Know What Else Drives Me Nuts?...

...me...

Yes, that's what I said...me. I drive me crazy. And not in a good way...

I am almost 43 years old and I am still fighting the demons that tell me I'm not good enough...wait, no...not that I'm not good enough...that I'm not thin enough...fit enough...not perfect...

After my karate class Saturday morning, I was talking with a friend of mine...I admire her a lot...she's a second degree black belt, knows how to shoot an AK-47, is smart, funny, beautiful, happily married...she has written I don't know how many books, has a law degree and is just an amazing woman...and she seems to be perfectly comfortable with her body...

She is exactly the kind of woman I want to be when I grow up...

Anyway, I was telling her that I had asked Brian to draw my outline on a huge piece of paper...

"Why?" she wanted to know.

Good question.

The answer is that I have an inability to see my body the way it actually looks. I trace it back to my childhood (and I am not one to blame all of my problems on what happened when I was a kid), but in this case, I spent years hearing how I was built like a football player and that I wasn't thin enough and how I would be "so pretty if I just lost a little weight" (looking back on pictures, I don't think I would ever have been categorized as fat, other than the baby fat in (on?) my face, which would have been there no matter how thin I was)...and despite my husband telling me (pretty much every day) how beautiful he thinks I am, I still doubt him...I mean, what else is he going to say? "Ya know honey, you'd be real purty if you lost some o' that fat!"? Any man with an ounce of self-preservation knows better than to say such a thing to his wife...

After Brian had taken pen to paper around my figure (all the while thinking his wife had completely lost it, I'm sure)...I stared at the picture and then said, "That can't be right. It's too small."

My husband looked at me like I was crazy. So did my friend when I told her.

This morning I got on the scale (and don't tell me I'm not supposed to weigh myself, that I should go by the feel of my clothes or the numbers on the tape measure...I already know that...applying it to myself has never worked)...and the number there did not make me happy...

And I got mad...not just angry or frustrated...mad...

At the scale and at myself...

And I declared angrily, "That's it! No food (except the ones that make my stomach blow up-like gluten) is off limits! I'm tired of this crap!"

My thinking is that if no food is off limits, it will no longer hold some sort of power over me (be it gorging on or denying myself said food)...that I will be like my friend...who eats to sustain her body and keep herself healthy...while at the same time not denying herself the small pleasures in life like a nice glass of Merlot if she feels like it...

What I want, more than anything, is to be done with this constant battle...I do not want to send the message to my girls (or to my sons) that there is something wrong with their bodies if they don't look like fitness models...I want to be strong and healthy...physically and mentally...

Just like my friend...