's going on inside?  The term doesn't specify whether the attitude is one of I'll-prove-I-can-withstand-this, or looking-on-the-bright-side, or uniting-my-suffering-to-the-suffering-of-Christ, or complaining-won't-help-so-why-bother. Any of these will do to be described as "accepting the conditions."    But I think you'll agree that which one is meant makes a very big difference to the spirit.

Another possibility is that we accept some idea or truth or statement about our body.   This means, simply, "we believe" that idea or truth. In that case, whether it's healthy to "accept" the truth or idea hinges on whether the truth is true!    "I accept that this morning I weighed 205 pounds" is a lot different from "I accept that I will always weigh more than 200 pounds."   "I accept that my physical condition increases my risk of developing diabetes" is a lot different from "I accept that I will develop diabetes." "I accept that I wear a size 16" is a lot different from "I accept that I have to wear big baggy clothes to hide my ugly hips."   "I accept that it's very difficult to exercise" is a lot different from "I accept that I am not able to exercise."

So, to return to Delores's question,

what do you think is the sequence for losing weight? Not accepting your body, so you change it; or accepting who you are and then from that acceptance just 'loving' yourself enough to change.

Does she mean "enduring" a body-condition, or does she mean "believing" a body-truth? I think the question becomes logical if we frame it as follows:

"What do you think is the sequence for losing weight?
- First, not accepting the proposition "Changing your body is impossible or undesirable." (In other words, accepting the proposition "Changing your body is possible and desirable.") Then, you change your body.
- Or accepting the relevant facts about yourself: that your body is in a certain condition, and that you live under certain constraints, and that you have certain tendencies and desires; and then with the power that comes from that knowledge, just willingly making sacrifices or acts of will that create good changes."
Wow! When you phrase it that way, it's stunningly obvious that this is not an either-or choice!

1. Understand and believe the relevant facts.

2. From those facts, judge whether a change offers benefits.

3. If a change offers benefits, judge from the facts whether they are possible to attain.

4. If there are benefits that are possible to attain, determine from the facts how they could be attained.

5. Decide whether you want to expend the effort to attain them.

That's the order of operations, without using the word "acceptance."
May 6, 2011

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1 comment on What do you mean, “acceptance?”
Vanity and physical fitness.

Betty Beguiles is blogging about the difference between making the effort to dress attractively and succumbing to the sin of vanity.   She names three innocent (read: vanity-proof) reasons to care about personal appearance:

First, I want my husband to know that more than a decade after we first started dating I still like to look pretty for him. I think that's a perfectly innocent way for me to express my affection.

Second, I think it's important to show my children that this vocation of mine is worthy of respect and that I value it. I want them to know how much I love being a wife and mother.

And third, I hope to witness to the culture effectively. I aim to convey to the world that I love my life and am thriving.


All of these are good reasons to put effort and resources toward appearance: dress for your family, dress for your work, and dress for the world.

How those efforts get expressed, of course, is going to be highly individual. Is self-expression another innocent reason to care about your appearance, or is that a sign of vanity? I'm not sure. I tend to think that if you carefully choose your clothing/makeup/footwear with "self-expression" as a primary goal — even if the result is sloppy or ugly – you might be creeping into "vain" territory, because it's such a self-conscious act. When a person dresses practically and attractively in accord with his or her state in life, though, the result can't help but let the self shine through, and be an expression of the unique combination that is the intersection of what she likes, what she needs, and what she does.

I caught this side comment with interest:

(Somewhat related is my goal of becoming more physically fit. I pursue this not to have a hot body, but rather because I want to be as healthy as possible…)

I call bluff on every woman who has ever uttered this.

Yes, yes, we're all supposed to pay lip service to "health" as the reason to become physically fit and lose weight and all that sort of thing. I've done it myself. But admit it people.

You (yes, you) want to have a hot body.

Health is more important! Yeah, yeah. But you also want to have a hot body.    To say otherwise is tantamount to saying, "I want to dress well, but not so that I look good. What's most important is to avoid hypothermia."

And I say that to want, and to work towards, and maintain what you've got in the hot-body department, whatever that may be is, absolutely permissible and nothing to be ashamed of, for all the same reasons that Betty outlined that it's permissible to dress attractively.

Is the road of consciously working towards physical fitness with the motivation of looking better fraught with temptations to vanity?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

So is the road of dressing attractively on purpose.  As one of Betty's commenters, the indefatigable Jen-of-Conversion-Diary, wrote in the combox to the linked post:

When I put effort into my appearance, especially if it's to go out in public, I ask myself if any part of my goal is to feel or be perceived as being better than other people. To me, that's the heart of vanity — wanting to be valued more than other people.

This applies to having a fit body as well as to having an attractive outfit. And believe me, the temptation is there. I got a tremendous rush from the realization, after my weight loss, that I looked so different (better, in my opinion) from before. It took me a few months to come down from it. I am still drawn to mirrors.

There's also the temptation to begin looking down on people who look more like you used to, or more like you look on a bad hair day, or whatever. Assuming that they (unlike you) are letting themselves go, lazy, etc.   I continue to struggle with the temptation to use unattractive strangers on the street as motivators to keep me from falling back to gluttonous habits: eyeing the fat people at the salad bar, and their plates, before I go up to choose my portion. It is not right for me to use my image of these unwitting strangers as a means to an end.

I'm not sure about reshaping one's wardrobe, but with something like weight loss or visibly improved fitness, vanity comes mixed with a good deal of temptation to pride. This is the thing that makes it different: For months and months, everyone congratulates you.    This does not tend to happen with clothing choice; I mean, someone might compliment you on your cute shoes or your new top, but nobody says "I wish I could dress like that" or "Tell me your secret" or "Gosh, it must have been a lot of really hard work" or "I can never find the time, how often do you get to the mall?"    But it does tend to reinforce the smug feeling of "I'm special, most people don't manage this, I did it all myself, I must be a really dedicated, strong, smart person compared to all those others," etc.

But — just like with desiring to dress attractively — the fact that sometimes it comes with vanity doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to desire to have an attractive body. Betty B.'s reasons will do just fine. Let's reiterate:

First, I want my husband to know that more than a decade after we first started dating I still like to look pretty for him. I think that's a perfectly innocent way for me to express my affection.

Second, I think it's important to show my children that this vocation of mine is worthy of respect and that I value it. I want them to know how much I love being a wife and mother.

And third, I hope to witness to the culture effectively. I aim to convey to the world that I love my life and am thriving.

These are all good reasons to want to be visibly, physically fit too.

In a way, you could think of the dressing part as an outward extension of the same impulse: dressing well means, in part, clothing the body you have as if you love it and care for it and appreciate its beauty.

It's a little bit of a paradox. I think it's pretty much impossible to dress well unless you're able, somehow, to accept the body that you are living in right now. We've all seen people who make the error of dressing as if they were 50 pounds lighter or 30 years younger. Or, heck, as if they were much heavier or older than they are. It doesn't look good. But on the other hand, dressing well is something that really improves the appearance of a body.   So you can't dress to enhance your body unless you first accept and acknowledge the body you have.

Which is, I think, also kind of true about trying to have that body itself be as good-looking as it can be.

May 4, 2011

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17 comments on Vanity and physical fitness.
Oblivious.

Ann Althouse comments on a NYT fluff piece about families, in the same room, disappearing into their own devices. She begins by quoting the NYT article:

"While it may look like some domestic version of 'The Matrix' — families sharing a common space, but plugged into entirely separate planes of existence through technology — a scene like this has become an increasingly familiar evening ritual. As a result, the American living room in 2011 can often seem less like an oasis for shared activity, even if that just means watching television together, than an entangled intersection of data traffic — everyone huddled in a cyber-cocoon."

It's a NYT culture article.

Is there a problem here? If a family of 4 were sitting around together reading books, it would seem better than if they were all watching the same show on TV. And yet, with books, you wouldn't be able to IM stuff to each other.

With either books or computers, if you're with other people, you can easily read something out loud to the people in the room and start a conversation. My grandfather used to do that with the newspaper, and I've come to think of it as a kind of proto-blogging.

I'm actually on Ann's side with this one.   As long as everybody shuts the things off when it's time to sit down around the family dinner table, as long as people respond to each other, as long as there are other things you can do as a family – I think there's something rather cozy about everyone being in the same room together and enjoying what they do. It reminds me a lot of when we used to get the newspaper and pass around the sections over our morning coffee.

Last weekend, I came home from my Saturday morning outing and told Mark about something I'd seen while I was having breakfast alone in a neighborhood cafe. "There were groups there, and young families with children, but also there were several couples sitting across from one another — older couples, younger couples too — each person using their own laptop." He smiled knowingly as I went on, "They were all sitting there in the booth together, drinking their coffee and staring at their own screens. And I thought –" I sighed and delivered the punchline: "It was so romantic."

I made him laugh, but I was serious!

Not that it isn't romantic that he will take care of the children any Saturday morning I wish while I run errands and get a little quiet time inside my own head.   But sometimes when I am sitting by myself having coffee and eggs Benedict — and by the way, I do really love sitting by myself in a restaurant, it's one of the great little pleasures of my life — I wish there were some way to share my lovely solitude.

And there's something about the casualness of it that I envy a little bit: Those couples, maybe, get so much uninterrupted time together that they can afford to squander it just sitting together with their laptops.   It's not as if I'm going to hire a babysitter just so I can sit in a cafe across from my husband, snickering at blogs while he shops online for carabiners, taking each other's presence for granted.

No, gosh darn it, if we get some time alone out together, we have to make the most of it!   Reservations at fancy restaurant, check! Get all dressed up, check! Conversation… must have conversation… ummm…. quick, don't waste it, come up with something!

So, yes, a little envy there. I banish it for now, and remind myself that chances are good there will be time to ignore each other when the children are grown.

May 1, 2011

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3 comments on Oblivious.
Earth.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that yesterday I had a guest post on Jennifer Fulwiler's most excellent blog Conversion Diary. She got the idea to go through the Our Father word by word and solicit guest posts one word at a time. I got lucky with "Earth." Check it out here. A link to the entire "Our Father" series is here.

I imagine that am probably single-handedly responsible for a HUGE spike in Jen's traffic yesterday. Of course, it all comes from my spending most of my day obsessively checking Jen's blog to see if anyone left any comments on my post.

It was a big step for me, though, because I allowed her to post it under my real name. I don't do that very often.

Apr 29, 2011

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No comments on Earth.
Impressions.

Betty Beguiles is blogging about the idea that dressing reasonably well is "a contributing factor to a happy marriage." She will be posting more about it in upcoming days, she says. The comments are worth reading:

"As I have gained esteem for myself, I have begun putting more care into how I dress and style myself. As I have put more care into my appearance, I gain more confidence and esteem in myself. Both are necessary."

"*sigh* As I sit here in a paint spattered T-shirt and athletic shorts, I secretly bemoan the warmer weather that is riding in on a tide of tornados. Because…. I love my yoga pants. Again, I say *sigh*. "

" I firmly believe putting forth a little effort can bear much fruit. It shows my husband that I still care about looking lovely for him a decade into our marriage, it's a nice witness to a culture that often devalues SAHMs, it shows my children that I value my vocation and it energizes me. "

"I do try very hard to not look like a complete slob. Not that my husband would love me less; but a skirt does make a difference in my mood. Last week I was behind on laundry and all my skirts were dirty so I was stuck with yoga pants. I felt scuzzy."

"I love how you said looking put together can show that your role as a stay home mom has value (although you said it more eloquently). That really resonates with me….sure, it can contribue to a happier marriage. It is a snowball affect – you take a little extra time for yourself, put on a little makeup or an outfit that makes you feel good. So you do feel good. It shows. Your husband comes home to a woman who looks just a little nicer, a little happier, a little more content with herself – because she feels a little better. He'll notice and whether he says anything or not, he'll appreciate it. …I will confess to being a jeans and t-shirt type of girl. But I'm working on taking my casual/comfortable style to a little more stylish/comfortable :)."

I think this is an interesting train of thought, although I am not really sure to what extent I agree with it. On the one hand, I definitely try to avoid the "sloppy mommy look." On the other hand, whereas some of her commenters refer derisively to going out in yoga pants, I am actually pretty happy and pleased to walk out the door wearing my running clothes. Readers of this blog will know that I consider it a sort of badge of honor that I (a) own running clothes and (b) actually use them for running. If I am headed out the door with my yet-to-be-washed hair stuffed into a bandanna and my running clothes on, you can bet that "go to gym" is on my to-do list.

And then of course, there is the statement — which I pretty much agree with — that women (when they pay attention to what they wear) don't typically dress to send signals to men, even their husbands; they dress to send signals to other women.

But I didn't want to wax at length about these theories without some data from the male sex, so I popped up to the bedroom where Mark was idly (I hope) reading a book about ice climbing, and asked, "Do you think that a wife's dressing well is a contributing factor to a happy marriage? I mean, does it matter to you if I dress nicely?"

He thought about it for a while and then said: "When we go out, I like it if you put on clothes that project a false impression that we have our shit together."

There you go. I definitely married the right person.

Apr 27, 2011

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8 comments on Impressions.
Co-schooling: Study hall.

The school year is winding down, and Hannah and I hashed out some end-of-the-year co-schooling thoughts over tea.

We keep bouncing around the idea of writing an article or, more likely, putting together a talk on co-schooling that we can shop around to the homeschooling conferences. We've been doing it for a few years together now and learned quite a lot, but it feels to me as if I need to talk to some other people who have tried co-schooling, with varying degrees of success, before I could possibly start to generalize about ways to make it successful. "We only know what works for us," I said, "I'm not sure I could tell other people how to make it work. Maybe you and I are just freakishly lucky that it's turned out so well."

Hannah said, "No, we have definitely learned some things that are universal." She went on to list things that we've figured out are important, like having a shared understanding of what you're trying to get out of the arrangement, and prioritizing the scheduled-together days, and having a plan of some sort for every child in the house, and each parent teaching the things they're enthusiastic about teaching.

I think she's probably right, but I would still rather find some other people who have attempted co-schooling. If only because then maybe I could understand better why it works so well for us and why so few other people make it work well for longer than a few weeks. I like data better than anecdotes.

Maybe few homeschoolers would really want to do anything similar to what we do. Hannah suggested that homeschoolers as a group are maybe very much "we do it my way because my way is the way that works for our family" people, and co-schooling inherently forces you to let go of some of the control you have over curriculum, teaching style, even child discipline, and hand it over to someone else for part of your teaching time. If we liked doing that sort of thing, we'd probably have our kids in school, right?

The discussion trailed off with us talking about how we've noticed that our 7- and 8-year-old boys, plus our friend's girl (Thirteen today! How the $^% did that happen?!?!) who joins us, are the three kids who could use a little more work added to their co-schooling day. We're already kind of maxed out on direct teaching time, especially since there's be a busy toddler to contend with now, but fortunately all three of them probably could use more high-level independent work. My 7-year-old, for example, now that he's reading fairly fluently on grade level, is ready to work on the skill of "read-and-answer-written-questions-about-the-reading."

We tossed around a few ideas, and decided to give them each a "study hall" period. For the teenage girl, we decided to ask her to bring a book to read, and to start her on a journal, and we'll give her a block of time for reading and writing in the journal on various little journal-starter assignments we can give her. As for the boys, we'll choose something workbook-y that the boys can probably do independently, not the same subject matter but the same kind of work, and have them sit together and do the work quietly for a time.

Should it be a set time period or a set amount of work? We don't want them either to sit idly waiting for the timer to ding, or to rush through a page to get it over with. In the end we decided to give them a particular daily assignment (say, two workbook pages) AND a twenty-minute minimum, so that if they happen to finish the assignment before the time's up they have to read or something until their study hall is over, but if they run out of time before they finish the assignment then they have to keep working until they're done. We'll try it out over the summer to see how it works when they don't have very much other work to do.

The "study hall" will be a major experiment for us, because one of the things we swore we weren't ever going to do again was to have kids working side-by-side on different work. Way back when our first kids were the same ages, we were trying to do co-schooling that way: each of us bringing our own curriculum and trying to teach our own child our own way, but in the same house. It was no fun at all, and that was what we threw out when we started our "new way" of bringing the kids together, giving up some of the control to each other. But maybe now that we've learned a few things, we'll be able to teach kids how to work on their own work while still enjoying each other's company.

I think it's funny that we often wind up borrowing terminology – like "study hall" — from the school-y environment that we have been trying to avoid. Clearly, in working together in a family-like environment, in a home, we're trying to assemble the best of both worlds. Home. School.

Meanwhile, we have other concerns, like trying to cram in the end of the history books by the end of June so we can actually have a "summer vacation" that means something…

Apr 27, 2011

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7 comments on Co-schooling: Study hall.