given up with weight loss, arrgh! sigh

That is it. I figure I am done with it. I am plus 50 now so I don't have to try and be like my 20 year old athletic self. Still, it is upsetting the weight I have gained in my five medicated years - the last year in particular. Arrrgh! I was really hating myself there. But the boyfriend said something recently that really put a smile on my face and made me realise he meant it when he said he thought I was attractive. What a relief. I am going to do my best then to have the perspective that I can still look good despite the thicker middle. I refuse now to cry over it anymore. I am saying stuff-it. I am 51 and beautiful.

It's a bit of a cliche, but for all the depth & detail that we think we know of ourselves, sometimes it takes another to see the whole person & their value.

You know...

I thought that I was putting on weight — and I was and did! — but it turned out to be edema associated with congestive heart failure! Today, I’m a skinny-old-man with giant bones and I look like a bizarre storefront window mannequin dressed in clothing that just seems to hang loosely. Crap, even my skin hangs loose. Not exactly what The Girls Want.

Now.

My Medicaid case manager really is overweight — not morbidly so! — and I think of her as one of the most attractive women I’ve known. We yell at one another when discussing politics (funny — she hung a new, gigantic Che Guevara poster for me last week; had she known Che’s politics she would never have gone near the poster!) and we flirt with abandon. We’re very physically close, too. We love one another in a respectful, but wholly unprofessional, way.

I have often cried when thinking of how far she goes to be kind.

As I’m in the elderly population, now, I realize that even in my misspent youth when collecting the ‘pretty girls’ I was as much (if not more) attracted by personality than bodacious good looks.

Unless weight gain drives others to the point of being a health problem, I give a great big ‘meh’ to extra padding.

Stuff-it.

I think perhaps we in the mental illness community have a struggle unique all to ourselves. A great many of us are medicated which is reason for an uncontrolable increase in weight. I have been ardently battling it. I eat very well, having a positive relationship with food. Having a dog and no yard means I walk a great deal and often so lack of activity should not be a problem either. It is no use. My boyfriend's comment however put a new spin on what was mentally tormenting me. Not that I would let myself go, but today I feel a great deal better about my image.

I'm 54 and have finally accepted the fact that I will never be thin. I don't have that body type. That doesn't mean I shouldn't eat right and exercise. I should, but it's never going to make me look like a model or a movie star. Even at my very healthiest, I would still be above average in weight, because I'm built that way. To put it in dog terms, you can't make a St. Bernard into the same size and shape as a Greyhound. You would only end up with a very sick St. Bernard. As long as I keep other numbers under control, such as glucose, cholesterol, and blood pressure, then I'm doing well. There is more to us than our dress size, and it shouldn't determine our self-esteem.