Today is July 3 which, in the U.S., has nearly the same holiday feel as July 4. And yet, with all the gains I feel like I’ve made in just, what, eight days? It doesn’t feel like a holiday to me. It feels like I felt nine days ago.
There’s every reason for me to feel fine:
- My migraines have improved
- My mood has improved
- My workouts have been better
- My employer, recently merged, is still pretty terrible, but a little less terrible
But today, I feel:
- Unbearably ugly
- Out of shape
- Uninteresting
- Exhausted
The challenge today, or always
One wonders whether spending time spitting this out is a good idea. I’ve read that suppression, the ability to say screw it, is really what serves a person’s mental health. Obviously I’m not so good at that.
There is a particular condition on which I’ve ruminated my whole, 5-foot life, and that’s not being a six-foot supermodel. Having a regular figure. Starving myself to a ludicrous figure. Eating my way back to a spherical figure. Returning to a regular figure.
I don’t know if this is way of seeing is particular to women worldwide, or handed down to some of us no matter where we are. Or both.
More recently, on a day in which my head felt like Pangaea splitting apart, I couldn’t stop myself; I ate about 2000 kcals worth of cookies. Fatty, sugary, chunky and huge, they were, and I’d already eaten the day’s food – about 1400 high-fat, low-carb kcals.
Problem or solution
And the next day, I felt amazing. Two-and-a-half pounds heavier, thanks glycogen! but great. As in, my head felt great. My heart felt great.
I spent some time with a number of different calorie calculators. How are the results derived? I gave some thought to just how intense my workouts are really. Are 80 handstands considered intense? Which is to say, are 1400 kcals a day enough?
Probably not. But I feel no worth except at my boniest, my tiniest, my most unsustainable.
I don’t know why I care
I’ve long since given up on dating, but there is still in the back of my mind a reminder that I’m still in fact nobody without a mate, riches, unfathomable thinness.
I could let the mate go. The riches, eh, could still happen. The appropriate thinness?
1700 kcals is what I decided to try. Could I achieve a worthy thinness If I’m not cannibalizing my own body for energy? Can I wait more than another two days to find out?
What about my migraines? The extra kcals could be one of the keys to recovery. For years I’ve labored under the idea that X calories were allowed at Y age.
I honestly do not know if I can let myself eat more, heal my head, and risk weight gain. I already can’t stop staring at these extra two pounds. How pathetic – how first world? – is that?
How pathetic am I?
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