is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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On a Scale of 1 to 10.

This is one of those stories that a person can�t tell without making some other people hate her, not because she tells the story out of malice, but just because of certain unfairnesses built into the world. I know this. But here goes.

When I was growing up I was a naturally skinny girl. Naturally-skinny like I could eat whatever I wanted as often as I wanted and never be anything but exactly the kind of skinny that many girls and women try their whole lives to be and never succeed. It is of course wrong that we live in a society where the tyranny of body type has offered a limited ideal that not everyone can achieve. However, I happened, for the first 29 years of my life, to fall into that type and I�m sure I benefited from it in ways of which I was never fully aware (especially since it is also true that I had tremendous body-image discomfort issues having to do with being a shy teenager who was maturing much more slowly, both physically and emotionally, than many of the girls around me. I really just wanted to be INVISIBLE bodily, but clad in fantastic outfits and shoes. In fact now it seems crazy to me that I never really got to be happy in the body that so many other people spend lifetimes wishing they had. But such is young life for many human beings, I guess).

By the time I was in my early 20s I had stopped feeling so shy all the time, but still had a tendency to wear large clothing. Around the age of 29 things changed. I grew curves and breasts. Sizeable ones, as those of you who know me know. Oy, what I wouldn�t give to trade those in. I mean, sure, I seem to have traded one kind of beauty �ideal� for another, but man, the luggage one has to carry when one has large breasts is, well, sizable. I don�t only mean in terms of the awkward actual weightiness of my front section. I also mean the trouble shopping for anything that goes up top: bras, shirts, dresses, and the worst of all, bathing suits. So often there is really nothing filling the gap between bad-judgment skankitude and self-hating tent shop. In addition to that, you get the leering glances from cads and louts, terrified where-should-I-be-looking glances that quickly turn into an unnaturally fierce eye-lock from males who want not to be cads and louts, and also those you-are-trying-to-steal-my-boyfriend looks from women who might otherwise just be my fellow female compatriots. It is as if I am to BLAME for all of this. It is interesting to compare what it was like having that body with what it is like having this one, in terms of cultural capital and liability, but maybe some other time�.

Anyway, in addition to the breasts came the rest of the normal bodily limitations�the ability to gain weight, some curves here and there. Don�t get me wrong. I�ve never really been fat, nor have I struggled with weight that much, though I�ve definitely experienced what it is like to be an aging average-bodied female in a society obsessed with prepubescence, plastic surgery unreality, or, worse, some combination thereof.

All this to say that I have never dieted, nor known how, nor cared to. I have fiercely asserted the importance of finding pleasure in food. I bake a lot of cakes. And I�ve done my best to resist falling prey to or participating in all the ways in which dominant ideas about what a female form should be are, at the root of it all, misogynist.

It is impossible to live in this society, even if one is a naturally skinny girl, and not be aware of that deep misogyny. I remember being totally confused in high school (in part because I was just not �there� yet in terms of my emotional and probably hormonal development) by how desperately many of the girls around me wanted to be skinnier than they were, even when they were, to my eyes, perfect. It was a sickness they had. It especially marked me when I became really ill during my senior year, lost a bunch of weight (weighed 88 pounds, looked like an anorexic), looked positively ghastly, and more than one girl told me she was jealous of me. Let�s be clear: I did not look good or healthy or happy at that time of my life. Because of the horror of that experience, to me, that is what dieting has always meant: a total loss of perspective on what matters about food and about the world.

(I say this even though a number of people very close to me who have struggled with weight in their lives have successfully dieted in totally sane and successful ways. Not everyone has body dysmorphic disorder.)

But recently I decided I wanted to be able think better about how I eat, and see if I could lose 5-10 pounds. This came not because I think I�m fat, but because the last two years have been a bit sedentary and stressful, you know how that goes, and I really did feel a bit better in my clothes about 5 pounds ago. My cardiologist noticed the weight gain and told me to lose weight and eat better, but no other doctor ever would tell me to do that, because I�m in pretty good shape for my age.

I tried for a month or so to just eat a bit less, exercise more, and pay attention to when I was hungry. It didn�t do much. Then I downloaded an app for my Sidekick 4G called myfitnesspal (whatevs). All it does is help you keep tally of what you�ve eaten and the exercise you�ve done, and report back to you on stats, in terms of nutritional and fitness goals. And the mere fact of doing that for a month taught me so much about food and exercise and my own habits around non-hungry eating, that I lost 4 pounds in four weeks. Without it feeling much like I was trying to do so.

I�m never going to be a skinny girl again�I went through that mourning process years ago. And let�s be clear: it was a �mourning� process only because of the liability of having breasts. And also because I had to give up one style of dress and take on another, because you just can�t wear a bunch of babydoll dresses and bulky crewnecks when you�ve got a huge rack. I�ve come to terms with that by now, and even appreciate the kinds of things I can wear now that I couldn�t wear then (you know, things made for women with curves). Given how aging works, I�m sure I�ll keep on wishing I was just a bit smaller as the years go by, not in a self-hating kind of way, but in the wistfulness of aging. But it has been really interesting to learn how much I didn�t know about certain categories of eating (in particular, the sugar category) that, once I observed how it worked in action, was very easy, basically painless, for me to modify.

I am still going to eat dessert and drink wine. And no, I am not going to tally all my food and exercise next week when I�m on vacation!

7:50 p.m. - July 09, 2011
liz - 2011-07-10 01:11:16
I just got an app called MyNetDiary (worst name ever, as those of us who have had net diaries for years know) and it's the same--i tell it how old and sedentary i am, what my weight is, and what I want it to be--then enter in what i eat and activity. It's become kind of a fun game to make the number work every day--like when I go over my calories by 100 or so then I'll do two minutes of crunches or whatever. I really think these keeping-track apps help because it's not emotional or human--it's just numbers!
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