SELF (a moment after having thrown myself on the couch across MB’s lap): So are your legs being crushed under the hideous weight of my 400 pounds?
MB: What are you talking about?!
SELF (mumbling): Well …. there’s how heavy you are and how heavy you feel.
You know?
Yes, I do.
(There’s also how OLD you feel vs. how old you actually are. I had students the other day who were teasing another student in lab because he was “ancient,” and “older than dirt” and all of that. His age?
25.
I refrained from making any comment about my being 38, and actually – technically, biologically-speaking – old enough to be his mother)
Tracey – oh, absolutely.
There are days when I am convinced that I am one pound away from morbid obesity and then there are other days (sometimes the following day) when I leap about feeling like a skinny-legged gazelle. meanwhile – the scale has not changed.
And sometimes, it’s moment to moment. Like when you’re trying on clothes in the morning, over and over and over:
“Fat.”
“Okay, pretty good, but …”
“Gross.”
“This could be it.”
“All righty. Back to bed.”
I wonder what effect all the War! On! Obesity! stories and all the stupid “weight-loss” supplement ads have on our attitudes.
I know that when I wind up watching a lot of news, and they have a lot of the “OMG! Americans are, like, soooooo fat! And we’re getting fatter!” stories, I kind of want to go on a hunger strike or something. And I get all terrified about Type II diabetes and heart disease and all that even though my doctor is always all, “ricki, calm down. You work out every day and you eat a healthful diet and you don’t have a family history of that stuff.” I still get all paranoid and think about throwing out all the chocolate in my house and trying to exist on rice cakes, salad, and air.
but usually I get hungry in a few hours and forget my panic.