Taking The Weekend Off

I took the weekend off, like so many of you probably did and probably have before.  It happens the same every week, whether you’re working outside the home or at home with the kid(s). The itch comes Thursday evening, all the great TV shows are on Thursday evening like some kinda of pump-me-up. For me it’s 30 Rock, Parks & Rec and Up All Night that get me jazzed. I have an hour and a half of gut-busting laughs and realize- TOMORROW IS FRIDAY! And even though I’m at home with the baby, Friday still means FREEDOM. Not that my routine really changes, still have to get up with the baby Saturday morning, which means I have to go to bed with the baby Friday night. But what Friday does mean is I take the weekend off.

The itch that started Thursday evening has spread into an eczema like rash by Friday afternoon that must be scratched or I’ll just die. Except when you scratch it, it spreads. So by Friday evening Husband Chad comes home and I’m just waiting for any reason to throw this diet out the window, and trust me men make it easy to convince you that you deserve some delicious grease (they want it to). Here’s how it usually goes down: Husband Chad calls on his way home (hands-free of course J) “Hey babe, you’ve been working hard all week, why don’t we just order in”. Of course he’s craving the carbs and salt too. And that’s all you need to start justifying it to yourself. I’m thinking, “Yes, I have worked hard. No, I haven’t eaten anything bad all week. Ya, I worked out, and it hurt, it burned, and it felt good all at the same time. So you know what? I totally deserve a carb overload!”.

The problem is much like an addiction, once you break it is so easy to continue to break and continue and continue and continue. (You get the point.) So you have some pizza Friday evening, and you gotta make yourself a Caesar. “It’s Friday, you deserve a cocktail!” you’re justifying. And for some reason you have to choose the most salt-filled cocktail out there (look at the Clamato label, talk about exceeding your daily intake of salt). Oh, but in the immortal words of Frank the Tank “Once it hits your lips”. So true Frank, so true. Once it hits your lips you’re too far gone. Saturday morning you wake up thinking “well, I’ve already broke my diet, let’s keep this going. Can’t do any more harm than I’ve already done”, You start things off with a cinnamon roll, c’mon it’s been a month since I’ve had one. Then lunch rolls around you’re eczema like rash has spread down your torso, must get more carbs! And because you’ve purged your house off anything bad for you, you’re now making deals with your husband on who should run out and get the fatty-delicious foods. Hey, it’s the weekend, you can start again Monday. Monday’s a new week and you’ve already broken, what’s the harm in a little more.

There is the harm right there. Saturday is now a scratch and there’s only one day left in the weekend, Sunday. Who wants to do anything on Sunday? Sunday was made for couches and chips or the couch potato if you will. When we’re feeling like being bad and throwing all food caution to the wind, Husband Chad and my favourite Sunday starts with eggs benny and ends with five different tasty-delicious appy style plates to munch on while watching some great HBO dramas. Just thinking of it makes me wanna turn this Monday into a Sunday. Cause Monday, well Monday sucks.

Anyone who says food is not an addiction has never taken a weekend off. I just took the weekend off and binged, and man it felt good. Like all addictions I justified it to myself, why I deserved it. Like any addiction I craved and wanted- heck needed it. The salt! The carbs! The sugar! Like any addiction I felt so so so so good once I got it in my system and like any addiction I feel like crap now. The dawn has drawn upon me and all the hideousness of this weekend and the realization that everything I worked so hard for last week. The suffering of dieting, the suffering of working out, the suffering oh the suffering was for nothing. Basically I suffered all week to break even or worse let the weekend win. So how do you NOT take the weekend off? Ha! Ask me next Friday, I have four days to figure that out.

Celeb Chat Friday

Hey we’re going into the weekend, who wants to think too much?!?! Not this girl! So every Friday I’ll chat about my favourite subject, celebrities. I’ll give you my take on what’s been making the tabloid headlines this week.

 January 27th, 2012

Heidi Klum throws Seal back into the wild… or did he throw her back? Who would throw Heidi away? Anyways….

What is it about celebrity couples splitting that shocks us? In this case, is it that they made it passed the 5 year mark? Usual expiration date for a celeb couple. Or maybe it’s because they have kids, and Seal even took on one of Heidi’s kids she had with the Italian dirtbag.  To be more accurate, Seal actually met and started dating Heidi while she was pregnant with another man’s child and then was present at the birth, adopted the little girl and even changed her name. Heidi proclaimed after her birth that “Seal is her father”. This couple also renewed their vows every year on their anniversary.  That has always hit me as strange, why do you need to renew your vows every year? And do it in costumes. Yeah, not only did they throw a ceremony every year, they also dressed up in costumes, one year going as redneck white-trash hillbillies. Nothing funnier than rich celebs making fun of a poor stereotype. Anyways, I think it was the fact that other than their vow renewals and awesome looking Halloween parties this couple was very low-key. No news is good news right? Guess not. And that feeling of sadness for them you can’t quite explain, don’t worry the demise of their relationship does NOT mean no one else can make it. I’ve heard that a few times since their split, “if they can’t make it, who can”. Really? Don’t base the idea of Happily Ever After on celebs.

Demi Moore checks in to a facility for every celebrity’s favourite reason, exhaustion

After reading tabs for years and years and years… a really long time, seriously, I have come to discover “exhaustion” is PR code word for some kind of substance abuse and/or eating disorder. Which is what the lower class of tabs are reporting what’s happening with Demi. Now, like I said these are the lower class of tabs, the ones that also claim Elvis is alive and a toddler in Phoenix is half alien, half monkey. So take this with a grain of salt, those tabs are reporting Demi checked in for an eating disorder, anorexia, and substance abuse after the demise of her marriage to Ashton Kutcher. I feel for Demi, she is gorgeous, now and at 30 and at 20, all her life she’s been gorgeous. And that voice! Anyways, if even Demi Moore can have body issues it goes to show something needs to be changed. So how can we be the change? I’m still looking to figure that out. For now, get well soon Demi. There’s always been a part of me who wants her and Bruce back together anyways J

Chelsea Hander makes fun of Mariah Carey’s weight fluctuations

Only a skinny girl would ever make fun of another woman and her weight.  I can tell Chelsea Handler works out, so she does work hard for her body and I know she’s a comedian, but I think she went too far with this one. And I’ve seen her act where she calls a certain beautiful addicted-to-adoption celeb the “c” word. Yet, I think this is where she went too far. Here’s what she said of Mariah Carey: “She's worse than like Elizabeth Taylor. She's just so ridiculous with her body. You see her one day and she's 50 pounds heavier or light…” The reason I think she went too far here is, we’ve all seen Mariah jump up and down with her weight, we’ve all seen ourselves jump up and down on our weight, it happens. Every time Mariah goes up she works to bring it back down, right now she’s a Jenny Craig spokesperson.  Mariah also just had twins- TWINS! Although most of Hollywood would have us believe your body should bounce right back a week later, you don’t recover from twins quickly (or any birth for that matter). Mariah also suffered from preeclampsia in her pregnancy. So did I. I know firsthand what that does, and is one of the reasons I gained so much weight. So, Chelsea, you make fun of a woman who, less than a year ago, gave birth to twins and suffered a medical condition that made her gain weight? Classy. Why is this still okay to make fun of someone’s weight issues?

What Finally Made Me Think Toddlers & Tiaras Went Too Far

I must make a confession, I love Toddlers & Tiaras. Every Wednesday evening I find myself drawn into TLC’s reality show following beauty pageants. Most find the big fake hair and the big fake teeth appalling. Not to mention the make-up, loads and loads of make-up (ohhh the make-up) couple that with a spray tan that would make the cast of The Jersey Shore jealous and don't forget the glitzy dresses. All this on toddlers and tweens. What made it okay to me was this was their costumes, minus the make-up; fake hair and teeth the outfits and showmanship (and crazy moms) weren’t too far off from a beloved Canadian sport, one I fondly took part in as a child and into my teens, figure skating. Even the eye brow waxing, though disturbing and going too far in my opinion, still part of the costume and sadly, what you had to do to win.

There are a lot of arguments you can make against pageants. One I heard many times is it attracts pedophiles. I’m not sure what kind of logic this one is based on; I think the sensationalized Jon-Benet Ramsey murder case in the 90’s, I’m not sure and frankly I think it is flawed logic so I’m not even going to get into it. The other more valid point is it teaches young girls that beauty is all that matters and you should be judged on looks alone. Sadly, that’s what pageants are. So although I don’t agree with it, I never really drew issue with it either, until last night’s episode.

Within the first five minutes of last night’s episode, which focused on the “Glitzy Divas” pageant in Arkansas, the pageant director Bonnie came on explaining what it would take for contestants to win the whole competition. “If contestants are a little chubby, that’s not gonna cut it. You don’t want to see a chubby child on stage.” As she’s saying this, an array of not-so-skinny-but-also-not-too-big girls is showcased in the background, as if for us to laugh at or to get her point that no one wants to see a chubby child. Thanks for that Bonnie, who by the way is not a thin woman herself (not that that should make a difference), regardless thanks for defining beauty as thin and pushing that in the minds of little girls. No eating disorders or low self-esteem will come of that.

Forward onto two of the girls profiled on the show and their mothers, who have decided to put their 6 and 10 year olds on diets and managed to get them to drop 3 and 10 pounds respectively in time for pageant day. Keep in mind, 3 and 10 pounds may not sound like much but that is about a fourth of their body weight. Imagine dropping a fourth of your body weight in a month. The kicker, neither of these girls was overweight, especially with the weight loss they were just forced into dropping. No 6 or 10 year old should be on a diet, should they get exercise and play some physical sports, sure. Should their parents make sure they are eating healthy and well-rounded meals, yes. But should two little girls who at most have a little bit of baby fat be put on diet and made to count calories? No. Yep, the 10 year old has to count her calories and she’s only allowed 1300 a day. Her family throws her a “good luck” party and her mom looks on in horror as the girl eats a slice of the cake that was given to her as a good luck token, talk about a mixed message. Her mom is even shouting “remember, this is a treat” and then turns to a friend and explains “we’ve been working so hard”.  There was also a shot of the girl eating pizza and background music that suggested something sinister was taking place.

Not that I think these children needed to lose weight, even if they were 3 and 10 pounds heavier before, but perhaps if your children were in a sport where walking in a triangle on stage with a smile, while holding perfectly still wasn’t the main objective and perhaps some more demanding physical activity was incorporated into their lives, like say… soccer then you wouldn’t have this problem. Or maybe, if the moms’ did their job in the first place and taught their children proper nutrition and made sure they feed their kids healthy meals they wouldn’t need to make weight for a competition.   And if you are feeding your child properly and the kid is getting enough physical activity and that kid is still above what you find an acceptable weight then maybe you’re the one with the problem and you should be seeking help for your warped sense of beauty, not your kid.

Friends and Foes

I wrote a couple days ago about the low-life, this miserable person who may not even realize what a negative force she is and how badly she is affecting people. All I know is she treated me poorly and for that I decided, in what I now know is a very immature mentality, that no one else should interact with her, much less have a relationship with her and to do so would only end in them getting hurt as well. Also, there’s a very selfish side that can’t shake that teenage girl in me saying “I don’t like her so my friends should be blindly loyal to me and not like her either”. Selfish is exactly where both those trains of thought come from.

Here’s the thing, my friend, Katie (not her real name) is somewhat acquaintances with the low-life (should be her real name) and I tried to tell Katie she will get hurt. I tried reasoning with her, like why do you even want to be seen with her? The bottom line is maybe Katie will get hurt, maybe she won’t but it’s not for me to stop. That logic and conversation always starts with “I’m only looking out for you” and almost always ends with your ego and you wanting your friend to show her loyalty. This turns into said friend feeling the need to sneak around or hide the relationship, so who’s getting hurt now? Plus, how good does it feel to say “I told you so”! Ha, I kid! But in all seriousness, just because one relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean another won’t. Not that the low-life and I really had a relationship, but just because our personalities clash and we don’t get on well, that doesn’t mean she won’t get on with Katie.

Same goes with exes. I have a close friend, let’s call her Stephanie (I would never use my friends’ real names, this is an alias) who is struggling with her ex moving on. We’ve all been there. It’s not necessarily that we want the ex back, it's more we question what’s wrong with us. In Stephanie’s case he’s moved on and grown up. He’s kept a steady job when he hasn’t been able to before, he’s living with the new girlfriend when he wouldn’t commit to Stephanie after three years of dating and he’s on the fast track to marriage with the new women. So, you can see how Stephanie is questioning herself and what’s wrong with her. Why didn’t it work for her? Why didn’t he want to grow up and marry her? All I could tell her in her is; just because it didn’t work with you two doesn’t mean your love for each other wasn’t real, it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person or he is a bad person, it just means you were bad together or maybe even not bad but not as good as it should have been. That doesn’t take away anything from you and who you are or how amazing you are. It just means they are better suited for each other. If it helps think of another ex, one you broke up with and moved on from, look back and tell me you didn’t love that ex at the height of the relationship and he must be a good person, otherwise you wouldn’t have dated him to begin with. See how you look back at this ex with a slight smile, he probably thinks the same of you. That it was right at that time in life, it’s just not right now.

As hard as it can be, let your friends and foes alike live their lives, build the relationships they need and want. Basically, award them the same opportunity you were given, to grow and learn.  

New Life Resolution

I had an encounter Friday night with a low-life, a person who is so miserable she feels the need to be demeaning to others, to bring everyone else down. If she were a cartoon you would have to draw stink lines around her to totally capture her nastiness.

Throughout the evening various people were coming to me and complaining about a negative experience they had with her. One of my friends was so fired up from the last time she encountered said low-life that she wanted to “take things outside”. I managed to talk her off the ledge, explaining that the low-life doesn’t know any better. She has her low-life friends who encourage her behaviour and laugh alongside her when she demeans others.

Irony has a fun way of sneaking up on you, just as I finished explaining why you should be the bigger person to my friend; the low-life decides I’m her next target. She makes eye contact with me from across the, what felt like an even smaller, bar, I’m thinking “Don’t look it in the eyes”. Too late my less than five second glance must have offended her so much she decided to give me the “kiss goodbye” gesture, you know when you put two or three tips of your fingers to your lips, smack and give the buh-bye wave. It may sound small but it was meant in a threatening way and taken as such. I was slightly shocked, I’ve never had a positive experience with this low-life but really someone looks at you and your first response is to intimidate them? Not smile, not even give a half-I-recognize-you-and-you-recognize-me-grin, nope you go defensive and threaten someone you have little to no contact with in your everyday life. Well, she has now officially offended me; my ego is screaming “How dare you? Do you know who I am?”, ha yeah, like I’m a big shot. Immediately thinking my friend isn’t too far off wanting to “take it outside”.

In the light of day I got to thinking about the whole situation. This low-life chooses every day to wake up and be miserable. For whatever reason life has turned her cold and her only way of knowing how to interact with people is to be a horrible person. Is it really her fault? Her low-life friends laugh and encourage her on, she’s being rewarded for her behaviour, and no one has ever really stood up to her because she is scary.  And because of her behaviour I have decided to make a New Life Resolution.

Not just a New Year Resolution, a New Life one. A resolution that I will have to work on every day to keep and will be a lot harder than any vain driven resolution I’ve made before. I resolve to be a better person from today on. I will not contribute to turning anyone cold like the low-life I encountered Friday has been turned cold.

My first goal is to tell everyone I love and cherish why I think they are great, including me. I will wake up each day, look in the mirror and tell myself what I love about me and what makes me amazing, I will choose something different every day. That’s where it will be hard, to find something different every day, but I know there are enough good things about me to carry through my life. I will also tell my friends and family when they are being amazing and what about them makes them great. If I see someone is having a bad go of things I will take the time out of my life to tell them how they have impacted my life positively, and remind people why they are important when I can.

My second goal is to take a page from my parents’ books and help others. If someone calls on me for help or to volunteer I will. I’m not saying I will let people take advantage of me by saying yes every time, but when I can say yes, I will. There’s a girl I know from my hometown who battled and survived cancer, She did this through her personal strength, her family and friends, and a very kind stranger. This stranger was a stem cell/bone marrow donor. When I heard that she has been given 6 more years, and many more to come, and the world is truly better with her in it, I thought, “I can do that”. I immediately looked it up, onematch.com, and registered. I received an envelope in the mail and simply swapped my mouth and sent it back to the Canadian Blood Services. I also decided to be a donor, I don’t need my body when I’m gone, but someone else may. And like my mom, who does so as often as she can, I will donate blood. Again, I don’t need it, but someone else may.

My third and final goal is not to contribute to any woman’s low self-esteem. We all struggle enough with our own body issues, I don’t need to be a part of that or a negative force in anyone’s life. I will not make fun or talk negatively about any woman’s appearance. There’s a saying “there’s something about her I hate about myself”. Think about that the next time you catch yourself letting another woman’s appearance be the focus of your conversation. And we’ve all done it, we’ve all been where there’s nothing else to talk about and we find ourselves poking fun at someone else or commenting “wow, she’s let herself go”. Anything along those lines, I will no longer be a part of it. I think this will be the toughest goal I’ll make, but I know it may possibly be the most important one for me to be a better person.

I’m not saying you need to do the same, but would love if you did resolve to be a better person and set your own goals on how you plan to get there. Don’t be a low-life who is only remembered for your stink lines.

The Jump to The Other Side

I’m not sure when I was introduced to their idea of beauty or how it was planted in my head; I just always remember beauty in women as being skinny. Not necessarily even fit. Skinny. Perhaps it was all the 90’s Kate Moss Heroin-chic Calvin Klein ads. Yes, modelling in the 90’s was all about looking like you were on drugs. Something every teenage girl should aspire to. I’m also not sure when I was introduced to fat being a negative thing; I’ve just always known it. Skinny=beautiful, fat=ugly. Did I agree with it? I’m not sure. My father always had a belly and I always loved that about him. So, if fat is ugly is my father ugly? Hell NO! Yet I did tease him about his belly and was never told that was mean or hurtful. It seems like weight is that last acceptable thing we can discriminate against. Think about all the movies where over-weight people were the butt of the jokes, think Eddie Murphy’s “Nutty Professor” for a perfect example. Now not only were the Klumps overly exaggerated as morbidly obese but they also made sure they ate extreme amounts of fatty foods all the time and were the gassiest people to ever eat. Ever. There you go ladies; if you’re overweight everyone will think you’re a fatty-fast-food lovin’ fartin’ machine. Oh, and forget about finding love unless you’re skinny, we’ve all seen the movies, you gotta drop the weight before your love interest will see you for the amazing person you are. Great message Hollywood, thanks for that too.

So imagine the predicament I found myself in as I went from my teens into early 20’s and slowly putting on the party weight, but hey, I had boobs and hips with that little extra weight. Guys do like a little junk in the trunk women are told, emphasis on little. I guess that’s when I began to look at beauty as not necessarily being skinny, but being shapely, thin mind you, but shapely. This is where we saw Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Beyoncé really making a splash in pop culture. But don’t kid yourselves, these are still size 2 ladies (or smaller).

You would think I’d nip it in the bud when I hit 25 and was 20 lbs heavier than my high school graduation day. Nope, I talked myself into that fact that I looked fine, I believed it to, the media and perhaps people in my life thought different, but I believed it. I have never had a problem with confidence until that extra 20 turned into an extra 30 and I find myself going from 120-150 lbs in 10 years. The funny thing is that’s when I found the love of my life, the man who would be my husband. The man who made sure to tell me how beautiful I was every day, yet, I was hardwired from youth to not trust this. Nope my stomach is flabby and my waist is looking more and more like my hips every day. The size 2 I used to wear has stretched into a tight 8. Despite what he tells me there is no way this is beautiful.

Finally it hits me that I cannot eat with no cares, I cannot watch soaps all day and dramas all night with little to no activity in the middle (what do you mean walking from my desk to the copier is not a work out?). And you would think I would get serious about it all, but maybe it’s because I was never doing it for the right reasons that I could never wrap my head around how to get skinny again. How I could to cut out the deliciously bad for you foods and incorporate healthy foods. Maybe it was because I always did it for vanity not my overall wellbeing and health.  So, despite going to the gym 3-5 times/week tack on another 5 lbs and there I was 155 on my wedding day before getting pregnant.

Pregnancy was bliss when it came to food; I did not deny that child anything she craved. (Yes, it was for the child, not mother, ha!). And by the time I gave birth I skyrocketed up to 225llbs!! 225! I couldn’t believe it! ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE POUNDS IN 11 YEARS! How does that even happen? Well it did. I lost 30lbs almost instantly by getting that 8 lb beauty out of me, but what about the rest? And how do I change my daughter’s future so she doesn’t look at overweight as fat and ugly? How do I take the pressure off of her to be skinny? And how to I make sure she values the other side of beauty; her mind, her soul, her family, her friends, and of course her body? To value her body in a different way than my generation was taught, to keep her strong and healthy, not to define her beauty.

Please join me as I try to discover the answers to those and find a new way to look at beauty and look at the journey that made me a used-to-be-skinny girl and why I’m better because of it.  Wanna contact me? theothersideofbeauty@gmail.com is where I get my mail.