- You go to talk to a gay guy at work, and instead of making eye contact with you he makes waist contact with you -- he stares at the muffin-top above your pants the entire time.
- Someone sets up a meeting using Outlook and lists you as the location.
I hate exercise. This was moderately ok when I wasn't middle-aged and when I lived in a city and was forced to walk everywhere, but now on occasion I even have debates with myself on the merits of getting up from my seat to go to the bathroom versus...just not. If I were an animal I'd be a sea anemone. I'd have a symbiotic relationship with organisms that groomed me and would wait for food to come to me.
There was a time when I ran. I only run when I'm depressed. Anyway, I kept waiting for this "runner's high" I kept hearing about. Maybe it's just me, but unless runner's high consists of severe cramping and the flab on your face actually detaching from your bones due to all the turbulence, I never got runner's high.
I live in Southern California, so I have to spend a good part of the year in a swimsuit -- and often times, sadly, in front of people I know. So instead of addressing the root of my problem, I ordered 6 tankinis to try on, figuring, the more coverage, the better. I ordered them from Victoria's Secret, which I knew right off the bat was a really bad idea. It is impossible for me to tell what those swimsuits actually look like because, unlike the models, I do not have breasts that resemble a grown person's buttocks. In fact, I could have stopped the last phrase five words in. But I'd venture to say that outside of Southern California, most people don't look like that. So, it is not possible to tell what the swimsuit actually looks like on any normal person based on the photo. As such, it was shocking when I actually put them on. The most fitting phrase would be "female wrestler". I didn't think this was possible, but I looked even worse in those tankinis than in a bikini with my midsection exposed.
My new strategy is to appear in locations where I am comparatively in shape. For instance, our next vacation is going to be in Palm Desert. Next to most octagenarians, I look young, firm, and in shape. I appear lively and full of energy.
Anyway, I eat well and I try to be healthy minus that moving-around part. You can't win 'em all.
... and I thought I was a whiner! Girl, you are t-i-n-y. So maybe you were tiniER before you had kids, i.e. before I met you, but I am actually crying in my closet every so often about not fitting into clothes anymore (not from 20 but from 2 years ago). Unlike for many things, I can't blame Midwestern Living for that, but rather lack of discipline and abundance of nervous appetite for carbohydrates and saturated fats. The fact that there is less (much less) competition here than in SoCal, you will be happy to hear, is NOT helping. If everyone's overweight, it's a poor consolation (not to mention motivation for the upcoming, utopia-seeming summer) when you stand out as merely chubby. So, to add to your real-life based checklist of when you know you're fat:
ReplyDelete- You feel briefly good about yourself because the size 8 pants you bought at the GAP hang slightly loose on your waist, unless they're washed, until you realize you bought the "curvy" cut (and all the sizes are vanity, anyway, so an 8 would probably have been a 12 so many years ago)
- the personal trainer at the gym your husband finally bullied you into joining politely looks the other way when you enter your weight into the thighmaster (I lied about my age, too, though he wasn't even cute)
- at said gym, a five-year old boy stares at you when you come out of the shower and asks his mom "why that lady needs such a big towel"
Take that, Ms. Fat.