Obsession

[brightbluegirl]

Sigh.

I am in the process of losing 30 lbs before my 30th birthday. (It was 31, 32 after Christmas, but I've already worked those 2 pounds out of my system)

I have 40 weeks to do that.

That doesn't sound so hard... I walk and bike pretty much everywhere, and I'm now counting calories - 1800 calories a day. As it gets warmer, we'll do more, like play tennis and go on longer bike rides and hikes and things.

But 30 lbs is a LOT, and 40 weeks is a long time.

Sigh.

The obsessive in me is crying, ranting and raving, because I want to go eat something huge. I want cookies. I want to eat a tub of ice cream. I want to eat just to feel myself eating!!!

How horrible, to be this obsessed with food.

But anyway. I have eaten lunch, so my tummy is full. I have water, and the prospect of other yummy food later. My rule is that once a month I get to have an "Eat Anything Day". I used that rule in 2001, and it helped me to lose 22 pounds.

I lost the weight in 3 months, though, which is kind of fast. I only ate 1500 calories a day, and I wasn't working. I basically focussed on my weight and my art for those 3 months. That's all I had to do.

Now I'm on the diet for the working Lisa. I think this is reasonable. In fact, I know it's reasonable. I even get to do stuff like eat some Phish food when I have calories left at the end of the day. I don't REALLY go wanting.

It just feels like it.

Contemporary feeling is that strong women don't worry about their weight or obsess about their weight. But that's not true. Strong women feel these ways too! Some strong women get fat. Some strong women want to be less fat. But it means that I have all these guilt feelings for 1) being fat 2) feeling fat 3) wanting to be thinner.

I mean, I am not going for a model build here. I just want to be me, but a little healthier and a little smaller, able to buy clothes pretty much anywhere if I need to, with lots of energy for all the activities I want to do. I know my back and knees and even feet would hurt less with less weight on them. And yes, I would feel prettier and more desirable.

I started this in 2001. I got a fair ways. Then in early 2002, we got pregnant. That and the resulting end of pregnancy (no, I do not have a child, do your own figuring) and the getting over all that stopped my loss. In fact, I gained half of it back (never all of it, thankfully, gleefully, never all of it).

Now, my birthday last year, I started again.

The child in me, and the obsessive in me (possibly the same bits of me) are wailing. WAILING.

I will succeed, there is no other option.

But I can still wail a little, can't I?

Comments

[anda.livejournal.com]

I hate that contemporary sentiment. It's nearly as damaging as the other contemporary sentiment that women should be skinny breadsticks. Truthfully, I'm less concerned with the numbers than whether or not my jeans fit. Right now, everything is fine except the bellypudge. It Must Go. Not because I want to be a breadstick, or because I weigh 20lbs more than I want to, but because it doesn't match my internal image of a lush, well-fed, healthy woman with a tiny belly.

Stick with it and good luck. Find some sort of low-cal thing that you can let yourself fill up on. Personally, I love rice cakes.

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

because it doesn't match my internal image of a lush, well-fed, healthy woman with a tiny belly.

It most definitely is an internal image thing. My internal image is of a lush, sensual, curvy woman with no extra bulges.

now at the end of the day, with yummy figs in my belly and 400 calories left to eat anything I want, it doesn't seem so bad.

Thanks for the support! Yet another thing that contemporary sentiment thinks - that strong women don't need support, and that losing weight isn't worth support anyway. HA!