If you are like me and know just enough Latin to be a danger to yourself and also enjoy highly Americanized Mexican food, you likely believe the above title refers to Taco Bell's newest burrito. Actually, if it did, it could hardly be any more disturbing or bland than their usual attempts to meld the six bulk ingredients they have on hand to create novel menu items. Just because they give it a new name, do they really think we don't realize it's the same inexpensive cheese product and questionably edible bean-like paste? Don't even get me started on the lumpy grey goop they call "meat".
But that's not what I wish to talk about in this column.
Instead I'd like to delve into the fantasy that I believe many people have had that might also be called the "Instant Perfect Body".
Most of you know what I mean by that, but just in case a stray Abercrombie model surfed by, I will simply state that the IPB fantasy is a day-dream where one's physical flaws are all wiped away by an unnatural (and benevolent) force and all of one's good features are enhanced to a point of exquisite beauty normally unseen in nature. The details of the transformation vary from person to person, as does the extent, but in the end we all become just friggin' GORGEOUS in comparatively little time. Poof! We're models!
What interests me about the IPB desire are the three parts of it that I would call the Delivery Devices, the Larval Stages, and the Guilty Pleasures phase. These parts, I imagine, make an otherwise common desire wildly divergent and certainly fascinating, even uniquely cool. As no two dimples on an ass cheek are alike, no two IPBs are either.
For myself, the greatest variation in my IPB comes from the "Delivery Devices". Something powerful, and external, has to make the change in my appearance, and rarely do I receive an explanation of why I am the beneficiary of such delicious beauty. The Lord, aliens, stray chemical waste leaks, leprechauns, and confused evil sorcerers have all made appearances in my fantasy as the actuators of my transformation. At times I have called forth the agents by prayer or (for example) by looking under a rainbow for a pot of gold, and each entity grants me my wish.
How they grant me those good looks are what I call the "Larval Stages".
In keeping with the spirit of "Instant Perfect Body", many times the Larval Stages are truncated and consist only of the aforementioned "poof!" One second I am standing there with unconditioned abs and a crooked smile (my only two flaws of any note) and a flash of bright light later I have a six-pack of hard muscles and a dazzlingly straight mouth full of gleaming white teeth. But sometimes there are actual stages. Some desire to make the fantasy more real prods me to make the change more gradual so that any observer would think it natural. Instead of just becoming perfect in seconds, I take a few days or weeks so that my friends would notice, but not immediately assume I had sold my soul to nefarious agents. I have fantasized on occasion that my "Instant" perfect body took three months of slow, progressive improvement.
But no matter who does it or how I become perfect, eventually I get the undeniably handsome body that I unquestionably deserve. And thus I begin to use my new found looks and end up experiencing the "Guilty Pleasures".
And I do mean "guilty".
Let's face it: If you looked like Justin Timberlake, you would go out and party like friggin' Justin Timberlake. Joining that monastery, which I'm sure sounds reasonable to short, fat, balding folks, would make absolutely no sense if you had the body of a porn star. If you got it, flaunt it.
Still, even in fantasy land, I have something resembling a conscience and inevitably the guilty part of the Guilty Pleasures enters the dream. What happens to my friends and family while I am off cavorting with Rachel McAdams and Jessica Alba? Do I pretend not to know any of the still "normal" looking folks that I once proudly interacted with after I become awesome? How can I leave them all back in Average Acres when I have moved on to Glamour Gulch?
Like this: So long suckers! Hello, Rachel...
Okay, so maybe I don't have that much guilt. But the results of my transformation do vary and sometimes I actually put my looks to good use once I have them. I get a great job, find a new wife, buy my parents giant mansions etc. etc. Eventually I work out the kinks and end up happy.
And then I wonder: Why do I need to be beautiful to be happy?
I'll tackle that whopper another time. For now, I would ask that anyone interested e-mail me a description of an IPB fantasy. Perhaps we've had a similar one involving leprechauns and Jessica Alba (or Justin Timberlake depending on your preference). I'll post some of mine from time to time just to see if at various stages of my life the IPB changes too.
Pigassus
Post Script 1: If any Abercrombie models did wander by, please allow me to be the first to help you with any difficult words and accept any photos you wish to pass on.
Post Script 2: I write out my IPBs like so:
Delivery Device: Unknown Golden Ray coming from my shower head.
Laval Stages: Instant improvements wherever the rays land followed by successive improvements each time I shower.
Guilty Pleasures: After a couple months of magical showers, Rachel McAdams sees me having lunch with my Mom and instantly falls in love with me. Take that Ryan Gosling!
Showing posts with label body dysmorphia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body dysmorphia. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Fat Armpits Are a Bad Sign
I am a medical reporter. I've spent the last couple of decades reporting on a variety of health problems for newspapers, then magazines and finally for TV. Now I freelance, dividing my time between TV news and magazines. I am usually quite private about who I am and what I do, but I share this here because I have finally realized there's an important disconnect in my life: I write about health and wellness; I know what I should do to maintain my own health, and yet...I never do it.
You can get away with that for a while, but not forever. But I thought I was somehow immune from the consequences of my own bad choices...a sedentary lifestyle, sitting in front of my computer for hours and hours every day, guzzling Coca-Cola like it was mother's milk. I told myself because I ate an organic diet and did not generally overeat, and stayed away from trans-fats and most junk food, I was fine. Never mind that I had to keep buying larger and larger clothes and finally topped out at a size 18. Never mind the facts. I was slim. I could look in the mirror and see that. My face was still the same, no double chins or waddles, and if my face was still slim, so was the rest of me, right?
But then one day I was walking by a low table and a small box jumped off the table. I spun around, puzzled. I was the only one in the house. Who had pushed that box down?
The question should have been: "What" had pushed the box down? It was my thigh, my thunder thigh that I believed was taut and sleek, not wobbly and flobbily. (Yes, I know "flobbily" isn't a real word, but don't you think it should be?) It was the part most adjacent to what had slowly become over the years, my old double-wide. What? I was still a size 10, wasn't I? I ran to the full length mirror in the hall and looked at myself. Thank God! There, shimmering through the heavy mists of my body dysmorphia, was my sylph-like Size 10 self. There she was. Never mind that the actual me was twice that size. In my mind's eye, I was still a slender and alluring girl. But then, what had happened to that little jumping box?
Then, another day, a night actually, I ended up in the hospital in a full-blown hypertensive crisis. My EKG looked so bad they told me they were going to have to do heart surgery. I was shaken down to my bones, but then I remembered what I knew about myself: I come from a family that has NO history of heart disease; I eat a moderate fat diet, I eat primarily healthy fats and no transfats, so the diagnosis made no sense. But there was that EKG showing possibly blocked coronary arteries. I simply couldn't make myself believe that was true. Wouldn't I have had some symptoms?
They did a fancy, expensive test and, thank God! My arteries were clear and healthy. The apparent blockages shown on the EKG were the result of arterial spasms caused by raging high blood pressure.
Staring at your own mortality should have an instant sobering effect. Yet, that scare happened way back in March and here we are in October, and only now am I acting upon my trauma in a positive way. I got the blood pressure under control with medication, but the doctor told me I could go off the pills if I lost weight and exercised. I didn't quite yawn in his face but I was tempted. So sheer terror didn't do it for me. Do you want to know what did? Peeling away the layers of self-delusion and looking at myself in a cold, analytical and clear-eyed way.
I decided to do some scientific investigation. I picked up a small hand mirror and turned with my back facing the full length mirror and looked. Oh, my God! Whose ass was that? It obviously wasn't mine. Whoever had that ass couldn't walk; they could only waddle. Had I been waddling for years with no awareness that my butt rolled up and down with each step, like waves breaking on the shore? That grown men who smiled as my Size 10 self approached cringed in terror or collapsed in hysterics after my Size 18 ass passed by?
Still in a scientific frame of mind, I stripped down and faced myself in my huge bathroom mirror. I lifted my arms like Venus rising from the sea, a sea of lard, that is. And I, Venus, am a little out of breath. After all, raising your arms is hard work.
I stared at the nightmare vision in the mirror. Oh, my God, again. My armpits were fat. That can't be a good sign. My naked upper arms, usually hidden under long, flowing sleeves, looked like Virginia Hams, only not as appetizing. (See, I am always thinking about food.)
I'm sorry, but I have to go back to that arm pit thing. I didn't even know you could get fat arm pits, but there they were, right where my arms joined my body...two distinct rolls of fat. No wonder I had so much trouble putting on deodorant. No wonder I used so much deodorant.
I pulled myself up onto a small step stool, amazed that what used to be so easy was now so difficult. I was an athlete all through school. I was fast, I was strong, I was graceful. And now I was having trouble pulling my 206.4 pounds up onto an 8-inch high footstool?
I finally got up there and regarded my self, or rather, the waist-down part of myself usually unseen in the bathroom mirror, and disguised by self-delusion in the dimly lit full-length hall mirror. My thighs looked like the Pillars of Hercules and my hips looked like two marshmallows that had gotten a little too close to the fire and sort of halfway melted. Formless blobs of pasty white flesh arranged in a not-so-fetching pattern. That was me, the real me, not the slender Size 10 me I had managed to delude myself into seeing all these years.
So, two weeks ago, I started a walking program, using a book called The 90-Day Fitness Walking Program. Notice the word "diet" is not in the title. I have an allergy to the word, "diet." I break out in hives whenever I hear it.
I laughed when I dug the book out. It was copyrighted in 1995 and the pages bore the evidence of many futile starts and stops where I journaled hopeful notes when starting the program, only to peter out two days later, having garnered so much satisfaction by talking to all my friends about what I was going to do that I felt no need to continue the actual program. But this time was going to be different. This time I wasn't going to brag to my friends that I was on a diet and exercising. (I'm going to brag to strangers, instead.) I wasn't going to promise myself I would lose 500 pounds in 10 days. In fact, I honestly wasn't all that interested in weight loss; I was interested in strength gain. I didn't want to be weak anymore. I didn't want to slide down into old age getting gradually sicker and weaker, with first this part failing and then that, all because I never took care of myself.
So I didn't tell myself I was going to "try" to do better. I told myself I was going to do better. I was going to start slowly and simply with two things–things I knew I could do: give up all soft drinks and follow the 90-day program for 90 days.
I have been on the program for 2 weeks now and my results are not impressive, but I am not discouraged because, for the first time in my life, I am finally doing a fitness program for the right reasons. I have lost just 1.8 pounds, (down to 204.6) but I have also lost 4 inches, including a full inch from my hips. I haven't missed a day. Each morning I rise and walk on my treadmill, and then record what I did in the journal provided in the book. That has become a high point in my day, a point of pride, written proof that I am finally taking care of myself and my body.
Big results? Not really. But a sea change inside my own head. It may take me a year; it may take two years, but one day, I will not only be a normal weight again, I will be a strong and healthy woman again. And maybe even (heads up, gentlemen readers)...alluring.
A friend who is also battling weight and health problems will be joining me here. We invite you to come along for the ride, literally and figuratively. Maybe we can help each other see and love ourselves as we really are, and most important, love ourselves enough to actually take good care of our bodies.
You can get away with that for a while, but not forever. But I thought I was somehow immune from the consequences of my own bad choices...a sedentary lifestyle, sitting in front of my computer for hours and hours every day, guzzling Coca-Cola like it was mother's milk. I told myself because I ate an organic diet and did not generally overeat, and stayed away from trans-fats and most junk food, I was fine. Never mind that I had to keep buying larger and larger clothes and finally topped out at a size 18. Never mind the facts. I was slim. I could look in the mirror and see that. My face was still the same, no double chins or waddles, and if my face was still slim, so was the rest of me, right?
But then one day I was walking by a low table and a small box jumped off the table. I spun around, puzzled. I was the only one in the house. Who had pushed that box down?
The question should have been: "What" had pushed the box down? It was my thigh, my thunder thigh that I believed was taut and sleek, not wobbly and flobbily. (Yes, I know "flobbily" isn't a real word, but don't you think it should be?) It was the part most adjacent to what had slowly become over the years, my old double-wide. What? I was still a size 10, wasn't I? I ran to the full length mirror in the hall and looked at myself. Thank God! There, shimmering through the heavy mists of my body dysmorphia, was my sylph-like Size 10 self. There she was. Never mind that the actual me was twice that size. In my mind's eye, I was still a slender and alluring girl. But then, what had happened to that little jumping box?
Then, another day, a night actually, I ended up in the hospital in a full-blown hypertensive crisis. My EKG looked so bad they told me they were going to have to do heart surgery. I was shaken down to my bones, but then I remembered what I knew about myself: I come from a family that has NO history of heart disease; I eat a moderate fat diet, I eat primarily healthy fats and no transfats, so the diagnosis made no sense. But there was that EKG showing possibly blocked coronary arteries. I simply couldn't make myself believe that was true. Wouldn't I have had some symptoms?
They did a fancy, expensive test and, thank God! My arteries were clear and healthy. The apparent blockages shown on the EKG were the result of arterial spasms caused by raging high blood pressure.
Staring at your own mortality should have an instant sobering effect. Yet, that scare happened way back in March and here we are in October, and only now am I acting upon my trauma in a positive way. I got the blood pressure under control with medication, but the doctor told me I could go off the pills if I lost weight and exercised. I didn't quite yawn in his face but I was tempted. So sheer terror didn't do it for me. Do you want to know what did? Peeling away the layers of self-delusion and looking at myself in a cold, analytical and clear-eyed way.
I decided to do some scientific investigation. I picked up a small hand mirror and turned with my back facing the full length mirror and looked. Oh, my God! Whose ass was that? It obviously wasn't mine. Whoever had that ass couldn't walk; they could only waddle. Had I been waddling for years with no awareness that my butt rolled up and down with each step, like waves breaking on the shore? That grown men who smiled as my Size 10 self approached cringed in terror or collapsed in hysterics after my Size 18 ass passed by?
Still in a scientific frame of mind, I stripped down and faced myself in my huge bathroom mirror. I lifted my arms like Venus rising from the sea, a sea of lard, that is. And I, Venus, am a little out of breath. After all, raising your arms is hard work.
I stared at the nightmare vision in the mirror. Oh, my God, again. My armpits were fat. That can't be a good sign. My naked upper arms, usually hidden under long, flowing sleeves, looked like Virginia Hams, only not as appetizing. (See, I am always thinking about food.)
I'm sorry, but I have to go back to that arm pit thing. I didn't even know you could get fat arm pits, but there they were, right where my arms joined my body...two distinct rolls of fat. No wonder I had so much trouble putting on deodorant. No wonder I used so much deodorant.
I pulled myself up onto a small step stool, amazed that what used to be so easy was now so difficult. I was an athlete all through school. I was fast, I was strong, I was graceful. And now I was having trouble pulling my 206.4 pounds up onto an 8-inch high footstool?
I finally got up there and regarded my self, or rather, the waist-down part of myself usually unseen in the bathroom mirror, and disguised by self-delusion in the dimly lit full-length hall mirror. My thighs looked like the Pillars of Hercules and my hips looked like two marshmallows that had gotten a little too close to the fire and sort of halfway melted. Formless blobs of pasty white flesh arranged in a not-so-fetching pattern. That was me, the real me, not the slender Size 10 me I had managed to delude myself into seeing all these years.
So, two weeks ago, I started a walking program, using a book called The 90-Day Fitness Walking Program. Notice the word "diet" is not in the title. I have an allergy to the word, "diet." I break out in hives whenever I hear it.
I laughed when I dug the book out. It was copyrighted in 1995 and the pages bore the evidence of many futile starts and stops where I journaled hopeful notes when starting the program, only to peter out two days later, having garnered so much satisfaction by talking to all my friends about what I was going to do that I felt no need to continue the actual program. But this time was going to be different. This time I wasn't going to brag to my friends that I was on a diet and exercising. (I'm going to brag to strangers, instead.) I wasn't going to promise myself I would lose 500 pounds in 10 days. In fact, I honestly wasn't all that interested in weight loss; I was interested in strength gain. I didn't want to be weak anymore. I didn't want to slide down into old age getting gradually sicker and weaker, with first this part failing and then that, all because I never took care of myself.
So I didn't tell myself I was going to "try" to do better. I told myself I was going to do better. I was going to start slowly and simply with two things–things I knew I could do: give up all soft drinks and follow the 90-day program for 90 days.
I have been on the program for 2 weeks now and my results are not impressive, but I am not discouraged because, for the first time in my life, I am finally doing a fitness program for the right reasons. I have lost just 1.8 pounds, (down to 204.6) but I have also lost 4 inches, including a full inch from my hips. I haven't missed a day. Each morning I rise and walk on my treadmill, and then record what I did in the journal provided in the book. That has become a high point in my day, a point of pride, written proof that I am finally taking care of myself and my body.
Big results? Not really. But a sea change inside my own head. It may take me a year; it may take two years, but one day, I will not only be a normal weight again, I will be a strong and healthy woman again. And maybe even (heads up, gentlemen readers)...alluring.
A friend who is also battling weight and health problems will be joining me here. We invite you to come along for the ride, literally and figuratively. Maybe we can help each other see and love ourselves as we really are, and most important, love ourselves enough to actually take good care of our bodies.
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