Parenting

My waist, that is.

For over 11 years, I’ve blamed it on my kids.  (Honestly, who knew that having children would prove to be one of the best excuses/scapegoats/reasons-for-failure EVER.  Though, considering all the, uh, challenges that rearing children poses that you NEVER SEE COMING, I’d say it’s about damn time there’s a thread of payoff woven into the fabric of misery.)

Back to my waist.  Or, specifically, lack thereof.

I swear to GOD that my waist was 19” back in high school.  And I remember feeling rather pleasantly smug about this at the time.  (Given all the things I felt like crap about throughout my teens, a tiny waist felt like a beacon of hope back then.)

To prove to you that I once HAD a waist, and kind of a cute one at that, I thought I could pull out my wedding dress and measure that part of it.

But then, that seemed like an awful lot of effort for what I *knew* to be fact, so I’ll just show you an un-adulterated, un-photoshopped picture of me in the dress, instead:

 

See?  Impressive, right??  (As a sidenote, the up-do I ended up with was NOTHING like the up-do I got on my “trial run” salon visit.  In retrospect, I’m thinking should have sued for the emotional damage that resurfaces every time I look at these photos.)

And NOW?  Well, now I cannot take a picture of my waist, because I don’t really have one.  I have this, ummm, blob that exists between my very pert, happy new chest (is it wrong to be proud of a surgically enhanced feature?) and the shelf that has become my backside.

Dressing Room Revelation

I recently decided that now that my hormones and electrolytes and the overall workings of my endocrine system are normalizing after my near-deadly flirtation with hyperaldosteronism, it’s time to reclaim my bod.

Did I deduce this after examining myself in the mirror?

Nope.  Quite frankly, I avoid that at all costs.  Looking from the neck up, I’ve decided, is all I really have the time and inclination for.

Was it, perhaps, a scale that tipped me off?

Uh-uh.  Avoid those like the proverbial plague.  Or, in my case, like raw onions.

Was it my doctor who perhaps suggested that I avoid jelly beans this spring and favor fresh greens?

Hell no.  Part of my physician-choosing criteria, in addition to “must have same body parts as those s/he is looking at on me” includes “s/he must have a BMI equal to or greater than mine.”  (That applies to my primary care doc – I’ve found over the years that specialists have been so busy trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with me that they take one look at my bizarre lab results, distraught expression, and the 1 – 3 fidgety kids sitting next to me and recall some unwritten rule that reads something like “in order to keep billing this patient and her insurance company to fund your vacation property, try not to add stress/negativity/judgment into said patient’s life.)

No, this honest take-stock, better-do-something-about-it realization, though knocking around in my noggin for awhile, was brought front-and-center by none other than my 11-year-old during a recent trip to Kohl’s.

I wanted to look respectable for my recent trip down to Chicago to the International Housewares Show (#IHHS12).  Claire came with me; I was thinking that if nothing else, perhaps she could distract me from my overall angst about supper plans gone awry, the basement in need of cleaning that I’ve avoided for 14+ years, and being creatively stalled out on the Kindle book I want to publish, etc.  (My motto:  if you can’t fix it, distract yourself from thinking about it!)

So we are walking through the store, and in a rare moment of role-reversal, she is cheerily suggesting things – “how about this cute layered, flouncy top?” and “this color would really complement your face” (it was a GRAY!!! Huh??) – and I am, in auto-pilot mode, dissing her choices and childishly challenging her upbeat tone.

After wandering around for about 45 minutes, we head to the dressing rooms with two choices, one of which I’m sure I’m not going to like, but that I grabbed just to placate her already.  My absolutely beautiful, perfectly shaped, pretty girl (not even kidding on this – check out yesterday’s photo) is sitting on the bench of the dressing room looking at me like I’ve just morphed into Jack Spratt’s wife (allowing my children to see me undress is never necessary, if you ask me), head cocked in calculation.  Reading what I assumed were her thoughts, I said rather sheepishly, “Yeah, I know, I am really, really picky when it comes to a lot of things – especially clothes.” (Just because it’s my parental duty to preach open-mindedness, variety, and “review all your options carefully” to my kids doesn’t mean I have to PRACTICE that drivel – at 43, I’ve earned the right to have my own well-defined tastes, right??)

And Ms. Young-and-Perfect shoots back, without so much as the merest of pauses, “Well, yeah — you’re picky alright… about everything except food.”

OMG!

You’ll be happy to know that, after my short pause of shock, I *did* respond to her blunt, without-a-filter observation.  l told my girl that the possibilities were VERY STRONG that aging and child-bearing will one day do things to her body that she could never foresee.  (I considered describing how my tastes were educated and grounded and based in my own unique-ness, but I decided against that particular line of reasoning, thinking she’d be repeating that line back to me within a week.)

Also:  I very pointedly ignored the snort coming from the dressing room next to us while I waxed philosophical.

She – who wryly raised an eyebrow in the direction of said snort – didn’t appear to buy my wisdom, but me and my old friends Repetition and Selective Bribery made mental notes to definitely be working on that.

So there you have it, dear readers:  how my fifth grader, whilst [always wanted to use that word] I was changing in a department store dressing room, brought the necessity of weight loss into clear perspective.  It’s time to face the fact that my waist is non-existent, and it’s time to start doing something about it.

I’ll be cutting back on sugar and carbs (though not completely… let’s not overreact!) and increasing physical activity.  Prayers, positive thoughts, and the dieter’s equivalent of a Rain Dance would be most welcome.

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