The Diet

This week, I go back to my alma mater for my fifteenth college reunion. I am trying not to think about how old "those people" seemed to me when I was a college undergrad -- how I snickered at the strollers in the courtyard, guffawed at the double strollers, and smirked at the placid, docile crowd. Our reunions are not known for being docile, but the denizens of the fifteenth reunion seemed to just be at that place in life.

And now I am one of them.

I am reveling in the fact that in the past few weeks, not one but TWO different people insisted I had to be in my twenties. They couldn't believe I had a child, much less three. Those were some awesome moments I had there. I have a notoriously young face, to which I credit my apple cheeks (read: plump cheeks). When I was younger, it annoyed me to be carded. Now, I want to kiss the person asking.

If you had asked me a month and a half ago, I would have told you that I was excited to go to my reunion, but I would have been a little bit lying. As a relentless extrovert, I usually love going to our annual reunions. I love seeing people, talking to people, standing in the crowds, seeing the familiar faces. I have loved it when employed with fabulous jobs, unemployed with no job at all, staying at home with children, newly postpartum, toting toddlers. But I had never gone back to a major reunion overweight before, and this year would be the first time.

Weight. It's such a tough subject for me to write about. Weight and I have been frenemies for lo these almost 37 years. In my adult life, we have mostly been on friendly terms, but in the past three years, it had turned ugly.

I gained a lot of weight with my third child. An unfair amount of weight, in my opinion, for how sick and awful I felt that pregnancy. Afterward, I lost a fair amount, but then my weight didn't budge at all for the past three years and change. Not at all.

I have tried to be healthy, but the truth is I have a sweet tooth and three small children who attract sugar like magnets. My sporadic attempts to work out and my third baby/toddler, he of the Hell-No-I-Won't-Go-to-Gym-Childcare, kept me firmly in a five-pound range of misery.

I am unhappy overweight. It doesn't feel like me. I'm a Leo and an extrovert, and I like to be seen, literally and figuratively, in the world. But when I am overweight, I don't just want to disappear, I feel like I actually am invisible. I feel like men do not look at me at all and women don't respect me. It's tough to write that, but that is how I feel. Less than. Ironic, when I feel "less than" only when I am actually "more than." The truth is, when I am overweight, it's probably the vibes I am actually putting out into the world that lead men to overlook me and other women to dismiss me, at least in part. But the result is the same, and I hate it.

Four and a half weeks ago, Husband and I started a diet. I don't want to proselytize, because diets are very personal, and all sorts of things work for all sorts of people at different times in their lives. My favorite "diet" is simply eating less and exercising more, for the record. But this time, we went on a medically-supervised, lower carb, lower calorie diet. It doesn't require exercise, which was what I could manage best right now. In the four weeks and change, I have lost twenty pounds. Husband, in typical male style, has lost more like thirty. (Bastard. Sigh.)

Now, I am really, really excited to go to my reunion. Not because I think I now look "acceptable" or thin -- because I still have a ways to go for that adjective -- but because now I feel like I look more like me. I feel more like what I am displaying to the world is more reflective of who and where I am in life. I still look very much like a mother of three children, with the muffin top and the somewhat depressing breasts to prove it. But now my face looks more like what I expect to find in the mirror. It's a face I haven't seen for a while.

I'm so glad my face is back.