On Being Zennier

One day I was driving down Highway 9 feeling exceeding frumpy. Not just frumpy, but also fat and fatigued. I worked myself up into a snit of dissatisfaction. I wanted to go buy new clothes, as if that would help. Then I stopped and noticed what I was doing, and told myself, in a slightly rude tone, "You should be Zennier!" As in, if only I could have a more Zen approach to life I would not be in this snit, if only, if only. I laughed at the irony of my silly internal dialog. I was approaching Zen Buddhism with the same whiny graspingness that I was approaching the desire to go shopping as an antidote for my unfortunate frumpiness.

I rolled my eyes at myself and moved on to something a little more productive. The being Zennier was not bad advice in and of itself. What would it mean to let go of desire--like the desire to be thinner and better dressed and more energetic--and simply accept each moment, accept my body (and my wardrobe)? Try to imagine fully accepting your body, just as it is. I felt very strongly that there was something to this, that this might indeed be the key I'd been looking for, that maybe accepting your body just as it is would unlock it's capacity to change into what you really wanted it to be. What? I might have been on to something, but I was clearly missing something.

Plus, wasn't fully accepting my body what got me into this in the first place? While I was pregnant with my daughter, I decided to do something I'd never done before: trust my body. Well, what my body told me to do during my pregnancy was eat, and, especially, to eat hot fudge sundaes. I gained 50 pounds and birthed a 10 1/2 pound baby. I continued to eat with great gusto, but breastfeeding my giant baby allowed me to lose all the weight I'd gained. It was a happy time. Then her new little teeth started to rot, and her dentist recommended I wean her. Although my body wanted desperately to keep nursing, my milk was turning her perfect little teeth to dust, so I did what I was told. Unfortunately, no one told me to stop eating for two.

As I continued to find great pleasure in eating, I simply accepted my body as it grew and grew. I thought of all my training in feminism and the impact of the media on our body images and expectations, our ideas of beauty, and I chose to be what I thought was a good feminist and a good Buddhist and just accepted my growing body for what it was.

Well, needless to say, that approach turned out to be a little misguided. There was nothing wrong with striving toward feminism and Buddhism, to be sure, but I must have been going about it all the wrong way, because I ended up too fat to be happy or healthy. I still can't quite work it all out in my head. There's something about this deep acceptance that still feels compelling and important, but if you accept your body as it is, how do you motivate yourself to set goals and make changes to help your body be happier and healthier? I'm really stuck on this, and I'm hoping someone out there is a better Buddhist than I am and can shed some light on this conundrum. (I'm not even a Buddhist, so that makes this whole circular argument even more off track!) In the meantime, I'm reading a book called "The Zen of Eating," so perhaps that will guide me. I'll let you know when I get it all figured out!