I love vintage Simpsons. LOVE! And not just: I regularly work in little pop-culture references to my daily life, and the greatest fun is when someone else knows them, too. It’s why I really love other kids of the late-70s. Bless us and all the cultural references we dwell in. 🙂
Back to the Simpsons, though: they make a big deal out of the Hallowe’en episodes, and the one that stands out for me is the “Treehouse of Horrors IV”. Marge got kidnapped by the aliens, who want to impregnate her (image source). I don’t actually remember all the details of the episode, but at one point, when Kang the alien is trying to chat up Marge as he moves towards impregnation, he says “Oh, you look lovely this evening. Have you decreased in mass?”
It makes me laugh. I don’t know what it is, if it’s how the alien pings the woman stereotype right on the head, with awkward delivery and totally atypical language, or what… but it makes me laugh.
I am actually a little bit annoyed with myself to BE in that stereotype, wanting to “decrease in mass”… but I have also never been one who believed in settling. Accepting this version of me would be settling… so I will keep the goal in mind, but I’m painting the bigger target on health.
Luckily (?) for me, my appointment at the dietician’s last week helped me put the two in line in a new way. Jenna pointed out that I had gotten my cholesterol under control once before, and that maybe my current unfortunate state had to do with having exceeded my set-point weight. I’m not even out of the normal range on the BMI scale, but I think that my body is still saying, “me no likey!” (Which would be Emperor Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove, if you’re keeping track…)
It’s an interesting connection, increased weight and high cholesterol… and whether it’s absolutely correct or not, I’m happy to pack it away in the arsenal of reasons to keep on keepin’ on. Maybe the physical me I’m most comfortable with on the outside is also the physical me with the very healthiest inside. Sold!
I also wanted to update a little from the day that I calorie-counted. As someone with a history of eating disorders, I find keeping numbers out of it is often the best way not to fixate on things… especially since I’ve seen all sorts of truly insane ranges of “celeb dieting targets”. I’m NOT trying to do anything that crazy (I read here that Amanda Seyfried was eating spinach and seeds and thinking it was food—don’t judge me for remembering it, I was just surfing for 2 minutes of mindless diversion and it stuck!), but I did find it useful to have some numbers to let me know where I was and what I was up to.
I thought my 1500 calories was good, too, but Jenna Anne said that 1800-2200 was a great range for maintenance—and, in fact, if I had had a stonking hard workout that day, I might have needed one last feed of about 300 calories to get me up to that level, and that was OK. The best rule of thumb, apparently, is to be sure that the 3 hours before bedtime aren’t spent grazing.
You learn something new every day… and “it’s great to learn because knowledge is power!” Anyone remember where that one came from? 🙂
PS: TODAY IS BAKING DAY!!! Come back later to see the glory!