Friday, October 13, 2006

Top Ten List -- WW

Happy birthday to Sean! 14! Wow.
Watching baseball -- Joe's staying and the Mets won the first game.

Inspired by this that links to this.

I haven’t been blogging that much and I really haven’t been talking a lot about Weight Watchers because it’s kind of boring and I don’t really want to do the weight loss blog thing. I am doing WW at work, though, and I really like our leader. She’s this great little Italian lady – grew up in the North End in a family that owned an Italian bakery and she lost over 100 lbs. This week’s “topic” was to identify our “winning outcome” and write it down, along with our weight loss goals. Because I find it almost impossible to stay serious during these things and I’m attending with a colleague who’s just as cynical as I am, I wrote down my winning outcome as:

I want to look hot on the pole when I go to Amateur Night at Faces.

Not a terrible goal, but not exactly MY goal. But it did get me thinking about why I’m doing this, still spending the money, still doing the meetings every week, still trying to get to my magical GOAL weight.

“To lose weight” just doesn’t make sense anymore. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that being thinner isn’t going to make me any happier. I am amazed by how much of my life I spent thinking that was true. But I’ve been smaller and I’ve been bigger – neither have made me any more or less happy. I’ve come to accept that I’ll always have some sort of body dysmorphia – that the person JM sees in the mirror is not the real me, nor is it the me that anyone else sees. When I’m really in my head, I think that I have some sort of tragic figure flaw, that I have huge hips, a big nose, bad hair, bad skin. Add on my “fat” knees, my perceived moustache, the Bert brows, my huge ass, my too-fat calves, etc….and yeah, circus freak.
But I’m not. I’m okay. I’m normal. And I really, really don’t want to keep up the mindfuck – that adapting myself to someone else’s standards of beauty (even when that someone else is ME) – is going to make me look or feel any better long term.

Um, so yeah, WW is not going to make me any happier. And I look okay as is. So what am I here for?

I present my top ten, in no particular order:

1. I want to wear size 8 pants. The last time I lost weight I threw out a bunch of clothes and spent a TON of money on new size 8 pants. A ton. Some, no, most still have tags on them and are sitting at the top of my closet in a box labeled “Size 8 pants.”
2. Again, with the clothes – I want to be at a stable enough weight to justify spending money on quality pieces. I’d rather get rid of all my cheapie pants and dresses and replace them with fabulously tailored pair that will last forever. Less is more. When your pants size changes so often, it’s hard to justify a $250 pair of pants.
3. Also on the fashion front – I want to wear a two-piece bathing suit. Not some ass-jiggling stringy thing, but one of those classic bikinis from JCrew. Yes, there’s the boob problem and JCrew’s advertising campaign might as well be “We hate boobies, hips and the people that own them” but I love the streamlined look of their bathing suits. Sexy, not hoochie.
4. I want to learn (at 30) what this healthy eating thing is with the fruits and the vegetables and that stuff. I can count points, but I’m still getting most of my food from the microwave and boxes and eating out. I KNOW this is *really* bad and I keep saying that I’m going to stop it and learn how to cook, but then I never do. Still wanting to learn, though.
5. I wouldn’t mind breeding some day. I assume that healthy eating breeds better mini-mes and I wouldn’t mind a mini-JM that preferred fruit to say, Drake’s Chocolate Brownies in a shrink-wrapped pack. Being healthier would also help me keep up with all my demon spawn.
6. I want a new bike. I’m so glad that YG got me into biking, and I doubled my miles this summer. I’m outgrowing my bike, though – I’ve gotten fast enough that I sometimes run out of gears. I’d love to get a road bike. These are pretty.
7. Re: bike. I want to do a Century.
8. Re: bike. I want to kick YG’s ass (or at least keep up) in Century.
9. I want to run a half marathon. Seriously, I put this on my New Year’s Resolutions list EVERY YEAR (along with learning to blow out my hair better and finding the perfect red lipstick). I want to do it, though. Sometimes I just feel like running. If I were in better shape and better toned, I’d feel better about attempting this.
10. And I’m stealing this one directly from Lose The Buddha: “I want to spend the time I use beating myself up to instead give myself a facial.” I’m not into facials, but I want to spend the time I use beating myself up to do…pretty much anything else. Read, write, whatever.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m sure I’ll think of other goals as I go along, but right now I’m happy that the majority of my weight loss goals are about my health and exercising, as opposed to magically being happy because I can finally ride the pole.

Monday, October 09, 2006

"A Piniella Return Could Benefit Rodriguez Most"

Seething over this article in the New York Times.

WHY? WHY? WHY? Don't get me wrong -- who doesn't like Lou? But WHY are we catering to this little pissant? It's Joe's fault that he can't do shit in the postseason? Joe is supposed to keep him batting clean up and let the whole team suffer because batting him 8th hurts his precious psyche? The whole team needs a new manager because he can't live up to his gazillion-dollar paycheck? Sorry, that's just bullshit.

I'm upset my team lost. Upset, but not surprised. We're officially the Atlanta Braves now. :-(

The Tigers and The Mets have been the Cinderella stories all year so I'm hoping that will be the end match up. STL and Oakland? Who cares? And it's been 20 years since the 86 series so I will, begrudgingly, say "Let's Go Mets!"