But first. A few updates. After only a few days, we got a call saying the carburator for the Peugeot has been rebuilt and she should be installed and up and running this evening. That sure was fast. Now if only it wasn't a million degrees outside I could pull out my sweet fake leather jacket and pop on my motorcycle boots and be riding around by this weekend. Reality is, I still have to get the thing licensed (50 bucks?)and buy some new tires.. which'll run about 75 bucks and probably take one of those moped safety clasees. bleh. Being responsible is no fun sometimes.
Alright. So the other day I mentioned my need to talk about my own health, for my own reasons. Little back story here. I've never been a small girl. I'm a good 5 feet 9, get my big boned body frame from some mysterious part of my family line that is not obvious in any of the living women in my family, and am one of those fortunate women with a metablism like a snail. Needless to say, putting on weight is much easier for me that taking it off. My weight has been an endlessly fluctating beast throughout my life. I've gone from chubby, to lean, to curvy, to dumpy, to fit .. and then I had a kid.
In the spectrum of weight problems, my issues are probably on the bullshit end to a lot of women with weight problems worse than mine. I had a friend say to me recently that when she looks in the mirror she doesn't see what's really there, and that applies to so many women, regardless of what size they may truly be, myself definately included. At this point in my life after struggling with self esteem and body issues i've finally discovered my happy body weight and what I need to do to deal with my issues with food.
I've never had an eating disorder. Other than being a die hard food lover. Which is why I chose to work in kitchens in the first place. And which is also part of the reason why my weight has fluctuated so much. I mean, you gotta taste it before you serve it.. riiiight? Throughout my life i've gone back and forth between vegetarianism, veganism, straight up meat eating, health food, not health food and everywhere in between. I've tried and loved almost everything.. except shellfish.. not a big fan at all. I wouldn't call myself a binge eater.. at times maybe.. but I am mos def a carb lover and fan of the Julia Child/french style of cooking that makes the best uses of heavy cream and butter, and lots of it.
Currently i'm at 174 pounds, which is not a bad weight at all, I know, but not where I would like to be personally. At my biggest pre-pregnancy weight I weight 203, or somewhere around there and was miserable and depressed about it. Though I may not have shown it to anyone but those extremely close to me. At my smallest I weight 148 pounds and felt great. I was fresh off a job in Yosemite National Park where I was very much in motion, took a new job working at a health food restaurant, riding my bike everywhere, learning capoeira and juggling and just living a very active lifestyle. When I moved back to Lafayette and fell in love I put on the standard 10 pounds of love.. or cajun food, however you want to look at it, and was still comfortable and happy (though of course a little complainey as us women tend to be). So, I was around 160 when I got pregnant. I put on 45 pounds with my pregnancy, the last 5 in the sad and anxious 3 weeks of past due my daughter put me through. At this point, i've taken off all but 14 pounds in the last year and a half. As a goal I would like to get back down to 160.. 150 would be awesome, but 160 is still cool.
Me as a kid.
Me at 23? Heavy, but not my heaviest.. for some straaange reason I don't have too many of those pictures saved on my computer.
Me at my smallest.
A full body shot of me at my healthiest and ideal weight. This is also just a super rad picture. I had some people tell me that I was too small at this weight. I'm pretty sure it was because they'd always seen me as thicker. This was right around 150 and as far as BMI indexes go I was just right at this weight.
38 weeks preggers?
Me at our first show as GUILTLESS last Saturday night. Not a bad weight, but still got some lbs to drop.
So punk rock chicks are not supposed to care about their looks. We're supposed to be these super tough, I don't give a fuck types, strong, independent, tough as nails. I am all these things, in certain ways. But if there's something i've discovered over the years about punker chicks, it's that we suffer from vanity, depression, self-esteem issues, pride and whatever other wonderful traits you want to chuck in there, just as much as any high class broad you can name. Sometimes more. I mean it makes sense. Punk rock chicks, though not all of them, dye their hair all the time and pump it full of products (aquanet/la loooks, etc), wear assloads of makeup (black eyeliner/megavolume mascara/red lipstick/etc), wear extremely tight and short clothes (fishnest/miniskirts/tight ass black jeans/altered super tight cool guy band shirts/etc) and spend just as much time if not more checking up on said things as other women.
Unfortunately for some of us, these standards of punk beauty aren't always friendly to bigger body types. They don't always make skinny jeans in plus sizes... actually come to think of it plus size skinny jeans is kind of an oxymoron. Though the world of fashion has become a bit more friendly to us luscious ladies, general clothing shopping can definately be a bummer.
I'm not going to go into some long rant about beauty standards being fucked up. We've all read it before. The whole media and societal whirlwind of heroin chic vs. curvy. Kate Moss vs. -insert 50s pin up model here-. That's not really what this was supposed to be about. I just want to talk about me. Me, me, me. Cause I am a vain punk rock chick and that's what this blog is for. What I will say is that even though I find all shapes and sizes of women beautiful and speak out like a good pseudo pc punker chick about aforementioned fucked up beauty standards, internally I am still greatly affected by them myself. And I think in our scene that's pretty normal. After years of struggling with my weight and finally getting to a place where all those issues were dust in the wind, I had a child and am finding myself having to fight against those issues again. I know that's fucked. I know it. But as anyone reading this that has had body image issues knows, it doesn't matter what you know is right or wrong. It's more of a feeling thing. A bad one. Deep in yer bones man!
So this is where i'm at. My recovery from a c-section was a long one. I didn't take any pain meds aside from motrin for my pain. I had to be that tough ass chick who didn't want to cross over anything into my breast milk so like a fucking mad person sufferend through weeks and weeks and weeks.. 12 weeks? of recovery. Plus my daughter was 9 pounds 4 ounces and I wasn't supposed to life over 10 pounds and of course didn't listen.. blah blah I'll talk about our birth story when I finally break through the wall I built up around it in my psyche. I decided to finally take the dive into a gym membership when I was ready. My penny-pinching fellow punk rock chick Katie found a gym that only cost us 10 bucks a month, so that didn't seem so bad. And I hit it pretty hard for a while. Then I got bored. and put back on 10 pounds and finally a few months ago realized I was unhappy again so i'm back at it.
I've been trying to stick with a 1600 calorie diet.. Just from working in restaurants and being a food nerd i'm pretty familiar with calories in food already, this isn't something where I walk around with a book of calories or anything, so my count is probably off on some days, but that's ok. I've been going to the gym monday thru friday with the weekends off, but once again, some weeks are busier than others. I do about 45 minutes of cardio and another 20 of strength training. In the last few months i've set up a system, and it may sound crazy but it's worked for me and my man both. He put on almost as much weight as me when we were preggers and of course he's lost almost all of it already. In the morning I weigh myself, mark it on my little Johnny Cash calendar and then go to the gym. I also highlight the days I go to the gym. I'm bad at coming up with excuses for not going so this system works because I look at that calendar in my kitchen every fucking day and there is no denying when i've been slacking. It's funny to write all this down. Feel a little guilty.
I've been a cook book reader forever. In the last 5 years or so i've become more interested in simple healthy foods. Not always cooking it, but reading about it. Lately i've been reading on blood types and food. Pretty interesting, though a bit of a bummer when I read that my blood type is not supposed to eat soy. Which had been a big staple in our mainly vegetarian diet. I've over eaten soy products for a while though and I know it. It's an easy and convenient vegetarian food, but too much of anything is not a good thing. So i'm slowly weening myself off of soy and have started to encorporate fish into my diet (bad vegetarian, bad!). Let me atleast say that I don't claim to be a vegetarian, but I do however encourage a mainly vegetarian diet, for meat eaters and veggies alike. I'm not a fad dieter, i'm more a person interested in reshaping my conceptions of food and working toward making sure our kids know what it means to be healthy, so we've been trying to eat a more balanced diet. Cliche I know, but I mean it, Lots of veggies, lean proteins, fiber, etc etc. Simple and healthy.
So I've been working in all these healthy food and exercise ideas i've read about into some sort of plan for myself and so far it's working. In the last 3 months of being pretty stable with it i'm down 14 pounds and feeling healthier, have more energy, etc. I've fluctuated enough over the years to know that nothing works unless you think long term, so that's the plan. once I get to a happy weight for myself i'll ween off of the 5 days exercise madness and work on maintaining. I'd like to get to my pre baby weight by the time my daughter turns 2 in December. I'm pretty sure I can do it. But mainly I'd like to get back to that place where I felt awesome in my head. Not crazy skinny, but healthy and strong and beautiful dammit!
This whole thing has been basically so I have it in writing that i'm trying to do this. I could say so much more about my issues with my body , but anyone reading this probably has the same issues and can fill in the blanks. I'm just gonna occasionally add to my list of updates how i'm doing with all this. Don't worry this isn't going to be a whole blog about how I lost 20 pounds and you can too. Just felt like talking about it today.
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