The One Where I Complain About Everything

The care and feeding of a 46 year old woman is entirely too hard. First of all, I'm fat. I hate it but I'm ok with saying it. I am less fat than I was. What's my secret? What's my trick?

Diet and exercise. Yes. I decided to do the thing which sucks and is hard because it's the thing which actually works. Truth be told, I could be even lesser fat (or is it less fatter?) but the degree to which I hate working out is so hard to fathom, I also can't fathom working out MORE. But I need to. My body isn't getting stronger the way it needs to, it needs more work. If I was 25 it would be different but oh god I'm not. I'm 46 and atrophy has set in across the expanse of my ass.

I got lumpy. It was easy to blame the kids. Shakes from Chik Fil A, donuts at midnight and bacon maple sundaes played no part in my rolls of fat and cellulite I'm sure. No, my diet of mass consumption and glory really wasn't to blame. Nor were the hours sitting at the computer at work, sitting at the computer playing video games. No carrying four children, two at once, rendered me a blob of human body fat. WHAT A TRAGEDY OH HOW DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME?

The truth is, I love to eat and I hate to work out. I come from fat people who love to eat. Genetically I just didn't have a chance. So I have to change the way I behave. Am I going to go to the Renaissance Festival and refuse to eat any chocolate covered bacon? No - because I'm also not trying to live a life of denial. But what I am doing is changing what's my norm. Changing my "everyday" behavior so that it positively impacts the amount of weight I'm carrying around.

I have 69 pounds left to go to hit what I tentatively set as my goal weight. I am not sure my goal is where I mentally need to be though. My best friend reminds me rightfully that my only goal should be health. Unfortunately I'm not MENTALLY healthy enough for that kind of focus. I want a single digit size. Or damn close to one. I realized a couple of days ago that I'm down two sizes. That's really good, but I couldn't help being disappointed. I wanted MORE. I'm not realistic in wanting more but it's what I wanted. And I cried in the stupid dressing room because I was so mad.

My wants are simple. I want to shop at the normal shops. I don't want to have to go to stores for "PLUS" sizes. EVER EVER EVER EVER AGAIN. I don't want to have to walk to the WOMENS DEPARTMENT of a major department store, away from the cute and awesome clothes, to discover the lovely Alfred Dunner and White Stag collections.

What? That wouldn't look awesome on me? No? There was an article last year even describing plus sized clothes are HORRIBLE. They are. Are there some cute things out there? Sure. There's always exceptions, it's just wading through the pile of shit that's painful. Don't suggest mail order anything I don't shop online for clothes the end.

This is why I'm a little down right now, because doing the math on my lost sizes, it's occurred to me - down two sizes now, if I drop the 69 pounds that might only equal another two sizes.

Which puts me at a 16.

Which is un-fuckingacceptable.

Would it be amazingly smaller than I started out? Yes of course. Would my health improve? Yes.

Would I still have to go to freaking plus size shops for clothes?

Yes.

I'm not doing that. I've been doing that for 20 years and I'm not doing it anymore. I'm just not.

I have an unhealthy body image, and I place too much emphasis on appearance. I can own that. But what I want is to NOT feel this way and still having to shop at the places that I hate isn't going to make any improvements in how I feel. I want to feel NORMAL.

And, when I was a size 16...

everyone told me I was fat.

It's going to be a really long next year - about how long it will take to get this weight off in a healthy manner. But I am leaving the plus size shops behind, no matter what it takes.
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