Confessions of an ideal-weight junkie

           "Every time I hear the dirty 
      word 'exercise',
      I wash my mouth out with
      chocolate."
           
      "The advantage of 
      exercising every day
      is so when you die, they'll say,
      'Well, she looks good doesn't she.'"

     Ayan, ayan... kitang-kita ang dahilan kung bakit kailangang kong bumalik sa pageexercise! (Pansinin nyo na di ko sinabing kailangan na akong mag-diet!) Bakit nga ba kung kailan ko natuklasan ang kasarapan ng iba't-ibang klase ng pagkain ay tsaka naman bumagal na ang aking metabolism. Para bang ilang minuto lang pagkatapos kong kumain ng 2 French macaroons ay nasa baywang ko na ang ebidensiya! Kaya ang wardrobe, kailangan nang palitan dahil sa nagsisikipang pantalon at iba pa!

      Pero iniisip ko mga. Dapat ba akong mabahala, for aesthetic reasons, sa aking paglapad at pagbigat? Bakit pa e sa aking edad, dapat what you see is what you get! Anyway, I have long been out of the market, so to speak. I have earned the right to not worry about what others will think of my weight.

     Pero sana nga ganung kasimple. It's really not what others say but what I think about my body that takes center stage. I have long been grappling with this issue of the perfect body (on me!) As a child and well into my early adult years, I was grossly underweight.  Given that and my height, people would say I should be a model. Wow, I thought! But the damper was my friends would add... " as a poster child for the Malnutrition Program" of the government. Sigh! 

     It seemed like even if the amount of food I took in could rival the volume that men in my group took, my weight still hovered around 100 pounds. Even after I had given birth to my first baby, I would still visit Slimmer's world for a weight gain program just to achieve that elusive dream of 120 pounds on my 5'5 1/2 frame.

     But after my second child, things changed. My post-partum weight refused to go away. Even if it was not too far from the magic number 120, it still didn't make me feel content. A few years later, in a phase of my life accompanied by much anxiety, my weight went down to around 112. Still another bummer for me even if outwardly, I thought I had achieved (without trying) a look that would make heads turn.

      And so the saga continues to unfold... At present, my self-imposed weight standard remains to haunt me. But not so much because I can no longer fit into my usual size 8 but because the numbers that appear on the weighing scale (I stopped looking months ago) signify health implications. If I lose weight, will the aches and pains in the joints go away? Will lessening my sweets intake ensure the diabetes gene doesn't kick in? Will cutting down on the dairy and the meat relieve me of allergic rhinitis symptoms? Should I resume swimming and mat Pilates so that I become physically fit again?

    Maybe I should take to heart these probable measures to ensure optimal living. I'd like to live a healthy life till I'm beckoned to go to Kingdom come. So now, it really doesn't matter if I ever get to be 120 pounds in this  lifetime. All I want to do now is... fit into my favorite pair of form-fitting jeans and look good in them! (Hehehe! Mababaw pa rin!)