Sunday, February 11, 2007

The Department of Stupid Things to Complain About

I've been losing weight lately. Nothing major - a pound or two every couple of weeks - but it's been happening pretty steadily for a couple of months now, and my pants are all starting to fall off, and I'm frankly a bit confused.

See, I'm not actually trying to lose weight. Oh, I'm certainly not complaining...and I'm not exactly in danger of becoming unhealthily thin any time soon....but I just don't get it. Losing weight, in my experience and in those of people I've seen try to do it, requires effort. Serious, concentrated, long-lasting effort. Maybe not for those lucky people with great metabolisms, but for people like me who usually gain weight by just looking at a brownie, actually losing weight is hard work. And I haven't been working.

In fact, I have never once been able to lose weight by trying. There have been times in my life when I have counted calories and dutifully gone to the gym three times a week and held off on dessert and all the rest, and not lost a single pound.

Which might explain why I find it so confusing, frustrating, and even upsetting when I go to the gym sporadically at best, eat whatever I feel like eating, and keep getting smaller. I've got one question for my body:

What the fuck?

It's a control issue for me. I like to think that I have control over my body, and that my actions influence how it functions. I can accept the physical consequences of my poor choices, just so long as they actually result from my choices. For example, if I eat poorly and don't get enough sleep and stress myself out, I am not surprised when I get sick. If I drink way too much wine, I am not surprised when I am hung over.

But when I treat myself well but suddenly find myself knocked on my ass with a cold...well, I get annoyed. When I wake up with a splitting headache and vague nausea after just a couple glasses of wine spread out over hours, I get sort of pissed at the grand unfairness of it all. I behaved myself; why can't my body? I don't like it when my body acts like an unpredictable teenager, acting capriciously, flying off the handle at the mildest provocation, not listening to reason. I'm an adult, damn it, and it's about time my body learned to act like it.

So while it's great that my moody, stubborn little body thinks it's fun this year to lose weight without trying, I'm a little worried about the day when it changes its mind and decides it is actually way more fun to watch me eat nothing but carrots and slave away at the gym as my ass gets bigger and bigger.

A little rationality. A little cause-leads-to-effect. Body o' mine, is this really so much to ask ?

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