Having a Weight Problem

I have a weight problem. I know, I know...lots of people have weight issues - but every time I mention mine I get this response, "I WISH I had your problem!"

Um...no you don't. I'm all of about 99 pounds now. Sure, when you weigh 250, losing a few pounds is great, but not when you are about 115 to start with. And when you can see all the bones in your body without needing x-rays, it's pretty much hell trying to gain back any weight no matter how hard you try. Trust me.

Over the past year or so - I've lost enough weight to easily slide out of my pants and I can fit into all my stuff I had (pre-marriage days) when I had a job, only now I don't have a job...and dressing to the nines just to post Facebook posts or clean every once in a blue moon, is pretty weird. But...I'm worried about it - and, whenever I worry...I either do one of two things...or maybe three. Okay, four...but no more than four.

1. I Google. It's on WebMD or MayoClinic.com - so it's not like I'm going to BobsDiseaseoftheMonth.com - but, within three clicks, I'm usually dead. I've been placed on "Internet Restriction" by so many doctors...it's actually kind of comical...in a sick, morbid sort of way.

2. I cry. I cry and then I post on Facebook or I call a friend and cry. Tonite I cried after a friend called me. That was nice for a change. The fact that someone called me...not that I was crying again.

3. I call up an on-call doctor or make a doctor's appointment the next day. See above two reasons. This is my justification for doing this.

4. I think "Hey, that would make a great blog idea!" Unfortunately, I don't ever write these things down and by the time I think about them again, six months later, they have lost something in the time span...mostly the initial funny and the interesting bits.

For example, here is a partial bit - it was much funnier about a year ago when I first thought of it...so add in all the stuff you think would have made it funnier and more interesting, as that's the way it was meant to be.

Being obsessed with weight has been an issue for millennia. It wasn't just those Roman vomitoriums I'm talking about, either.

You have your fairy tales...like the one where Snow White or Sleeping Beauty falls asleep for 100 years...or at least long enough to drop those 50 extra pounds she had before she was "thin enough" in that vain Prince's eyes for him to finally want to kiss her.

Then there's "The Princess and the Pea". Face it, only a bony chick would feel a tiny lump under 20+ mattresses. And only a really skinny chick could have scampered up all those mattresses to start with...especially since they probably made ladders back then out of twigs and vines.

And then there are Greek myths. Now, I love Greek myths - but the Greeks were obsessed with beauty to start with, after all, they did give us Narcissus, who (undoubtedly) basically starved to death after falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water.

Oh...they don't tell you the "starved to death" fixation...but I am certain it was a running issue with the Greeks back then.

Take Icarus and Daedalus -- no one (in their right mind) who weighs 300 pounds would envision thinking they could make some wings out of a bunch of feathers and wax and actually fly to the sun. Only a person starving to death has thoughts like that. That's probably the last thing you think of before dying of starvation...or dying, period: going toward the light. Well, in this case, that light was the sun...and Icarus, being delusional from not eating for weeks on end...figured he was light enough to fly up to the sun. Sorry...no one's that thin...and, yes, you CAN be too thin -- so much for that myth.

Then, to round out my point, there's poor Persephone. Persephone was kidnapped and taken to the Underworld by Hades...but, she didn't want anything to do with him...and her mom, who just happened to be the goddess of the harvest, pined away until Zeus finally fessed up that Hades had her. (Zeus was a jerk and liked to screw with people, by the way.) Somewhere in the bargain Persephone is given a pomegranate to eat, and unbeknownst to her, the number of seeds she eats is the number of months she has to live in the Underworld. Let's just say everyone was lucky she could only kick back a few seeds.

Do you have any idea how fattening a pomegranate seed is? No one does. It's like negative calories...like celery. It takes more work to eat it - you expend calories just trying to eat the edible bits. She must have weighed all of 99 pounds...and was probably in her own personal hell just like I am...

...but in more "weighs" than one.