Heather in Paradise

In response to my last blog post, I received the following comment from someone named hotsauce:

heather, this makes me sad. i stumbled onto your blog via the wordpress home page. you have some amazing photos and seem like a genuinely cool person. so why the disgust with your body? why the self-flagellation over not being thin enough for …. well, for what? if you’re concerned about your health due to not having the healthiest of eating habits, why not try to add more nutritious things to your meals instead of telling yourself “can’t eat this CAN’T EAT THIS!!!!” be honest with yourself: do you know anyone who has gone on a diet and lost a good deal of weight and kept it off for at least ten years? ’cause i don’t. try just adding more nutritious things into your meals — but don’t make weight loss the end goal. plenty of people screw up their health by trying to lose weight again and again. yo-yoing is worse for you than just sticking to where you are weight-wise now.

i’m a regular reader of a blog called shapely prose and, in particular, i think this post will be of interest to you: http://kateharding.net/2007/11/27/the-fantasy-of-being-thin/

please don’t think i’m patronizing you. i really was for-real saddened when i saw this post. i think you’re beating yourself up over things that you really should not.

It bothered me all day yesterday, although I was too hungover to respond to it. I did think about letting it go, since it’s clear the person didn’t mean any harm with the things he/she said, but finally I decided I couldn’t let it go unanswered. I feel like I have to defend myself against what sure felt like some unfairly-directed remarks.

First, this person does not know me at all. My blog was found through WordPress’s home page. From the content it seems clear the person has read only a few things in my blog and not much else. My interest in the South Beach diet was prompted by a number of things, primary of which was not weight loss. The South Beach diet is a “fad” name for a non-fad diet, full of all of the things we know we “ought” to know about a healthier existence. Weight loss is a pleasant side effect of following that diet. I have high cholesterol and leg circulation issues that were most likely pointing to a possible pre-diabetic condition. I didn’t feel like sharing that information before, but there, now I have.

With regard to “disgust” with my body…I do not hate my body. I have been unhappy with my appearance because I allowed myself to gain 30 lbs by overindulging in crap and never exercising. In short, I FELT terrible and looked terrible. Both “terribles” can be addressed at the same time, so why should I not do so? Apparently the poster of that comment missed this comment I made:

I want to clarify, too, that I do NOT think I’m fat. I’m a size 12, and size 12 is not fat, people. This is about being my best self, having higher energy, and not being self-conscious about my poor state of health and body tone. Health comes in different shapes and sizes, and I am just not healthy. Simply put.

I am a huge advocate of people being happy with themselves, but I do think that whatever people want to do in pursuit of that happiness is alright by me, and you won’t find me posting a comment on someone else’s blog telling them how “sad” it makes me that they want to be more fit and can’t just accept themselves as they are.

All that said now, I am back on Phase 1. Saturday was a free-for-all, but even so I didn’t get all crazy (except for the wine, good Lord, the wine). It was a good test, really, since I felt so terrible yesterday (and still feel some residual awfulness today) that it reminded me of how good I have felt since I started minding my life a bit better.