April's CR Diary

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May 29, 2005

Is It Really Normal for a Woman Over Thirty to Be This Thin?

It never fails. I read a beauty magazine, I get blog inspiration.

I was flipping through Glamour yesterday when I came across an article claiming that older women (like over thirty! like me!) are now acquiring eating disorders in an attempt to look like the women in "Desperate Housewives." I imagine there are (and have always been) women over thirty with eating disorders, and those women should get help and I hope they get better.

But do we really have to address this problem by claiming that it's not healthy for women over thirty to be thin??? Okay, granted, they said normal, not healthy, but reading the article confirmed what they meant.

Why oh why would we counsel women to "accept" gaining weight every year after thirty as a natural process, when it is a deadly process? Sure, it may be harder to stay thin after thirty, especially for people who have kids. But people gain weight because they eat too many calories and don't exercise enough, not because they keep having birthdays. Personally, I found it quite easy to get fat before thirty... if I had not started CR at 29, who knows what I might weigh now? I was gaining weight at about three pounds a month with no sign of stopping. I hadn't had children, I was just eating too much, and bad foods!

I wish the magazines that women turn to for advice would confront the problem instead of shoving pictures of thin fashion models in our faces then telling us that we should accept gradual weight gain. What a depressing message! How about a feature with all the CR'd grown up girls (to be a grown up girl, in my mind, you have to be over fifty, and be prepared to show ID) talking about how real women stay thin and healthy at any age.

Another feature in Glamour asked "Full skirts for real bodies?" implication being that some bodies are not real. I wondered, do I have to look forward to a CR'd future in which I am not real, not normal, because I'm not fat?

At least now, when MR and I are together, we look more like a nice couple who just graduated from college than like supermodels. I've always thought that he looks more young than skinny, like one of those teenagers who eats a pizza every night before bed. I'm still not particularly thin looking... anyone who has actually seen me can comment that I'm not skinny looking at all! And yet, I find the Banana Republic size 0 slightly too big. MR's mom was noticing how sizes have crept in recent years... what is now a size 0 used to be more like a size 10. People are growing, and so are sizes. Thin short women can't find clothes. Should I gain weight? Should I grow taller? Should I shop in more expensive stores (oh no!)?

It's even worse for men. One of my male friends who is not particularly thin but is in shape and works out all the time has trouble finding pants that are both long enough and small enough in the waist. CR'd men seem to just give up on finding clothes that actually fit, relying instead on belts to keep their pants from falling down. It always cracks me up how when a woman says a pair of pants are too big, a man will often say, "Why not just wear a belt?" As if!!!

I can understand that there's not that much demand out there for clothes that fit men who are six feet tall and 123 pounds, but really, a six foot tall man who weighs 180 but is in great shape should be able to find clothes! Is it a requirement that everyone get fat? This same friend was hanging out with some of our nurses the other day, and they started to tell him he was too thin! One of them said, "You have to have a milkshake!" When we all went out to dinner, they wanted him to eat dessert. These are nurses! If you genuinely think someone should gain weight, shouldn't you suggest that they eat healthy yet high calorie foods, like a little more olive oil and some hazelnuts? Grrrrr...

Contract negotiations go on and on, and the room is filled with gak. Friday was a rough day... I hadn't planned to spend the afternoon/evening in negotiations, so I hadn't packed enough food, thinking I would get out for lunch. VLC and I met nurses at noon in the hospital cafeteria, where I marvelled at the horrific choices that hospital visitors and staff are offered for lunch. Chicken fingers (do chickens have fingers?), pepper steak, macaroni and cheese. A truly wilted salad bar. Ugh. I did try a Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper, which was exciting. I guess they skipped the steps of having Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper and Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper and just went for the whole thing.

We had to do some scouting out for office space, so by the time we got to negotiations it was about 2 pm. I was still thinking I would get out and go get a real lunch, but I eventually decided to stay at negotiations, so I walked up to the little hotel restaurant to order a salad to go. I had to have some protein, and the choices were horribly limited, so I had a grilled chicken caesar salad with no dressing, no croutons, and no cheese. The man who took my order argued with me that it wouldn't be a caesar salad anymore, and I said, "That's right, I just want lettuce with chicken on top." That settled that.

Someone had brought trail mix with almonds, so I munched on those, and towards the end nibbled at the last of a club sandwich that someone had ordered and not eaten... feeling terrible but also really hungry.

Yesterday was another interesting experience... I took a break from work last night to go out with some new friends, and we all went out to a bar that had absolutely nothing I would eat. I decided to pull an MR and not eat at all, as I had dinner plans later, which fell through at the last minute when an out of town friend didn't end up making it into town.

Going into work this afternoon and may end up making dinner for my mom, not sure yet. Tomorrow we're back in negotiations (no holidays for the union people!) and I will be packing my cooler bag full of cottage cheese and yogurts and hazelnuts. There's a pizza place near the negotiations hotel that had an excellent house salad with a ton of veggies, so if I can convince the others to get lunch from there, I'll be in good shape. Who knows how long we'll be there... could be all night... so I'll just have to stuff my cooler bag as full as I can. It's times like these that I wish for megamuffins, and of course it's times like these when I am least likely to have time to bake them! Not to mention that the memory of green endive flecked goo dripping from my kitchen walls the last time I made them does not inspire me to attempt the process alone.

Posted by april at May 29, 2005 7:57 AM

Comments

Posted by: Mary at May 29, 2005 5:00 PM

Posted by: April at May 29, 2005 6:40 PM

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