Egad. I can't believe how tired I am today. I went home and ate a proteinaceous lunch (cheese and shrimp and nuts, leftovers from a 50th wedding anniversary celebration I helped out at yesterday) and I'm still dragging. I'm actually hoping my research student DOESN'T show up at 3 to work on the poster.

I couldn't get out of bed this morning to exercise. I really need to force myself to, if I can get home early enough.

Yes, even though I'm tired. I looked at the calendar and am now in "Ohmygosh it's only a month until my yearly checkup" panic mode and so I'm going to worry about my weight, and whether I've gained/lost, whether I could drop a couple of pounds before now and then, worry about everything I eat. It's sad, it really is. But several years ago, an offhand comment from the doctor about my weight got me feeling judged, and so now I agonize about it. Even though I attempt to eat a healthy diet (and I think I eat more healthfully than most people; I strive to get the five servings of fruits and vegetables every day) and I exercise for almost an hour, five days out of the week, I still stress over it.

(and no, I won't change doctors; I like having a woman GYN and they're few and far between, at least where my doctor is at. And I've not had her say anything since, so it's probably forgotten on her part and was probably a silly, inexperienced comment from when she was newer to practice).

But, isn't that stupid? And isn't it sad? That I stress out over my weight - which really, isn't excessive, yes, I am clinically overweight, yes, I wear a size 14/16 dress, but other than that, it's not that big a deal. I have only one, relatively minor, non-life-complicating health issue that MIGHT (repeat, MIGHT) be related to my weight. I am roughly the average size (or only a bit bigger) of American women. I can walk 10 miles if I need to, climb stairs without pain, carry and lift heavy objects. I move faster in the field than 90% of my students (most of whom are 15 years my junior). I can work out 50 minutes a day on a cross-country ski simulator and I'm still terrified of stepping on that scale at the doctor's. (I find it actually more stressful than the actual exam, and yes, it is THAT exam that every woman needs to have yearly).

I've tried dieting in the past and grew frustrated. The usual diet I followed was the obsessive "you must write it down in the notebook if you eat it and try to figure out how many calories it contains, and not eat over 1500 calories a day" diet. Which left me cranky and sad and led to my stopping it in disgust after two weeks. I also tried a "no sugar, no sweets, no snacks ever" diet and wound up breaking down weeping in front of the cookie aisle in the grocery. The problem is, I like eating too much to be a good dieter. I like good food but I don't overeat. I don't spend my days guzzling sodas or sugared coffee or tea. I don't even really snack that much - no midmorning donut break, no bedtime snacks. I generally eat small, balanced meals. Yes, I do sometimes eat when I'm not hungry - when I'm really sad, or bored and overtired, and I've tried hard to curb that. I am also given to not eating enough at lunch, and coming home ravenous at 4 pm, and then eating a lot of things that aren't so good for me, and eating more than I really need. (If I were more organized than I am, I'd make sure to have hard boiled eggs in the fridge, or something that I could grab. Or better, have something over at school I could eat before I ever got hungry.)

I don't want to do Atkins - the thought of having to eat eggs every morning makes me want to hurl - I don't want to go to Weight Watchers (in fact, I don't even know if there's a chapter within easy driving distance). I don't want to do anything with public weigh-ins because I'm one of those people whose weight, when it changes, changes glacially slowly. Like, a year or more to lose 10 pounds. And it frustrates the hell out of me. To be honest, I DON'T want to diet. I want to be able to eat when I'm hungry, not worry overmuch about eating beyond the "are you getting the nutrients your body needs" part of it. What I WOULD like is to be able to convince myself of the fact that maybe my body is just programmed to be a little bigger, and to live with that and not to worry about it, and figure things are OK if my weight hasn't changed drastically in the past six months.

I think the problem with dieting for me is severalfold. First, I see it as some kind of enforced deprivation. Yes, I know, psychologists and diet gurus say "Don't think of it as a diet, think of it as how you are going to live from now on." And that makes it even worse, somehow. I guess it's that I spent and spend so much of my life conforming to laws and playing by the rules of the game as I understand them, that it makes me crazy to think of dealing with yet another set of rules in my life. Second, not to be TMI, but as far as physical sensual pleasure goes in my life, eating and sleeping are about it these days (you know how they say people who have fallen out of love, or are living without it, eat more chocolate because of the feel-good chemicals in it? You're lookin' at her.) And going on a diet feels like I'm taking one more enjoyable thing out of my life. (Again, I KNOW what the diet gurus say).

And I hate the sad little bean-counterly accounting of it: of totting up calories and fat grams and carbohydrate grams and God knows what else, and standing there in the Wal-Mart or at the Farmer's Market and wondering: if I buy this tomato and broil it with breadcrumbs and parmesan, will that be okay? Not, will that taste good, will that appeal to me? but: is that permitted in the regime under which I live? (I also am not good at balancing my checkbook, and my taxes get done with much Sturm und Drang every year, so it may be the accounting and not the diet per se that bothers me there).

And it seems to me that there's a lack of spontaneity: you have to plan out each meal so much in advance, so the whatever it is you are counting to make sure you're not eating too much works out. And, paradoxically, even though I dislike lack of planning and spontaneity in other areas of my life, I chafe under the thought of "You WILL eat a ham sandwich on one slice of rye bread, a salad, and a bowl of blueberries for lunch, and then when you go home in the evening, you will eat broiled salmon, brown rice, and stewed tomatoes." and that it matters not that you have an upset stomach when you come home and acidy tomatoes are the last thing you want, or you lack the energy to broil the salmon, or the rice will take too long too cook for you, that there are no substitutions and no changes. (I also hate eating leftovers, generally).

I think the other thing that gets me is the fundamental unfairness of it: I work out for 50 minutes a day. The little calorie-meter on my cross-country ski simulator claims that burns between 400 and 450 calories, depending on how fast I push myself to go. And yet, even eating the same amount or less than I did before I was exercising, my weight stays stable. (It's not a simple in/out relationship, I'm convinced. That "cut out 3500 calories to lose a pound a week" is bunk, at least for my body type).

The worst part? This week I'm premenstrual and one of my typical symptoms is a raging appetite. It's actually kind of scary, it's like being a teenager again when I could eat the world and still be hungry afterwards. (Normally, I have a very nice, rather dainty, appetite as an adult. But not this week.) I try very hard not to give into the various cravings (unless they are for healthful food; I tend to take that as a message from my body that I'm missing some essential nutrient) but it's really hard. I ate a couple of Oreo cookies at lunch even though when I got up this morning and looked at the calendar I said "I sha'n't eat any more desserts until after my checkup."

*******
Reading over the whole rant again, I almost feel "I should just delete this, not publish it, it sounds so screwed-up." But then again, to paraphrase Tolstoy (or was it Dostoevsky?), normal people are all alike but every screwed-up person is screwed-up in their own way. And this is one of my own ways.