I have always said love the body God gave you. I haven't always done it. This is something I'll work on this year.
I've yet to see that many perfect male specimens, but all men seem to be very comfortable in their own skin, regardless of no ass, love handles, pot bellies, sunken chests, chicken legs, and rapidly receding hairlines. I think that's great. A confident man is a sexy man. And a confident woman is a sexy woman, but they're much harder to come by.
I see these less than perfect men verbally sneering at women they deem less than perfect. Tearing them down, playing the "Pass or Hit game", reducing to meat a woman they know nothing about.
Are you naturally skinny? Can't gain weight no matter what you eat? God bless you, love your skinny body, be good to yourself.
Are you starving yourself trying to fit a "perfect" image, afraid of your natural curves because some Bozo might call you fat? Stop it, right now.
Are you packing on pounds trying to drown pain, sorrow, fear? Deal with a trauma that's left you feeling scared to be seen? Please stop punishing yourself, find a way to deal with the emotions and be healthy, whatever is right for your body.
Are you naturally large and feeling inadequate? Yep, me too. At my healthiest, I was 150 pounds of muscle, butt and boobs. Hearty peasant stock. I wanted nothing more than to be a dancer, but dancers aren't 5'8" and built like a brick shithouse. For years, I exercised to excess and starved myself, keeping to a strict 1000 calorie a day diet. I was 112 pounds and my period was screwed up. I had bone density issues, and my hair was coming out in clumps. When I quit dancing, I felt like a failure and packed on 60 pounds in a year. I was ridiculed, teased and made to feel ugly. I had a choice, hide behind my weight using it to keep people at bay, or find a healthy weight. I was happy at 150, healthy and active. And then I got my first boyfriend, at 20. He constantly hounded me to lose weight, wanted me to get down to 125. Every bite I took in his presence was scrutinized and if he didn't like it, he tried to humiliate me. It worked. I managed to get down to 130 before he dumped me for someone he'd been sleeping with for the last six months of our relationship. I went back to binging and purging, craving food and being ashamed and afraid of gaining weight. This went on for a few years. After marriage and kids, I ballooned. 235 at my heaviest. Depressed, angry, afraid, every negative emotion I had, I ate. It's been a very long road. At almost 50, I'm just starting back on the road to health. I'm realistic. I'm a middle aged mother of two with serious weight issues. I would be thrilled to get down to Ashley's 170 pounds. Yes, it's 20 pounds heavier than my ideal 150 and in the "fat" range for some men, but it's a more attainable goal. And a whole lot healthier than my current 220. I will achieve this goal before my 50th birthday.
So, when you see a woman, don't look at her stick figure and say "Real women have curves," or look at her slightly plump curves and say "Thin is beautiful and you're too fat to be pretty." See a woman, worthy of love and respect, and realize she's fighting wars over her body that you, as men, will never know.
Love doesn't see body, love sees love. Attitude and caring is much more important than body development.
ReplyDeleteIf you know what to look for, it's not hard to tell the difference between thin and healthy. Colorado is known for being thinner than the rest of the US, but we still have our fair share of fatties, and I've noticed that far more important than being thin is carrying what weight you may carry well, as demonstrated by two overweight (though not obese) women I've known.
ReplyDeleteAs for why men tend to seem less superficial than women, there are 2 things there.
1: Men can be just as superficial as women, if not moreso. We're bombarded with our own standards of beauty, and none of us are going to reach Alex Louise Armstrong, Marcus Fenix, or Brock Samson builds without the genetics as a foundation. That doesn't stop many of us from trying. And unlike women, there are no "fat acceptance" movements telling men it's OK not to be built like The Rock.
2: Women are designed to look good. The female body is more visually appealing, to both sexes, to all sexualities, than the male body. Men are not designed to look good, we appeal to women in other ways -- intelligence, good smell, physical strength, dominant social position. As fat doesn't directly detract from any of these qualities(though it certainly doesn't help), it's easier for a man to consider himself "sexy" while still carrying around 50 pounds of blubber.
I wish you the very best in attaining your goal. I also just recently gave myself the goal of weight loss by my 50th birthday. I have faith in you that you will do what you've set out to do. I'm proud of you for doing something so important for yourself! As mothers we forget to do things for ourselves, don't we?
ReplyDeleteWise Angel One, damn, I don't know which I love more, your heart or your brain! Thank you for once again "splaining" it the way it should be done!......
ReplyDeletevaquero viejo
Ice water...tons of ice water.
ReplyDeleteGoing around the outside edges of the supermarket, fresh fruit and veg, meat and eggs. The middle aisles are all full of preserved and snacky shit. Avoid.
ReplyDeleteWalkies with Maximus Cuteness, Walk everywhere you can. Write down everything you eat for a week. It is a shock, but you will soon realize when you are"vulnerable". Eat protien rich mini meals six time a day. Never get hungry so your body learns how to burn the energy. Drink water til you are floating, no sodas, no booze, no sugar drinks. Unsweetened Iced tea does it for me. When you are cruising for a snack, drink water. It takes awhile to retrain our spoiled little bods but it can be done. And dance whenever you feel like it.
And you wonder why so many men think women are batshit crazy?
ReplyDeleteGod bless and best of luck in your endeavors. It can be done, I know for a fact. I used alcohol and cocaine for 20+ years to drown out issues from childhood, I'm now almost 6 months clean and sober.
ReplyDeleteda-truth36...keep on keeping on...1 day at the time really does work...I'm coming up on 5 years
ReplyDeleteGranny - Thank you! I'm gonna copy and print your recommendations to overcome my own lack of discipline!
Angel - Thanks for posting this out front...you really captured the essence of the struggle very many people have.
volfram - I had no idea men are "bombarded" with "our own standards of beauty" In fact, I've never heard those words all used together in one sentence ever in my whole life, and I'm 59. I should probably stop here before the conversation turns to things like "manbun" or "skinny jeans", two more items that no self-respecting Man will ever be bothered with. Have y'all had the water tested wherever it is you are?
Your appearance is (more or less) how God made you. WHO you are is how you made yourself.Love someone for who they are.
ReplyDelete@success: Just as there is a differene between "healthy" and "thin,"(though they are often related) there's a difference between "healthy" and "muscular," (though again, the two are often related.) The amount of time and effort required for the average man to reach the level of muscularity of any of the 4 examples I gave(you'll note 3 are animated), or for the average linebacker to maintain his size, simply doesn't leave much time to do anything else, much like the level of effort required for most supermodels to maintain their frames.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that because Feminists hate men and everything masculine, they focus exclusively on sexualization and objectification of women and ignore, marginalize, or applaud when it happens to men.
...if only I could shed the extra 100lb gained from being semi-mobile
ReplyDeleteand unable to walk down to the lake (2.5mile) every day or ramble on the back forty with my best buddy Milo (German-short-hair)in pursuit of bunnies and such.
Milo doesn't seem to mind how I look(of course he's getting old ,too) so why should I ? Eat right and keep moving for fun...before you can't.
Men with chicken lags, sunken chests and no ass.
ReplyDeleteAnd that would be me.
My wife and I had been exercising and eating better for over ¾ of a year. I lost about twenty pounds (my wife did much better.) Then at sixty years old, I was just diagnosed with borderline type 2 diabetes. My doctor suggested controlling my high blood glucose with diet and exercise before using any medication. I found an old copy of Protein Power by Mary and Michael Eades. After limiting carbohydrates and sugars as the Eades recommended, I dropped an additional fifteen pounds in three weeks. My fasting blood glucose has dropped to 86 (normal is below 100) from 126 and I feel great. The information presented in Protein Power changed my outlook on food and how I can give myself a better chance to enjoy my family for a long time to come.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry things are even tougher for you... I notice here a lot of advice. Everyone has advice.
ReplyDeleteI have sympathy/empathy. It is danged hard to not hide out in the fridge when life comes along with a baseball bat to work you over - and Lord knows you have had your share of innings. Some folks don't take solace in food, I don't know WHAT they take solace in. I have several girlfriends who have been worked over pretty hard and still manage not to eat 6 Klondike bars for a mid morning snack. They just don't have the urge that way. But some of us do. It is harder than those skinny-minnies think to climb out of the iced-cream bowl, since they don't even care that much about iced cream. Perhaps they don't care deeply about much, but that is just being catty. No sense in hurling insults. Helps nobody. My friends are good women and they care deeply about those they love, so no, that isn't it. They are just constituted differently - and I don't mean mentally, I mean physically.
Perhaps it is those of us programmed for Syndrome X (it is real, not woo-woo). Go look it up, you may see yourself in it - crave carbs?). Meaning that if we aren't careful, we'll end up diabetic. Nobody knows for sure that diabetes can be staved off, but my feeling is that it can with careful control, but there you go. You're trying to carry a huge load and then someone heaps THAT on too, it can be overwhelming and the whole load just crashes down.
Body image. Unfortunately, it will always be there - men look at women and pick the trophy chicks (they all do, don't be fooled), women select successful men. That horrible, ugly, monstrous henry kissinger strutted around with TC's full time, although I think he was privately a butt pirate and use women as a smoke screen, and to deflect from his horrible behind the scenes shenanigans.
We're just stuck with it. Biology is not changing. Women get old, men get distinguished.
My husband is a pretty successful guy, confident and good looking - he is also 10 years younger than my 66 years. I can see women thinking 'what is that guy doing with that old woman?'. Well, he did marry me for my brain (we are both engineers with a philosophical bent). But that's a rare thing. He loves my brain, but I still know that he'd be even happier if that brain were encased in a young lovely body.
I've been reading your blog for a couple of years now, commented once or twice,but this post struck a chord I could not ignore. As I said, I can offer little in the way of advice - I don't know you well enough to know what advice you could use, but I can say this: There are many of us all in the same boat, by way of empathy.
(But do go look up Syndrome X. Buy a glucometer - they are cheap, track your blood sugar for a couple of weeks and try to keep it under 100 full time. Sometimes being a geek about things can give you the handle you need...)
Fair Winds
Cap'n Jan
You go girl. It's as good as done, I can tell.
ReplyDeleteThe older I get, the more I value personality over looks. Seems to me it would take a special kind of asshole to say something like "I'd love you more if you'd change your body for me".
ReplyDeleteThat said, at 51 I've just lost 70+ pounds in 6 months without hunger, any change in exercise or much willpower. Dr Joel Fuhrman Eat to Live, mostly vegan, minimal (as in almost none) refined sugar, processed carbs or processed oil, recommended minimums of a pound of raw vegetables, a pound of cooked vegetables and a cup of beans or legumes per day, no maximums on those or fruit. Wife and parents have gone on the diet half assed, didn't have as much to lose as I did but lost around 20 pounds each. Wife had to go off her diabetes medicine, it plus the diet dropped her glucose too low, and is lower and more stable unmedicated now than when medicated before the diet. (If you are on diabetes or heart medicine, have a doctor keep tabs and adjust medicine as needed) I normally wouldn't have read or believed Fuhrman, but I'm a fan of Penn Jillette, and he recommended the book as the basis of Penn's recent 100 pound weight loss. As far as I can tell the book is extremely accurate, and none of its predictions have failed.
Don't know what to say, because I was raised to believe it was rude to comment on a woman's form. However, I've learned few things in the last 63 years, and one of those is: It's all good.
ReplyDeleteMen are primitive animals at heart. We are first attracted to a woman by her physical traits. Every man is programmed differently though. Some men find a plump woman attractive, others are drawn to skinny. Some guys want big boobs, some are big boobs, and some say they grade by bra size, an A for an "A" cup, a D for a "D" cup.
ReplyDeleteA woman's appearance is the bait on the trap. Her personality is the jaws that hold him. Some gals are grand at controlling their temper until after the wedding. My first was like that. She blew a gasket the day after we got home, and that was the side of her I saw for the next eighteen years.
Every one of us have faults. How we set our standards depends on many things. as a guy gets older, his standards drop. eventually he reaches the point where a pussy and a pulse are all that is required. The pulse can be faint.
We are all human, we all say the wrong thing at the wrong time to the person who matters most. It is all part of GOD teaching us about forgiveness. We all need it, and he has lots of it.
He was willing to slay his only son for you, so you must must be valuable.
As anyone who has struggled with our weight knows, we all know how to lose weight. You damn sure don't need me telling you how to do it. I only offer you well wishes and perhaps the thought that I have maybe come to the feeling that everyone has a certain weight that our bodies are supposed to be at. I know that my ideal weight is not as low as I wish it was, but it is where the needle seems to stay, no matter what, and that is real, not in my head, nor an excuse.
ReplyDeleteBut know this, you have many well wishers out here, and we all have your back for any words of encouragement, and to help your back up if you fall, no judgement at all, as we are all friends here. I know with the disposition you have, from reading your blog, if you set your mind to something, it will happen. So best of luck, stay healthy, and have a great weekend.
Smart is sexy. (mic drop)
ReplyDeleteGive Paleo a try, worked for me. Lots of info about it on the web and books and really good recipes to boot.
ReplyDeleteYou WILL go through a brief period of bad (starchy) carb withdrawal where you feel as if you can't get enough to eat, but once that is over it is clear sailing. I never followed the diet portions strictly and ate as much as I wanted of good food, cheated on occasion and still lost about twenty five pounds between September and Christmas eve.
Was working out too and the more I lost the harder I worked as I got incentivized.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
hbbill
Somewhere Behind Enemy Lines
Peoples Republik of Kommifornia
Lose weight for your health, or to stay in your loved one's lives longer. But don't ever let someone force you to do it for them. I have, now, a wonderful woman who is actually the exact right type of crazy that fits with mine. She and I have had our weight go up and down over the years. I am no longer the lean mean fighting machine I was in my Army day's, but I try to stay active at least. I love her no matter what her weight, but I do get concerned with her health. And she with mine.
ReplyDeleteIf I could get one of several basic ideas into women's heads, it would be that a Man loves a Woman based on several factors, but changing one of those by a few percentage points should not affect the Love they have. Problem is that most don't know how to capitalize, in any sense of the word.
I hope it wasn't my blog post that inspired this Angel. If it is - I'm sorry. I know what it's like to pick up weight and I know how hard it is to lose it - I've done it (and got it all back again). You will lose your weight when it is your time. The hardest part is getting started - at least for me.
ReplyDeleteThe problem I have is when some fat, stupid 20 year old she-twink with purple hair and an even uglier personality - gets in my face and calls me a bigot because I don't think she's desirable. Then I get some social justice lecture on 'fat acceptance'. Fuck off, already.
As for you - you have NO business at all caring one whit what 'bozos' think. Stop it!
A womans worst enemy lives in her bedroom mirror ---Ray
ReplyDeleteI so feel the love and respect in this room...it's too bad it couldn't infect the world. It would be a better place to live!
ReplyDeleteI have learned in my 52 years that true beauty comes from within and shines outward...no one can validate that for you..it is something you must give yourself, regardless of shape or size...it is just plain old simple self love. I figured out years ago, that I cannot expect a man to truly love me, if I couldn't even love myself...and that included my body, mind and spirit...I am not perfect..hell by far...
So I don't believe it's the "right diet" to get on track...I think it's "getting right" inside...with yourself...
HWA...you are one of the loveliest women I know...your beauty shines outward, that's what draws people to you...focus on that positive and radiate..it will all come together...YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL! YOU ARE WANTED! YOU ARE DESIRED! YOU ARE LOVED! YOU ARE WORTHY!...I am not yelling, I am emphasizing.... I see you, I feel your shine!
Love you chick!
For what it's worth, I think Rebel Wilson is both funny and hot. It's what's inside that counts. My wife looks best 20# over her idea of right weight, but I can't get her to believe me.
ReplyDelete