Is the Pound I Lost the Same I Gained? Finding Wisdom in Weight
As I stared at the pair of jeans that had rotated through my “fits perfectly,” “not a chance,” and “maybe with a little wiggle” categories over the years, I couldn’t help but wonder: is the pound I lost the same one I gained back?
And more importantly, what has this dance with the scale taught me about the weightier matters of wisdom and spirit?
The Physical Reality
My body and I have been on negotiating terms for over seven decades now. Living with MS has made it an interesting conversation, to say the least.
We’ve traveled together from the slimness of youth to the fullness of middle age, back to a more moderate territory during periods of renewed discipline, and up again when life had other priorities for me.
Each fluctuation came with its own wardrobe crisis and emotional soundtrack. There was the “nothing fits” panic of weight gain and the “everything’s baggy” celebration of weight loss.
There were doctors’ appointments where I dreaded the scale and seasons when I stepped on it with pride.
What I’ve noticed, though, is that the same weight feels different at different ages. The body I had in my fifties somehow distributed itself differently than the one that emerged in my sixties and seventies.
My body remembered previous versions of itself, but wore each phase like a different outfit entirely.
Which makes me wonder – what if those pounds carry different meanings when they return? What if they’re not the same at all, but rather new weight, bearing the wisdom of where I’ve been?
The Spiritual Weight
There’s something about getting older that involves a curious kind of loss.
Year by year, I’ve watched certain things slip away – the absolute certainties I once held, the rigid beliefs about how life should unfold, the illusion that I could control every outcome if I just tried hard enough.
I remember the day I finally admitted to myself that I couldn’t manage my MS through willpower alone.
For decades, I’d held tight to the belief that if I just pushed harder, researched more, or found the perfect combination of treatments, I could outsmart this condition.
Letting go of that belief felt like watching something precious drift away on the current – terrifying and heartbreaking.
The space that opened up when I released that tightly-held control felt empty at first, almost weightless.
Like stepping onto the scale after losing weight, there was both satisfaction and a strange sense of absence.
Who was I if not the person constantly fighting against my body’s limitations?
But nature abhors a vacuum, doesn’t it? That empty space didn’t stay empty for long. Something else began to take shape in the clearing I’d created – a gentler relationship with my body, a deeper compassion for others facing their own battles, a humility that connected me to the world in ways my stubborn self-sufficiency never could.
This loss – of certainty, of control, of the person I thought I needed to be – initially felt heavy with grief.
But the mysterious alchemy of aging transformed it into something else entirely. It wasn’t just that I’d lost something and gained something else. The very substance of what I carried had changed.
The Weight of Wisdom
It turns out wisdom weighs differently than certainty ever did.
Like muscle versus fat, they might register the same on the scale, but they function entirely differently in the body.
Last month, I ran into an old friend who had once wounded me deeply. Years ago, the encounter would have sent me spinning into rehearsed speeches and reopened hurts.
But standing there in the grocery store, I felt something unexpected – a genuine curiosity about her life, a recognition of how we had both been doing our imperfect best back then.
The anger I’d carried for so long had transformed into something heavier yet somehow easier to bear – understanding.
That’s the paradox of the wisdom we gain as we age. It often comes with more complexity, more nuance, more awareness of life’s contradictions – all of which should make it heavier to carry.
And yet, there’s a strange lightness to it. The wisdom I’ve gained at seventy-seven distributes its weight more evenly across my spirit than the brittle knowledge I clutched at forty.
My younger self carried her certainties like dumbbells – impressive, perhaps, but exhausting to maintain.
My older self carries her wisdom like water, flowing around obstacles rather than crashing into them.
Both have their weight, but one allows for movement while the other restricts it.
Living with MS (and now aging) has taught me this lesson repeatedly. Each time my body changes, each time I’ve had to adapt to new limitations or unexpected capabilities, I’ve had to let go of one way of being to embrace another.
The weight of experience accumulates, but it settles differently than I would have expected – not as a burden but as ballast that helps me navigate life’s storms with surprising steadiness.
The Transformation
Those jeans I mentioned earlier? They might zip up the same, but they’re definitely not experiencing the same body they once contained.
The pounds may register identically on the scale, but they’re distributed across a body that has learned to carry itself with the quiet dignity of weathering countless changes.
I think about how trees add rings each year – technically gaining weight but actually gaining history, story, resilience. Each ring represents both growth and survival.
Perhaps we’re not so different.
Looking in the mirror now, I see the lines that mark where I’ve smiled and worried, the softness that speaks of comfort foods during hard times, the strength that remains despite challenges.
My body tells the story of a life fully lived, not a battle won or lost against the scale.
I smile thinking how both my body and my spirit have developed these character lines with age.
The extra padding around my middle has its spiritual counterpart in the cushion of compassion I’ve developed for myself and others.
The strength in my hands, despite arthritic changes, mirrors the persistent grip I maintain on joy despite life’s difficulties.
Conclusion
So, is the pound I lost the same I gained?
Not by a long shot.
Life may bring us full circle in many ways – returning us to weights we’ve known before, reintroducing us to versions of ourselves we thought we’d left behind.
But we’re carrying these familiar states with unfamiliar wisdom. Each time we circle back, we do so with the accumulated experiences of all our previous journeys.
There’s something profoundly comforting in this realization. Nothing is truly lost – not even the pounds we thought we’d bid farewell. They return transformed by our journey, just as we have been. And in their return, they bring gifts: perspective, humor, acceptance.
As I fold those temperamental jeans and place them back in the drawer, I can’t help but smile at how much meaning we can find in something as mundane as weight fluctuation.
Perhaps that’s the greatest wisdom of aging – finding profound truths in ordinary experiences, and carrying that understanding with a lightness that defies its depth.
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