Diet Day 240

[darkemeralds]

Ho hum.

Plateau plateau plateau. Boring boring boring. My weight has not shifted meaningfully since April 26.



The last time I was at this weight--stably, that is, not just zipping through it on the way up or down--was a long time ago. Long. I was in my twenties, I'm pretty sure. Long time. I can remember some of the clothes I used to wear in this size, and they were 80s clothes. And 70s clothes. This weight was pretty stable for me over a series of fashion periods.

My body rose to this weight very quickly in a fit of misery and loneliness when my family moved back to the mainland from Hawaii in my senior year of high school. "Don't mind me. I understand why we had to move. Of course it was necessary! Dad was unhappy in his job. I'll just be over here in the corner eating cheese and drinking wine and quietly hating California." And it stuck here for years.

I didn't rise significantly past this weight until another, much later period of loneliness and misery (and shame and shock and horror) following events several years ago that I still don't talk about. (Maybe they'll go in the next novel. I haven't decided yet.)

So it would be natural to suppose that I belong at this weight. But I remember the misery that got me here, and I don't like the symbolism of acceptance. It feels like resignation. I have a goal, dammit, and I'm nowhere near it yet.

So onward I go. Calorie spiking and calorie cycling haven't shifted me from this plateau, not even a little, in six weeks, so I'm making an additional cut in calories, working through a renewed fear of hunger, and hoping to nudge my body back into fat-burning mode with a fresh start at square one.

Comments

re shame and shock and horror

[karen_jk]

Who hath dared to wound thee?

Re: re shame and shock and horror

[darkemeralds]

Oh, you know. Some dickhead.

Re: re shame and shock and horror

[karen_jk]

I am truly sorry that this happened to you.

I feel privileged to have gotten to know you a little bit in the past couple of years.

Re: re shame and shock and horror

[darkemeralds]

Thank you--for your sympathy and your graciousness!

Nothing has happened to me that hasn't happened to most women, I think. My reaction to it might have been a bit more extreme than common, is all.

What doesn't kill you...right?

[without_me]

I support you in whatever endeavor makes you happy. At the same time, I know that what was zomg fat! in high school looks like something beyond a fantasy 30 years later. I don't know what weight is healthy for 2011!you, but I do encourage you to evaluate that for yourself based on how you feel now, not how you felt at 18.

[darkemeralds]

Excellent observation, and I've thought quite a bit about this very thing. I'm keenly aware that the role models (like Twiggy) whose images helped me form my idea of myself as fat were extreme and strange (and probably the culture's cruel, unconscious acknowledgment that corn production was about to take over the continent and eliminate skinniness from the American landscape for three generations).

And I don't think I actually can return to the weight I had when I had just reached my adult height. I'm not actually sure how many pounds I'm aiming to lose, and I'm fairly comfortable where I am now.

But I do know two things: that my post-high school weight gain was born of misery, and that so far in this current process, I've continued to feel physically better the more weight I've lost. So I guess I intend to keep losing weight until I feel sure that what "excess" is left isn't the result of misery, or until losing weight stops feeling better.

I pay pretty close attention to how I feel. It's the great offsetting advantage of a single life: utter unfettered self-involvement.

[ranunculus]

That is a very good basis to make decisions on.

I love the fruit fly study that showed that fruit flies that ate less calories and were slimmer lived significantly longer. I THINK I have more willpower than the average fruit fly?

[darkemeralds]

LOL! I hope I do too!

I've read in various places that a lower-calorie diet statistically correlates with longer life, and I think leanness does too.