A new approach

It's been a good couple of days. I'm not normally one for relaxing - I'd prefer to be getting a result than a rest - but think over the last week I managed a good balance of housework/gardening, exercise, catching up with family/friends, and lying in the hammock.

Unfortunately, I'm also 3.8lbs away from the weight I promised myself I'd never go over. Am trying really hard to approach this calmly rather than having a big freak-out over it, and think I've come up with a plan that A and I will both be happy with. The part of this whole thing that he doesn't like is its potential to consume my every thought and turn me into an angry, narcissistic, discontent fishwife. My problem with that is that if I don't think about it all the time, this happens. And I just get bigger and bigger until I feel gross.

I think there's room for a compromise in there. So I suggested to him this morning (warning: this is hardly rocket science, don't get over-excited...) that I follow a set plan, so I don't have to think about it all the time, and there are fewer decisions to occupy my mind. We're both happy for me to eat:

• either fruit or veg, plus one protein (a boiled egg, fat-free yogurt, cottage cheese etc) for breakfast (approx 150)
• an undressed salad with one protein (grilled chicken, tuna fish etc) for lunch (200 - 350), and
• a balanced dinner (approx 600)

I warned you it was nothing revolutionary! But that's the part I'm proudest of. There's nothing extreme, disordered or unhealthy about this. Combined with running three times a week, I should lose 2-3 lbs a week -- aka a slow, healthy loss. And, it keeps my intake around the 1200 mark so a) it shouldn't screw up my metabolism and b) it allows for deviations in situations like eating out or having dessert sometimes, without taking me over my RDA.

This isn't somethimg most people would feel worthy of posting on the internet, but I'm pleased with it. At any given point in the last couple of years, this amount of food would have either fed me for a week or for a couple of hours. I think this is progress. This is how normal, healthy, people eat.

People

There are people in the world who just go out when they feel like going out, even if they're feeling fat. They have people over when they feel like having people over; they serve and eat dessert, and it doesn't make them cry in the bathroom at work throughout the next day. If a stranger drops by unexpectedly it doesn't throw their day into turmoil because they're afraid that person secretly thinks they're fat.

I used to be one of those people, but it was so long ago I don't remember for sure. This is what I am now. My body swells like a balloon, and only my spirit gets smaller and more emaciated, rattling around in its empty house, frightened by the space around it.

I notice a lady in the store buying non-diet groceries. She's pretty and cheerful and relaxed. I imagine her going home, opening the food she's bought, and eating it with that same serene brightness in her face, never thinking to run and kneel in front of the toilet like a devoted disciple bowed in penance for her sins. Maybe she has none.

Low

So, I'm trying to change the tone of this blog a little and just make it less... whiny I guess. I had a conversation with A the other day that kind of reminded me of the futility of compaining about things that are in my power to change, and then not changing them. Sounds obvious, right? So I'm trying to steer clear of posts that are overwhelmingly negative or discouraged, but that's just what I'm feeling at the moment. I'm so frustrated that I relaxed for a few weeks and undid everything I'd done. So I'm back up in the 120s again, with a 20 BMI. It's pretty gross. I need to re-lose 9 huge lbs to be back underweight.

Part of me feels irrationally angry at the people around me who told me it was okay to relax, and eat, and stop worrying about all of this. I did all those things, and it wasn't ok. Now I'm like this and I think I'll never fix it. But the tiny rational part of my brain knows that it's not anyone else's fault. It may feel like they tricked me, but I need to remember they didn't do it on purpose. They just didn't understand what would happen and why it would be such an awful, awful thing.

They tell me I'm fine, that I can stay like this, that this looks good. A holds me tightly against him and tells me, "but you're so beautiful to me", and I squeeze my eyes shut and try to imagine what it is that he sees, what it is that I'm missing.

Some people have real problems; illnesses and family dramas and aloneness and financial difficulties. My life is idyllic. And I wonder if what I'm missing, more than a tiny tiny waist, is gratefulness. And I wonder where one acquires such a thing.

Hope

Hypocrisy

Following the previous pose about learning to accept yourself, and "loving your tree", I'm realising (again) how hard it is to put that into practise. I know it's hypocritical, but at the moment I just feel overwhelmed by how far I have to go, and in the back of my mind I secretly doubt that I'll ever really "arrive". I look in the mirror, or I step on the scales, or I watch myself acting like a total bitch, and it feels like this thing I'm chasing has never been less attainable.

My Mom summed it up the other day in a conversation about identity crises in general, by identifying the desire to be someone else, but without knowing who that person is. And I think she's right; it's like aiming at a moving target, or one that fades in and out of visibility. I want to be an FHM girl, all voluminous blonde hair and pouting lips, with giant breasts and a perfect, smooth stomach. But simultaneously I want to be Tia Dalma, strong and dark and unrefined, as though something of the jungle was residing inside her. And Christina Hendricks, who isn't remotely thin but that just makes her all the more beautiful. And Waris Dirie, full of grace and altruism and elegance and quiet strength. And Zooey Deschanel, quirky-cool, multitalented, and adored by men and women alike. And, and, and... ad nauseum.

But if I looked like any one of those women, I still wouldn't be happy, because I'd want to look or be like the others. The one thing they have in common isn't what they look like, is it? It's that none of them, as far as is evident, wants to be anybody else.

Ironic, no?