#46 Things that Make Me Go Ah-Ha

Oh, I wish for so many things, like peace on earth, an end to global warming [and adult acne], and of course skinny thighs. I wasn't a chubby kid, but I was one of those meaty ones whose cute tushy and chunky thighs screamed, "take a nibble". Well, those thighs are still somewhat ample, but I'm not so sure that they are yummy anymore nor cute. Actually, my husband kind of liked "rolly polly" when I was combing the thesaurus for the right word to describe my thighs.

Cheerfully, I'm going to move away from descriptive thigh words and talk about my ah-ha's. I was in the salon reading the December 2008 Allure Magazine the other day when I came across an article called the Total Makeover. It showed 3 women in their before and after photos with their before and after weights and measurements for the readers to ooh and ahh over. Each woman talked about their professions, how they changed their diet, exercise, food plans, goals, etc. Heather, 31 and a University Fund-Raiser, said that her favorite tip was to make a list of the foods that she had been abusing. She said, ..."after she wrote them down, it was relatively simple to avoid them". This wasn't a major ah-ha for me, but I'm definitely going to try this. I've heard before that once you share something, or journal it, it loses its power over you. Let's hope.

Ok, onto other things that make me go ah-ha. I was thumbing through a book called The Hunger Within and saw something that rang true [no longer, thank g-d] for me. In this chapter, the author is working with a group of people who are sharing their histories. They discuss the "fat me" and the "thin me" and how their life, work and relationships would be different if they were thin. As I'm hearing their words in my head, I realize that they are using their body weight [ok, this is where I saw me] as protection, like a suit of armor. Because my body matured early, older boys and men would say things to me and interact with me like I was a woman. The problem was, chronologically I was 13, physically I looked 18, but my emotional/sexual mind was still a tween. The author says, "when your early environments were not safe and did not allow us to have effective boundaries, increased body weight can become an imaginary boundary". All I have to say about this is that I wish the weight was imaginary too. I mean I put on some serious boundary there for a while.

Next ah-ha, French women don't get fat -- or something like that. I was reading a blog recently where the blogger talked about her stay in France and of course the food she ate there... chocolate sandwiches for lunch, a pastry here, hot chocolate there. Well, you get the idea. She worried that when she arrived home and stepped on the scale things would not be so jolie [pretty in french speak]. However, when she did step on the scale, Voila... she had actually lost 3 pounds. She attributes this weight loss to all the walking and climbing -- certainly not her dieting. My ah-ha is that perhaps it's the consistent "exercising" that stokes the fire all day and helps the [french] body burn calories. I wonder if our working out for an hour in the morning [perhaps] does nothing for us in the afternoon. The French are walking or biking to and from stores, school and work, and if they take the bus, they may have to walk a mile or two each way. A couple of summers ago, in addition to my morning workout, I used to walk every evening after dinner. I had no trouble maintaining my weight that whole summer. This is something I think I need to revisit!!

Enough ah-ha's... Our raison d'etre [reason to be] should not be to cherchez et mange la plus [look for and eat the most]. As De La Sabliere says, "Il est difficle de vaincre ses passions, et impossible de les satisfaire" (It is difficult to master your passions and impossible to satisfy them). Sadly, it seems that for us food passionate people, sont vissées [we are screwed].