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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Thursday, April 12, 2007

"You want to look at the money? I find it always calms me."

171. finally. it's about time all this eating of the healthy and working up the sweat garnered me a pound lost. it's been like a week. no, really, i'm trying to be patient and it's nice to see something happening. i have to remember that slow is good, slow is maintainable. the whole thing is such an adjustment that the faster the losing the more likely the return. this morning i grabbed a shirt to put on, one of the many black ones in my closet, and well it wasn't the one i thought it was. it was one i hardly ever wear because i always think it accentuates the fat. not having a washer handy is having an adverse effect on the laundry so i just put it on and figured i'd wear a sweater over it. bulk and dark colors, the fat dresser's best friends. what do you know, it looked fine. as fine as the shirt i thought it was.

it's not an easy thing to retrain your brain to see what's really there when you've put so much work into not seeing it for so many years. i have to remember it's all new territory and i can't force the body i have into molds my mind makes. one thing has become very clear the last few up and down sort of weeks, my body is not deflating the same way it blew up. it's older, for one thing. it's more muscled. it's just not the same at all. i've been fitting into some clothes i saved from college, and maybe it's just me, but while they fit they don't look all that great.

i'm sort of torn because they're free and they do fit, but it's not the recapturing of a thinner youth that i had been hoping for. four years and thirty pounds takes a toll, and i seem to have gotten shorter. i've been tearing my house apart looking for these two skirts. they're limited (my kryptonite) size 12, wool winter skirts. i'm desperate to find the bastards. why exactly? they didn't fit this winter (well, they buttoned but it was not a look to write home about) and atleast one of them makes my legs look short and chubby. why, oh, why do i want them back when i could be buying new size 10's for next winter? because, obviously, there was a time i felt really great wearing those skirts. sexy, beautiful, remotely professional. i want that back pretty bad. i'm having a hard time accepting that i can't manipulate the end result no matter how hard i try.

i'm not entirely ready to give away all the things i've saved. not least because i can't wash them. i think i will be soon. i'm never going to get to be skinny in college. there aren't enough sit-ups in the world to take you back in time. so i'm working on embracing the present, including my present body. it's not as toned or as thin as i'd like it to be, but i have way more disposable income than i did in college. at the very least i can afford to invest in spanx now, if the sweating doesn't pay off eventually.

3 comments:

MayQueen said...

I wanna borrow an allen wrench!! I wanna borrow some duct tape!!

I don't know why that popped into my head the other day.

Amy said...

Cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort!

oh, the memories!

Beth Currie said...

Yeah, I sympathise. I have this skirt I try on about once a month because it used to fit me 12 years ago (when I was 22) and I have this stupid idea I should be able to get back into it. It's not even a particularly nice skirt. I don't think I'd ever actually wear it again. I just want to know that I could if I wanted to.

It's not always entirely rational, this body image malarkey :-)