The First Pound

Twenty pounds is the amount that the average American woman would kill to lose. Literally. According to surveys, we would rather lose that last twenty than end hunger or bring about world peace. And feminist scholars have spent the last couple decades dissecting how women and their weight neuroses feed the diet and fashion industries, and vice versa. Pretty much the unhappiest merry-go-round ever.

I have to make two honest admissions:

Number One: as an iron-clad third- (or tenth, or whatever) wave feminist, I have NEVER been on a diet.

Number Two: for the first time in my life, I have weighed in as 20 pounds over the magical 135 that my frame size defines as my ideal weight, and a diet is looking like a pretty good idea.

Of course, I am taking steps to read my VegNews and UTNE on the elliptical trainer instead of on the sofa, but at 20 pounds (!) "overweight" I feel as though something drastic may be in order. Something like no more vegan ice cream, my ultimate weakness. I guess I will be reviewing the low fat sections of my two brand new vegan ice cream books, which I only received on Sunday.

So while I think of calling out the big guns and phoning a nutritionist to help me nail down the lowest calorie low-fat, low-insoluble fiber veganish diet I can imagine, I'm mostly afraid of becoming so restrictive (as if my IBS diet wasn't enough) as to trigger one of those unhealthy yo yo patterns we hear so much about.

Maybe that's better though that than suffering like those great land beasts, marauding mountains of sweaty varicose flesh that are my dreaded paternal aunts.

A diet seems like the atomic bomb solution to weight and health issues...you accomplish your goal but the carnage is horrific, you wonder if it was worthwhile, or flexing your military might in front of the Soviets. Well, minus the Russians. So shelving that for the time being...

Goal for the day: following up my heart-rate monitored elliptical stint with 20 minutes of YogaDownloads I just discovered on Lori's blog, MommyGreenest.

Pictures thanks to Cosmo @ http://cosmosveganshoppe.com