On Being a Very Good Eater

My attempt to lose the 10lbs that I somehow managed to gain over the summer is not going so well. Oh sure I'm eating salads and going to the gym where I have been doing some RUNNING (Seriously. I have been running. Who am I?) but I'm not actually losing any weight. This is probably due to my love for food.

You see, I love food a lot. Often I'll find myself eating some food and excitedly thinking about the food I might eat next. It'll be lunch. I'll be munching on a nice crunchy salad with artichoke hearts and boiled egg and blue cheese and thinking to myself, "hmm what shall I eat for dinner? I could make spaghetti! Or order Thai basil chicken! Man tomorrow morning I get to have that yummy yogurt again, with the dried apricots, I CAN'T WAIT!" This cannot be healthy, right? Surely I must have some sort of hole in my heart that I'm trying to fill with food but when I try to recall being abused by the elementary cafeteria lady I quickly get distracted by thoughts of sloppy joes and chocolate malts. I think the hole I'm filling might just be my bottomless stomach.

I recently observed that having few buddies at my new jobs means I'm much more likely to eat a healthy lunch to which my friend Lisa replied, "Good Point. If you [worked here] we'd be all 'hamburgers!' every day." This is not true, sometimes I would want mac and cheese and some other times I would want Chinese pork buns, and least you think I only want to eat food bathed in grease sometimes I would just want roasted broccoli covered in lots of red pepper flakes. Part of my problem with food is that I love healthy foods which seems like a good thing until you're eating a trough of it and gaining 5lbs JUST FROM BROCCOLI.

Sometimes I fantasize about getting really fat. Because sure, I would miss my toes and sexy underwear and living past the age of 50 but maybe all of that is a reasonable price to pay for unlimited ice cream consumption? Maybe once I got past being the woman that kids moo at in the grocery store I could cover myself in a yummy blanket of ranch dressing and dig my way out with a truck load of french fries. Perhaps TLC could do a show on me (Half Ton Blogger?), perhaps they would pay me for humiliating myself on national television not with a free gastric bypass surgery but with my own personal chef who will make me endless supplies of fresh pasta covered in spicy tomato sauce. Doesn't sound half bad, right?

This fantasy is partially fueled by my desire to succeed. I am not always successful at eating less than 5 servings of jalapeno corn bread or doing my personal trainer prescribed squats at the super slow speed that makes my thighs shake in fear. Despite past successes I am not at all sure that I can succeed at losing the 10lbs that appear to be cling wrapped to my thighs. But I know without a doubt that I could kick ass at being really fat. I would eat ridiculous quantities of grilled cheese sandwiches. I would lounge around in a muumuu. I would be very good at sitting in a very large chair.

"On Losing my Identity" or "Who Moved my Boobs?"

It has been way too long since I’ve written anything about my boobs and I know that I am sorely in danger of losing my readers. For those of you that come here every few days looking for more information on my battle with bras and heartfelt analysis of the breasts of reality TV stars – it’s your lucky day. For those of you who work with me? Hit the Back button.

Once upon a time I was a 34DD, today I am a 32C. When a girl loses weight she tends to lose at least a little in her boobs. Women tend to fear this loss. Girls who have always been a little chubby have a tendency to fall into the trap of thinking that their breasts are their only attractive feature. It’s easy to see why – the world hates big thighs and big bellies and big arms and generally big girls – but the world loves big breasts.

I’m mostly fine with my decrease in cup size. While I used to consider my ample chest a possible strategic asset when it came to attracting boys it never served me very well. It sat out there – young, perky, propped up and on display but this almost never resulted in boys actually talking to me (and when it did, they were, unsurprisingly, never the right boys). I prefer to believe that men are less shallow than society gives them credit for and breasts just don’t mean all that much but it’s entirely possible that I just didn’t know how to work it (still don’t.). Either way no big loss to me, I wasn’t attracting men with my boobs two years ago and I’m still not today, the only difference is that now I can buy bras in styles other than "Extreme Grandma." And seirously, have you seen some of my skinny girl hot parts? My clavicles and hip bones stick out just so and I find them much more amazing than my breasts ever were. Though, it should be noted that these assets aren’t exactly delivering the goods either.

In theory I’m fine no longer being a busty girl -- except when it comes to self identification. It’s hard to change a key word that you’ve been tagging yourself with for 15 years so I find myself making jokes about being busty or bemoaning the pain of button down shirts as if I were still rocking a plus sized rack. Usually mid self disparaging comment I remember that I lost 40lbs and oh look! I can see my toes! Then I realize that no one is getting the joke and probably they are thinking “crazy girl, you have normal sized boobs, stop talking.” At this point I feel a little sad, I had some really great big boob related jokes in reserve that are now just going to waste. I can only hope that someday I’ll get pregnant and get my boobs back. Having to raise a messy little cheerio muncher will be a small price to pay for releasing my jokes from the prison of my average sized chest.

On Being Thin

I have weighed about 135 pounds for just over a year now. I’d never make it on America’s Next Top Model (Dear ANTM Producers: please make up a challenge wherein those girls gain about 15lbs each – Tyra should have some suggestions.) but it’s safe to say that I’m skinny. It’s tough to write that, I find myself thinking “I’m not skinny! That’s ridiculous, I look normal!” But the numbers don’t lie, I’m 5’4”, I weigh 135lbs, I’m a size 4. I’m significantly smaller than most American women.

Before I started officially dieting in March of 2005 I think I weighed about 170lbs but it’s hard to say for sure since I mostly avoided weighing myself. I wasn’t one of those girls who had always been fat, I didn’t hate my body, and I didn’t spend years trying to lose weight. I thought I was curvy, perhaps a little chubby but nothing too awful. I was so accepting of my body that I didn’t believe it could change. I believed diets were gimmicky and futile and too many women seemed to hate who they were because of their body size. I didn’t want to waste time eating cabbage soup and grapefruits and hating myself; I was a curvy girl and I decided to be ok with that.

In 2004 my mother and a friend both lost a good amount of weight on Weight Watchers. While I was impressed with how amazing they both looked I was more jealous of the power they had. They had changed something that I had convinced myself was immovable.

I started dieting to prove that I could control my body size. Once I began to lose weight I felt good and I realized that I wanted to lose a lot more than the original goal of 10 or so pounds. I gained a little understanding of why people became anorexic -- being able to change my physical form felt like magic. I’m obviously not advocating eating disorders but I was shocked to discover that I suddenly understood the appeal.

Ultimately losing weight was easy. It took time, but it wasn't hard work. I know no one wants to hear that, it’s supposed to be hard, if was easy we’d all be thin. Maybe it was easier for me because I had fewer emotional issues with food, or because I already liked vegetables, or because I have an amazing sense of internal guilt for someone with no religion. I figured out what I was eating (mostly through journaling), figured out what was good for me (mostly based on calories and Weight Watchers points) and stopped eating crap. Did I want to eat ice cream? Every minute (This is always true. Ice cream is the world’s most perfect food. There is never a time when I do not want to eat a scoop/pint/gallon/barrel full). I did not do any sort of formalized exercising. I live in New York City, I walk a lot. I used to go to the gym and while I'm sure it made me healthier it never made me skinny.

I weighed closer to 130lbs (and even saw the 120s once or twice) for a short while last November but eventually decided that 135lbs was a better weight for me, mostly because it was much easier to maintain and I believe that my body is happier here. I’ve since learned that a few people thought that the 130 me was a bit on the overly skinny side. This is astonishes me. I can believe that I am not at all chubby (though honestly it’s tough) but the idea that I could be too skinny is so foreign that it doesn’t seem possible. Changing your view of your own body turns out to be a lot tougher than changing the body itself. I don’t look at old pictures of myself and see a heavy girl, I just see me, an average girl who is moderately pretty but nothing special. I see her in the new pictures too. We’re used to our faces and (even more so) to the versions of ourselves that we believe in on the inside. Losing this weight has changed fewer things than one would have expected.

Things that have changed:

1. Shopping is much easier, almost everything looks acceptable (if not amazing) on me.
2. I am obsessed with food and constantly paranoid that I am eating poorly and will gain the weight back.

Things that have not changed

1. I still think I look average sized
2. I still do not have men fighting over me (I’m as surprised as you folks my ass is hot!).
3. I still think my thighs look huge about 10% of the time (this delusion is clearly hard wired)
4. I still do not hate myself.