rule number one

(source)

I broke one of the only rules I ever set for myself the other day. At a party, someone said something nice about my appearance.

What did I do?

Absolutely categorically said no, no, I wasn't pretty, I was big and heavy and lumbering. Look at all these thin people - I feel like a monster next to them. Or in similar words, with a slightly tipsy bent.

What the hell was I doing? The one rule - the main rule of being a woman. One I realised around age 13, when after many years of really bad bullying (which little did I realise, wasn't quite over) said I would never give anyone any ammunition with which to judge me again.

Why not: "Why thank you. That's very sweet of you to say"? or "Haha - thank you. Not sure I agree, but thank you anyway"? Why instead: "No, you are wrong - I am a troll."

Not only did I humiliate myself a little by doing this, but I also basically told the person I was speaking to that she was wrong and her opinion invalid. Whether or not she honestly believed it, she felt moved enough to say it (apropos of nothing, by the way - it was not fished for).

How can I stop doing this? I don't know. Perhaps it's good to do it occasionally, to realise what a thoroughly twattish thing it is to do.

And that's not breaking the rule, incidentally. Sometimes I am a twat, but I hope that it's a temporary state. Unlike, say, the shape of my body (which though changing, will never be waif-like).

Ladies - learn from my mistake! Let's stop doing this to ourselves and recognise when we do it. It is WRONG. Good on you if you don't need this reminder. I think every woman I know does. Maybe you are all paragons of not doing yourself down. In which case - write to me and tell me how you do it.

some things i've learned

Some things I've learned about dieting:

(image from here)

- it's not that hard. You can do it, you just need to follow a few rules.
- it's damned hard. You have to follow the rules for a long time. I will probably have to sort of follow them forever.

- it's not just about food. There are bigger things in your life and you can appreciate them more once you've broken down that relationship a little bit.
- sometimes it's about a lot more than food. That cheesecake my friend baked to celebrate buying his first flat? Yeah. I'm going to eat the piece he cut for me. Who wants to be that girl, the one who turns down a small gift, a celebration. Food has meaning greater than satiation. But not all the time.

- some things can be turned down easily. It's just about saying "no".
- life is not about saying "no". It's about saying "yes", and living, and enjoying yourself. You need to go out to dinner.

- you can speed up your weigh loss by eating more fruit and vegetables
- in order to speed up your weightloss, you HAVE to eat more vegetables. And no, you can't put butter on them.

(edit - i thought of another one:
- small things don't matter. This bit of salad dressing/bit of x, y, z won't hurt.
- all the small things together? Yes, they matter. They are all that matters.)

Life is not just about looking a certain way. But it makes a lot of things in life easier (climbing stairs, shopping for clothes without crying) if you err towards the regular sized end of the spectrum. I'm all for being happy whatever size you are. But I wasn't.

Everyone, I would suggest without exception, is too hard on themselves the majority of the time. I would like to find whoever came up with the idea that you can have 'fat ankles' and give them a smack. They are ANKLES. They perform a useful perambulatory function and hold your feet onto your legs.

Life is full of dichotomies. You want one thing, but you know you should do another. Self acceptance versus empowerment and change. Diet Coke versus wine. Short-term enjoyment versus long-term satisfaction. The fact that I've always loved my body and been grateful for all of it versus the fact that I have still cried in changing rooms. How do you square that?

Anyway. Sometimes there isn't much coherence to things and that applies to writing blogs too. Random thoughts today.

PS All of this makes me glad that I found the best damn blog in the world. Eat the Damn Cake by blogger Kate Fridkis makes me overwhelmingly happy. When I see a new post appear in my reader, I save it up for later, for time when I've got a cup of tea and can fully digest and appreciate her words of wisdom and joy. Kate writes about how she never understood why anyone should feel unattractive, while understanding that we do, and we're human. And she advocates remembering that sometimes (all of the time?) you should just eat that slice of cake and be happy. A message we can all get behind, I think.