Weight Loss

Being a girl it is always hard to talk about weight. If you think you are the right weight or if you are actually losing weight you don't fit in to so many conversations with girls. Everyone is unhappy with the way they look or is trying to lose weight but doesn't feel they are losing enough. It seems that no one does it in a very healthy way. Every girl has done things like not eating for a week etc. There are two times in my life I have walked out of a pair of pants. I am wearing them and accidentally step on the back and they sort of fall off. One time was my second year of grad school. I had stopped eating and was horribly depressed but was really happy about the way I looked for the first time in my life. Yes, I was happy I finally had the willpower to stop eating. Here I am, crying myself to sleep every night, feeling just horrible every minute of every day and all any girl, including my mom, ever said was "wow you look good!" Was it worth being depressed to be thin? Almost. Did everyone else think it was worth it, yes. Except for my sister Lauren, she was worried about me and I will always be happy she was. It was nice to know that someone didn't think it was worth it.

Since I got better from the depression I have constantly been fighting to lose weight. I started training for triathlons and lost a bit but wanted to lose more. Ned kept saying, in true physicist form, just eat less and workout more. I didn't have time to work out more and I already felt I wasn't eating enough because I was constantly tired. It seemed so simple to him but it was a lot less simple for me.
Yesterday I walked out of a pair of pants again. Am I skinny by societal definition, no. When I saw my mom she didn't even notice. I still need to be thinner, but I don't really feel I need to be. Will I lose more weight, maybe. Is it the goal of working out, no. But damn is it a nice side effect. Now I am pretty happy and I am really healthy and I am again at my skinny end. The part that makes me the proudest is that I am 15-20 pounds heavier than I was the last time I lost my pants. That's right, I have 15-20 pounds more and it is now mostly muscle. It has taken just as much will power, but has been a lot tastier. I eat a lot, breakfast, second breakfast, elevnsies, lunch, snack and dinner. And last night I had 2 donuts.

This whole thing has really changed the way both Ned and I look at weight loss, but in opposite directions. I feel that if all the will power women put into not eating where channeled into working out, they could lose weight in a healthy way. Ned finally realized how much genetics play a part in weight loss. As he said, if it takes an Ironman training program to make my body finally lose weight, then maybe some people just have a harder time and he is just lucky. I've known for some time that he is genetically just skinny. Now he realizes it and sees that it isn't all physics involved in weight loss. I'm glad he realized that and I am lucky to be married to a guy who is willing to change his world view when presented with compelling evidence. He is such a physicist!