I am joining Simply For Life, in an attempt to develop a better relationship with food. As a student I find it extremely hard to eat well with little time and little cash. Amy, my counselor, said that she can help with both of those. I also joined because I would like to lose some weight. After careful consideration, I decided that I wanted to lose weight for me. In the end, I also had to decide what was it about me that made me want to lose the weight. In the past I have tried losing weight for several reasons : New boyfriend, get my old body back, fit into my old jeans, feel better about myself, etc.
You know what has never been one of those reasons : because I want to be healthy for my future, for my life, for potential children, for me.
I've always tried losing weight because I was not liking my body or because I used to be 30lbs lighter and wanted to fit into those old jeans. Before I went on this journey, I decided I wanted to lose the weight because I am sick and tired of....well, being sick and tired. I want to have more confidence in my eating, less stress eating and more energy and have a better exercise regiment. If that results in losing weight (which is VERY likely considering my sedentary student lifestyle) than this is excellent. I also want to lose weight so that I can feel better about me, not for anyone else. I realize that I am not going to be a size 2. I am roughly 5'7" or 5'8". I am currently 192 lbs. I love my body, I have breasts I know girls would kill for, I have great legs, I have a nice long torso, tiny hands and feminine feet (size 7). I am freckled, and porcelain in skin color, my natural hair is brown/auburn and I have huge green eyes. I feel beautiful. I am beautiful.
Then I talked to my mother, she said, 'Well, I mean really, you're not meant to be big, you're probably meant to be about 125, 130 lbs." .............. wHAT? I'm sorry, just....what? In what universe could a 'normal' human being my height be 125lbs. Okay, I lied, super models are 125lbs. You know who else is my height and about 120-125lbs. Angelina Jolie, and people are constantly saying she needs to eat! She put on between 15-20 lbs in Tomb Raider and looked, in my personal opinion, fantastic.
I am meant to be smaller than I am, I am carrying around excess weight from, well basically doing nothing as a student. My day consists of waking up, class, sitting, eating, studying, and on the weekends, sleeeeeeeping, working, studying, eating and maybe also drinking. This...will definitely (unless you have a ridiculous metabolism) put weight on over the years. I am tired and feeling jiggly and want energy to do things. According to many different sites, my ideal weight is somewhere between 140 to 165 lbs (give or take a few lbs depending on the site you use). Let me do the math. If I'm roughly 190 lbs now, and my goal weight is approximately 160-165lbs, that's about 30lbs I plan on losing. That is incredible. That is an achievement. It was extremely disheartening to be compared to skinny actresses right out of the starting gates. I'm not going to look like that unless I starve myself. I was approximately 120lbs once....when I was 14. I've since grown 3 or 4 inches and grown hips, and breasts. I love my body shape, I don't want to be Angelina Jolie, I want to be Alyson, and I want to be healthy. I want to have a good relationship with food and working out and I want to have a slightly better version of myself. I think that is an amazing thing and I think that I shouldn't have to feel pressure, especially from my own family to look like that. You know who's body type I admire, Christina Hendricks, Marilyn Munroe, Sara Ramirez, Kat Dennings, America Ferrera, Kate Winslet, even Jessica Simpson and Kim K. Although I admire them, I still want to be me, and I want to be healthy and I want to be more confident. :D In the end, I think, the rest doesn't matter.
Who WOULDN'T want to om nom nom on that hourglass figure?
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ReplyDeleteI loved this post Alyson :) Especially since we are on the exact same page! Lately, I've been focussing a lot on my weight, some is good focus, some is bad focus. I know I am not healthy, and I dwell on that too much, to the point where it hinders me from taking any action. Some days I love my body all up-- I love how it looks, I love that I'm bigger. Then there are days that I burst into tears when I am getting dressed because I don't want the world to see me like this. Those are the really bad days...and it's all based around this conception of how we as women in this society are supposed to look. I work really hard to love my curves, because they are not going anywhere. Even when I do finally have a grasp on eating the right foods and exercising regularly, my ass/hips/thighs will ALWAYS be "fat". I use fat in quotations because the term is referring to how society defines weight. Even when I was 135, they were still bigger. And that's ok-- it's who I am. I've come to learn this. Now at 190 (yeah, we're the same weight!), I feel lethargic, tired, lazy...unhealthy. You're right, people need to start thinking of health, not weight. They are linked, yes, but not to the degree we all think.
ReplyDeleteLoved this post. Good luck in losing the unhealthiness :)