Health Advisory System: Red Alert

Confession: I am unhealthy.

I have stopped, after a ridiculous amount of time, thinking about my health as a symptom of my weight issues. I've thought that way for edging perilously close to thirty years now, and do you know where it has gotten me? Nowhere. I still have the problems that I've always had. Clearly, focusing on the need to lose weight has been ineffective, so say the least. So I started to wonder, what if I just reversed my thinking? What if my fat is a symptom of my being unhealthy?

Now, on the surface these sound like pretty much the same thing. Let me tell you why they're not.

Focusing primarily on weight loss can lead--and has, at least for me--to resorting to unhealthy measures to shed those unwanted pounds. No, I've never been bulimic or anorexic (though much of my thinking about food and weight has been disordered, something that I'll probably address eventually). But I've been guilty of falling into the diet trap time and time again, engaging in eating habits that don't deliver proper nutrition and probably did more damage to my body in the long-run, especially when you consider the way my weight yo-yo'd whenever I'd go on or off of them. Rapid weight gain or loss puts stress on your body that is just plain ol' bad for you. So here's my plan:

Fuck thinking about weight loss.

This is not to say that I think it's good and okay and healthy for me to be my current size. Frankly, I don't. But I also don't think that my lack of health is caused by my size. I've heard a lot of buzz recently (old buzz, but give me a break, I'm new to this) about a book called Rethinking Thin, which as I understand posits the theory that all bodies have a size that is more or less a natural baseline. Proper nutrition and regular exercise will keep you within a reasonable range around that size, and it takes intense and constant effort to maintain a weight very far above or below it. (Makes sense to me so far, but I want to pick up the book to see if I'm understanding it correctly. Hope I don't have to go to a regular bookstore to do so; I might be allergic to paying full price for books these days.) If this is true, then I can be healthy and still be fat. So . . . okay.

That doesn't sound so bad.

The problem is that, right now, I have a lot of bad habits. I mean, a lot. Habits that I'm going to have to change in order to be the kind of healthy I want to be. But the thought of changing them all at once sort of feels like saying, "I've decided to take up mountain climbing. I shall therefore go out and climb Mt. Everest RIGHT NOW." Meep. That's a surefire recipe for failure, right there, which will just lead to backsliding into unhealthy habits all over again. Instead, I'm going to take a marathon-training approach to healthy habits. When I've mastered one stage and it's ingrained as a new, healthier habit, then I'll move on to the next. In the meantime I'll still try to make healthier choices when they're presented. (e.g. I still got a mocha after breakfast today, but ordered it with skim milk and no whipped cream. Baby steps, right?) I will mark these steps off on a Homeland Security Advisory-esque rainbow scale, because I'm a bit of a smartass and because I like rainbows. The idea is to get from red all the way down to green. My first step:

Drink more water.

I have always gotten very easily dehydrated. For those of you who don't have this problem, let me tell you: it SUCKS. In addition to plain old thirst, when I let myself start getting dehydrated I get headaches, feel sluggish and sick, and tend to be in an incredibly pissy mood. None of these are good things! The Mayo Clinic assures me that everyone needs different amounts of water, so I guess I'll start out with the 8x8 rule (8 8oz glasses of water a day) and adjust from there if necessary.

Hooray for hydration! Let's all drink up together. (Just don't try to toast each other with water, okay?)