Book

I tossed out a little book today that I have had for years. In it, I meticulously charted my measurements: calves, thighs, waist, hips, bust. These measurements appear in my own personal shorthand, sometimes accompanied by summaries of the week’s workouts.

The first entry was from 2014, after the birth of my first child, back when I first realized I needed to account for the “snapping back” of my postpartum body. The book chronicles yo-yo periods when I’d go up or down an inch here or there, and even the dark time after my second child’s birth, when everything went haywire. Here I saw the pen slashing angrily in the page, pressing too hard as I recorded the many excess inches due to my broken thyroid.

I have been vaguely aware of this book and its location in my house, really at all times over the years and through moves. It’s there along with the Pepto Bismol-pink tape measure in a drawer in my bathroom, pen clipped to spine.

Today, I finally thew it away. While I haven’t measured myself in a few months, I want to be free of that little book with its petty numbers. The funny thing is, throughout all the peaks and valleys, in all honesty, I’m pretty darn close to being exactly the same size and weight I’ve always been—it’s where my body seems to normalize and stay.

Day 144.