Weight. You can't Win...
Like many females I have been waging the war against fat most of my life. I’ve tried the grapefruit and hard-boiled egg diet, the cabbage soup diet, Atkins, L. A. Weight Loss, no carbs, all carbs, and parts of a gazillion other diet fads. And all with varying results.
I lose a bunch of weight, am inordinately pleased with myself for about a year, and then my weight creeps up again when I go back to my regular eating habits. I have four sizes of clothes in my closet because I know that, regardless of my current state, my size will fluctuate. Resolutions to eat moderate portions and exercise regularly are useless. After forty-four years (Yes, my sister put me on a diet when I was eight) I no longer assume that I can have consistent self-control. The facts are, I love sweets, wine and carbs and am an emotional eater.
So why write about this lifelong struggle now? (And with people struggling just to survive, how do I even dare call my petty weight concerns a struggle? But considering the billions of dollars wasted on discovering and promoting diet aids, it feels like weight control is important. Certainly in the North American culture, appearance is equated to self-worth. Although I know better, subconsciously I still subscribe to the thin is good bullcrap.) Well, I’m losing weight now. And I’m not on some weird diet or excessive exercise program. I actually just got a minimum wage job that requires me to walk around a lot and doesn’t let me pick at food all day. Who knew?
I’m enjoying the approval and jealousy (or maybe that’s projection on my part) of my female friends for my new svelte figure. I bought clothes to show off the improved silhouette. (Although I’m surprised to find as a newly minted size ten, I still fit the large size in the clothing brands carried at Target. If size ten is large, does that mean six is medium and two is small? Are they unaware of the actual sizes of most women in North America? And wouldn’t it make more sense to scale your sizes the other way to make women feel better about themselves when shopping so they’ll buy more? But I digress.)
The weird thing is how good I feel about this odd fluke of my weight loss. Even knowing that it won’t last and that it really makes no difference in my daily life—yes, I’m getting congratulations from fellow weight-warriors, but am I getting asked out on dates? Am I getting raises at work due to being a more socially acceptable size? If I get run over by a car, will the insurance company suddenly increase how much money my relatives will receive for my demise? Nope.
I might be a little healthier for carrying 20 pounds less, but even this is debatable. Most research on weight is conducted by companies hoping to make money off various diet drugs and schemes. So why do we let advertisers and major corporations bully us into thinking we should strive to be thin? Just looking at the famous models today you can see that most are unnaturally skinny. (The fashion biz has now started propping up stick figures with inflated boobs to pretend that they support healthier body weights. Yeah, right. That’s healthy.)
So on the one hand I’m glad and strangely proud of not being overweight, on the other hand I feel stupid for allowing myself to be emotionally manipulated in this way. But if I’m going to feel fat and unattractive when I regain these pounds, shouldn’t I allow myself to enjoy their absence? Sometimes I hate being a woman. Yes, men also experience this pressure to conform physically to an attractive ideal, but certainly not from as young an age and so unremittingly throughout their lives. I hope the younger generation of females can fight back, I apparently have been too strongly brainwashed.
I lose a bunch of weight, am inordinately pleased with myself for about a year, and then my weight creeps up again when I go back to my regular eating habits. I have four sizes of clothes in my closet because I know that, regardless of my current state, my size will fluctuate. Resolutions to eat moderate portions and exercise regularly are useless. After forty-four years (Yes, my sister put me on a diet when I was eight) I no longer assume that I can have consistent self-control. The facts are, I love sweets, wine and carbs and am an emotional eater.
So why write about this lifelong struggle now? (And with people struggling just to survive, how do I even dare call my petty weight concerns a struggle? But considering the billions of dollars wasted on discovering and promoting diet aids, it feels like weight control is important. Certainly in the North American culture, appearance is equated to self-worth. Although I know better, subconsciously I still subscribe to the thin is good bullcrap.) Well, I’m losing weight now. And I’m not on some weird diet or excessive exercise program. I actually just got a minimum wage job that requires me to walk around a lot and doesn’t let me pick at food all day. Who knew?
I’m enjoying the approval and jealousy (or maybe that’s projection on my part) of my female friends for my new svelte figure. I bought clothes to show off the improved silhouette. (Although I’m surprised to find as a newly minted size ten, I still fit the large size in the clothing brands carried at Target. If size ten is large, does that mean six is medium and two is small? Are they unaware of the actual sizes of most women in North America? And wouldn’t it make more sense to scale your sizes the other way to make women feel better about themselves when shopping so they’ll buy more? But I digress.)
The weird thing is how good I feel about this odd fluke of my weight loss. Even knowing that it won’t last and that it really makes no difference in my daily life—yes, I’m getting congratulations from fellow weight-warriors, but am I getting asked out on dates? Am I getting raises at work due to being a more socially acceptable size? If I get run over by a car, will the insurance company suddenly increase how much money my relatives will receive for my demise? Nope.
I might be a little healthier for carrying 20 pounds less, but even this is debatable. Most research on weight is conducted by companies hoping to make money off various diet drugs and schemes. So why do we let advertisers and major corporations bully us into thinking we should strive to be thin? Just looking at the famous models today you can see that most are unnaturally skinny. (The fashion biz has now started propping up stick figures with inflated boobs to pretend that they support healthier body weights. Yeah, right. That’s healthy.)
So on the one hand I’m glad and strangely proud of not being overweight, on the other hand I feel stupid for allowing myself to be emotionally manipulated in this way. But if I’m going to feel fat and unattractive when I regain these pounds, shouldn’t I allow myself to enjoy their absence? Sometimes I hate being a woman. Yes, men also experience this pressure to conform physically to an attractive ideal, but certainly not from as young an age and so unremittingly throughout their lives. I hope the younger generation of females can fight back, I apparently have been too strongly brainwashed.
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