In this age when fashion models grow thinner by the week and
real-sized women attempt to reclaim their curves, I hesitate to complain about
my own physical self. As the mother of girls ages 9 and 7, I am very conscious
of what I say about my body. You won’t hear me utter self-deprecating phrases
that begin with “I’m so...”, or “I hate my…”. I cannot bear the thought that
they could grow up and hold themselves in contempt, as so many women in our
culture seem to do.
We are bombarded from birth with advertising and media
images that seek to make girls and women doubt their own value and to believe
that looking good is the primary measure of a woman’s worth. Flip through any
fashion magazine and you will find women’s bodies used as objects in order to
sell liquor, cars, clothes and cosmetics. Teaching children to think for
themselves in this media-saturated environment is an uphill battle. Therefore, it was with great reluctance that I recently answered
my elder daughter’s question of “Where are you going?” with “To Weight
Watchers”.
Yes, I need the Weight Watchers program. Again. Although I
like to believe that the reason I require the accountability of the meetings
again is due to a pregnancy, that baby just turned two. It’s obvious that no
amount of exercise and logging calories works as well for me as plain
old-fashioned peer pressure. Go to the meeting, get on the scale, announce that
you’ve lost a few ounces and keep working at it some more.
It’s difficult for me to know how to explain this
to the girls. I don’t have a laptop or an extremely intelligent phone. There
are smart phone apps that help people to discretely track their food intake. I
have to track my food and activity daily on the company website, frequently in
plain view at the computer in my dining room. They don’t get it and, bless
their hearts, they don’t think that mommy is fat. Weight Watchers, on the other
hand, would like for me to lose fifty-five pounds.
The local Weight Watchers group meets at a church in
Elmhurst and they are a kind, supportive group. I sign in, wait in line for the
scale, remove my shoes and hold my breath, waiting for the numbers to go down
once a week. Sometimes, they do. I am annoyingly inconsistent in my ability to
follow the program. Maybe holding my breath makes me weigh more.
I worry too much about everything. I often fear that a panic
attack is only a moment a way. Mind you, I’ve never had a panic attack, I just
overeat to tamp those emotions down and then everything is FINE. Except for the
extra hips on my hips.
I’ve decided to do away with letting advertisers in my
living room, as much as possible. With the exception of Oxy-Clean (I find it to
be a useful product), I just don’t need commercials for fast food restaurants
and diet plans blaring at me, or my children. I don’t really need first-run TV
programs. My husband hooked a magic box to our set that allows us to stream
channels and use a service like Netflix. So far, it has been a great relief.
I wrote the preceding paragraphs in late January and have
since bounced up and down the scale, keeping seven pounds off so far. Only
forty-eight more to go.
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