My body hates me, or Conversations With My Navel
I hate dieting.
I hate the mysogynistic attitudes pushing women into looking a particular way to please men, and the bitchy fashion crap perpetuated by women too. I believe that healthy bodies are beautiful, whatever the shape and size (and the range of shapes and sizes among my partners and exes demonstrates this just fine). Aesthetically, I love my own body just as it is, hips, boobs, bum, all of it. Unfortunately my right knee joint doesn't agree.
My right knee joint - the one that I've had dozens of operations on, and several accidents to boot. The reason I walk with a stick, however stylish - is complaining that I'm two, nearly two and a half stones over the healthiest weight for my height, and it's not happy. I'm not 'fat'(you probably wouldn't guess it to look at me, as it's pretty evenly spread), I'm not even clinically obese, but I am over the 'best' weight for my size, and my knee is reminding me it was happiest when I was a couple of stone lighter. Reminding me by hurting a lot, and locking or giving way at inopportune moments.
I don't have the option to exercise it off. Any attempt at jogging and my knee joint may explode. Serious swimming causes more pain than I could imagine before I tried it. Cycling causes noises that would make even the least squeamish amongst you grimace. I can get on with yoga, some martial arts, even belly dancing, but none of them is particularly the sort of cardiovascular regime I'd need to properly lose weight.
So controlling what I eat, or being unable to walk is the option I have.
My body doesn't like this either.
We have this conversation:
Me: "Hey body, I know you want me to be a bit lighter, so today I'm going to give you lashings of fresh fruit and veg, and lean meat, and lots of lovely fibre. I know how you love that."
Body: "Oh yeah, I do love that. But hey, where is the fat? Where are the starches and the fast sugars? You're cutting me down on carbohydrates too? You're... you're starving me!
Me: "But this is what you wanted, you want me to weigh less!"
Body: "Starving! You can't do this to me! Chop off an arm or something to get lighter, just give me MORE!"
And so on...
The thing that bugs me, which diet books and clubs and magazines always miraculously fail to mention, is that the whole point of dieting is to give your body less energy than it wants. It makes me feel tired, grouchy, run down, no matter how much healthy stuff I'm eating, because my body is simply getting fewer calories than I'm using - and that's the whole point.
My body, on the other hand, has the same attitude to calories that I do to money. It likes to have a little set aside for a rainy day. It wants to have a tiny bit extra each day to pop into the savings bank in case of emergencies. It asks me
"what if there's a famine?"
Me: "There's not going to be a famine. We're NOT going to starve. You have plenty of reserves, use some of those!"
Body: "But war, pestilence, plague, the death of all your loved ones! The sudden crumbling of society! There is no certainty!"
My body, it seems, has a rather pessimistic outlook on life. It is rather sceptical about the continuation of society-as-we-know-it, and insists that I might one day NEED these extra stores. However, where my little nest egg in the bank may one day become a house, or an investment of some sort, or one fine day in the far future even a pension, that nest-egg of stored energy that I'm lugging around every day is unlikely ever to become anything but a nuisance.
So I have my knee joint grumbling that I'm putting it under constant strain, and occasionally going on strike, and my stomach on the opposing side crying hysterically, staging all sorts of melodrama, wailing that doom and destruction may befall us, and I'm going to wish that I'd kept a hold of that extra icecream-portion's worth of podge. And here's 'me' caught in the middle with no way to win other than to accept that one side or other is going to keep on grumbling at me.
Apparently, I am at war.
I hate the mysogynistic attitudes pushing women into looking a particular way to please men, and the bitchy fashion crap perpetuated by women too. I believe that healthy bodies are beautiful, whatever the shape and size (and the range of shapes and sizes among my partners and exes demonstrates this just fine). Aesthetically, I love my own body just as it is, hips, boobs, bum, all of it. Unfortunately my right knee joint doesn't agree.
My right knee joint - the one that I've had dozens of operations on, and several accidents to boot. The reason I walk with a stick, however stylish - is complaining that I'm two, nearly two and a half stones over the healthiest weight for my height, and it's not happy. I'm not 'fat'(you probably wouldn't guess it to look at me, as it's pretty evenly spread), I'm not even clinically obese, but I am over the 'best' weight for my size, and my knee is reminding me it was happiest when I was a couple of stone lighter. Reminding me by hurting a lot, and locking or giving way at inopportune moments.
I don't have the option to exercise it off. Any attempt at jogging and my knee joint may explode. Serious swimming causes more pain than I could imagine before I tried it. Cycling causes noises that would make even the least squeamish amongst you grimace. I can get on with yoga, some martial arts, even belly dancing, but none of them is particularly the sort of cardiovascular regime I'd need to properly lose weight.
So controlling what I eat, or being unable to walk is the option I have.
My body doesn't like this either.
We have this conversation:
Me: "Hey body, I know you want me to be a bit lighter, so today I'm going to give you lashings of fresh fruit and veg, and lean meat, and lots of lovely fibre. I know how you love that."
Body: "Oh yeah, I do love that. But hey, where is the fat? Where are the starches and the fast sugars? You're cutting me down on carbohydrates too? You're... you're starving me!
Me: "But this is what you wanted, you want me to weigh less!"
Body: "Starving! You can't do this to me! Chop off an arm or something to get lighter, just give me MORE!"
And so on...
The thing that bugs me, which diet books and clubs and magazines always miraculously fail to mention, is that the whole point of dieting is to give your body less energy than it wants. It makes me feel tired, grouchy, run down, no matter how much healthy stuff I'm eating, because my body is simply getting fewer calories than I'm using - and that's the whole point.
My body, on the other hand, has the same attitude to calories that I do to money. It likes to have a little set aside for a rainy day. It wants to have a tiny bit extra each day to pop into the savings bank in case of emergencies. It asks me
"what if there's a famine?"
Me: "There's not going to be a famine. We're NOT going to starve. You have plenty of reserves, use some of those!"
Body: "But war, pestilence, plague, the death of all your loved ones! The sudden crumbling of society! There is no certainty!"
My body, it seems, has a rather pessimistic outlook on life. It is rather sceptical about the continuation of society-as-we-know-it, and insists that I might one day NEED these extra stores. However, where my little nest egg in the bank may one day become a house, or an investment of some sort, or one fine day in the far future even a pension, that nest-egg of stored energy that I'm lugging around every day is unlikely ever to become anything but a nuisance.
So I have my knee joint grumbling that I'm putting it under constant strain, and occasionally going on strike, and my stomach on the opposing side crying hysterically, staging all sorts of melodrama, wailing that doom and destruction may befall us, and I'm going to wish that I'd kept a hold of that extra icecream-portion's worth of podge. And here's 'me' caught in the middle with no way to win other than to accept that one side or other is going to keep on grumbling at me.
Apparently, I am at war.