Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Mother of All Setpoints

I've been at 100 for a week now.  The line between triple and double digits is a big one for my body.  I mean, biiiiiiiiig.  As in, the gauntlet is thrown down and it is ON.  Anything below 100 causes my body to cling stubbornly, desperately, needily to every calorie it's given like it is the last one it will ever, ever see.  Picture a rotund, disconsolate Italian mother sobbing into her apron in despair as her only child walks out the door to move into her freshman dorm at college 200 miles away -- that's my body at 100 and below.   The calories are off somewhere else, playing drinking games and skipping class and my body is just sitting there with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, pouring over family photo albums and hoping for a weekend visit.  I wish there were some way to communicate to it that it's all good, that it needs to just chill and trust me on this one.  Of course, this is the same body that decides that it will be quite necessary to inhale an entire bag of doublestuf oreos in one sitting (oreos which, by the way, now come in a resealable bag?  Who are these people who think there could ever be a reason to reseal a bag of oreos once you've opened them?  I mean, are there people who actually put them away before the bag is finished???? Mind-boggling.)

I can't stay at 100.  It's enough to keep me from wanting to peel my skin off and be ok with sex, but it's not enough for me to flatten my stomach.  We all have problem areas:  for some of us it's hips, for others, thighs, for others, arms, for some, stomachs.  I'm ok in all areas except my stomach.  I want an absolutely perfectly flat (if not concave) stomach and it's the last thing to fall in line for me (even with lots and lots of exercise, including core work).  Going under 100 allows me to achieve that -- but just DAMN, it's like some epic battle.  Small And Her Metabolism, now showing at a theatre near you.  (Rated R for Restriction.)