Battle of the Body

"Nothing tastes as good as thin feels" ~ source unknown

When I was 9 or 10 - I can't remember exactly how old but I'm pretty sure it was well before my teenage years, in other words much too young - I marched down the stairs on a weekend morning and announced importantly to my parents that I was going on a diet. My grand plan? I was only going to eat carrots.

I can't recall how they reacted but I do remember my Dad saying something like "I guess you won't be wanting any of these delicious pancakes I'm making then." And I - flush with my new commitment to what I perceived as a much-needed weight loss - merely hesitated for one moment and then plopped down in a chair at the table to dig in. "Oh well, I'll start eating carrots tomorrow."

And so began a life-long ambivalence towards dieting - something I've not been much good at. Though I've never been a "skinny minny" as I like to say, I was lucky enough that I didn't really have to worry about my weight for many years of my life.

Playing soccer from a young age all the way through college, I was always very active and therefore able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted without undue consequence. And, whatever issues my parents saddled me with that I have to take responsibility for and deal with now, a problem with food or full-blown eating disorder is, fortunately, not one of them. In fact, I hated the way women seemed so preoccupied with weight and found it tiresome, trite & boring.

In my early days of awakening to the injustices of socialization I basically took it on as a feminist issue and tried to get my friends to realize that dieting was a form of sexist oppression. I still remember hanging out in the hallways of our freshman(woman!) dorm one evening and my friends engaging in that particularly female routine ritual of communal self-loathing which consisted of picking apart every self-perceived imperfection possible.

And me exclaiming in sudden frustration "Let's talk about what we like about our bodies for a change. For instance, I just love this little freckle on my right thigh, it's so dang cute!" The silence was probably deafening but I only remember feeling how certain I was that we were not meant to hate ourselves like that, and wanting them to understand that it was possible to feel better.

Yet I was obviously under the influence of some degree of "body dysmorphia" that as a pre-adolescent I was convinced that there was something about my body that was wrong and needed fixing -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder

I look at photos of me from that time and laugh at the notion that I needed to lose weight back then - especially now that I've gone through several rounds of gaining and losing weight since.

Because, fast forward a couple decades and given many a year since college logged at sedentary desk jobs, like most people, I found myself needing to lose weight for real. And to "just eat carrots" was not a sane, healthy or realistic option. So, the first time in my life that I actually lost weight I did it with lots of exercise and cutting back on calories.

Real simple. And, as I recall, not all that hard. But I was in my 20s yet and had a worthy goal: my "carrot on a stick" - yes, pun intended - was my 5 year college reunion, back in Spring of 1998. It was great and I felt powerful: it was the first time in my life I had gone on a diet plan and it had worked!

But it didn't last - fast forward to 2006, past buying a house, getting married and even more years spent at a desk, I had even more weight to lose. 60 pounds in fact, and that time I did it with Weight Watchers. Slow and steady and harder than the first time but I did it, again. (Meanwhile my husband David was effortlessly losing weight by doing something called The Paleolithic Diet, but that's his story to tell, not mine. But link included for those who want to know - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet)

After that I gained some back, lost it again with Weight Watchers and almost got back to what I weighed when I was 18 years old going off to college (back when I, despite my feminist aspirations, still thought I was probably a little bit "fat"). Then we turned our lives upside down & moved to Florida and before I knew it I was back AGAIN well beyond the healthy range of the BMI calculators you can easily find on the internet. How I hate them, even when I think I'm good I always end up too heavy to qualify as "normal" - ugh
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

It's all so tedious and I find me boring myself with my own blog post. But I have to admit that my most recent weight gain coupled with impatience and some amount of desperation (I just couldn't stand to do Weight Watchers again!) and the testimony of several people I know convinced me to embark on the HCG diet plan which I've been doing now for 24 straight days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/hcg-diet.htm

It's been hard but I've been determined and it has worked, I almost immediately lost about 14 pounds. More than that, I've been eating way more fruit than ever before, getting tons more sleep, going to the gym regularly and David tells me I've been much happier since I started so....

But I've plateaued big time since my initial weight loss and been frustrated in the last couple weeks so tonight I snapped & splurged on fried fish&chips and beer. Maybe I'll get back on tomorrow but either way, the battle of the body, which I so reluctantly participate in, continues despite my best intentions, aged feminist convictions and inherent intelligence....

I have one more month before we go to the island of St.Martin (our first real vacation since 2009!) and maybe at some point I'll "just eat carrots" if that's what it takes to feel good in that mythical bikini on the beach. :)