With an amusing tagline ("Only a ball should bounce"), one might hope for something a little playful and less dismally ugly. One might hope, but one would be disappointed. Bitter experience has taught us that D-cup-wearers can't be choosers.



Appearance is one thing, style another. With such a clever tagline, one could reasonably hope for more from the product blurb:

An ideal bra for women
engaging in high impact activities
such as horseback riding, running,
soccer, volleyball, aerobics,
police officers...

On the other hand, one is greatly amused in speculating precisely what "high impact activities such as... police officer" could be.

I have a confession. Few people know this of me - Matthew, my kids, Sophie. That's about it. Nothing I'm ashamed of, but I fear the reaction. But now I'm about to tell you all...

I joined Weight Watchers.

Almost three months ago.

I'm self-conscious about it because I am not fat. Never have been. I fear the ridicule. In fact, I got it, indirectly, when a neighbour heard from one of my kids (thanks, kiddo) that I'd joined. Then the neighbour told a friend. The friend, apparently, said,

"WHAT? She's a STICK!"

Which, given that I was, at 154 pounds on my 5'5" frame, juuust barely into the 'overweight' category, is simply not true. That I carry my weight well is not in question: I know how to dress and I have decent posture. But "stick"? When I'm a 34D (lately, 36D), and hips to match? Um, no...

(Said friend is gay. Perhaps he doesn't look at women overmuch?)

But I've never been heavily overweight. Most of my life I've been slim.

And that's just it. Most of my life I've been slim. Most of my life, without any effort at all, I have maintained an easy 120 - 123 pounds. Most of my life, I have had a body mass index of 20-ish. Without any effort, without any thought.

When, about 10 years ago, I noticed a few pounds sliding on, I didn't worry overmuch. I was in my late thirties, a little weight gain is to be expected, and I was far from overweight. Except that the weight just kept slipping on. And on. And on some more.

Until I kinda wanted it to stop, you know?

I may have mentioned my family before, but every last one of'em is fat. Not just fat, obese. Most of them are not just obese, they're morbidly obese.

Morbidly. As in, so overweight it's a serious threat to their health. My sister cannot walk across a room without wheezing, and, at only 45, has arthritis in her poor overburdened knees. My brother has to sleep with a CPAP machine lest he stop breathing entirely in the night, entirely due to excessive weight pressing on airways. My mother has had two heart attacks, my uncle has had one. My grandmother suffered high blood pressure for years before her death.

It's not pretty, this kind of obesity.

And the pounds kept sliding on to me, despite my efforts to prevent it. Until, at 154 pounds, a mere 3 or so pounds into the official 'overweight', I had to do something.

And just as I'd reached that decision, a neighbour told me she'd begun attending Weight Watchers - and that the meetings were held only three or four blocks from my house.

I recognize Destiny when it hits me on the head with a brick.

Off I went. In three months, I have lost close to 15 pounds. I want to lose another 10 or so. I'll be heavier than I was at 24, but that's okay. Because I'm not 24 any more. But neither will I be following the rest of my gene pool, submerged at the bottom of the deep end and wondering why they're having trouble breathing...

What this program has done is give me a liveable framework by which to evaluate and structure my eating. I want that glass of wine? Sure - but not those cookies, too. I don't wonder, I know how much is too much. It takes a little more thought than in my thoughtless youth, but not a whole lot. It takes a little self-discipline, and I'm discovering I had more than I thought.

I am, once again, just about the size and shape I like to be. And I know that in another couple of months, I'll be there. And I'll stay there.

Phew.

Friday. Time to be accountable.

Let's talk physical activity.

I am not a couch potato. For most of my adult life, I have not owned a car. This means I walk. A lot. Always have. Five km is no biggie. I routinely do ten on a Saturday morning. I walk a couple most days. (Or I did till I injured my back last winter. More on that in a moment.) But apart from simple transportation, I have not "exercised" in any systematic way for about ten years.

Ten years ago, I went to a gym. Did weights. Loved, loved, loved it. A real gym. A mostly-guy gym, murky in shades of grey, smelling of stale sweat and testosterone, decorated in Early Canadian Bunker. The only spark of colour was paint flakes in the corners of the windows. Concrete floors except under the weights. The weights needed to be babied. The humans in there? We were there to get hard! No babying for us.

I'd tried all sorts before then. Aerobics. Nope. Ever since my middle child, my son - my 4400 gram, damn-near-ten-pound son - SHOT from my body in 87 minutes flat, ever since then, every time I bop around, I...well, not to put too fine a point on it, I pee myself. Yes, indeed.

I blame the boy. Now, now when it doesn't matter, he's Mr. Laid Back. Then? Then, he was in such a fucking hurry to greet the dawn he just totally took my bladder control right with him. The last time I had any problem peeing was immediately after his birth - you know, when everything is numb? Now I'm one of those women who stops walking when she coughs or sneezes. You know someone who does that and never knew why? Just thought she was uncoordinated? Nope. Aren't you glad you know now?

Bottom line: No aerobics for me. Which is too bad, because I DO have rhythm.

Which is why I tried a step class once. I have rhythm, I can follow the beat. Step classes are good for the thighs, burn lots of calories - sign me up! Plus my friend had a free pass. Clad in unassuming grey sweat shorts and white t-shirt, we entered at the very back. First class shy, don't you know. Follow the leader. "UP and down and LEFT and RIGHT."

We huffed and we puffed and we put our arms UP and DOWN and OUT and IN and we were keeping up and we were so proud of our selves and then we looked up from a particularly intricate "UP and DOWN and LEFT and LEFT and RIGHT and UP" combo. - and we found our red-faced selves facing the entire class of 35 slim and pink-faced, breathing-deep-but-not-puffing, brilliant-lycra-clad beautiful people.

What can you do but laugh? So I laughed. Thirty-five Beautiful Lycra People frowned slightly. "And UP and DOWN and TURN..." I stuck my tongue out at 35 toned asses, and never went back.

I tried step and spin and karate (the pee problem there, too) and tennis and running... None of them worked. I wanted weights again.

Except I hurt my back last winter. For a while there I couldn't walk, couldn't sit for more than ten minutes, couldn't bend, couldn't have sex. Well, technically I could have sex, of the "lay back and think of England variety". Hmph. When a pelvic tilt makes you either scream in agony and/or pass out... That involuntary pelvic thrusting that accompanies the Peak-Point-of-Sex?

(Oh, don't be giving me that bullshit about sex being about intimacy and love. I get that through the right kind of conversation, all the time, thanks, because I am with a phenomenal man. Sex is love and intimacy, and/or fun and frivolity, and/or maybe just plain old stress release, some days, leading to orgasm, and you know it. Well, for me. I am totally supportive if it doesn't happen for him. Not that my man has any problems in that area, but hey, he's over 40. It could be in our future.

Well. Got a bit carried away there. Tangent over.)

But orgasms? Killed me. Just killed me. So, yeah. None. Even by myself. For two months. I was not a happy camper.

No macho gym for me, but how about...oh, the shame and mortification...how about Curves? To me, in my she-macho snobbery, Curves was the epitome of wussiness. But still. A "real" gym was out of the question for my still-recovering back.

So I went. Took my youngest with me, me sneering inwardly. And I LOVE it. Okay, so I'm not pumping iron. There is no stack of metal crashing triumphantly behind me, no grunting, no tang of man-sweat in the air - or smudge of man-sweat on the bench. No men at all, for that matter. The room is bright and airy and well-ventilated. The room is CARPETED, for God's sake. And the music? Yeesh.

But you know what? I'm kind of getting into the women-only groove. I can see the appeal of "the girl thing" of the place.

And those machines? If you really push yourself, (which, snarks my Inner Gym Snob, very few of the women in there do) they offer some serious resistance. After three months, there is tone in my upper arms - upper arms which had been tending in the direction of middle-aged arm-flap. Tone, I tell you! My legs less so, because I am having to baby my back, but I'm increasing the resistance slowly, my back is getting stronger each week, and I can feel it happening in the legs, too!

So my weight may not be shifting a lot (down a whopping three pounds in three months, unlike Candace, who has managed three pounds in three WEEKS), but the tone, she's coming back.

It's progress. Next week: the weigh-in.

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piss on it anyway