I’m starting to believe that I have cancer of the fat. My chemotherapy in this case is diet and exercise which is proving to be about as potent as spritzing melon-scented body spray at a big hairy alley rat on a dark night. Meanwhile the fat cells have their own agenda of spreading their troops and mutating to resist the normal means of burning and they are pissing me off.
In this battle my progress is non-existent. I’m starting to believe that metabolism is a mythical character from some Greek tragedy. My body is not reacting to endless spinning classes, the sweating, the running or the minimal soup for dinner. It’s as if I’m not politely excusing myself from the daily breakfast rituals of my colleagues which involves carbs upon carbs of deliciously filling food. The other day as I walked past the desk of one of my work mates, enjoying his happy meal, I spotted the small toy that came in the box. Having gone for about 2 weeks without any form of potatoes, I picked up the colorful plastic object and put it to my nose and fiercely inhaled the sinful scent of French fries right out of it. I looked like a freshly fixed crack addict. That whiff alone caused me to gain two kilos.
Since then, the evil scale in my bathroom mocks me daily with the same number. Even the most minor fluctuations only ever go upwards, if anything. One day I’m going to sacrifice that damn scale to a bonfire and then dance joyously around the flames.
And it’s not like they can find anything wrong with me. I’ve been turned away several times from the hospital staring begrudgingly at a lab result informing me that I had no thyroid problems or unnatural hormone levels, and that I was fine. Damn it!!
Most of the time, when I look at food I can hear the music from that Clint Eastwood movie in my head where he stares at the bad guys just before asking the punks if they felt lucky. It’s either you or me, buddy. While I am battling with the carrot cake to stop seducing me, others around me are happily eating what they like and stylishly donning clothes 4 times smaller than mine.
I have been trying to be thin since I was 12. Several years ago, when I was 10 kilos less than I am now, I went to a nutritionist with my little sister who was quickly following in my voluptuous footsteps. After our weights and heights were measured, we sat silently in her office staring at our feet in shame, waiting for the diagnosis. We watched eagerly as she tapped furiously at her calculator and scribbled numbers down, wondering which one of us was in more trouble with our BMI. The serious look on her face made it seem like we were here to take out a loan and she was looking at our two dollar collateral. A minute later she looked at us and smiled. She began politely explaining how she took our weight and factored it with our height and came up with our Body Mass Index. The number corresponds with different categories of fat such as ideal weight, slightly overweight, overweight, and so on.
“However”, she said sweetly: “You are both obese.”
OBEEESE! OBEEESSSSE? How can I be OBESE??? Then what’s the word they’re using these days for people who are really huge. Obeser??? Super obese? That’s it? They just add a descriptive term. I can’t believe that we’re all in the same category. So what comes after that? What do you call the really fat people we saw in Disney World drinking milkshakes out of bucket-sized cups with straws in one hand and holding a giant turkey leg in the other. Ill-proportioned?
So as you can see, it hasn’t been fun. My year long membership at the gym has just expired yesterday. When I joined the gym last year I was 8kg less. I don’t get it.
I actually went to the gym 75% of the year. It’s just like the cancerous cells that feed on the opposition they get. They are taking me over alive.
Although my husband tells me that he loves me just the way I am, my jeans evidently do not. Is it sad that I feel rejected and upset, because I’ve been dumped by my clothes. But no matter what, I will never give them away. They are neatly folded and allocated the VIP section of my closet, because if I get rid of them, then I will be embracing this new category that I’m a reluctant member of. The obese.
So today’s a new day, and I promised myself last night that I will not eat anything with sugar in it. I’ve been successful so far. But that’s only because I spent the day hiding in a closet, peeping through the cracks at the dancing chocolate soufflé, waiting for me to come out.
2 comments:
Fantastic.. couldn't stop laughing.. u have a very intersting way of looking at things... love it!
Hi, I'm studying cert IV fitness right now, and from everything that I have learnt, and from what I have read about your attempts at losing weight, Im sorry to say, but everything you are doing is complete opposite of what your meant to be doing. First off, if you don't eat enough food your body will hold onto that fat to keep you alive. It's a "survival" mechanism in your body. Another thing, you should never EVER skip breakfast. Your breakfast should include plenty of fibre and all the B and C vitamins. Also include calcium in your diet. So an example would be a high fibre cereal from a health food store and have soy milk with it, NOT normal full cream milk, and not even skim milk. Soy milk is the best for you and it has just as much calcium in it as normal milk. In your cereal you can also mix some muesli or oats in.
Another thing, you should be eating 6 small meals a day as it increases your metabolism. A meal with carbs should be the size of your fist. And a meal with protein in it (meat) should be the size of your hand. I think you should see a dietician not a nutritionist, becuase there is a difference in the two. A nutritionist will tell you what you can and cant eat, whereas a dietician will write a specific eating programme with certain food for each meal. It is an individualised food programme written specifically for you.
Also head back to the gym. It also increases your metabolism. Metabolism is NOT a myth, its just a matter of knowing how to control it. You should probably do some research of your own.
And lastly, weight loss is 70% what your diet is, and 30% exercise. Meaning that exercise is just the frosting on the cake that makes it all the more better.
So forget about all the diets in the world, and please justt listen to your body when it says its hungry, and give it something with alot of nutrients in it.
I hope I have helped you.
Kat.
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