Take Two

Okay, I'm back on the diet and exercise wagon. Yesterday and today, I went to the gym, walked on the treadmill for 40 minutes. Goes fast when there's a show I enjoy on. Yesterday it was Seven Days, today DS9. Also, the nausea and fatigue seems to be easing, but I'm starting to feel the diuretic effects of this new pill. Dry mouth. I drank all 8 glasses of water by 2 pm, then switched over to green tea, as it's supposed to help with belly fat. Heh, I'm making Matt drink it, too. He gets more honey in his, though, since he's not (as far as I know) IR.

Today, though, after getting off the treadmill, I felt lightheaded and a little queasy. I sat on one of the weight machines for a while, sipped some water (I'd taken a break after 20 minutes or so and had some, too), and waited for the world to stop spinning. Felt okay enough to walk, so walked back to the apartment, thinking, okay, I just need to get some lunch (I'd had a bowl of cereal w/milk around 10, and this was about 12:30 or so). Got upstairs, into the apartment, and my hands were shaking. Without thinking I grabbed an apple and chowed down at the sink. It was almost gone before I realized that it wasn't a particularly good apple, sort of dry and mealy. I felt steady enough to get the leftovers out of the fridge, plate them, and put them in the microwave. Ate a leftover cranberry muffin while it heated up.

And I just spilled water all over myself while checking the level in the bottle.... Guess that's nature's way of saying, "Go take a shower!!"

Grr

Just something I need to get off my chest. This actually happened a few days ago, but it's still irking me a little.

You know that Dove commercial, the one with the slender redhead, the two pregnant women, the BBW, and the older woman, all in their underwear? Where the song in the background goes, "What if we loved our skin?" etc? Well, it was on the other day as our roommate came out of his room. He groaned and commented, "I hate this commercial. I don't want to see that!" I just looked at him funny. He went on to say, "There's only one on there even halfway worth looking at." He was referring to the slender redhead.

Now, Chris is no specimen himself. If you looked up "skinny white boy" in the dictionary, you'd see his picture. He's pencil-thin, pale, and bald as a chihuahua. I think he missed the point of the commercial. One, it's not aimed at men. It's aimed at women, making them appreciate their own bodies. Two, not every woman is model perfect. Look at me. I'm 5'6" and 235 pounds...and I was standing right next to him as he made that comment. Obviously, someone wanted to see me in my underwear, as I'm married and have a rather healthy sex life.

The last image on the commercial is a web address, www.campaignforrealbeauty.com. If you go to that website, you'll see that Dove is collecting pictures of real women that someone thinks is beautiful. The blurb says: Be part of the worldwide effort to show a new, wider definition of beauty by sharing a photo of a female you personally know and that you would consider beautiful. Dove's goal is to collect one million photos. Every photo collected will support a donation to the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.

I went to the website. I looked at the photos. And more often than not, the photos I saw were of women NOT model-thin. They were REAL women. And as the title of an indie film stated, real women have curves. We are not sticks with boobs. Dove's working to redefine beauty through self-esteem. And I'm all for that.

My husband thinks I'm beautiful. Yes, I'm dieting and exercising to lose weight, but it's to be healthy. Not to reinforce society's standards of beauty. Chris can go soak his head as he looks for a stick with boobs.