Starting My Diet Now Before the Holidays Get Me Any Richer

I start this posting session with just finishing a phone conversation with a health club sales person who is eager of course to take my money and hopefully take some of my fat. I am proud of people who can manage to eat healthily. And what about those people who seem never to gain any weight despite what they eat? You know those types. Ugh! Lucky them I say. These of course are the same people who can take any item off a clothing rack regardless how ugly, throw it on, and voila, they look like they are on their way to the next red carpet event.

I had an aunt, not biological, but that's not important now to this story, who was one of those Truman Capote's fag hags, when such a term was used. She was an accessory to the "couple" and was aptly dressed for the occasion for which she joined the two men on their "outing". These are only some of the stories she shared with me including this one: she was one of those slender ladies who later wore a minimizer bra when she was already a size A cup. I didn't get the need to make her already small sized breasts even 'smaller" She had the looks and grandeur of Audry Hepburn and lived her life accordingly filled with a rich life of important galas and fancy dinner guests.

Again, lucky her. She was one of "those" people. She was anorexic long before is was popular to be anorexic. Now for me, I was never one of those gals. I was always a healthy up and down weight girl growing up way too soon before my very own eyes in womanly development. I started growing breasts by fourth grade, and after much pleading, my mother finally took me to Macy's for my first bra, which was a full size B, thank you very much. If you only knew the embarrassment to finally getting a bra when you really really needed one. Ouch! But enough of my emotional preteen stress I may have grown up with.

Though that same Aunt did give me this advise when I told her how I was having trouble with her sister, my Mother tantalizing me with brownies when I was trying to lose or keep of the weight - she said, "screw your mother, be skinnier than her!" Sounds like there was always competition between those two. Can you imagine anything like that being said to you?

Now despite my early growth spurt, us American women somehow always have a hard time loving our bodies, not all of us have this problem of course, nor am I particularly blaming any one company or person or even a family member. I would love to learn the mystic of French women on how they manage to have their cake and eat it too attitude. I recall one trip to Paris at 15 years of age. I was inside a changing stall requesting yet another larger size of pants. In New York I would have been a missy size 11, but there was no such size available to me at this store nor at any other store in Paris. And of course, this time in fashion was attributed to those skinny legged jeans which of course just came back in style 2 years ago, which brought back to me, my Paris changing room nightmares I had while there 20 years prior.

Then again, once at around the age of 19, I found myself back in France. This time in the French Riviera. I can still see it in my eyes now. A woman roughly 60 years of age, all tanned of course, in a bikini, with all her stomach and stretch marks to see, but she proudly showed them off as if to say...I am proud of these and I do not care about my slouching and droopy stomach. I was simply amazed. So now I am in my forties with the same stretch marks, and there is no way in Hell I will ever find my body in a bikini. - And that's whether I ever get tanned again or if I am in France again.

Confused? Yeah, so am I. How did I get this plump, which is a very nice way of calling the size that I am currently. I have been up and down my entire life and have lately decided enough is enough. So I have made the appointment with the health club for Monday and I am sure I cannot wait (umm i mean weight) to see myself getting weighed. But I did get a Doctor's check up first, I am all cleared for exercise, so that's one thing I did right. Nor am I all psyched up to grab that old bathing suit to swim with all my thighs hanging out for the pool swans to see, but I must forget about them and focus simply on me. And this I think is where it starts to get dicey for us Women. To start thinking about ourselves for once.

In fact, I think this is where it basically starts for all of us women. The fact that we do not think about us, but put people higher up on a pedestal than we need to. Some of these celebrities have had plastic surguries, all sorts of things sucked out of them, plumped back in and stuff lifted, not to mention the 24-7 on call chefs at their disposal. But this is what we have to compare ourselves to. Can you recall the first time when you were a kid wishing you were different than you actually were, do you recall when looking at your girlfriend and wishing your hair was like hers, or that you wished you were taller, or (insert whatever your wish was). We start so very young today wishing we were someone else but ourselves. Our true selves. I find this so sad, and to think I have always known this, I still find myself wishing something else different of me.

If we only knew how much those glossy magazines get airbrushed, how spider veins seem to vanish, breasts and rumps get plumper and seem to defy gravity for those in their 60's which is now the new 50. Thank God, I have something to look forward to when I turn 50 in eight more years - I will still be in my "forties" but yet, still past Jack Benny's age of 39. Hmm...Go Figure, literally.

We (us women) give and give to others and forget to give to ourselves unless of course if its that big ice cream bowl at the end of the night, or the occasional bowl of popcorn. So with all this giving and it being time for Thanksgiving, I have decided to give myself at least a two month try at a local health club and see if I can give myself some time on one of those exercise machines and get my arms to less jiggle and my tummy to less juggle and my thighs to less jelly. And if all goes right, I will finally start the new year with giving myself I truly need, a new lease on life!

Stay tuned, to see how I do on my first day after initiation. Or if I stay with this program at all.