I feel fat today….

I don’t understand how my body concept can change from day to day but it does and today I feel fat.  Does the scale agree? I try not to get on the scale everyday and, in fact, I try to only get on the scale on my skinny days (days I feel good about my body) but like a lot of other women, I am obsessed with my body.

I get a lot of pressure from the media of course like all women (wish I had an airbrushed version of myself) but most of my negative internal feedback is just that “negative INTERNAL feedback.”

Why do we think this way?  Men can walk around with protruding bellies and take off their shirts at ballgames and think “Man, do I look good” to themselves but women, we prefer to be hypercritical and torture ourselves on a daily basis with no end or satisfaction in sight.

Two strong factors add to our mental chaos:  age and beauty.  I feel the sorriest for the really beautiful women in youth because they have even more to lose in this shameful game of self recrimination. Although beauty can sometimes escape age issues, eventually all beauty seems to be dependent upon good bones, good skin, and a decent body.

I grew up with two women I think are actually beautiful by most standards even today as they enter their 60”s.  When I saw one recently, I remarked how beautiful she still was.  I saw the pain on her face because she didn't think so.  “ I've lost so much of my looks” was her sad response.

Women are just too critical of themselves and the noises in our heads are deafening but what’s a person to do?  How do you retrain a lifetime of self criticism and angst living up to a model that doesn't exist?   I often hear shouts of let’s rebel from the Barbie doll media brand based model of womanhood but, in truth, we all succumb, no matter how we protest otherwise.

Many psychologists would say that knowing your demons is half the battle.  I say knowing your demons means you recognize their voices in your head and give them more credence so what’s a person to do?  I figure that I have two choices: accept my feelings and eat ice cream anyway or ignore my feelings and eat ice cream anyway.  What would you do?