See, I've had pretty inaccurate body image since I was a teenager. Right around the time I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, I gained about 40 lbs from different medications. It happened so fast, I didn't notice; and then I lost it all again when I got sicker. This continued until last summer, when right after I had colon removed, my weight hit an all time low. 110 lbs. That's as unhealthy a number as it sounds. I was literally malnourished. No exaggeration--I got a skin condition usually only seen in cases of starvation and started to lose my hair. (Luckily, my hair was pink at the time, so it was actually kind of funny to see giant clumps of it stuck in the sink and whatnot.)
And I felt super shitty. When I felt that bad, I didn't really think too much what I looked like. I was too sick to eat much, and when I did, I didn't absorb nutrients well, so I didn't gain weight. Which brings us to Diesel's Mirror. A chart:
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| bad at math |
Now that I can, like, eat, I do. ALOT. AND IT RULES. But I don't always make wise choices...Its been six years since I could make eating mistakes and leave the house afterward. So maybe I've been drinking 8 Dr. Peppers a day. And Family Size bags of Doritos . Ok, and more bacon than I'm proud of. Or exactly the right amount of bacon to be proud of, if one should be proud of eating large quantities of bacon. But either way its a lot of it. And I feel GREAT! Better than I have in my entire life! Did you know that you body will do things you tell it? I did not. I have spent the past six years in a constant battle of will against my colon not to shit myself; my joints have been creaky, I have been too anemic to walk more than a block or two. spent a long time feeling like I was a little person inside my head, working the controls of a body that was pretty, but unreliable. My body was unreliable enough that I ignored it or hated for the way it worked. But now? I exercise on purpose. And exercising means you can eat whatever you want, right?
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| I love bacon so much, I did marry it. |
I did not know that. So since I am on-purpose exercising, I assumed I had a bangin' bod, like I did for a month or two in the fall, when I had put weight I lost from the surgery back on. 3 pairs of outgrown jeans be damned. My body was acting right, for the first time in a long time. Diesel's mirror said Feel Good= Look Awesome.
Now that's not to say I don't still look awesome. I do. The extra weight has given me high-class porno grade boobs, since there's no danger in spontaneously losing it, I can dye my hair all awesome and purple, my ass is round and higher from taking the stairs at metro. But the extra weight (20 or so lbs) is starting to take its toll: I also have sciatica, which tends to flare when I'm fatter because of the extra weight put on my hips. My back is not the fan of my better-than-Jenna-Jameson's-tits tits that I am. So I am trying to lose some--exercising, and cutting my soda intake down to 2 a day , eating foods that are pretty close to being 100% organic matter. (Not organic food, just food that is made from things that used to be alive, not things that are mostly chemical and corn syrup flavored).
I don't want this to become a weight loss blog, It won't , actually, because the process of weight loss is tedious at best and harmful to people who don't have the blessing of delusion's self esteem at worst. But for the first time, in a very, very long time, my body feels like mine. Doughy, bigger than it used to be, but stronger, more resilient, more flexible; more than a place I live. Its becoming me
