Do you diet for yourself?

A question from My_space http://www.opendiary.com/entrylist.asp?authorcode=D682141
"So I want to put it out there, do women and man really diet for themselves or do you think that they have to look a certain way because fashion magazines say so?"

I was going to leave a note replying to this, but I started getting so long-winded that I decided the question needed ample space to be answered. Be warned, this has gotten seriously out of control and turned into an over-the-top essay because I kinda miss writing papers… so I went a little crazy!  Damn, if I were still in college or had more reason to be all gung-ho with this, it would be a total thesis, or a book… maybe I’ll write a book! ~L~ Just what we all need, another book about weight! Anyway, here ya go: (P.S. I couldn’t get the spell check to work, so forgive me!)

There is constant pressure on women to be thin, and in the past, men seemed to be immune to this pressure. However, the introduction of the "metrosexual" and other images have started taking their toll on male self esteem as well.  Where we could once count on our boyfriends to reply to our whine of "I’m so fat" with "You are not! You’re beautiful!" now we’re more likely to hear, "Just look at me! My arms are flabby and I have no six pack and my brow needs waxing!" Ok, maybe that’s an over-kill.  Still, men are more sensitive now about their apperance than they’ve ever been.  *I once read an article about how men are now becoming body concious as women, which I would cite if I still had the magazine, it was either Glamor or Cosmo. 

It’s undeniable that the madia has an effect on our self-esteem and our desire to be thin.  It seems like everywhere we look we’re constantly being told we’re not good enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough, not toned enough, not even organized enough! (Oh, and on top of all that we’re suppoed to be baking things from scratch and forcing blooms, and giving homemade gifts!) Women are litterally killing themselves to achieve this impossible perfection.  It’s incomprehensible not to be affected by the constant bombardment. 

As if the media pressure weren’t enough, friends and family and even strangers will comment about your weight.  They offer suggestions, diet tips, encouraging remarks, "you’d be so pretty if you lost some weight."  Personally, I haven’t had to deal too much with this issue.  I come from a large extended family, and yes, everyone was large, and every get-together was celebrated with mountains of food.  You were more likely to be made fun of for not eating enough than berated for taking too much.  My cousin was once teased for the weight he’d lost over the summer working construction. The only influence I had outside of that was the kids at school who would make fun of the little fat girl. 

Beyond that, being a single fat girl can be tremendously difficult. I don’t know how many times I’ve been chatting with some guy on-line who will declare me to be so funny and smart and sexy, and I’d love to meet you, only to have him vanish upon seeing my picture. There is definately pressure in the dating world to present yourself as a pretty, smart, cultured, interesting, and of athletic/fit/thin/average stature to be considered worthy of attention and a valid dating prospect.

Let’s not forget the doctors in their infinate wisdom reminding us with every opportunity that we need to lose weight. I’ve even had the misfortune to have a doctor that refused to give me any explaination for medical problems I was having beyond, "You need to lose weight. Watch the junk food and exercise, even if it’s just a walk around the block."  Aparently, she missed the part where I just said I went to kickboxing classes FIVE days a week.  Also, it’s been so long since I had anything that qualifies as "junk food" that if I ate any it would make me all kinds of sick! I degress, the point is, some doctors are unable to see beyond your weight to properly give you the care you need. (In this case, had she been listening to me, and not just seeing how fat I was, she may have understood that the same healthy food I ate one day was making me sick the next, and maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t have had to live for 2 years with the pain that was my GALLBLADDER. *stupid head*)

Historically, (From my knowledge, without over-doing this thing extremely and actually researching it!) weight was never an issue before the advent of modern living.  In past times, the larger woman was lusted after, she was a sign of health and a weathy family. Did anyone back in those days think, oh, I’m gaining too much weight! I must diet!  It hasn’t been until recently that this uber-thin waif is the model of what we’re all supposed to strive for.

Granted, the world back then was a very differant place. You had to actually walk places, and scrub your laundry by hand, and weed your garden, and milk your cows, and do a million other things that would keep you from getting too large.  The modern world with it’s fast food and ease of living has brought all new levels of plump and sedintary lifestyles. The large portions, the fat content, the very ease of every day living has morphed us into a fat, lazy culture.  Back then people didn’t have to "exercise" they just lived, and that was enough.  As spoiled, modern people, we have to put some effort into maintaining our bodies, a task which doesn’t come easily to many of us.

So do we diet for ourselves? To an extent, yes.  There are many people who have realized a proper diet and moderate exercise keeps us healthy and happy while feeling and looking good.  Unfortunately, "diet" today has so many evil, unhealthy, deprived and starving connotations behind it. Many of us do not "diet" for ourselves. We "diet" to lose weight now! Because our doctors tell us to. Becuase we want to be accepted, to be pretty, to fit into those cute clothes, to get someone to look beyond the fat and see us.  We don’t deprive ourselves of our favorite foods and force ourselves to go to the gym becuase we really want to do it, we do it because of all the pressure to lose weight.

I wonder how many of us would be happy with ourselves as we are if it weren’t for the steady stream of media images, this constant  pressure to be thin.  It’s gotten so that even women who are within the health professionals standards of acceptable weight feel that they aren’t thin enough.  Yes, there are many people now who are realizing that even with out immediate noticable weightloss, a healthier lifestyle makes you feel better, stronger, and they want to keep doing it because they like that feeling. Though there are so many others that do it just becuase they feel like they should.

I’m not saying that we should all just give up and be happy with how we are.  I just wish it didn’t have to be such a struggle. I wish that little girls who are perfectly healthy didn’t pinch their normal sized skin and think they were fat and disgusting.  I wish that we could all balance out our fruits and veggies, protien and carbs, and still

enjoy the treats we love without feeling guilty.  That we could free ourselves from the binge eating, the large proportions, and all the emotional baggage that keeps us over weight.   Moreover, I wish that we could learn to love ourselves, to accept that we are flawed, and no one is model perfect, not even the model. 

There really are a million reasons to lose weight, and while it’s my belief that if you do it for yourself because you enjoy feeling better, you’ll be so much more likely to make a lasting change.  I’ve been frustrated for years with my inability to make quick work of doing away with all this excess weight.  But the weight that I have lost hasn’t ever come back. It wasn’t until recently that I realized I’ve actually changed my lifestyle through all the years of struggling to lose weight.  I went through a heatbreaking relationship, I got a promotion at work that put in charge of making sure that everything got done on time durring the busiest time of the year, and a million other follies which kept me too busy to really focus on weight loss.  Yet at the end of it all, I hadn’t gained any weight.

It amazed me.  Though after thinking about it, I don’t eat to make myself feel better any more. I don’t binge because I’m too upset to do anything else. After all this time, I’ve actually gotten to the point where when I was the most frustrated, I went to the gym.  Can you imagine?  Even when the rest of my life is going to hell, I don’t "give up" becasue there’s nothing to give up any more.  I enjoy kickboxing, I like the way I feel after I workout, and I can’t stand that over-stuffed feeling I used to subject myself to.  If I could tell everyone the magic trick to this, or even what my turning point was, I would, but honestly, I’m really not sure of it myself.

Do I have a conclusion to all of this?  Not really.  I think what ever your reasons are for wanting to lose weight, hold on to them, let them motivate you.  You don’t have to be of the purest intentions and enjoy a good sweat right now.  Hell no.  I sure didn’t when I started out.  At this point I’ll cite something I read a couple of years ago that works here, you can read the original here:  http://www.frolicanddetour.com/losingthecow/archives/2004/06/index.html but I’ll summerize some of it in my own words. 

You use whatever motivation works for you.  You have 5 of the 7 deadly sins working on your side right here. 

Pride – Yes, I want to be thin and beautiful and admired! I want to be proud of my body!  

Envy – so-and-so has the best body, I must look like that, I must look better than that…  

Lust – Feel better naked? Have more sex? Want more people to want to have sex with you? Yes please! 

Anger – I’ll show them! I’ll show them all! And he’ll be so sorry he ever turned me down! 

Greed – Did you know thin people earn more than their over-weight counterparts?  And do you know how much easier it is to find smaller sizes on clearance?

Some days you just have to work with what ever gets you through!  It’s taken me years to get to this point.  I know that’s not incredibly motivating to anyone, becuase we all want to be thin yesterday, the thing is, I know at this point that when I do lose the weight, I’m not going to have to worry about gaining it back, and that’s a compromise worth waiting for.