170, Indeterminate Inches
As of yesterday, I've been "lean-eating" for two weeks.
This started for a multiplicity of reasons.
1 - I'm fat. Well, no, but according to any body-mass index, health professional, and the scores of items in my wardrobe that no longer fit in any way shape or form, I'm fat. I must say that I'm grateful to the morbidly obese population, if only for giving us a term for people who are truly fat, thus freeing the term fat for those of us who just need to lose weight. So I'm not morbidly obese.
But when I sit at my desk, I have to push the waist of my pants either over and under my spare tires. I take the elevator at school so that I won't get overly hot and crabby walking up four short flights of stairs. In flash photography, my butt pretty much shines, because the stretch material in my pants is maxed out, and therefore reflects my fatness to infamy in pictorial form. Fatness.
2 - I eat too much. I mean, I don't sit with one of those big plastic tubs of ice cream with handles and eat it in one sitting. I don't 10 sugared sodas a day. I don't finish off whole boxes of Lucky Charms. But I like food. As it says: I live to eat. Not the other way around.
Eating is fun. I like it. A lot. It is a preferred pasttime. I'm not like the French. I'm the American. I finish off plates at restaurants, enough food for 3 meals. It wasn't always this way, nor will it always be, but when things are crazy, as they often are, and I feel poor and neglected on any other level, I finish what I've started. And that's usually a bag of buffalo-wing potato chips.
3. Clothing. As mentioned before, a large part of my more enjoyable wardrobe is off-limits to me. I have a lot of choice clothing. I collect it. I also sew, and collect fabric and patterns for a time when I can actually make them. Also, my favorite season is summer, with the preferred "uniform" being a sundress. And some sort of shoe. No bra. No straps, even. And all that fabric, all those patterns, well, they are sundresses waiting to barely clothe me throughout the humid and oppressive and wonderful midwestern summers. I can't look like a sausage in a sundress. I have that much awareness of my social responsibility to the aesthetic well-being of others, and I am not a pretty sight.
Those are the main reasons. Of course, I could've put 4. health 5. emotional well-being 6. outright self-esteem boost 7. etc. but these are all pretty secondary to me, at least when it comes to motivations. They are all powerful reasons to stay on the wagon, but they don't get me on the wagon. For that matter, I'm not sure what really gets me on the wagon. But the holidays are over, school has started, I have money for food, and being that my husband and I have to be 90 miles apart during the week to finish our degrees - I only have to focus on my own caloric intake. And summer is coming. And dang, I want to wear some of those choice 80's vintage duds on my formal rack. And not look like I was poured into them.
Amen.
This started for a multiplicity of reasons.
1 - I'm fat. Well, no, but according to any body-mass index, health professional, and the scores of items in my wardrobe that no longer fit in any way shape or form, I'm fat. I must say that I'm grateful to the morbidly obese population, if only for giving us a term for people who are truly fat, thus freeing the term fat for those of us who just need to lose weight. So I'm not morbidly obese.
But when I sit at my desk, I have to push the waist of my pants either over and under my spare tires. I take the elevator at school so that I won't get overly hot and crabby walking up four short flights of stairs. In flash photography, my butt pretty much shines, because the stretch material in my pants is maxed out, and therefore reflects my fatness to infamy in pictorial form. Fatness.
2 - I eat too much. I mean, I don't sit with one of those big plastic tubs of ice cream with handles and eat it in one sitting. I don't 10 sugared sodas a day. I don't finish off whole boxes of Lucky Charms. But I like food. As it says: I live to eat. Not the other way around.
Eating is fun. I like it. A lot. It is a preferred pasttime. I'm not like the French. I'm the American. I finish off plates at restaurants, enough food for 3 meals. It wasn't always this way, nor will it always be, but when things are crazy, as they often are, and I feel poor and neglected on any other level, I finish what I've started. And that's usually a bag of buffalo-wing potato chips.
3. Clothing. As mentioned before, a large part of my more enjoyable wardrobe is off-limits to me. I have a lot of choice clothing. I collect it. I also sew, and collect fabric and patterns for a time when I can actually make them. Also, my favorite season is summer, with the preferred "uniform" being a sundress. And some sort of shoe. No bra. No straps, even. And all that fabric, all those patterns, well, they are sundresses waiting to barely clothe me throughout the humid and oppressive and wonderful midwestern summers. I can't look like a sausage in a sundress. I have that much awareness of my social responsibility to the aesthetic well-being of others, and I am not a pretty sight.
Those are the main reasons. Of course, I could've put 4. health 5. emotional well-being 6. outright self-esteem boost 7. etc. but these are all pretty secondary to me, at least when it comes to motivations. They are all powerful reasons to stay on the wagon, but they don't get me on the wagon. For that matter, I'm not sure what really gets me on the wagon. But the holidays are over, school has started, I have money for food, and being that my husband and I have to be 90 miles apart during the week to finish our degrees - I only have to focus on my own caloric intake. And summer is coming. And dang, I want to wear some of those choice 80's vintage duds on my formal rack. And not look like I was poured into them.
Amen.
posted by radtothebad at 1:50 PM
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