Tag Archives: weight

B was for Beetlejuice, except it’s not. It’s for body image.

B has been a total B. Nagging at me. Not because I didn’t have a B thing to talk about– I wrote a whole post about the movie Beetlejuice! I had a hilarious story to tell about it and it’s a movie I love… but it just didn’t seem right. Beetlejuice is a great movie and everything, but it’s not exactly life changing like Love Actually or Sleepless in Seattle (me and Mindy, rom coms are where it’s at). My heart wasn’t really in it and I didn’t come up with the answer until this morning. Finally!

I spent the day today doing yard work. (After making Sethy some pancakes, of course– half chocolate chip, half blueberry. I’m such a good wife.) I started by mowing the lawn and I had a bit of an audience. Youths!

The park across the street was infested with teenagers! (Infestation = 6ish, right?) Including two bitty little scantily clad girls sunning themselves on a picnic table. Even at the age of 30, nothing (nothing!) makes me more insecure than teenage girls. And this morning was no different.

As I wound my way back and forth and back and forth across the front yard, sweat dripping down my brow, I could have sworn these girls were looking at and laughing about me. One may have even taken a picture. And I found myself trying to figure out what I’d do if I ended up as the newest Internet meme– move over awkward penguin, here comes sweaty muffin-topped lawn mower! NOOOOOO!

Do me a favor and don’t repin that one, ok? No matter how clever or hilarious the saying… pretty please?

In addition, holy cow am I ever narcissistic. And insecure. And disturbingly focused on my body when there are so many other awesome things I could have been focused on– the gorgeous day, the smell of the fresh cut grass, the tulips and rhododendrons blooming, the invigorating exercise I was getting (I love the sneaky kind of exercise you don’t realize you’re doing), etc.

Over the past year or so, I have gained an awful lot of weight. And I’ve kind of been meaning to tell you about that for a while– another unpublished post that just didn’t seem quite right. But the truth is, body image is a big deal to me. And it’s bigness is two fold.

First, your body image is important to me. I truly want you to be happy in your own skin. I want you to know that you are beautiful. And it is crazy important to me that you know that whether you lose 47 pounds or gain 58, I will love you all the same. Your number, your appearance, your body… it’s just there to hold your soul.

Second, my body image is an absolute obsession. And I am not nice. I’m not nice to myself now, at my highest weight, and I was not nice to myself even at my lowest weight. My internal dialogue is so at odds with how I legitimately feel about others, it’s unreal.

I was mean today, but there was a point, a few months ago, when I made some important realizations about my own body… and now that we’re at the letter B, I think I’m ready to share:

Following the death of another friend’s iPhone and combined with our complete inability (read: laziness) to plug our phones in to a computer to back them up, Seth and I broke down and bought space on the iCloud. Automatic back-ups? Yes, please!

To accommodate the huge initial upload of files to the cloud, Seth asked me to spend some time going through my pictures and deleting ones I didn’t want to keep. Fair enough, we’d done a lot of comparison shopping by photo– makes a lot of sense when you need the information, but becomes quite cluttered once you don’t. So before even getting out of bed on one weekend morning, I spent an hour or so flipping through all of the nearly 2,000 pictures I had accumulated since I first got an iPhone in October of 2011.

I was somewhat floored scanning back through all that time by how many pounds I have lost, gained, fluctuated, upped and downed and back again… my weight. Dang. But here’s the thing: no matter how much or how little I weighed in any given picture, every single one of them represents a moment, a memory, something worth hanging on to. And in every single one, I am happy.

Several pounds over several years... but thousands of happy moments!
Several pounds over several years… but thousands of happy moments!

A couple years ago I read a great blog post from someone else (wish I could find it!) about why your weight should never prevent you from taking a picture… explaining that as your weight has nothing to do with your worth as a person, it also has nothing to do with your worthiness of being remembered as part of a moment in time. I think I recently proved that to myself.

Regardless of how I feel about my body, and no matter my pants size, neither my body nor my pants size defines me in any given moment. What defines me is my presence in the experience– with my puppy, with my niece, with my friends, with a donkey… whoever, whatever. It’s the experience that shines.

Honestly, I don’t care at all about what you or anyone else weighs. But I stress about my weight, my size, my appearance a LOT. My photo tour, however, was an hour long, 60 pound tour of why I should stop. Not a single one of those photos means any more or any less because of my size. Intellectually, logically, I know that. Fat, skinny, or just right, whatever that may be, I’ve got a fat heart… and that makes me perfect exactly as I am.

See? I can be nice even to myself on occasion! I can find a place of body image that brings me a sense of peace– and I need to keep flexing that muscle for the purpose of strengthening it, to turn this obsession into something considerably more positive.

B… is for body image.

But because B was also almost for Beetlejuice, I better share my little story, eh?

The movie Beetlejuice came out when I was in preschool. My cousins were in town one weekend and we went to the movie theater to see it. (Trusty old Showcase Cinemas Ann Arbor… how I love(d) thee.) Fortunately for my parents, The Fox and The Hound was also in theaters, so my cousin Spruce and I were taken to that while the big kids got to go see Beetlejuice. Fortunately for me, my cousins all talked about Beetlejuice on the ride home and I got a pretty good sense of what it was about.

My mom got a phone call home from preschool about the appropriateness of the movies she and my dad were allowing me to see the next week. My mom was somewhat surprised– The Fox and The Hound had some difficult material, yes, but it was rated G and she didn’t really feel it was inappropriate. Except I had told everyone at school that I saw Beetlejuice and told them all about it. Because I was a liar. And I really wanted to see Beetlejuice.

(Sorry, mom… and sorry, Mrs. King.)

I didn’t see the actual Beetlejuice movie until many, many years later, but I was absolutely in love with the cartoon version. When I finally saw the movie– omg, it was a revelation! Just brilliant! And I’m still in love with it to this day. In fact, Harry Belafonte’s Jump in the Line (aka shake, shake, shake, senora) is my second favorite* song of all time.

 

 

*Second only to Dancing in the Moonlight (everybody!). I don’t know what it is about that song, but I just groove to it every time it comes on because it’s the best. BEST!

A Scientifically Sound Algorithm for Calculating Your Ideal Weight

I have always been a big fan of my little brother’s sense of humor. It’s like Will Ferrel, Carl Sagan, Andy Samberg, and Friedrich Nietzsche got together to have one, very tall, very skinny, very fascinating love child… and that is my brother. (Steve Martin and Bill Murray are his exceptionally influential God-parents, in case you were wondering.)

We don’t get to chat terribly often, but when we do, it’s always good. (Especially when it’s a long text conversation that involves cyber-bullying our sister… but that’s another story for another day.) When the Superbowl got Superboring this Sunday we struck up one such conversation and although it never really ended, I went to bed.

Such glorious things were waiting for me when I woke up!

First: a list of genius movies for a Vonck-style film fest. Ummm, yes please! Where do I sign up?

You so want to come, don't you?!
You so want to come, don’t you?!

Still not the point though– (and I am taking my sweet time getting there, aren’t I???)

The final text awaiting me on Monday morning was a novel and brilliant way to think about your ideal weight (my brother– he gets me, you see) and I couldn’t get it out of my head all day. I believe my brother and the person he quoted were on to something spectacular, and I would like to propose this genius algorithm as the ultimate way to calculate your ideal weight.

The holy grail of health and happiness!

And it starts with considering how much you love puppies. Because of course.

First, on a scale of 0 – 10, how much do you love puppies? That’s your input:

Ideal Weight Algorithm

The algorithm output is your ideal weight and it’s actually a very simple calculation.

Say, for example, on a scale of 0 – 10, the amount you love puppies is 8. Then your ideal weight is simply the weight of you holding 8 puppies.

Let’s try another example, if the amount you love puppies is 5, then your ideal weight is the weight of you holding 5 puppies.

It even works if you don’t like puppies (for the love of all that is holy– what is wrong with you?! but no judgement…). In that case, your ideal weight is the weight of you holding zero puppies, and you’re there!

So the actual algorithm inspiration was this quote that my brother sent: “My ideal weight is the weight of me holding eight puppies.” Tom’s addition: “I think that’s a level of physical and emotional and psychological comfort everybody should strive for in so many different ways… in all of the ways.”

B-I-N-G-O!

My sister responded with these:

ooooooo... mmmmmm... ggggggg...
ooooooo… mmmmmm… ggggggg…

But seriously, puppies are amazing. And puppies do not care what you look like for even a second— not even one! To a puppy in your arms, you are at your ideal weight. No need to worry! And that’s probably the best attitude you could take about it. The puppy attitude.

If you’ll excuse me please, I need to gain same pound(puppie)s…

20131113-202009.jpg

(Seriously, that was a genius play on words, was it not?!)

 

Mind, Body, Prison

First order of business– THANKS a million for all of your help on deciphering the 100% illegible inscription from Adam Bucko!  I’m pretty sure it’s “may you be the change,” but “may you be in charge” could also be right… and that little word after be seems to look a little more like in than the.  So, after pondering, I’m going to read the book, see if “in charge” makes sense, and then decide if that’s it or if he was quoting Mother Teresa.  Either way– thanks so much, friends!!  You’re awesome and someone’s about to get a book!!

Anyway, on to our regularly scheduled program.  Prison time!

———–

I read a really interesting article from CommonHealth the other day entitled “I’m Finally Thin – But Is Living In a Crazymaking Food Prison Really Worth It?” by Rachel Zimmerman.  It was a really good read and I loved her prison analogy.  Loved it!  So much so that I wanted to extend it to the other side, too.  Because it’s not just thin women that end up in that crazymaking prison… I think all women can.  And it’s not difficult to get locked up.  At least not in my experience.

So, let me tell you about life… on the inside.  (Do I sound hard?  Like prison hard?  That’s what I’m going for.)

Mind, Body, Prison.

When I’m trying to lose weight or maintain a lower-than-usual weight, those are times when I’m working toward parole and I’m so busy kissing the warden’s behind that I can’t do anything else.  My stomach growls and I spend hours in the gym, but it’s never good enough.  So much time is spent obsessing about food, and not eating it.

When I’ve gained weight and feel too fat, those are the times when I feel hopeless and certain that I’m in for life.  I’ll make a shank out of just about anything (cookies! candy! cake!) and I’m quick to use it at even the slightest provocation.  (Nom nom nom…)  Again, I’m obsessing about food, but the feelings are of finding more and then feeling guilty for consuming it.

My body is covered in prison scars and homespun tattoos– stretch marks from rapid weight gain and loss and persistent injuries as a result of over-exercise.

They say that people can become permanently institutionalized… unable to function appropriately in the real world.  And I fear that I share that fate.  I hope for rehabilitation, a chance to live happily on healthily on the outside.  But what does that take and how do I get there?

My institutionalized mind has two alternative answers for me.

The goody two-shoes hopeful parolee says that loss of a few pounds (or many…) will impress the parole board– a smaller pants size, careful control of caloric intake and demonstration that I am willing to eat nothing but leafy greens and crunchy carrots.

The prison yard gangsta says to forget about it because I’ll just end up back here anyway, searching the yard for another sugary, salty treat to turn into a weapon… and let’s get another tattoo while we’re at it.

So then what’s the real answer?  How do we reform the mind-body prison system?

I don’t know.  And at the moment, I’m the tough guy looking for a fight, about to start a dang riot.  And that’s a problem because people who just want to fight (read: eat) are rarely capable of looking for diplomatic solutions in the heat of the moment.  And, to be perfectly honest, the piece of me that hopes for an answer is really just looking for a way back in front of the parole board– in smaller pants.

I have pretty intense physiological and emotional cravings for, as the book says, Salt! Sugar! Fat!  (Really, good read, I highly recommend it.)  But I’m simultaneously dealing with a neurological and sociological obsession with thinness and unrealistic, mainstream beauty ideals.  But above all, the thing that my heart desires is comfort and to be out of prison, once and for all.

Orange really isn’t my color.  Even metaphorically.

 

 

Oh man, nerd alert.  I was re-reading this post and was concerned that I had used the word shank wrong because suddenly shiv was popping into my head instead.  So I googled it.  Don’t worry.  They’re both names for sharp, handmade prison weapons.  Whew.  I wouldn’t want to incorrectly label a handmade prison weapon.  Oh TV, thank you for giving me so much prison knowledge!

There must be some toros in the blog-o-sphere…

Do you like blogs?

Hint: the correct answer is YES because unless you hate the internet, which you obviously don’t, there are tons and tons of blogs out there and there’s bound to be at least one that’s just right for you!  For example, Under the Tapestry.

(See how I just linked you right back here?  Clever, girl*…)

Personally, I looove blogs.  Some because they are written by people I love.  Some because the content is absolutely fascinating to me.  Some because the people are so different from me and incredibly knowledgeable about something that is otherwise very foreign and I find them completely engrossing.  I love different blogs for a lot of different reasons, but every day I think I am becoming more and more blogophilic.  (I’m hyrodphilic too– always thirsty.)

For that reason, I thought I’d share some of my favorites from each of the aforementioned categories.

I know lots of people with awesome-dot-com blogs.  (Awesome.com is a trademark of one of my former labmates.  It’s his, totally his, I can claim no credit for that excellent turn of phrase, but I use it anyway.  Hopefully, he’s out there somewhere, like beantown, saying dang, dang, dang.  Because then we’re even.)

First and foremost is my good friend Chris Lema over at ChrisLema.com.  He’s a big WordPress guy and knows pretty much everything there is to know about the interwebs and how to make it work for you, plus a little bit (ok, a lot) about everything and anything else.  (Except being a mom.  His wife is waaaay more knowledgeable about that.)  While his subject matter truly boggles my mind, he speaks my husband’s language, and he’s married to the most amazing woman on the planet, so I follow him.  Every once in a while I learn something– you know, like how to pay for lunch.  (True story: TWO times, I have managed to pay the check while out for a meal with Chris.  I’m still waiting to hear back from Guinness Book, but all signs point to a world record.)

My cousin Holly has a great blog too (well, she’s my husband’s cousin’s wife, but cousin works here I think… we have the same last name).  It’s called Mom Taught Us and she shares all sorts of amazing and delicious kitchen creations.  Yes, I’ve actually had some in her kitchen.  Jealous?

My friend Dawn has a beautiful, beautiful blog at cupsruningover.com.  She’s.  Flipping.  Fascinating.  You will love her, she’s impossible not to love.  Go read her blog, be impressed, be inspired, but then come back and love me too!  (The fact that we recently reconnected at this moment in time is absolutely bizarre and I can’t wait to write all about it in some sort of super special feature sometime very soon.  Plus, we wear the same size shoe, which means I automatically love her.  Without giving anything away, it’s larger than average, to be sure.)

Another grad school friend, the very talented doctor Lara Lacombe is a real life writer– of romance novels!  How sweet is that?!  (Yes, I am technically a writer for a living, too… but my writing is significantly drier than Lara’s, to say the least!  Except one time I did write a case report about a woman who suffered a stroke as a result of sexual intercourse.  Decidedly un-sexy.)

Last, but most certainly not least, is my favorite day-job client and friend Dr. Rajan Kanth.  His website is full of all sorts of wonderful medical and self-learning tools!  Dr. Kanth is always teaching himself new things and I love it when people love to learn!!  Also, before I met Dr. Kanth, the only thing I knew about Nepal was that it was the location of Mt. Everest.  Now I know that Dr. Kanth is from there, too 😉

Then there’s all those other people.  The internet people that I don’t actually know, but that I absolutely adore.  For example, I’m pretty sure that if I saw CaitlinHTP on the street I would give her a hug, behave as though we’d been best friends a while, and then be hauled off to jail for being the biggest creep ever.  Seriously though (the other part is only not serious because I am not much of a hugger by nature), Healthy Tipping Point is a revelation.  I love it.  I also love Bridget from Stumbling Towards Perfect because she makes me smile and makes me cry.  It’s heartfelt, nearly local, and gorgeous.  I love Jeannett at Life Rearranged because she’s totally mom-spirational, even though I don’t have any kids, and I love her take on life in general.  Her Sunday Smiles are 100% inspirational 100% of the time and InstaFridays are genius!  Same goes for Tsh & Co. at SimpleMom.  Speaking of amazing mom’s, I can’t forget the Crappiest mom of all.  Seriously, go read her Target post, catch your breath, and then come back.

Did you read it?  How hilarious is she?!

And the subject matter people.  They are amazing too.  I wonder if I could ever write something so meticulously researched, so very expertly explained.  (But then again, that is my day job… which is precisely why I don’t do it here.  It is really, really nice to write without citing, to just say whatever you want with the justification of “because that’s what I think.”  I don’t think most reviewers would buy that.)

My favorite ever is Dr. Yoni Freedhoff of Weighty Matters.  Dr. Freedhoff is an MD and when I say MD, I mean it like he’s an actual, practicing physician who isn’t trying to make money selling you the latest miracle weight loss drug (ahem, “Dr.” Oz).  He presents the radical notion that the best life to live is the healthiest one you can enjoy and I love him for it.  If you know me, you know that weight is a thing in my life.  Something that plays on that dreaded second track and cultivating a positive attitude toward myself and others in that respect is paramount to me.  Dr. Freedhoff has a great perspective if that’s something of interest to you.

Other subject matter experts I love to follow include Oh She Glows (even though I am far from Vegan), PhD Comics (because Jorge Cham gets it), PostSecret (because yes, I consider Frank the world’s leading expert on the subject of secrets), I F*ing Love Science on Facebook (I learn SO much!), and the list goes on.

If you’re a friend of mine and blogs have never really been your thing, I would encourage you to branch out and try subscribing to one or two.  Perhaps even this  one 😉  I used to use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs, but switched to Feedly when they shut down.  Feedly is super simple… I highly recommend giving it a try.  But there’s also the email subscription option (see the box on the right).  If you subscribe by email, every time I update, it will come straight to your inbox.  I’m nothing if not convenient.  (And begging for subscribers.  Is this begging?  It might be begging.  Subscribe.)

If you’ve been around the blog-o-sphere for a while and you find me somewhat intriguing, then I am truly delighted to be part of your life!  Thank goodness for the internets, yes?!  Bringing people like you and me together since… ummm… what year was it when I first started IMing via AOL?  It’s been a while anyway.  (I wonder if I still have an away message up…)

So glad you’re here!!

 

*Clever girl… that’s what the dinosaur hunter says in Jurassic Park when he realizes that the velociraptors** teamed up to hunt him.

**Trust story: I look an awful lot like a velociraptor when I run.  Ask any of my high school cross country teammates.