Food

I don't eat very much. It's not necessarily intentional. Courtney and I always like to say that we could never be anorexic. Her because she's hungry, me because I'm forgetful. When I get hungry I generally forget that I'm trying to eat less. It's not that I'm trying to be anorexic, those people look terrifying and they are tormented for the rest of their lives by the disease, even if they successfully seek treatment. For me it's more like trying not to eat a snack.
I'd rather not think about food. I'm still trying to deal with the screwed up mentality of counting calories that I acquired in high school when I thought that the normal amount of fat on my size-4 stomach was disgusting and something to be fixed. I now realize that it was going to the gym every day in tenth grade that helped tone me, not dieting; honestly I was probably the worst calorie counter on the planet since I probably neglected to count, like, dinner. Exercising regularly, however, is what kept me in shape. Of course I now need to get in that habit again so that maybe I can fit into some of the clothes that I still love once again, and not feel self-conscious standing next to Kat, my stupid adrenaline-junkie boyfriend. So he is a motivator, but he is also an inhibitor.
Kat rides his bike up to 20 hours a week because he's a competitive racer. So his body's perfect: motivation for me to be more perfect. Kat eats food all day, especially when he's raced that day or ridden for four hours. So he always has food sitting in front of my face: motivation for me to be a complete fat-ass. Also, his being on a strict training schedule means that he can't really work out with me because a) that would probably end up making him look anorexic and b) it could either injure him, stress his body, or make him too tired. We do like going for day hikes and we both like kayaking, but cycling trumps those things routinely so I end up sitting on the couch with my feet up eating entire bags of Cheetos. Ok, not really, but that is seriously how his constant exercising makes me feel! I am not in a Muumuu (at least not yet), I do not need a special stick with a rag on the end to wash myself, and I do not drive my car across the street to put some mail in the box.
In fact, I like running. I like it alot. And I like pilates. Unfortunately, I've been in better shape before so right now these things are more challenging for me than I would like them to be. Despite that I've been pretty good about being active, and...nothing's happened. It's a horrible feeling to identify with the fat cartoon woman in the Slimquick ads whose husband and dog lose a bunch of weight by, like, drinking water while she's still fat and subsisting on lettuce. My friend Molly and I would always get together every Friday to watch trashy TV, I know, I really productive use of our time. Right before she would go back to campus from my house we would always watch one of those shows where a whale of a person would be forced to lose weight by a bitchy little British woman. We would always feel better watching these shows because not only did we think it was funny when they were complete babies about taking two steps out the door and being forced to eat cabbage and lentils, but also because this specific show would show a list of everything they ate in a week, and would then lay all that food out on a table to show them.
This part made us feel better because it was absolutely absurd how these people were eating! The announcer would calmly rattle off the list: "9 stick of lard, 3 loaves of white bread, 2 whole chickens, 14 liters of soda, 3 pounds of chocolate (and she was lactose intolerant!)," etc., etc. Ok, maybe I made up the lard, but I swear the other entries were true, and it wasn't like that was all they ate that week. It was the 2 whole chickens plus enough other rubbish to bring down an elephant. One guy had to be taken to a meat plant to be weighed because he was too heavy for a scale made for people. Awesome. So that makes me feel better, mostly because I'm in the healthy weight range for my height. Yet, when they finish the part of the program that you see on TV, they've lost a ton of weight; not literally, but still. I eat like them and exercise, shouldn't that make a difference?
Even in Kat didn't exercise that much he would still make me mad about all this. Courtney's boyfriend stopped eating salty foods, stopped drinking soda and alcohol, and stopped riding his bike to work, and has lost 25 pounds. I hate boys. And now the Olympics are on, a constant reminder of how little I have in common with these perfect human specimens. So I guess all I can do now is keep doing what I'm doing, resent most humans, and maybe figure out some way to hang a bowl of macaroni and cheese right in front of face when I'm on the treadmill so that I can somehow get skinnier... I mean healthier.