Up Until Now

Really, for about the last five years, I tried an experiment. I guess you could dignify it with the term of experiment. I decided to stop obsessing about my weight. I just decided to do it. I decided to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, and not when I didn't, and see what happened. I honestly believed that I would infinitely expand, like the blueberry girl in Willy Wonka. (I'm not trying to be mean here, but some people must infinitely expand, how would we get the really, really fat people otherwise? All I'm trying to say is that infinite expansion must be possible. Sort of.....)

What happened was that I topped out. I probably topped out at about 245, again, a guess, hampered by not weighing myself. I took a 20. (That woman up there, though is what I got when I googled "size 20" and she was in a Gaultier runway show). Those are really, really high numbers, but they at least stopped. I didn't go on to weigh even more, or take even bigger sizes. Once I topped out, I set to work at accepting myself. I bought nice clothes. I got my hair done. I wore high heels and sheer stockings, and even got a tattoo on my ankle. I was okay with myself. I realized (and realize even more now) that being out of breath climbing the stairs or walking around the town I work in was not a good thing, but it didn't bother me enough to do anything about it.

Topping out was a good thing, it really was. It made me accept myself, my weight, what I am and how I look. I truly think it was good for me. I had fat days and thin days, just like everyone else. I didn't wear certain things because they didn't flatter me, but I also didn't wear muumuus. In all honesty, I'm aided in that by the fact that I have a shape, even if it happens to be a big one. I'm a solid girl, not amorphous. (Though I had moments of that, notably during PMS. I was at a mall once with my younger daughter, and we were about to go to the women's department. "I feel perfectly amorphous," I complained. "What does that mean?" she asked. "Shapeless," I answered. She immediately looked very worried. "Do you think this is really the best time to be trying on clothes?") So I was okay with it.

And then, I guess, I got not okay with it. To be honest, I was creeping up. A loose-ish 20 looks okay on me, well, okay by certain standards. A tight 22, not so much. All the solidity, which I depend on a lot, in the world can't bail you out of size 22.

However, I joined Weight Watchers this time more to keep my older daughter company than anything else. She wanted to do it, and didn't think she could afford it, so I thought we could do a fiddle and do two for the price of one. We couldn't, so I joined too. For the first few weeks, my attitude was mostly, oh, well, we'll see what happens here. As the weight came off, I got more into it. So did she. We have Sunday afternoon grocery shopping trips, where we hit the supermarket with our points calculator, and search for low-point food. We have fun. We're bonding. She's lost 21 pounds, I think, of the 30 she wanted to lose (she's built a lot like me, but shorter, and so she certainly didn't look obese, but she looks amazing now. Delectable in fact. She's 22. Of course she looks delectable!) and wants to submit her story as a success story to Weight Watchers and get a makeover. I think she has a shot at it. I also said that her number 1 tip would be to have your mother do all your cooking for you!

I like the online version of this for a couple of reasons. I hated hauling myself off to a meeting. After a while I had internalized everything they had to say, and honestly, unless you've got a special group for people losing 100+, when someone stands up and says, I went from 145 to 130 and everyone applauds, you just want to throw up in the corner. Truthfully. The other thing I like is that I'm not tied to the tyranny of the scale on weigh-in day. I can have a salt-shakers worth of sodium the night before and know that I didn't really gain (or not lose) three pounds in a day. I weigh myself every day now, which, far from making me crazy, gives me the long view. My weigh-in day is Monday, but I lose my weight in the middle of the week. So, if I've been consistent about following the program (which I have so far), I can cut myself some slack and enter the weight from the day before, if I know that it was honestly that far down.

Well, I got off the topic of controlled vs. uncontrolled eating, which was what this was supposed to be about, and I need to go make my dinner (whole wheat penne with vodka sauce and shrimp, undressed asparagus on the side) but I would like to say this: I think that controlled eating makes us crazy. We give away our power as women. We devote far too much time to worrying about what we're putting in our mouths, and not enough time to whatever else is going on--the things that give us joy. I have always (even when I was actively doing it) found diets to be acts of negation, not suffiiciently proactive for me.

More later....but for now: go eat something that makes you happy. Just don't eat all of it.