I spoke to my friend Rob today and he directed me to come here and.....
...write a couple of sentences to assure my friends that I am not dead and that I will post when I have something interesting and/or relevant to update you on.
Of course, I was just going to be a brat and do exactly that, until I realized that I have a little story to tell. A story that I don't get to fully tell people these days because they are so caught up in their automatic knee-jerk reaction followed by an ironclad belief that they are, of course, right that, so even if they took the time to listen, they wouldn't hear a word I said anyways.
For those of you who haven't known me all my life, in high school I was 5.6" (the same I am now) and I weighed 90 lbs. (So.... 171 cm tall and 6.4 stone) I used to wear trackpants under my jeans because the smallest size I could get were still too big for me. I remember one year when I was 14 there were these awesome flap pocket jeans that were all the rage and after begging for months for a pair, my mom and I spent an entire day trying to find some for me. I ended up in a childrens store and went home with the only ones that were small enough to fit my hips - they ended just below my knees.
In the ensuing years I gained weight but stayed the same height and I've always been more "boy formed" than girl. I have wide shoulders, slim hips and, to top it all off, two legs that join at the tailbone (ie: not much of an ass). Over those years any weight I gained, I gained around my middle. Actually, that's not true because I've kept about the same weight so, in reality, fuck knows where it came from.
I've kept records of my measurements and looking at them right now, they go back as far as 1999. I know for sure that I've had a pretty big disparity between my hip and waist measurements for about 5 years longer than that. I started keeping records when I started diet and fitness regimes to specifically reduce the size of my waist and the size of my waist only.
During my 'office' days, I used to buy pants that were a little roomier in the hips and, inevitably, huge in the ass to make the wearing of pants all day long less uncomfortable but when your hips are 38" and you're waist is 34.5" (March 1999)..... well, lets put it this way - anything that fit around my hips carried a 26 or 27" waist.
So, head into your bedroom, grab a belt say, 1 and a half inches wide, and cinch it around your waist at roughly 5 or 6 inches SMALLER than your current waist size. Proceed to wear it all day. While sitting down. Repeat. For 15+ years. Get back to me.
I've never had any success with any kinds of diet or exercise and my weight has been steady at 130 - 134 for the last 15+ years. Hell, I figured basic training would knock that baby right off my middle but, no. I came home from basic training with 11% body fat and a belly the exact same size as when I left.
From my records, it looks like I briefly had 36" hips in 2001 to go with a 31.5" waist but still the proportion of waist to hip ratio has pretty much stayed the same. Ergo, my problem has stayed the same.
The advent of low rise pants gave rise to a less painful clothes wearing experience for me, however, it was replaced by the embarrassement of having pants fit nicely at 30" just under my belly button - which clocked in itself around 34-36".
Yes, the dreaded muffin top. From perfectly fitting pants. On a skinny girl with low body fat and a BMI of 20-21.
All these numbers are a bit confusing, I know. Let's say that the norm for waist to hip ratios (according to the internets) is .7 (or for me would be a hip size of 37" and a waist size of 27") but what I have instead is .83. Which, apart from being painful is also a moderately high health risk.
As of last week, for the 16 or 17th year in a row I measured hips 37", waist 31" and whatever that measurement is called just below yer belly button - 35.5" and I weighed 128 lbs. Now, I'm so not denying that there's a percentage of this that's about vanity - about wanting to look my best, but the long involved explanation above is a larger percentage of my problem with it. Sadly, it's the percentage no one wants to talk about.
Sometimes, these things are not about fitness. Not about how hard you work, what you eat or how you want to see yourself. Sometimes, they just are.
And sometimes, after 15+ years of trying to fix it, deal with it, get over it --and 15 other 'its'-- it's just one of those things that you hand over to a surgeon with a state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner.
Yes, internets, I had liposuction 5 days ago. And my body? It thanks me.
(Update: Amount of 'tissue' removed - 1L. Yup.)
