Tuesday, April 7, 2009

When do we start feeling content and loving ourselves?

I have always struggled with my weight. Maybe not when I was 10 years old, but since I hit late puberty I was cursed with a rounder figure. In my earlier teen years I played basketball and went horseback riding several times a week, but once I hit 17, boys and partying seemed much more appealing than sports. With lack of activity and parties every weekend, I gained weight. I wouldn’t say that I was really fat, but definitely curvy. I was so envious of the girls with not an ounce of fat on them and they seemed to be able to eat anything they wanted. Clothes always fit them better, and they seemed to be so happy and worry-free. For the next 15 years, thinking about weight and how to loose it occupied my mind hours everyday. It became an obsession.

I think I tried every diet possible. The banana diet, grapefruit diet, weight watchers, LCHF diet. I even tried to starve myself and just have one meal a day. Although most diets make you loose some weight, nothing worked long term. My obsession had now turned into self-loathing. As the years went on, my weight slowly increased–a pound here and a pound there.

About fifteen months ago, I decided that my life needed to change. I could not continue to wallow in self-pity and weight obsession any longer. I signed up for one of the delivery diet food services and thought I’ll give it 3 months. If it didn’t work, no harm no foul. In the beginning I didn’t even noticed much. I guess low expectations made me less self-aware, but the pounds had start coming off. Three months later, I had lost 28 pounds!

Now fifteen months later, I have lost close to 40 lb and I think I’m content–I still want to look like a woman after all. There are still days when I think that maybe another 5 or 10 pounds would make everything perfect, but then again when is it enough? It is the number on the scale that makes the difference or how we feel inside? I now try to eat healthy, smaller portions, and I stay active (no cheating).

I think in my head I’ll always be the overweight girl. I’m always going to think I should lose a few more pounds, that my butt is a little too big and my tummy a little to round. I’m still going to get on the scale every single day making sure that I’m not gaining even a pound. But if that is what it takes, so be it. I am content, for now at least.

I’ll end this with a comment on an article I read this morning. It was about what they call “the death of size zero”. The author was stating that fat was now some how in. I, by no means, advocate anorexia and self-starvation. I don’t think today’s runway models are healthy looking (or pretty for that matter!), but I don’t think fat will never be in. But then again, when they say fat, they may mean a size 2, instead of the desirable size zero, is making a come back. So please don’t say that fat is in when you give Daisy Lowe as an example of a curvy model. She is 5’ 10” weighing 125 lb–that makes her BMI 17.9! That is considered under-weight.

Thoughts any one?

 

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