Food for thought

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. Do I really want to lose weight, or do I want to gain health? Does it matter if I eat healthily, exercise regularly, and still have some extra fat?

We bought Fable 2 recently, and one of the things that has changed from the original game is the option to choose male or female character (this story is going somewhere, trust me!). I chose a female character, and then I started fretting about my character getting fat. That's right. I started to moderate the food intake of a video game character. Now, in the previous Fable, I happily made my (male) character fat, thin, muscly, stringy, short, tall, without having a second thought about his level of attractiveness. After all, my character totlly kicked ass! Yet, make it a female character, and even with high levels of ass-kickitude, I still fret over my character's fat, or lack thereof.

Obviously, this is not healthy.

I think this needs to be said. I don't have an unhealthy relationship with food. I have an unhealthy relationship with body image. For a majority of my life, my body has been made public property. As far back as I can remember, the people around me have felt perfectly comfortable telling me that I'm too fat, too thin, too pimply, my hair is too curly, etc. I'm unfortunately certain that most readers can understand this.

When it comes to food, yes, I could do a lot better. I could make healthier choices more often. Like most people, as much as I enjoy a plate of vegetables, I'm more often going to go for the quick choice than the more nutritious choice. But generally, I don't think my relationship with food is that screwy. Aside from poor choices, I don't tend to binge these days, nor do I deliberately starve myself.

But my body image is fucked.

And the only reason I can come up with to lose 60kg is to attempt to "earn" the praise of others, particularly my family.

Why?

Now I've thought of it, that's a stupid reason to make myself half the size I currently am. Sure, I may get to that magical beacon, "60kg lost! Size 10 - 12!". And yes, I will get praise, compliments, and the rest. But if these people criticise my weight now, if I no longer have that weight, they'll find something else eventually. My teeth are wrong. My hair is too short. My weight is starting to creep back on....

So fuck what other people think. A life lived to try make others happy is a life that is not my own. So what do I want?

I want to be fitter.

I want to eat better food.

I want to learn to cook healthy food better.

I want to enjoy my life on my own terms.

My physical size does not appear on this list. Pursuing health and fitness will probably result in my losing fat, but ultimately? I want to learn to love whatever size I am, and learn to tell people who want to put me down to piss off.

So the focus of this blog is kind of shifting focus. But I can't continue agonising over body fat. Because the day I agonise over the size of my video game characters, is the day I officially have a problem.

You're free to be pretty

Something I have come to realise, is that as my weight has increased, my femininity has decreased. And by that, I mean I stopped allowing myself to be pretty.

In high school, at a size 14, I used to wear lots of pretty clothes. Dresses, skirts, fancy tights, interesting boots.... I used to spend a lot of time sewing for myself or modifying clothes I had bought from op shops. And while I was still overweight, at that stage I only had to lose about 15kg to be at a healthy weight, instead of 60kg. What is more important or interesting however, is that even though I was overweight, and noticeably bigger than my peers, is that I didn't allow that to detract from my right to be pretty.

And it's not just my former outerwear. I had a formidible collection of snazzy lingerie, boasted a large collection of haircare products, and although I've never been one to wear much makeup (I have the sort of skin that soaks up foundation and makes my pores look like giant hungry wells in my skin whenever I put it on), I spent the money for good eye and lip make up, and nice bath products.

When did all this change? Obviously, now that I have my own house, and pay my own bills, and have a dog and a car, and other assorted money-sinks, my "pretty" budget is a lot smaller. And tastes change, obviously. Getting dressed used to be a big production for me, now it's as simple as getting a Tshirt and jeans. Which, most of the time, is a good thing. As one gets older, taking forever to get dressed and make oneself up just to hang aroud the house is a bit much. But I don't think it's as simple as the wisdom of aging a year or four.

It's that I don't value myself, as a fat person.

Because I am fat, I don't want to be noticed. Because I am fat, I want to blend into the background. Because I am fat, I consider myself to be less of a worthy human being.

And that, all of that, is absolute bullshit. I know that I am still a pretty girl. I know that I'm an interesting, capable and intelligent person. I know that I am just as worthwhile a human being as someone half my size....

....but I don't treat myself that way. I allow myself to wear one pair of jeans until my thighs chafe a hole in them. I don't have any "pretty" or "sexy" or hell, even any special occasion clothes set aside. I have a pair of jeans, some tshirts, a couple of jumpers and my work clothes (oh, and gym clothes. I have those too.). That's my entire wardrobe, summed up. My undies are the cheapest Big W cotton 7 pack. Bras these days are either sports bras, or basic bonds, and my hair and skincare rouine is the bare basic minimum. And as I said before, this isn't entirely a bad thing. Streamlining my daily routine was something that needed to be done.

I think the issue here is that I don't want to enjoy being overweight. That I feel like I'm a work in progress, and stopping to smell the roses along the way is a waste of time because it distracts me, or that it allows me to become "comfortable" in being a fat girl. And not that I have a problem with fat acceptance, (Cthulu knows that I need a nudge to accept myself as I am), it's more that the idea of fat acceptance, to me, implies that one is happy being fat, and one intends to stay that way. And while I should accept myself right now, I am not happy being a fat girl, and I never will be.

The thought that spurred this post however, was my realisation that if I don't allow myself to be pretty occasionally, no matter at what size, I'll get to my goal weight..... and then what? Am I magically going to implement a better skin care routine, or make the effort to do something with my hair *just because* I'm thin? Probably not. If I allow myself to be a slob now, I'll always be a slob, whether I'm size 24 or size 12. I need to stop the "When I'm thin I will......." fantasies of how being half of me will be a magical panacea for all the things that are wrong with my life.

So I'm bringing pretty back. Ruku's mum gave me some Chanel No. 5 as a present last year, and I've gotten into the habit of spritzing a little on in the mornings when I get dressed. Even when I go to work outside pulling weeds, with a bunch of guys to get stinky and sweaty, the knowledge that I've given myself that little piece of pretty is powerful stuff. And that's an important start to balance.