Reluctantly Healthy~

This week I had dinner with Charlotte, who is one of my steady girl dinner date partners. We share a love of red meat, wine, and have a shared intolerance of stupidity. It gives us lots to talk about.

Anyway, during the course of conversation we were talking about the ridiculousness of weight loss and gain. She, being pregant, has an excuse for weight gain. I am simply gestating a twenty pound pizza. And simply writing that sentence makes me want a pepperoni. What on earth is the matter with me???

Absolutely nothing.

Here is my view on weight. Would I like to be 150 pounds and toned and smoking hot and never have to worry about thunder thighs ever again? Of course. Would I like that at the expense of pizza and pop and ice cream and M&M's and all the other completely awful-for-me things that I like? Not a chance.

Genetically, I am not meant to be skinny. Seriously, I researched this and some people's genetic code makes their fat cells more likely to absorb and hang on to fat than other people. It also genetically picks what places on your body that fat clings to. When I told Lola this she didn't feel better. I thought it was reassuring - like....'Hey! Its not us! Its our jeans! Errr....genes!' But she was not reassured. As a matter of fact she went crazy and declared war on our genes, getting all skinny and toned and reinforcing all my bottled up shame from eating more than two doughnuts in one sitting. Ugh.

BUT...

I saw how much Lola had to do to get skinny and toned - and I watch her beat herself up for gaining a few pounds back or losing tone and getting soft or squishy a bit. And I think about all that work sometimes when I sit on my couch and eat my doughnuts. Poor Lola, missing all this sugary goodness and eating her little portions of low fat, low carb, (blasphemy!) mini meals and snacks.

This is not to say that I just sit around and eat and work on producing fat rolls. I occaisionally declare war on my genes from time to time as well. About two years ago I got on a scale just out of curiosity and almost passed out when it said two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds? How on earth had I got there? If you are two hundred pounds, this is not an insult to you by the way - but for me, that was the line. I knew where I had been my whole life and for me to cluelessly just climb the scale and hit that point was ridiculous. I was completely motivated to get healthy and wage war on my super-soaking fat cells.

So Lola and I and Leah and Olive and a few others all joined a local body challenge and vowed to be in bikinis by summer. Lola kicked all our asses and still today makes me look like her chunky version, but I lost thirty pounds and I felt better than I had in years. At 170, I went out and bought bikinis and lived in them all summer long. I was happy. I was healthy. And I was shameless. And according to medical professionals...I was still twenty pounds overweight.

I am never going to be at my doctor recommended weight. I haven't seen 150 pounds on a scale since I was in high school and I have zero plans that involve ever seeing it again. I know that Americans are overweight and that we all should be health conscious, but at what point do we say enough? People are made in all shapes and sizes and we should embrace that. Especially us women. Let's stop beating ourselves up and find that things that are beautiful about us - whether they jiggle or not. Because let's be real here....do you really want to live a long healthy life....without donuts?