I am just going to say this once, but it's important, so listen up everyone. If you want to feel good about yourself, find a pair of pants you don't currently fit into, lose enough weight to pull them on, AND, (this is the really mind warping part) ZIP THEM UP. It is a guaranteed natural high which will have you short of breath and floating on air all day. (Ideally, you should be short of breath from the joy of it all. Of course, you also may be short of breath because to get them zipped, you now cannot sit or breathe, but I consider that a personal issue, and I'm not going there.)
I will admit something very sensitive and revealing. People used to call me skinny. Frequently. Pretty much all the time. As in, "You are so skinny, you make me sick." That sort of thing. I felt it was rude and uncalled for. I was slender, even thin, but skinny? That sounded like a dying animal getting ready for the glue factory. It is meant to be a compliment, I suppose, but it feels like a backhanded slap and an insult when you are 20 and full of yourself.
Well. I am here to notify you, enjoy it while it lasts. Because the times, they WILL change. And it's a very rude awakening when suddenly, at 50, your waistline is heading out for its own zip code without you, and your bottom tries to annex an additional seat for it's very own. We will not even get into thighs and hips. This is a family blog, and what I think of THOSE two topics is not fit to print.
Like most women of A Certain Age, I have put on one or two additional pounds I did not strictly need. Those pounds are, of course, most inconveniently located, and a redistribution plan was definitely in order.
I started with small goals, a pound here, a pound there, and played around with a steady diet of salad and water. I gained five pounds. I think it might have something to do with the bread sticks and the half cup of salad dressing I was putting on the plain old boring lettuce, but I'm not positive.
Clearly, a new strategy was in order, so I made the supreme sacrifice and gave up my bedtime (by which I mean eating IN bed every single night) snack. This is a new habit I picked up a few years ago, and one of which I have become inordinately fond. So has my stomach, which now has a mind of its own, demanding meals at midnight, and sulking at breakfast time.
I should really write a diet book, because I can say with absolute honesty, I have lost quite a few pounds by simply not eating after 7 or 8 p.m., and never in bed. By quite a few, I mean over ten, which is substantial progress in my weight loss goal tending.
So, yesterday, I reverently took my skinny jeans (yes! I AM finally to the point where skinny comes into this little story) down off the shelf, and once again tried to pull them on. Oh glory days! The joy was overwhelming when they not only slid over my hips, but I was able to button them, AND breathe, all at the same time. It was a thrilling moment of achievement, and I reveled in it.
The sense of pride and accomplishment were truly something to behold. I was so excited I immediately told four people, because I just could not contain myself. It was a high no drug could reproduce, because I knew it came from achieving a personal goal that required some effort and patience on my part.
That is the problem with our current child rearing methods, I believe. We deny them the opportunity to work for their achievements, so they never really learn how rewarding it can be to have to wait until you have attained a goal to get the prize. We can't have them compete, because that will harm their self-esteem. We have to hide their grades from their peers, because no one needs to know how they did on the last test. We save them from every hardship, and pave their way in front of them so there is ne'er a pothole or crack to be seen.
But we learn about the thrill of victory and the satisfaction of success when we are forced to work towards a goal that is difficult to achieve, and occasionally taste the agony of defeat. And let me just share, losing weight when you are 50 something is nearly the impossible dream, so there is a lot of agonizing that goes along with it.
Losing weight is not the hardest thing I have ever had to face in life. There are many more difficult problems that have been thrown in my path, and many more complicated situations to sort out. But very few things are more important to most people's sense of self-worth than their appearance, and how they are perceived by others.
So go ahead. Call me skinny. I can take it! My skinny jeans and I will be strutting our stuff as we go out for a walk. (Part of Redistribution Plan B.) I will give you the skinny on being skinny if I ever get called skinny again!
Meantime, put down the snack and back away from the treats. Trust me. Skinny jeans really ARE worth it!
Have a lighthearted week!
