6:47 a.m. - Monday, Dec. 30, 2002
Ms Leslie Does the Math
First some business:
I need to stop and express my thanks to you for signing my guestbook with your comments and encouragement. I see something there every day. A lot of the things you say almost demand a response from me, but I haven�t done much to make it easy to respond to comments. I�m going to work on that, I promise. In the meantime, just know that I read it all. I take the advice seriously, even if I don�t always follow it. Mostly, I just love you for taking the one or two minutes to let me know you�re here.
Item two: You made me number 92 in the top diaries overnight. My life is changed forever. Well, OK.. maybe not, but it�s still ultra-neat that you did that for me. Thanks!
Alright. On to my entry:
I�m an athlete.
That thought never occurred to me until a day or so ago. I�m still floundering in the weight loss department. Wallowing in self doubt and pity because I can�t put iron clamps on my eating behaviors. Oh, I know. I have deep emotional reasons for overeating and if I could just resolve all these issues and end all that anguish, then my inner child wouldn�t have to eat to feel loved. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe all that�s true, but there�s something else going on. It�s called ravenous hunger. Not emotional hunger, not psychic longings for love, not even fear of intimacy. Just animal hunger. And why is that?
It�s because I need fuel, just like any other athlete. It�s real hard work lugging this big old body around everywhere.
I learned to calculate the calories needed just to maintain body weight. For a moderately active woman, it�s her weight in pounds divided by 2.2 and multiplied by 35. ((lbs/2.2)*35). That�s just another way of saying that it takes 35 calories a day to sustain every kilogram of body weight. Now, I�m not going to tell you how much I weigh. Let�s just take your hypothetical woman of say�.. 200 lbs. In order to BE 200 lbs, she has got to eat 200/2.2*35 = 3182 calories every day of her life. She can count them or not count them. She can lie about her weight or be honest, but if she�s 200 lbs, then she�s eating 3182 calories. Period.
Now, if she decides she prefers to weigh say, 132 lbs, then she has to eat no more than 132/2.2*35= 2100 calories every day. That�s how much energy it takes to exist as a moderately active 132 lb woman. More calories gets a bigger woman. So she needs to cut 1082 calories from her daily diet. That�s just another way to day that a 68 lb. person inside of her has got to die. And that poor 68 lb. Person has to die of starvation. That�s why she�s hungry. But it gets worse. When that 200 lb woman goes on a diet, she doesn�t just cut out the 1082 calories she needs to avoid in order to be 132 lbs. No.. she drops down to 1200 calories.. sometime less. So now there�s a 75 lb. Woman dying inside her. Thirty-eight percent of her is dying of starvation. Ouch.
So, what�s the answer?
Maybe that 200 lb woman needs to realize that there are several women inside her, depending on how she chooses to see them. There is either one 68 lb woman or sixty-eight 1 lb women. Or two 34 lb women, and so on. My guess is that it�s probably easier to starve out the smaller ones one at a time rather than one great big one. What this all means is that I need to count calories, but not reduce their number so fast. Can I set a goal, calculate how many daily calories I need to sustain that goal weight and then eat that many until I reach the goal? Then set another, lower one? I guess time will tell because it�s only two days til 2003 and I�m not taking that extra woman forward into the next year with me. She makes it too hard to buy clothes.
In other news:
I have some unsolicited advice for you. If you feel so adventurous you MUST try the new diet vanilla coke, don�t buy a whole case at once. Just buy one can. I�m old enough to remember the last time vanilla coke was a new idea. It was in the fifties if you must know. Back then you could go to a drugstore, sit at the counter and order a vanilla coke. The jerk (no� that�s what they were called, honest!) would draw a fountain coke and add a few drops of vanilla. It was pretty good. So when Isaw vanilla diet coke in the store the other day, it took me back to my youth. I bought a case.
The first can was interesting� and pretty good. The second can wasn�t nearly as interesting. Numbers three through twenty-four were decidedly bad. Oh sure, I drank them all, because that�s the way I am. I punish myself in these little ways. You, on the other hand aren�t very likely to finish a whole case of them. Just buy two, OK?
0 comments so far
�
�
