Saturday, June 5, 2010

I'm not a maths genius: I'm obsessed

Any fellow dieters/people obsessed with their weight out there will likely resonate with this story.

So today I was in a lift. It was a small lift, there were lots of people (at an unconference) trying to get into it. I think there were about seven of us in the lift, and the doors didn't close. It was because one of the guys had his foot too close to the door, not because we were over the weight limit in the lift, but someone made a comment about the weight to people ratio. The sign on the lift says "750kg or 11 persons" or similar. I made the comment that we would only fit 11 people in the lift if everyone weighed 62.5kgs or thereabouts. I totally pulled this figure out of my arse, and it was a rough (inaccurate) estimate. But everyone looked at me in awe, as if I was some kind of Good Will Hunting in heels, and one guy goes "Did you just figure that out in your HEAD?"

I kept mum, because the truth is that I make guesstimations based on weight and size all the time. It's part and parcel of dieting, or possibly just being a girl. I don't know, I've done it for so long. Whenever I'm in a lift I do the math and figure out what they think the average person should weigh, then think about how many kgs I am over that. Massochistic, possibly. Inevitable, definitely. When I watch my weight I become particularly obsessed - is this T-shirt a bit looser today, are my cheekbones more prominent, how does the size of my arm compare to that random girl's - it's undoubtedly a bit crazy, but it's part of how I get through it, and stay on track.

And I haven't eaten a carbohydrate in almost two weeks.

1 comment:

  1. This is interesting. I actually have been the opposite for years. I'm far more comfortable being fat. I think thin = sick and have quite a distorted body shape view of thinner people (according to my friends). For years I got away with it healthwise by including sports like riding or rowing in my daily activities, but now that I have been in sedentary management for so long I am having to lose weight for health reasons. It's challenging for me - and I haven't given up carbohydrates!

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