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Joni Edelman, 40, of California has started a internet conversation over her online essay about her “rollercoaster” ride of weight loss and weight gain.
The mother of five describes why she gained weight and lost weight with factors such as losing a child, divorce, breastfeeding, 12-hour shifts, a broken ankle, and many other life events that played a part in what the scale said.
Once a size four, Edelman said to maintain that size and weight she had to eat only 1,000 calories a day, run 35 miles a week. She had to deny herself food and was constantly hungry.
“Being a size 4 made it infinitely easier to shop for clothes and presumably to look ‘better’ in clothes, because let’s face it, clothes are mostly designed for people who are a size 4. Being a size 4 made strangers’ heads turn. Repeatedly. It made men in the grocery store hit on me and doctors at the hospital propose torrid affairs. It made me obsessive about every detail of my body, from my stretch-marked belly to the definition of my bicep.”
In the Today.com story, Edelman presented a photo of herself at age 35, when she was the thinnest she’d been since high school. Then she contrasted that to a current photo of herself. Five years later and obviously several more pounds heavier, Edelman says of this photo: “I’m the one who looks like the mother.”
Her main point: “Happiness does not require thinness. Fatness does not presume sadness.”
“You want to really blow people’s minds? Try this at home: Be fat and happy. Be unapologetically fat. Wear a bikini, and mean it. Eat pizza and ice cream and enjoy it. Drink up your life and a bottle of wine, and make no apologies.”
On Edelman’s Instagram account, she describes herself as: Wife “Mom of 5. RN. Freelance writer. Body positive. Cake and carrot lover. Yarn hoarder. Dirty handed gardener. Had a baby in my kitchen.”
Find her on twitter at Twitter.com/joniboloney
