femminista: thoughts of a feminist rhetorician

And by "losing it" I mean weight. In spite of my feminist leanings, in spite of everything that I know about the unrealistic expectations placed on women's bodies, I am still preoccupied with my own weight. For once, I have reason to be. I look back at how frighteningly skinny I have been at times in my life and seem to recall being unsatisfied even then. Gaining this weight has put those times in perspective and made me realize that I don't want to be that skinny again. Still, I want to be thinner and that means dieting and exercising. Dieting is new for me and difficult. Being unable to eat gluten makes it even more of a challenge to make healthy choices for weight loss as I can't have many of the meal bars and other pre-prepared diet items. This means, of course, that I have to make my meals from scratch and it wears thin. (No pun intended.)

I started on the South Beach Diet and while I've learned some good strategies and recipes from my attempt, I ultimately was unable to continue with it because of the low energy that resulted. I was too tired to exercise and found it difficult to even walk for moderate distances. That combined with the restrictions on consuming fruit and the fact that this is fresh fruit season, I decided to end that diet and try reducing caloric intake while alternating aerobic exercise with strength training.