May 05, 2003 @ 2:44 p.m.
They don't call it "DIE-t" because it fills you with joie de vivre, you know.

I had an appointment with my dietitian today. It seems that I haven't lost any more weight since I last saw her a month ago. This strikes me as odd, because I'm positive that I'm getting slimmer. Perhaps I'm making up for the lost fat with muscle, thereby keeping my weight even. And perhaps that sequel to The Fast and the Furious is a really high-quality movie, too.

But it remains a mystery, as I've definitely gotten less chunktastic over the last few weeks.

Perhaps I should fill you all in on this, since I haven't thus far mentioned my quest to not be a Space Porker From Planet Lard.

Over the past year or so, I have gained some weight. Not enough that I'm endangering my health, but more than I am really happy about carrying around with me. I attribute this to various things, including my medication, but essentially I wasn't exercising enough and was letting Stuart have too much influence on what I ate - sometimes it's easy to forget that just because the people around you can eat crap all the time doesn't mean you can.

Also, I eat when I'm happy. Unfortunately for me, I also eat when I'm sad, lonely, bored, angry, depressed, ecstatic, despondent, indifferent, confused, busy, lazy, tired, hyperactive, moody and vaguely psychotic.

At any rate, this past year or so has seen me go from deliciously curvy chick to deliciously curvy chick who is carrying more weight than she would like to and is feeling kind of gross. Although I count myself lucky, because it hasn't gotten bad enough for my clothes to stop fitting, and the only people who've picked on me about my weight are my parents, because they're lovely like that.

I enlisted the help of a dietitian because while I already knew I'm genetically predisposed to diabetes, I realised one day when a doctor was asking me questions about my family history that I'm also predisposed to a hell of a lot of other stuff (mmm, colon cancerlicious), and that learning how to look after myself properly wouldn't be such a bad idea.

She told me to lose nine kilos. I got all idealistic and decided I'd lose 15 (because as any fashion magazine will tell you, looking gaunt and unhealthy is sex-say). I had second thoughts about this plan when I shared it with one of my housemates and she shreiked in fright and yelled "YOUR BOOBS! WHAT ABOUT YOUR BEAUTIFUL BOOBS? DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY GIRLS WOULD KILL FOR A RACK LIKE THAT?" After some thought, I conceeded that she was right, I am magnificently endowed should be grateful for what I have rather than dieting it into oblivion.

So it's around two months later and I'm only about two kilos lighter, which stresses me out somewhat. Which I know is silly, because I'm definitely losing fat if not actual numerical weight, my eating habits have improved exponentially, I'm a lot fitter, and I'm feeling heaps better about myself. I think a lot about how much I've internalised societal pressure to abide by a beauty norm that realistically isn't right for my body at all. The only real pressure on me to lose weight is coming from me, and my weird notions of how I should look. See inside my head during one of my panic trips and you'd be forgiven for getting the impression I have a double-digit IQ. I don't really talk about these thoughts, but what little I've voiced to Stu has made him pull retard faces at me. Which is fair enough, really.

I still haven't figured out precisely when or why I started thinking there was virtue in there being less of me. I mean, being fit and healthy is an admirable goal and one worth striving for, but it goes deeper than that. Deep down part of me wants to be stick-thin and hipless and flat-chested, like so many other girls I see. Of course, another part of me wants to be a burlesque dancer and put tassels on my boobies, so I guess I can't have it all ways. I look at all the women in my family, and there's much more tendency towards being voluptuous femmes fatale in steel-capped boots (I thought that aspect was just me, but no), than there is towards being slender and slight.

I need to fix my head, obviously. I keep telling myself that even if I got riskily thin, the underlying issues would not go away. Which is true. And in my 20 years on this planet, I've never been kicked out of bed for being bootyful. For pulling knives on people and demanding their life savings, yes, but never because of my curves. Which should say enough, really.

But as yet it doesn't, so I think I'll just keep on trying to be healthy and not be stupid, and continue to remind myself that it's utterly daft to buy into something that I otherwise don't support or believe in. And also developing a habit of laughing at people and things that encourage me to think bad things about myself. Like gossip magazines, and the whole of humanity.

I didn't say I thought it would be easy.

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