Body Image

Have you ever seen John Bingham's article on food? To paraphrase (though I'd be happy to forward the article to you) he says--food is fuel. That's all it is. Food will not make us happy. Food cannot make us upset or worried or anything else. It is just fuel for our body.

Well, that's true. If that's all there was to it, we wouldn't have any problems, would we?

Saying, "It's just food," reminds me of the Dexatrim commercial that says it helps to stifle your hunger. I always shout back at the screen, "What the hell does hunger have to do with eating?"

I used to be one of these people who could and would eat anything she wanted. I've never been particularly thin -- the smallest clothes I have worn in the past 10 years are Levi's size 6 reverse-fit jeans, and they were pretty loose. (Even at my thinnest, I've still had a reverse-fit, not classic-fit, body.) But I was never one of these girls who ate salad all the time or counted calories or any of that. If I wanted dessert -- and I usually do, both from years of training and from lust for sweets -- I had it. I was a size 8 whether I exercised 7 days a week or did absolutely nothing.

I have gained 20 pounds in the past year. I am 25 pounds over what I think of as my "normal" weight and 35 or more over what the weight charts say I should be. (I'm not really 5-foot-5, I'm 5-foot-4 with an extra inch of spine due to an extra vertebrae.) I'm not wearing size 6 jeans -- I'm about to pass out of size 10 jeans into size 12, and according to Laura (during Rob and Laura's visit last week) clothes have suffered "size creep" during the past 10 years: what used to be size 10 is now size 8.

I have never dieted before. I might have thought about it, but diets are boring and I've never had to be specific about what I've eaten before, why start now? Sure, I've been upset about my weight from time to time, but that's just part of being a woman -- even the skeletons aren't happy with how they look.

Because I've never dieted, I have never specifically tried to lose weight. No, really. I've been unhappy with being flabby or not looking like the women at the gym, but never enough to make me jump on the scale 3 or 4 times a week. I have never seen weight loss happening. I know it's happened; at one point during my most buff period I weighed 128 pounds, and I know I weighed more than that during college (before the buff period).

So now, having lived my life with a "I will not be obsessed by food or weight or exercise" attitude, I find myself at 160 pounds, up from 140 last year. The running hasn't budged that an ounce, by the way -- I did weigh myself this week and it's still 160. I don't know how to lose weight. I write down everything I've eaten, but I'm not taking measurements of what I'm eating (is that a half-cup of Haagen-Dazs nonfat yogurt? a third of a cup?) and I don't know what the caloric count of 12 pieces of tuna roll sushi is.

Yeah, I wanna do the liquid diet, if for no other reason than to get things started. To see something happen. I've never gotten any of these reputed benefits from working out and I'd like to see a physical difference for once.

When I say I've never seen any benefits, I'm not kidding.

• I worked out at the gym -- with a personal trainer and everything -- for years and never saw any major differences. No muscle definition, no matter how much I lifted.

• I keep hearing that exercise is supposed to fill you with energy. Ha! It makes me tired. I am trying to work out in the "zone," as Bob I-am-Oprah's-trainer Greene puts it, and I haven't felt that elation I hear about.

• I thought quitting the medication I was on, which was a)making me extremely sleepy and b)reputedly contributing to my weight gain, would cause things to get better. Well, I'm a little less tired, and I'm exercising now. But the weight is staying right where it was.

So I'm going to keep up the running, work up to 20 miles a week, push myself to go just a little bit faster and get a hard workout. And I'm trying to watch what I eat, short of having a calorie counter in hand.

I know that I can change some things about myself -- I look at 9 of my fingernails and can see that. I look at the 10th and see what I've always seen: a nail I can't stop tearing at, a nail that gets the brunt of my anxieties while I'm in thesis class or TV class. When I get to 10 out of 10, then I will know I'm over my nailbiting and nailpicking. Until then...

If I don't start seeing something happen with my body in the next several weeks -- not the best time to do it, to be sure, but I don't tend to pig out on anything but sweets, and everyone I know has unappetizing sweets like pumpkin pie around this time of year -- I'm going to do the liquid diet.

I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it ain't easy living here in LA. This is the land of beautiful people. Ain't nobody here who's a size 10, kids. I'm probably never going to be a size 2, like so many of the women I see here, and I'm quite sure I'm not going to put forth the effort to get there.

But it's not so much pressure I feel, as envy. I'd like to look like that too. I'd like to be attractive, rather than just charming or cute. Having a dumpy figure (highlighted by my short legs) is not going to help with this.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

I've been lucky: I decided (consciously) to take Monday and Thursday off, and both of those days have been filled with rain, whereas other days have been beautiful. Cool.