martedì, maggio 31, 2011

I wish I had kept all my old fat for a parka

I'm a little concerned that running has replaced blogging as my release activity. But there are only so many hours in the day, and once I've put on the clothes I run in and drag myself up and warm up and go for an hour and cool down and come back and stretch and shower, even someone with a work ethic as shoddy as mine knows it's basically time to settle down to work. And I don't think I can give up the running. It's ace. It feels so good. Even when I'm not in the mood to start, once I get going, suddenly an hour has whizzed by that I've spent thinking about what I'd yell at the prime minister if we were on television together, or how to foment rebellion, or striving to see things from the perspective of my enemies so I can hate them less, or any number of other things that usually I'd type here.

The drawback, besides no time for blogging, is that I've lost weight - rather a lot of weight. I'm not sure how much because I don't believe in scales, so have no idea how much I weigh now or how much I weighed before I started. But there is a visible lack of fat on my body relative to the amount of fat on my body a few months ago. At first that was sort of cool, and I spent a lot of time posing in front of bathroom mirrors and and feeling all sexy and shit, but then I realized that now I'm cold all the fucking time. I mean fucking freezing. I feel like a corpse on a slab of ice at the morgue.

Now, I don't know my women's mags, and I suspect I've been more successful at avoiding media brainwashing about how women need to lose weight all the time etc etc than most, mostly by virtue of spending so many years of my adult life in countries where I'm not totally comfortable with the local languages. But I am woman enough to know that nobody ever, EVER warned me that if I lost a lot of fat I was going to be so fucking cold all the fucking time. And yet each time I discuss how I have to wear five fucking layers of clothes all over the place because I think I'm going to break my bones shivering, all interlocutors concerned who've lost a lot of weight said that happened to them too, and for many it was the factor that made them stop dieting, if they'd lost the weight through dieting.

It pisses me off, it really does. So symptomatic of our culture. Just try to look good and damn the consequences, even if the consequences are going to make you change your mind later so your weight yo-yos, which is so bad for you. For fuck's sake. Anyways, I'm going to try to deal with it by drinking lots of hot water and eating more animal fat. In terms of sheer quantity, I don't think I can eat anymore than what I'm already fitting in my face.

4 commenti:

Sam ha detto...

fwiw, I've lost a fair amount of fat over the past 4-5 years. Strangely, I'm (much) warmer now than I used to be. I was always cold when I was at my heaviest.

In my case, the weight loss correlates with a number of changes: more exercise, draconian purging of sugar from my diet, half-hearted avoidance of gluten and increase in consumption of animal and dairy products. I'd be interested to know if your increase in consumption of animal fat will help the body temperature.

Dread Pirate Jessica ha detto...

Well, the time frame's a bit different - your circulation probably really improved when you dropped the weight over years. Whereas the last year I was in Belgium I packed on the pounds hard. After my boss disappeared, work got so hectic I stopped going to the gym or getting any exercise that wasn't walking to work or sightseeing, when I was usually holding whatever deep-fried delicacy that town featured as we walked . . . and then all that fat built up over the year disappeared in the last six months because of the running. Going into the onset of the Australian winter, such as it is, too . . .

Anyways. Who knows. I just had two rather disgusting beef sausages for dinner and I'm already feeling warmer; could be the beginning of food poisoning though.

Dread Pirate Jessica ha detto...

How's not eating sugar going in Belgium, speaking of? If I went back to Belgium, sincerely, that would hurt. A lot.

Sam ha detto...

It was easier in California... now I do grab the occasional piece of chocolate, but other than that, it's not so bad. I actually find it much easier to avoid (nearly) all sugar than it is to moderate my intake.

I find it much harder to reduce my gluten consumption... beer is my péché mignon.