1:13 p.m. - 2005-09-13
Food.
You know? I think I've been depressed for the last year or two. I didn't recognize it at the time, but that's what its been.
I know, because, I woke up with morning craving healthy vegetarian food and not obsessing over myself.
I have so much work to do to repair the damage I've inflicted on my body over the last three years. I've been horrible to it. Eating bad fats, refined carbs and salt without censure. Given my BP and Cholesterol/Triglycerides, those are the worst things I could possible put into my body.
I let a back injury keep me out of the gym for far too long, and lost my gym mojo.
I habitually drank too much alcohol and let my body dehydrate to no good end. If you've been reading for any legnth of time, you may have noticed that I tend to socialize in a alcohol infused environment ; )
I've been doing some hellishly difficult work on my head and heart, but have abused my body as some form of comfort.
Why do I seem to need a crutch so badly? Food, booze, sedentary non-activity... All these things that are so bad for me, yet, I turn to for comfort. They make me feel bad. But I have yet to find an alternative.
I could take up smoking, weed, drugs... Those are bad too. Maybe not worse than what I've already done, but certainly no better.
I don't want to be body/appearance centric, but I also don't want to let myself go and become some unhealthy, obese person who can't fit through a doorway and needs heart surgery and oxygen.
Not that I'm anywhere close to that by any stretch of the imagination, but I want to be so much healthier and less chubby than I am now.
I used to do plus modeling. They like the girls who are on the edge. Size 12-16s who look good in clothes who are too big for normal modeling, but not obese looking. That's where I am now. I'm tall, I'm chunky, I have an hourglass figure, a poochy stomace that reminds me too much of Buddha sometimes, and a slightly chubby face that makes me look 10-15 years younger than I am to some folks. So I guess there is a benefit to being chunky. I can pass as a college student if I want to get a discount. (I wouldn't though.)
I look at the gorgeous plus sized models like Emme and Mia Tyl0r and think how they look perfect to me. Beautiful, well shaped, stylish. I look at them as role models, and wish that I could remain as I am and feel beautiful and be healthy.
I feel beautiful some days, but others, I feel like crap and my bad habits get out of control. I am so wrapped up in how I look, yet I don't want admit it.
I've always hovered on that edge where I can shop in regular stores and plus stores. Even as a kid, I was built muscular and thick. I was strong and lean, but never thin.
Even today I don't want to be thin. Its never been a look that I've aspired to. I'd like my belly to shrink a little bit, but not go away. I want my arms to shrink a little bit, but not be boney. I'd like my cheeks to be a little less chubby, but not enough that the fine lines of a thirty something will appear.
I need to lose an ungodly amount of weight to be considered within the healthy limits according to the surgeon general. But accd to my doc and his body makeup analysis, my ideal healthy weight would be about 25 - 30 above the national charts. He likes to tell me that I'm very "dense". In more than one way.
I hate that the media over the years has made our culture so weight/size obsessed. Even though I get all the man attention I want and need, I still feel the pressure we all do to be "normal" (although average is really what I am now).
I watch my friends' children grow up and see the girls buckling under the pressure to meet with a societal dictate that you have to be paper thin to be attractive and to be acceptable. I see 5 and 8 year olds telling their parents that they hate the way they look and they won't be able to get boyfriends unless they stop eating and lose weight. 5 and 8 people! It makes me sick.
On the other hand, overweight can be life threatening and cause medical issues.
Is there no balance?
Its so frustrating.
Food. A basic, essential need. How did it ever become such a drug? How did it ever become something to overindulge in? Do you ever wonder whether there were fat cave men? If there was, was it genetic, or did he just eat to much raw meat and berries?
Food. As addictive as herione. Or maybe just the physicality of a binge, the pain it inflicts, the doubly painful after effects when the food can't stay in the stomach anymore and it rejects its contents. Are we addicted to pain? Or food? Or what?
Weird, huh?
How does it stop? How do we stop hurting ourselves and our children and our children's children?
If I figure it out, I'll write the best seller. That's a promise.
