the cure for stretch marks

personal trainer diary

If you have them, you know.  Whether 100 pounds or 300 pounds, 18 years old or postmenopausal, we are united by our stretch marks.

Some women, like myself, are doomed from the beginning.  My stretch marks began in my teens.  I grew so fast over my fourteenth year that I even have stretch marks on my knees!  I am used to my stretch marks.  They have faded to slim, silvery reminders of my adolescence and I barely notice them unless they happen to catch the light on a bright summer day…  I thought I would be prepared to deal with the mother of all stretches – the postpartum stretch.  “How bad can they get?”  I thought…

Not bad at all if your dream is to resemble a purple zebra.  For those of us who aim for a more human look, they’re pretty bad.  But maybe “bad” is the wrong word.  They’re pretty “extreme.”  But they’re a more-than-fair price to pay for the wonderful little person who gave them to me.

My stretch marks are now collapsed in on themselves, as only my fellow mothers will understand, into an ultimately even less appealing lump of crepey skin not unlike the back of my great grandmother’s nearly century-old hands.

How’s that for imagery?

As my husband, J, and I begin planning our first child-free getaway in more than two years, I feel myself becoming unusually preoccupied with my stretch marks.  This will be the first time I appear in public, stretched, as it were, and half-nude.  It’s a rite of passage of sorts.  My first inclination was to run out and snap up every decent one-piece swimsuit in a fifty-mile radius but, as I vowed aloud never again to wear a two-piece, my husband’s horrified look started to change my mind.  If he was so horrified at the prospect of my moratorium on bikinis, maybe I didn’t look quite so awful as I thought.  Sure, I don’t look the way I did five years ago, but I’ve worked hard in the last year to lose 40 pounds of baby weight and I am more motivated than ever to stay active and healthy.

I’m in the business of making people look good and – more importantly – feel good about the way they look.  Sometimes, in my own life, it helps to imagine my own problems are the problems of a client and imagine how I would respond as their coach and confidante.

I would definitely not let my client self resign herself to a bikini-free life.

Next week I will book a date with my most trusted advisor (my sister) and begin the search for a new bikini.  Wish me luck!