Woke up to 40s (yes, 40s!!!), gray, rainy and wet. Yuck! Days like today make me wish I was at home, curled up in bed with a good book and my cat. Hmm, only 6 more hours of work…
Honestly. It feels like Christmas will be here soon with the way this weather is going. I feel like listening to Christmas carols.. ha!
Yesterday was a rest day for exercise. My head/neck still hurt when I got off work (late, since I had the dr. appointment in the middle of the day), so I went home and tried to nap for a bit. The dog kept barking and DH was cutting tile, so it turned into a pretty futile attempt to rest. I made homemade pizza for dinner and had one slice, then made blondies to bring to work today - and stuck to one small piece. That’s willpower for ya! They turned out pretty good for my first blondies attempt. You know. I just think butter and brown sugar and nuts will always taste better than broccoli or Brussels sprouts… LOL. And I LIKE Brussels sprouts!
My parents arrive a week from today. I haven’t seen them since I was about 192 lbs, so 20 lbs ago. I think they are a little shocked that I’ve stuck with running/dieting this long, and who can blame them? I have such a troubled diet history - one that reeks with being unable to stick with it - so it doesn’t surprise or bother me to hear the surprise in their voice about me still running. While I don’t blame them for many of the issues I’ve had in the past with weight, there are things that stick out every now and then that make me think, gee, it’s no wonder I’ve had to deal with some of the stuff I dealt with. I was telling DH the other night about comments that my brother/mom made - things about baby fat (”Does Fat Pants still have baby fat?” asked my brother when I was 12. “I hope so!” responded my mom) - things about being obese (”Is Fat Pants obese?” asked my brother when I was 13) YOU’VE GOT SOME TACT! lol. I’m kidding, I love my brother. But let me tell ya, it was a little bit of payback to hear I was 100% healthy when I was 200 lbs and my brother - always being on the skinny side - had high cholesterol at age 28. Neener, neener.
I guess, thinking about some of the comments made by my family in the past, is that while the comments hurt, and I don’t think they should have been said (and I KNOW that once they found out about my eating disorder, they felt terribly sad and guilty and felt responsible for it), the truth is, they were never ok with me being fat. And I don’t think that I should have ever been OK with me being obese, either. I’m not saying that what they said was right - but at the same time I’m not sure how I would approach my own daughter if she was terribly overweight, either. Teenagers are hard enough… I hope when I have a teen, I remember that the thing that mattered most to me during my teen years was just wanted to be accepted by my peers. It wasn’t about being cool or being popular, it was about people liking me for me. And when you are fat and in high school, that’s a tough thing to achieve.
I don’t know if my family ever had the right answers about my weight problems as a teen (alright, not like 150 lbs was big, either, but still about 20 lbs overweight for my age/height). Likewise, it should have never been OK for me to be so overweight. I realize I became grossly obese after I turned 18 and moved out to go to college, so at that point, what were they going to do? Despite the here and there comments my family made, I was never unhappy with my weight in high school. I had good friends, I dated a few guys, seemed to get along with everyone. My weight never bothered me even though I was surrounded by 110 lb blonde girls (they were all Dutch and blonde!) who were athletic, gorgeous and popular.
I guess I’m saying, I wish I had been bothered by my weight long before I reached 200 lbs. I wish I had been upset about being overweight at 150 lbs rather than waiting until I was 210+ to do something about it. I’m not sure that it’s ok for us to be so accepting of “that’s just how things are” when it comes to weight. I can’t remember what article I was reading, but it quoted some “acceptance of fat people national group” and I just thought -seriously? We have a national group about being accepted for being overweight? I’m not saying the person shouldn’t be accepted… but I’m saying that maybe as a society we shouldn’t be so accepting of obesity?
I don’t really know the answers. I know that as a teenager if someone told me that being obese AND having heart disease/diabetes run in my family is a huge factor for having complications down the road, me in my infinite teenage wisdom and uncaring I’m-never-going-to-die nature would have said “so what?” If perhaps I was taught from the get-go that being active and making healthy choices was simply going to be part of my lifestyle, things may have turned out differently. But back in the 80s, Richard Simmons was basically it. Back in the 80s, hardly any kids were overweight.
I guess when I have my own kids, we’ll be incorporating exercise and healthy eating from day one. I’m not blaming my parents - we did what we could in the 80s when my dad was just a consultant and my mom was just a preschool teacher.
So the question really is, where is the line bewteen not “being ok” with obesity, but not fostering an unhealthy body image? Not everyone’s going to look like Heidi Klum! The end of normal BMI for my height is under 110 lbs - I would look like death on a stick if I weighed that.
We can’t be ACCEPTING of obesity. But we also can’t be ACCEPTING of placing so much emphasis on body image. Where’s the middle?
