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We were at my grandmother’s house last weekend.
Note: My great-grandmother is 93 – we go there a lot – you know, I want
to make sure I visited her within one week in case she dies. It’s a guilt thing.
I grew up listening to her tell me she wished she spent more time with her
mother before she died and now….it’s too late. She’s a smart one, yes she
is!
One of the rituals that happens every time we
visit is getting me on the scale. My great-grandmother is not happy unless she
knows how much I weigh. In my passive-aggressive way (she’s 93, I can’t get too
snarky) I make up random numbers like “93” and then when she says it’s
impossible I either blame it on her macular degeneration or tell her the scale
is broken. I once told her “425” but she almost had a breathing attack so I keep
my fake numbers on the low side.
The problem is, I cannot resist looking at the scale - then spend the next
few hours judging myself and being all girly and self-hateful before I snap back
out of it and remind myself HEALTH AND WEIGHT ARE NOT SYNONYMS!
Ok, I don’t actually snap out of it. I gently coddle myself. First I remind
myself that the first person I knew that died of cancer was a 25 year old
mostly-vegetarian, thin, healthy, dirty-hippie type that didn’t drink, smoke or
do drugs. I remind myself of all the doctor appointments my thin, fasionista
acquaintances make for heart conditions, skin conditions, high blood pressure,
low blood pressure, and diabetes. These thoughts comfort me until I can ask the
final question that gets me right with myself.
Would you give up your health to be thin?
This question used to be difficult. Is it more important for me to be healthy
or for people to think I’m healthy? Obviously it should be more
important to really be healthy – but it’s difficult sometimes to make my heart
see reason.
So….here’s why I’m writing this particular entry. (No, it’s not so you can
tell me I’m beautiful.)
At grandmother’s house last weekend I stepped on the scale. I looked down and
was sure the scale was calibrated incorrectly. I called for Randy to come in and
step on the scale (he always weighs the same plus/minus five pounds so if it’s
right for him it’s right for me) – the scale showed his weight as dead-on
accurate.
Which means in about a month I’ve lost 50lbs. My clothes don’t feel
different, except for this one pair of pedal pushers that try to slide off my
body. I don’t think I look different. If I put my arm straight down you could
still shelter a village of children from the rain under the flap above my
elbow….so what happened?
I remarked on my magical weight loss out loud to my husband, and my
(supposedly deaf) great-grandmother says, “Oh I’m so happy you lost
weight! Congratulations, sweetie!” (Did I mention, at 93, she’s on a diet? If
you saw how little she eats and then says she’s going to get fat you’d wonder
how I don’t have a real eating disorder.)
But…I’m not happy I lost weight. Because there’s no reason. I mean there must
be a reason. I’m no more or less active than I was a month ago - I'm pretty
active in general. I don’t diet, so that’s obviously not the cause. What
happened? It’s an important question because that’s a good hunk of weight to
just disappear from my frame without giving me some forewarning or notice of
departure.
The last two weeks have seen more than one evening of me up clutching my
tummy in pain rather than sleeping for hours on end, but I figured that I had
just eaten something that disagreed with me. That for some reason my stomach is
getting more sensitive as I age. I mean, you can't eat sliders (aka White
Castle) forever without consequences, right? Foods are more easily grossing me
out and I’m cutting them from my diet because I just can’t eat them. Some
examples? Beef, most chicken, milk, most cheese. I’m still a fan of pasta but
don’t eat as much because it’s not as tasty as it used to be. Nothing sounds
good. But this has been happening steadily with no weight loss for the last six
months. Not a real explanation for a
