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I need to write this out to organize my thoughts, because I realize the crazee is lurking. As you know, I am on a diet. This diet was precipitated by a huge wave of body loathing, triggered by catching a really bad angle of my stomach in the mirror. As you probably also know, I have a long history of borderline eating disordered behavior, borderline body dysmorphism, and just a general unhealthy relationship with how I look and what I eat. A couple years ago, I sorta made the decision to never diet again, accept that I am an old woman now and that my body isn't going to look good no matter what, and just stop obsessing about it and let my body do what it wants. No more depriving myself. No more crazy eating regimens.

Well, I've had some limited success with that, but every time I've lost a few pounds without trying during that period (because I'm crazed with anxiety so much that I can't eat, mainly) I'd be so happy about it. And when I started eating normally again and the few pounds came back, I'd be sad. No matter what I tell myself intellectually, that I'm middle-aged and I'm going to have a middle-aged woman's body, I don't want my setpoint to be 10 or 15 pounds higher than it was when I was twenty. Whine, whine. And all it takes is a small comment from someone or a bad clothes-trying-on experience or a bad angle in the mirror to trigger that disgust with myself. I know this is sick and unhealthy, but rationality doesn't enter into it.

So now I'm back to dieting because I can't be at peace with my stomach looking like it does. I was talking to M1 yesterday--and let me say, her relationship with her weight and her body is as screwed up as mine, and in the years I've known her, she has tried every single weight loss scheme known to man short of liposuction or weight loss surgery (which she isn't overweight enough to need)--and she asked how the low carb is going for me this time and if I'd lost any weight. I told her I wasn't exactly sure because I hadn't weighed myself to start, but when I weighed myself over the weekend, the number on the scale was a pleasant surprise, but disconcerting in that I usually look better at this weight than I do now. My fear is that I'll lose five or ten pounds and it won't come off my belly and the sides of my waist. That even at the weight I want to be, I'm not going to have the nice curviness I had 5 or 6 years ago at that weight.

As part of my getting borderline obsessed again about losing weight, I've been reading various weight-loss and low-carb support forums online the last few days. Those are *somewhat* reassuring in the "well, at least I'm not as fucked in the head as most of these people" kinda way. But one topic I read this morning was about choosing your goal weight, and it was really interesting to me. People saying that they want to weigh what they weighed twenty years ago in high school or college, other people saying they knew that was unrealistic, and others saying they'd know when they got to it. I started thinking about the two times in my life that I got down to my lowest adult weight which is 112/113.

The first time was in 1989. I had lost all my baby weight in early 1987 and was at what my "normal" weight for that time in my life was, somewhere between 116-120. But I decided I wanted to be thinner than that. So, in keeping with the prevailing wisdom of the times, I went really low-fat; I was also going to the gym *a lot* then. When I got down to 112/113 then, I was fairly muscular and for the only time in my life, I lost my breasts. I think I had some bras that were 34Bs, and even S, who I was already broken up with by then, frowned at me and asked, "What happened to your boobs?" one day. I'm imagining my body fat percentage was pretty low then, comparatively speaking. I have pictures of me taken in New Orleans that year, at probably my lowest weight, and while my thighs were still curvy, I was tiny.

The second time I got down to that weight was in 2003, immediately after my mom's death. I had low carbed myself down to 118ish in the preceding year, and then the stress of my mom's illness knocked off another five pounds. I wasn't working out then at all. I was also 14 years older than the last time I weighed that. This time, my boobs did not go away. I was wearing a 32D bra, but you could see every vertebra in my back and count my ribs. My thighs were still curvy with a layer of fat and my naturally big quads. I was aware of feeling just a tiny bit too thin, for me. The total lack of padding in my back made, for example, sitting in a hard-backed seat uncomfortable. But I bought a lot of clothes that summer because everything I tried on looked awesome. Ha! I'm sure my body fat percentage was higher then than in 1989, but really in a good, hour-glassy way.

The point of all this is not that I think I am ever going to be 113 again, nor do I want to be. I don't think it's realistic to get there at this point, and definitely not realistic to stay there. Plus, I'm old. I need some fat in my face to plump up the wrinkles, yo. No, the point is, reflecting on how different my body looked at the same weight in 1989 and 2003, I am even more afraid that when (not "if", motherfuckers) I get down to 120-125ish now, I won't lose the belly fat. What if I lose a cup size and my belly stays the same? That would look worse. What if I do have to get to "no facial fat" before my love handles go away? That might possibly look worse.

It's like, it took me till the age of 42 to accept and love my bulgy Polish catcher's thighs. Is it going to take me to age 70 to accept middle-aged woman's stomach? Will I finally be at peace with my body by the time I die? I don't want to be that woman in the magazine that I wrote about, having plastic surgery at age 78 or whatever. My whole brain being fucked up about this (though not as bad as some of those people who count their carb grams down to the percentage point, thankyouverymuch) disgusts me as much as my belly flab does, but I don't know how to fix it. Telling myself I'm not going to care anymore didn't fix it. Positive reinforcement from other people doesn't fix it. Antidepressants haven't fixed it. I mean, I am better about this than I was 25 years ago, but like I said, I don't want another 25 years to go by before it ceases to exist at all. It's very discouraging in a lot of ways.

I told you not to read this.

xoxo