On Resolutions

Over Christmas, I got a book from my boyfriend about feminism. "Beauty Sick" was the title (Author: Renee Engeln, who has a whole entire Ph.D in this area). I read it, liked it, reviewed it on goodreads, had my reservations about it. It was pretty good. Of course, then my parents just had to ask about what it was about, which lead to a whole discussion about weight and health and beauty that just felt like it went nowhere, and they didn't care to admit that maybe I- and the book- had a point. It's really hard to have those conversations when one parent is a physician and the other was a nutritionist who talks endlessly about gut bacteria. I know they're smart, given how well they both perform in their respective field, but sometimes I question their advice. The takeaway from the conversation ended up as: weight can be an indicator of health, regardless of beauty, and just focusing on what your body can do and ignoring its weight is irresponsible.

I don't know why these things.. I don't want to use the word trigger, but that's what it does, it triggers my own damn insecurities. I used to not have these- which sounds completely unbelievable, except that I was wildly underweight for my entire damn childhood until I stopped dancing, and even then it took 6 years before I actually felt insecure about how much I weighed because some dresses I bought no longer fit me (I still have them. They are just too pretty to give up). Christmas is, hands down, THE WORST TIME to have this shit come up. My family eats terribly over Christmas- and there's that word, terribly. Is it really terrible to enjoy delicious home cooked food? To eat Christmas goodies? To sit and read in front of the fire and play board games and piece together puzzles? I really don't feel like it is, but of course, as they said, gaining weight is bad when it's out of control.

The process of trying to lose weight is a really odd one. For one, I have to approach it a certain way. If I'm too obnoxious about it, or too restrictive, or too obsessed, I damage my relationships. Nobody wants to hang out with the girl who won't eat with them at restaurants or who is constantly talking about how her change in diet is going (yes, friends, I am on that train: crash diets don't work, temporary changes don't work, you have to commit to changing forever). For another, I have been avoiding this for so long because I just fucking love candy. I have a massive sweet tooth. My mom would say that's the fault of my gut bacteria, and maybe they have changed since I started this endeavor, but who's to say. So I can't restrict myself or I'll go insane. I can't not eat "bad" food, like pasta (I really, really hate that carbs are the enemy now. It's basically the worst thing in the entire world), brownies, all that good shit. I keep maintaining that life just isn't as enjoyable without these foods, which of course I can't say around my parents anymore because then we get trapped in that cycle of That Conversation I Hate.

I've been tracking my food intake and exercise, is what I'm getting to here. Since the start of the year, not so much on the weekends. For better or worse I hit a point where I can't just keep gaining weight forever. At some point, it has to STOP. I know what my BMR is, so I can make sure the app doesn't trick me into starving myself (another app tried before, and that lasted all of a day after a lunch of green tea didn't really seem like the best option), but the rest is all guesstimation. I can't add recipes to the app without paying a monthly fee, so I've started calculating calorie amounts on my own for recipes, figuring out how much I ate on paper, and then plugging that into the app with a similar item. It is working. I've been genuinely trying to eat healthier foods- no more Kraft Dinner for lunch, you fool- and it is true that some foods make you feel very full while containing a low caloric value. I've been cooking more. I've been eating more plants. It's all very good. At the end of the day, especially after I've gone to the gym (and trust me, my friends, I am getting BUFF AF), sometimes I will have enough caloric room for like, 3 brownies, and I take advantage of that every time. So I'm doing okay. Slowly losing weight. Not spending a ton of time feeling hungry. But things have changed.

Mostly it's my own awareness of what I eat. If I keep track, I'm forced to confront the calories in everything I eat, which makes me feel like maybe a glass of orange juice at breakfast isn't the best option unless I really want some fucking orange juice. It makes me reconsider. It also makes snacking a lot less appealing, because when you snack it's hard to know how much you really ate and if you have to try and guesstimate that later- it's just a pain. I'd prefer to avoid it. So overall I'm probably eating less, and eating less candy because hot damn. And I have just given up trying to track during special events, like a party at my boyfriends' house last weekend (like an adult party for real adults with small children, not a woohoo alcohol party), or the girls' night I hosted on Friday (that was a woohoo alcohol party). It's just not worth it to me to not be able to let loose and have fun and trust my own judgement, although I suppose alcohol probably impairs that a little. If I tried to track that, I'd have to keep track of shit like how many triscuits did I eat and what volume of this salsa-boursin cheese mix did I ingest, like maybe 50ml? I have no clue and I just do not have the patience for that kind of bullshit. (The boursin-salsa thing, btw, is the most amazing invention in the world, and you have my dad's friends' family from Saskatchewan to thank for it: put a whole thing of boursin cheese on the middle of a plate. Pour salsa around it. Microwave until everything is warm. Et voila, pour a bowl of tortilla chips for dipping and your friends will love you FOREVER).

But now that it's working, I'm thinking ahead. Mainly the question is- when does this stop? On a semi-related note, I found a grad school supervisor and will submit my application later this week to start in May- I'll be moving back home to go to the university there, but it's my best option and I'm very happy about it. Of course, at the start of May, my family, plus my sister's friend and Redbeard, are going on a two week trip. How do I tackle both of those things? Do I have a set weight in mind? How do I even find where my body's natural set weight is when I don't maintain when I just eat how I feel? I used to think it was about 30 pounds below what I am now, but I'm starting to wonder if that's the case. Do I stop tracking when I get there? Do I track until I feel like I can trust myself? When is that point, exactly? Do I just get to pick a set weight? Am I going to have to buy new jeans again when the ones I bought to accomodate the weight gain no longer fit? And then, what do I do with those jeans? Do I keep them around just in case? Is that a bad idea? I have no idea where this thing ends. I'm starting to think I might just have to pick a set weight and aim to maintain it, and be prepared for that to not be the right number and to have to adjust my expectations. I also don't know how much the BMI can be trusted. According to that measure, I'm overweight. Which feels really odd to think about, since I don't think my body has changed too much. Most of my clothes I can still wear. My face is a little rounder, something which bothers me a lot (when you're constantly mistaken for being 6 years younger than you are, a rounder face does not help). I don't feel like "overweight" is a term I'd apply to myself. I feel like "average" is a better one. Maybe even "pretty healthy" at this point.


So what was the point of this post? It's just something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I really do loathe how much brain space this takes up now, but I do honestly think that for my own health, in a preventative way, I needed to make this change. I was already going to the gym and really enjoying it, actually (it's a women's only gym, too, which I LOVE). The food thing was secondary. I know I have friends who will probably insist that I'm fine- and I am. I'm not yet at the point where I'm horrifically out of shape, or unable to do things I could before (and fitting into those dresses doesn't fit this category since the dresses are the wrong size for me, not the other way around) (I'm still not giving them up though. One of them has pockets, you guys), or experiencing actual health issues (like someone close to me recently did due to weight gain, which yes, did spook me a little). I'm just trying to do what I think is right... and on that note, I seriously slept in today (lol "today") and it is time for a very late brunch.