Weight loss. Every fat girl thinks about it. No one can stop reminding us. Ads, magazines, tv, commercials, mothers, girlfriends, spam email. And now, as I'm preparing to have a wedding, of course it's intensified exponentially. Everything is "get fit now" this and "have the best shoulders ever" that. I'm sick of it. Oh god, this could get ranty.
The really hard part? I'm also really sick of being overweight and unhealthy. I love my body, don't get me wrong. I make great food choices but add too much sugar. I maintain my weight very easily, especially considering the levels of stress hormone pumping through my veins my entire adult life.
The hardest part, for me, is finding motivation to do something I despise. I love swimming and water aerobics, but the pool I have access to is surrounded by oak trees, to which I'm severely allergic. It's also in direct sunlight and I can't afford that much sunblock. I LOVE doing bikram yoga more than any other exercise I've ever done, but it's ungodly expensive. I hate the feeling of working out. I hate feeling the pain of scoliosis, I hate being uncomfortable on bike seats made for already tight asses, I hate being sweaty and feeling like I'll never cool back down. I hate it all. I hate having to wipe down machinery. I hate having to peel off lycra clothing. I hate crappy sports bras, the bound breast feeling is awful.
I hate diets. I always make them into some kind of mindfuck game. I tried Weight Watchers for a couple of months in my early 20s, I was eating five one point items a day, two pieces of fruit, and two cups of black coffee. I wish I could hug that me. I was panicked about whether I would get up in the middle of the night and need a beer or a glass of wine, or worse, a spoonful of ice cream, and not remember it the next morning. I tried writing down what I eat, because that is supposed to automatically make you eat less, since writing it down makes you feel more accountable. That was even worse than the Weight Watchers incident.
I also hate living in a culture that marginalizes fatties like me. I feel like I shouldn't be taken less seriously or made fun of for my weight. Even my own family, when they were speaking to me, never failed to ask if I was losing weight. Everyone growing up seemed to be hoping to lose weight. Mom was on several drugs and diets, and after age 50, like most other people on her side of the family, she was finally able to shake most of the excess weight and drop out of plus sizes into a large at her smallest.
You know what else I hate? BMI. Who came up with this shit? I'm muscular. I know I'm fat too, but even at a size six in high school I was Popeye-arm-curvy and had calves too big for normal shaft width boots of any kind, and a full D cup. If you'd taken my BMI when I was 14 and had 17% body fat, I would've been labeled obese. I have broader set bones, a hell of a lot of mammary tissue, and muscles. I still have normal blood pressure and, despite having diabetic and hypoglycemic relatives, I don't appear to have issues related to blood sugar. My corn product intake is extremely low, due to my intolerance of it.
I'm tired of people trying to tell me all about their diets. I'm tired of people who are of equal or healthier weights telling me about their fat or their weight loss plans. I know the basics of most diets. I know how to proportion my food. I know how to exercise and count calories. Hell, I know how to calculate Weight Watchers points. I can tell you that excluding carbohydrates is a stupid and impossible idea, and that vegan diets aren't going to work for someone who craves dairy products. I go through one half gallon of 1% milk a week.
I don't know what my point is anymore. I want to lose weight because it'll make my life easier; but I'm not interested in making my entire life about only that. I want to be healthy, but not at the cost of my self esteem or confidence, or because I'm caving to some kind of social pressure. I don't want to be congratulated for losing weight, I wouldn't even know how to react to that. I can't stand to do exercise that doesn't consume my entire attention and leave me brain power enough to be able to think about doing anything else. My back problems limit what I'm able to do. Ugh, ugh to the whole thing!
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