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| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon Whose Cups No Longer Runneth Over
So...I Used To Have Boobs So I used to have boobs. Seriously. As currently as last January, I had tatas. And Now? They're not tiny. Really. They're still in the D-cup range. And I know that a lot of women are right at this moment consulting with surgeons to get their boobs in this size range. But me? I started out in the DDD-cup range. So the change seems pretty drastic. See?
My shrinking boobs are actually the least of my worries. And actually, in regards to my body, I have few worries. I eat right. I exercise. I don't harbor a great number of those weird body image issues that a lot of women have. (And that is due, in large part to having stopped reading women's (and men's and, as a matter of fact, all) magazines a long time ago. I stopped watching television years ago. I stopped going to movies that glorify dumb, beautiful women. I stopped trying to compare myself to other women on the streets. I stopped trying to be things that I'm not and will never be.) What Remains? After such a drastic weight loss as the one I've undergone in the last two years--and I do mean drastic, as I dropped over 56% of my previous body weight and now weigh twenty pounds less than I did when I was twelve--I still do have some things that bother me. What bothers me? Well, I have developed these, shall we say, interesting attitudes towards food. For example, I have twice in the past two years thrown up meals that I knew I should not have eaten. I have battled this idea that if I don't work out, that I don't deserve to eat. I can't imagine adding fat to a meal--for example, putting olive oil or butter on anything, and even salad dressing is verboten. I don't eat red meat or chicken anymore, not because of any vegetarian-istic beliefs that I hold, but because they're too costly calorie-wise. I haven't touched pasta in god knows how long. I have to have Max hide food from me--at his own house, no less. Anyway, I'll tell you about the throwing up thing, okay? I never, never, not in a million years, would ever, when I weighed very well over three-hundred pounds, ever thought of throwing up a meal. That just sounded wrong. And it is wrong. But I was talking with my walking buddy Judi one day--Judi, who is extraordinarily thin and beautiful and who has been all her life--about this idea of puking up meals. And she said to me: "Yeah. I do it about twice a year." And I was, like, What? Twice a year, she explained, she eats her favorite combination of foods (brownies and popcorn floating in butter) and then she throws it up. The rest of the year she lives on things like chicken broth with cabbage in it, but twice a year, she binges and purges. So I thought, that was no help. Some thin women like Judi actually accept the idea that puking up food is an okay thing to do from time to time. But me? I'm not going to be that particular flavor of thin woman. I had to find a way to stop myself from thinking that binging and purging was a short-cut to losing weight and keeping it off. So I began to punish myself whenever I found myself thinking about puking up a meal. And how did I punish myself? By forcing myself to eat more. No, really. It worked this way: By the time I came around to the idea of eating and hurling my way to thinness, I had already adopted a lot of the habits that it takes to get and stay thin. I was eating my 5-6 small meals a day, living on veggies and soy protein, drinking water, working out almost every day. And the idea of eating such fat-laden things like cookies and pastries had become almost repugnant. So when I ate a meal that I felt like throwing up, I would force myself to eat dessert afterward. Seriously. I so hated the idea of eating dessert--hated it even more than I hate the idea of puking up a meal--that it kept me from eating meals that I wanted to puke right back up when I was finished. (This is Demon Wrangling, kids. No one ever said it had to be pretty--or make sense.) But it works. The other issue I battled was the "No gym, no food" equation. I did that by "scheduling" myself for a higher calorie intake on the days when I didn't work out. I vary my caloric intake by a few hundred calories from day to day to keep my metabolism guessing, to keep it from learning how to get too efficient on too few calories. If I was supposed to eat more calories on the days when I didn't work out, then I duly ate them. And it was weird at first, finding myself in front of the refrigerator, thinking, Eat. And The Brain would sigh. And it would try to tell me that we couldn't eat. That we didn't want to eat. That, no, really, it was fine. It didn't need the glucose. Really. And I would think, Eat. You're scheduled to eat. You said you were going to eat, now eat. Eat whatever you want to. And then I would sigh and pull out a container of yogurt, or some tofu, or anything, and I would eat it. It was a chore, but I did it. And, over months, it eventually led me out of the "no gym, no food" mentality. (And you think that's bad? Try getting out of the overtraining mentality in general--of which this is just one part. My overtraining leads me to work out for more than two hours each day, doing serious weight training at least five days a week and cardio seven days a week. And it's a schedule that most people can't imagine keeping, but one that I could hardly imagine giving up for a very, very long time.) Weird, huh? Now That You've Exposed Your Food-Based Weirdness, Why Not Be Grateful For Something? I am grateful. I am grateful for Mayflower and Arma and Jeni. I am grateful for Max and Judi and Kim. I am grateful. I am grateful for Sophistica and The Brain. I am grateful for Bernardo. I am grateful. I am grateful for all my beautiful and supportive friends. I am grateful. I am grateful for my diminishing cup size. I am grateful for all of it. I am grateful to "I'm entitled" woman and to random sex partners. I am grateful. I am grateful for anger and for the ability to use anger and for the ability not to use anger. I am grateful. I am grateful and this is how I show my humility. I am grateful and this is how I show my obedience. I am grateful.
More lies:
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