D had to go to the PCP this morning, so I got more kindle reading time in. I am done with my other book, and so I started reading a new one. (I would tell you what it is called, but that would involve getting my kindle out of my purse and turning it on, and that's too much work considering you all don't give a crap anyway, amirite?) The premise of the book is that the author tries a new workout program every month and reports on it. In a humorous, though informative, manner. I literally LOL'd in the waiting room, to the point of slightly embarrassing myself, so yeah, it is funny. The author also has little essays intermixed, dealing with related factors, including her struggles with disordered eating and her anxiety disorder and such.
In the foreword, the author mentions that she had three children when she was in the midst of this experiment and now has four. This struck me as...slightly unusual? I dunno. You just don't see that many educated middle class young women having big families these days. Well, in one of her essays, the shoe drops and she mentions she is Mormon. That made perfect sense in the four kids arena. It did showcase my own prejudices, however, because I was surprised then that this Mormon lady was a gym rat. Which is silly. I mean, they're all about the clean living, what with the no alcohol and the no caffeine, so why wouldn't they be into exercise too? Plus, I'm sure all those women come from hardy pioneer stock. If their great great grandmothers built their own log cabins by hand, why the hell shouldn't they be able to do pullups? (The reason I can't do pullups is that my bulgy Polish catcher's thighs weigh down my bottom half too much. I'm built for squatting in fields and/or blocking the plate, not feats of upper body strength. God. And, yes, I am sticking with that excuse.)
Oh, Andrea, does this post have a point? Not really. But I did want to discuss/ask/ponder an important question. In the essay in which the author first mentions she's of the Mormon religion, she's discussing how long it took her to get comfortable with changing out in the open in the locker room, and she mentions one of her embarrassments with that is that she wears special Mormon underwear. Underwear that is somehow a symbol of her faith (like a yarmulke or chador). Seriously? I had never heard of this. And then she doesn't specify what the special Mormon underwear consists of. I had to know. Thank god there is wikipedia. The ladies wear little undershirts and what look like bike shorts. It's fascinating. (Don't roll your eyes at me. It is. And consider this your multicultural lesson for the day.)
I also found the author's discussion of her battles with both orthorexia and over-exercising really interesting. You people know, if you've been paying attention, that with my own semi-disordered relationship with my body and with food, I am always kinda checking myself to make sure I'm staying on the normal side of the eating disordered/non-eating disordered line. I am certainly not anorexic or bulimic or at danger of being so, nor am I an over-exerciser. But I kinda worry about something akin to the orthorexia. I have, since last September/October, logged my food into fitday almost every single day. I was doing it more often than not before that, but once I started lifting weights and I realized I needed to eat enough calories and protein to support that, I have gotten semi-obsessive.
I weigh my food. I weigh my food enough that when I don't eat at home, I can make a pretty good guess of how much that restaurant has served me. Liz and I were talking about weight loss on Saturday--she's lost 20 pounds since Christmas and she was all excited in buying jeans the other day that were a size smaller than she thought she could now fit into--and she mentioned she's been trying to measure out her portions. I then made a pitch for my food scale and my lurve for it. She said she had thought about buying one and someone told her to knock that off, that it was obsessive. Oops. What can I say, all the chicks and the guys on my weightlifting boards think it's perfectly normal. I also noticed that the other day when fitday was down for awhile, I got really cranky that I couldn't log what I'd eaten. That's kinda...not good, right?
But I'm not sure it's really orthorexia when what you're weighing on your food scale is your third portion of cheese for the day. C'mon now. I just am trying to make sure I'm eating enough, not trying to restrict. I gotta get points for that. Anyway, I have got to finish reading Mormon chick's book and see what other insights I glean from it. And/or just continue laughing at her stories in public and making people look at me funny. Whatev.
xoxo
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