THANKS A LOT, NEW YORK TIMES.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all

I’m just sitting around, minding my own business, recovering from my New Year’s party and then WHAT? Here’s the Times talking about weight  – how once it goes on, seriously, it never comes off. The lengths to which people go to keep it off. Now, I may or may not have drunk a Big Mac’s worth of champagne the previous night and I may or may not have had buffalo wings for breakfast, but either way this is not what I want to be reading as day fades to evening and late lunch becomes an early dinner. Not one bit.

I put it out of my mind. I had some cereal, went to bed, and, by morning, the bad news was far from my thoughts. Except, it wasn’t. It never is. I weighed less than 100 pounds when I was in the hospital. And, though I did gain a little during my early recovery, I lost even more while I was living by myself through early 2010. I’d never been skinnier, and I loved it. (Let’s be honest, I still love it.)

Then the numbers on the scale started creeping up. Slowly first, so I almost didn’t notice, and then faster. Now I’m afraid to weigh myself because I would probably be near 130. That doesn’t sound like a lot, maybe, but consider it in context: I gained 30 pounds in two years, I’m not all that tall, and I have an eating disorder. So that weight in this body can never be far from my mind.

But So I’m driving home from work today, and effing Tom Ashbrook comes on On Point with thishit:

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/01/05/keeping-off-the-fat

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR OF THE GODDAMN NEW YORK TIMES PIECE. And, like a martyr, I’m listening to it and feeling all crappy about my prospects. I mean, I totally screwed up my metabolism with all that starving and purging BS. I haven’t eaten like a normal person since I was 14, so what makes me think that 16 years later, I should be able to feast hearty and not pay the piper? People get older, metabolisms slow, and we can’t seriously expect to wear that little black dress forever. Cheer yourself up, I thought! But I couldn’t.

Then, the author, Tara Parker-Pope, started talking about her OWN weight. Her OWN struggles. And I can’t remember her exact words (I was driving, you know) but she exhorted the audience to be healthy in the bodies they’re in. And the way she said it, I was like, damn. That makes a lot of sense. I couldn’t cheer myself up. But she did it for me.