Weighty Matters

I will say up front that I expect absolutely no sympathy.

I realize that compared to many people, I am coming to this issue approximately 25 years late.

I also realize that it is likely of zero interest to anyone besides me, my mother, and a subset of my health-care providers (everyone but my ophthalmologist and dentist, I'd say).

Nonetheless, it's an in-my-face reality these days.

I need to lose some weight.

There. I said it.

This from the woman who did not weigh enough to donate blood back in high school.

Who was all of 105 lbs., seven pounds below the already absurdly low weight limit for my height, back in my college-cheerleading days. (Yes, I was a college cheerleader. And a high-school one. And a middle-school one. And a Pop Warner one, if you know what Pop Warner is. There. I said that, too. The late-blooming feminist said it.)

By the time I left college, I finally had hips and breasts, and I weighed 127.5 lbs. I was thin but not too thin. (I really don't think I've ever been too thin—just naturally skinny. The way my dad was in his teens and twenties. The way all my cousins on his side have always been.)

I didn't pay a lot of attention to my weight. A scale wasn't always among my belongings, and when it was, I didn't spend a lot of time on it.

But whenever I did step on a scale—my own or a doctor's—it read 127.5 lbs., year in and year out.

For two decades.

The only exceptions were during chemo. The first time around, I had an allergic reaction to an anti-nausea drug, and I dropped seven pounds in three days. I put the weight back on, and the same thing happened again three weeks later, during the next cycle. I put the weight back on again. By the following cycle, someone figured out that I shouldn't be taking that drug, and all was well. No more changes in my weight.

The second time around, with a different chemo regimen, I had the opposite experience—I managed to put on 15 lbs. Big weight gains and losses are pretty common among cancer patients, and no one was concerned. And I eventually took the weight off, slowly but surely.

So when I moved to LA a year ago, I was back to my familiar 127.5.

And then I gained about a pound a month, topping out at 134.5.

I can give you lots of reasons why this happened—I'm over 40, which makes it easier to gain and harder to lose weight. I'm officially and permanently in menopause (ditto). I am on at least one medication (Arimidex) for which weight gain is a common side effect.

I also moved to Los Angeles, where pedestrians are an endangered species.

Where I cannot find a gym within walking distance.

Where I sit in an office in a skyscraper for 40-50 hours a week.

Where I got rear-ended and wasn't able to do much of anything for a good two months.

All true.

All beside the point.

It's not just that my clothes don't fit right (although they don't, and that is a daily irritant).

It's that carrying extra weight puts me at higher risk for some things and creates or exacerbates other things—all problems I don't ever want to have (diabetes), or don't want to have ever again (cancer), or want to get rid of immediately (acid reflux).

To be healthy, I need to shed those seven pounds. Pronto.

And I'm hoping that writing about it here—not incessantly, but regularly—will help.