Zaftig

I live on the scale. I shed a sweater and verify-or at least hope to verify-that it did in fact weigh two pounds (that’s 0.142857 stone for some of you) by immediately re-weighing. While this might seem excessive, in the context of my new cult, Weight Watchers, it is relatively normal.

I woke up a few months ago and realized that my clothes hadn’t really been shrinking for two years. That I had moved from the svelte end of the spectrum to the zaftig side. I kind of like zaftig, and I like to think of myself as succulent and juicy (see definition of zaftig)...pleasantly plump, even Reubenesque, rather than fat but the net result was more than a handful no matter where you grabbed it. I tend to over-think these things, actually, I tend to over-think all things…hence much soul-searching ensued.

The short version of where my soul-searching ended: a happy person eating good food is the size that they’re meant to be. And oddly enough for the first time in my whole life I can stake a claim to happiness, not contentment or satisfaction, but actual happiness. However, despite rationalizations and self-affirmations, after two years of slow but steady weight gain, I have started working my way back down to fightin’ weight.

Why? Because Carl Rogers made sense when he said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

Since January, I have lost 15 pounds – in other words 10% of my body weight and 50% of my total weight loss goal – and figured out along the way that the caveat to my epiphany is that a happy person can still be happy eating half as much good food and the size you’re meant to be isn’t really that important in the whole grand scheme of things as long as you get cuddles.