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.

Introduction

I am a 20 year old girl living in Southern Sydney, who needs to lose a lot of weight.

To properly introduce myself, I am Sebastian (not really, but I always liked the name, so I use it as a psuedonym), I am turning 21 in March, and the thought of being 50-60 kilograms overweight for the *big* 21 is a pretty upsetting one. So, if I start now, I can be on my way to a much healthier weight by my birthday, which would be a really great present.

I am a very busy girl. I have two jobs, and not a lot of time on my hands to make sure I eat well. With that, and my rampant dairy addiction (i can knock down a chocolate milkshake in 30 seconds flat), I've decided to try the Celebrity Slim diet plan, so that I spend less time preparing healthy food (the biggest downfall of the CSIRO plan and the like, IMHO), and I get my milkshake cravings satisfied, without having to put up with being sick all the time.

I'm going for consultations every fortnight. Mostly because I get a rostered day off every second Friday, but also because having fortnightly weigh ins means I have more time to try lose weight, so hopefully when my weigh in rolls around, I get somewhat of an impressive figure on the scales. I had my first consultation on Friday, and my figures are as follows;

Dress Size: 22 to 24
Weight: 118
BMI: 44
Hips: 138cm
Waist: 127cm
Arms: 35cm
Next Weigh In: 10/10/08

My goal weight is to be about somewhere around 58 - 63kg, to wear a size 10 to 12, and to have a BMI of 23. This means I need to lose about 60kg. So, I've started this blog, separate from my regular journal, to be totally devoted to my quest to be 60kg lighter, and several dress sizes smaller.

However, to set myself a shorter term goal, I want to lose 10kg, and get to 108kg. That will also get my BMI out of "Morbidly Obese" and into regular old obese at 40. If I can do that in the next two months, I will be very happy, and will reward myself with a nice treat when I get there. A full body massage sounds nice though! Because losing 60kg is just... well, intimidating, I'm trying to think of it in terms of taking small bites. I don't feel like I can lose 60kg, but I can definately lose 1kg, sixty times. I'm fairly sure I can lose 5kg, twelve times. And losing 10kg, six times sounds like a challenge I'd be up for.





I'm starting the plan tomorrow, so I'll have an update on my food and exercise then. Wish me luck!