This is what the internet tells me as I click through site after site of weigh loss advice.
Oh, there is no lack of information on the web for how to get your skinny on.
The problem, no one is getting skinnier by sitting on their ass at the keyboard.
Some people want to get slimmer, some people want to gain weight, and a very few and select special people love their body just the way it is.
That's right, they are the special ones.
Realistically, I know there isn't any reason for me to lose weight except for my own desire to get in shape and trim up or whatever my newest body ambition turns out to be.
At this point, I am relatively comfortable with my body.
80% comfortable. That's a pretty good number.
But I believe most women aren't happy with their body (I'll not be sexist and say that a majority of men aren't satisfied as well). But this is about women in particular. At one time or another most every woman with which I've had a conversation talks about their weight. Some in a very direct way, "Oh, I've gotten fat since...(insert minor traumatic or life changing experience here)" or "I've lost so much weight since...(insert minor traumatic or life changing experience here)." Some ladies go about it in a very round-about way, "I've stopped eating wheat and sugar, and drinking. And I feel great!" (An apology for my composite characterization of a few select friends). Some in a very understated way, "I just don't feel like myself anymore." I like to think I avoid conversations about weight with my people because it's a conversation that has become as casual as, "How's the weather out there." It's a conversation that doesn't necessarily need to happen. I really want to know about you as a person, not the size of your ass or your muffin top.
So, I try (and I emphasize try) to avoid the weight conversation because I think we women obsess and ultimately damage our confidence and self-esteem when we talk about our weight. There are far too many people in the world with eating disorders that are so consuming they become life threatening. Once upon a time (earlier this year), I teetered on the edge of Bulimia when I found myself eating so much my stomach would ache - so I would purge afterward and found it was the best possible solution to ease the bloating. For those of you who haven't engaged in repeititve self-induced puking, I am here to tell you that after a while of forcing yourself to puke, it gets real easy to do it over again despite the fact that you consider the acidity taking the enamel right off your teeth and a myriad of other health issues associated with the process as you tickle the back of your throat and proceed to fill up the porcelain bowl.
I'm beyond this stint at this point in my life, likely because these days I am happier.
Anyway, I am far less concerned with the weight of other people than I am my own. The women in my family, at least the generation ahead of me, are always on diets and because of this I am always worried my ass is going to get big and I will have no control over it. About once a week I say to myself, "I want to start running now that I've quit smoking (almost 5 months now)," usually after I eat dinner and desert and watch The Biggest Loser. I say to myself, "If only I had a trainer like Jillian to yell at me, or a treadmill in my living room, or the ability to put my laptop in the book holder of the elliptical machine at the gym, or if I had better shoes, or an Ipod holder, and some Mace, and if the sun didn't go down so early, then I would run."
Boy... Turns out it takes a lot for me to get my ass up and exercise.
This is what I've found in my life-long search for the right exercise program:
- I hate: Yoga (what kind of liberal hates Yoga: the new-age spiritual exercise of choice).
- I can run but it takes a while to do a mile without stopping. When I finally reach that goal I go back to letting my imagination run instead of my feet.
- The pool is the best place for me to exercise and meditate at once. I don't care that my ass looks bigger in a bathing suit. The problem: it does nothing for the slimming of my ass-tree-trunk-kankle-legs.
- I have to do the elliptical in the student rec. center - usually within eye-shot of a student who is gliding away, all 105 lbs of them, as I push buttons frantically trying to figure out how to start a program.
- Meth or any form of amphetamine is a quick way to drop the pounds. But like the commercials depict, you will pick every pore on your body, be gross, have awesome (in the not so awesome sense) Kate Moss like black circles under your eyes, and your new found community will likely take more away from you than your weight.
- Break ups and divorces. Nothing is better for my figure than heartache, loneliness, and a general dislike of myself. I lose my appetite, drink more, stay up late, and go out too often, all in effort to keep myself busy and all the while the deep pit in my stomach helps me to get my skinny on.
- I love dancing. Throughout my life, my commitment to shaking my ass on the dance floor has been in flux. I spent my late teens at the underage night club and various all night Raves. My early twenties in the bars and a few clubs, my mid-twenties at queer nights and then came my late twenties and thirties - and I lost all my enthusiasm for second-hand smoke and hangovers.
- Can we bring the portion sizes down a tid-bit. Christ people, no one needs to eat that much.
- I wanna see more "fat" girls in advertisements. You know, women that reflect my own body type so I can be reminded that I'm not, god forbid (cyber-sarcasm here), a "big girl" (all 5'6" / 155 lbs of me - a whole twenty pounds heavier than I was in Jr. High School (and last year for a few weeks, but lets not go there again)).
- And can we make exercise "fun" and cool again? For instance, Jazzercise sounds like so much fun - but no one has been brave enough to resurrect this lost exercise program of the 80s. Boy, it's really too bad. I have my leotard ready and everything. Besides, when the current fad passes, it will be a great way to put those leg warmers to good use.
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