Posts by lauren0019

I'm 5'6" and about 145 at the moment (I'm not sure about my frame size).  The Express 8s and Gap 6s I have fit me about the same, and both are a tiny bit tight.  Before I slacked off, I was about 140, and they fit well.

While I certainly wholeheartedly believe that you know your body best and you should make decisions you're comfortable with...

I also think that sometimes people think they would be unhealthily thin when they wouldn't necessarily.  When I was 160, I didn't think I could ever get to 130-135.  I thought my bone structure was too large for me to ever be smaller than a size 8 or so.  But I saw those numbers (and even lower ones) from several places, so I shrugged and made them my tentative goal.  While I still haven't reached my goal (I'm at 144ish now), I can definitely see that I still have at least 10 pounds I could lose without looking anything like a skeleton.  I could probably lose plenty more without looking like a skeleton (though I don't want to try--135 is my goal and 130 is the lowest I would ever want to go). 

I guess my point is that the goal you pick now doesn't necessarily matter.  When you get closer to whatever your goal is, you can reevaluate.  If you think you should stop 10, 20, or 30 pounds before you get to what all the charts say you should be, fine, do it.  If you suddenly realize that you have 15 more pounds of pudge you want to be rid of, you can do that too.  It's not like someone's forcing you right now to pick the weight you're going to be for the rest of your life.  You can still change your decision later. 

I didn't really gain anything over the holidays, but since then, I haven't lost anything either.  I think my body got happy with treats and didn't want to go back to what it was getting before.  Plus I'm having a really hard time finding energy for the gym.  Bleh.

The reason I didn't know how to cook when I went off to college is because my mother never really knew how to cook, either.  She had a few recipes she was familiar with and made over and over, and some cookbooks that she felt comfortable trying something new out of occasionally, but she was never a proper cook.

When I was little, we baked together a lot, and one year my brother and I actually made an anniversary dinner for my parents (with careful pre-selecting of the recipe by my mother), but I was never really encouraged to or taught to prepare fully balanced dinners, especially not without following a specific recipe to the letter.

I'm trying to improve!  Just wanted to say that in this case, it goes at least one generation further back.

If your brothers are being jerks, tell them your body is none of their business.  I'm guessing that you're still growing/developing and all that, so they're probably just used to you looking like a kid, so of course when your butt starts not looking like a kid's butt anymore, they'll say something stupid.  I wouldn't worry about it.

If your parents are making these sorts of comments too, you might just want to talk to them seriously and let them know that it makes you uncomfortable and self-conscious when the family discusses your body and its possible flaws.  Your parents, at least, probably don't actually intend to be mean, they may just not know how you feel about it. 

We had a non-traditional dinner this Thanksgiving.  In one meal, I ate:

1 (freaking huge) crab cake

2 crab legs  (with butter)

asparagus with Boursin sauce

an ear of corn

a glass of white wine

a glass of black currant lambic

two or three (small) slices of homemade baguette

1/12 of a chocolate pie

a very small slice of plain cheesecake

This meal (including dessert) was something like 1500 or 1600 calories, but it was basically all I ate all day.  (Not intentionally--I don't believe in skipping meals--but I just ate a couple of almonds before we started cooking (we do lunch, not dinner), then I didn't get hungry until bed (although I ate a serving of ice cream then anyway...)).  I even worked out Thanksgiving night, so it was no worse a day than any other.

That being said, I have never felt so full in my life.  I think my stomach must be half its old size nowadays, because it felt like it was going to rupture before we even ate dessert.  Now I know, for Christmas, I need to take the volume of food into account, not just the calories.

I saw an article that cited 4500 calories for the day as an average.  I simply cannot accept that.  Maybe other people eat way different foods than I do, but I cannot imagine ever consuming that many calories in one sitting (especially semi-accidentally).  My boyfriend and I were trying to estimate what you'd have to eat to get that high, and the highest we managed to get was about 2000 calories for the meal (including 2 desserts).

Of course, I don't have to worry about that, because we're having crab legs, asparagus, and corn for our Thanksgiving meal.  :)  And chocolate pie, but that's still nowhere near 4500 or 5000 (or even 1000) calories. 

What would make sense is if they made a certain number of seats larger, so that people who needed them could special order them (for a higher price, but not for double the normal price--basically charging by the inch of seat space).  Of course, then people would be mad that they had to sit in whatever row this was or whatever.

Or then again, they should probably make all the seats bigger, since most people feel cramped in them.  Of course, if they did that, they'd all be out of business, since they're all kind of on the edge anyway.  Maybe they should make airplanes with futuristic drawer-things that we all lie down in and go into hibernation for the duration of the trip so we're not aware we're crammed into tiny spaces.