Weight and the Act of Fluctuation

"With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself--for survival and living day to day with what comes up."

~Marlyn Monroe

I don't like talking about weight.  Why?  Because it's depressing.  It's not a real number. The reason I say that is because weight's only consistency is that it fluctuates.  Whether you're thin, overweight, or obese it's always changing.

I know I gained weight last year. It wasn't much (twelve pounds), but I was already overweight to begin with.  Okay, let's be honest.  According to the BMI (Body Mass Index), I am obese. I know what my "ideal" weight is, but if I am to have muscle tone and not look sick, I'd rather be about ten to fifteen pounds higher than that.

Fat DOES NOT weigh more than muscle.  When people exercise to lose weight and get used to seeing the number drop when they step on that scale, when the number goes up again, a part of them gets discouraged and they want to give up.

Without consciously thinking about it, I gave up on focusing on lowering the fat content in my cooking.  I also decided to stick with soy milk since I haven't had any stomach issues since switching away from milk. It's also a decent enough creamer substitute, should I run out of the non-dairy liquid creamer--I hate the powdered crap.

Small change like this, and I've already lost six pounds this year.  It's odd.  I stopped caring about it and I'm dropping. It may not seem like much considering how much I really need to lose, but it's a step in the right direction and that is truly what matters.  It's a positive and that's what I should focus on.  I know once I pick up the pace on the exercise front, it'll drop quicker. Anyway...

I know all these diet gurus tell you to use non-fat this and non-fat that, but why?  What are you really getting out of it? More preservatives? More chemical balancing? I have some older cookbooks from the forties and fifties and none of them call for fat free anything.

A majority of women from the twenties through the seventies weren't overweight.  They were curvy or voluptuous.  They were sexy.  Don't get me wrong some were overweight, you can't completely escape the fat cell, but curvy was sexy...not fat.

Example: Marilyn Monroe - Curvy,  "Stacked",  Beautiful

She didn't have her ribs showing or poking through her clothing.  She had meat on her legs and arms.  She had a gentle puff to her cheeks.  She often said that people called her "the lady with shape"--well duh!  Now, by media standards...she's considered overweight.

The media, however, loves thin women.  By "thin" I'm talking bone thin.

Example: Keira Knightley--thin, but considered sexy.

Don't get me wrong, I adore Keira Knightley, and this picture is of her at her thinnest.  Her body type has her consistently thin, but at times like this picture--in my humble opinion--I think she's just too thin.  If your ribs are showing, that's not a good thing.  You look malnourished, sick.  Sick is not sexy--no matter how much make-up you put on.

I'm not advocating that being overweight is a good thing, it really isn't.  It makes our heart work harder, we have a hard time breathing, and it can cause skeletal issues.  What I am a believer in, however, is being a healthier me.  

Me...me...me...me...me!  What will make me happy?  Finding a way, of my choosing, to be a healthier me.