Overweight But Also Sort Of In Shape

It's been scientifically proven that Bad Hair Days affect not only how you feel about your tresses, but also your sense of your own capability.

If hair influences self esteem, then one can only imagine the effect of thighs, buttocks, and tummies on one's general outlook.

In short, I've been having some Bad Body Days. But as I've argued before, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I think I am the most important beholder of my beauty.

Conveniently, I am pretty forgiving.

Anyway, bad body days are my fault: I've been hitting the cheese, tossing back the chocolate, helping myself to seconds and thirds, and slathering it all with Ranch.

And then putting another outfit in the When I Am Ten Pounds Lighter pile.

I am a firm believer in finding kind ways to give myself a break from self criticism, and maintaining my weekly run helps my sense of my own capability.

It's like eating better and exercising more is too much to accomplish right now, so I am swapping adverbs: I'm eating more and exercising better. Because I count adding 20 lunges to the end of my weekly run "better."

I maintain that strong is better than skinny. I care more about what my body can do and what it feels like with me inside it than how it looks from the outside. When I run I feel good.

When I eat well I feel good, too, but darn that job: there's something about work that makes me hungry--or at least makes me think about food--in ways that days off don't. Forays for snacks provide needed downtime, perhaps. The day is charted by feedings: bell rings for nutrition break; bell rings for lunch.

I know that today I not only vowed to eat better, but actually wanted to, and wasn't even craving our cafeteria's breakfast sandwich by 8:30 AM. Instead, a colleague with whom I fed the homeless yesterday rewarded me this morning with a cupcake-sized, still-warm peanut-butter-and-chocolate lava cake on my desk. I put that bad boy away by 7:45.

Summer is almost upon us, and I am confident that I will fall back into the routine of feeding the child within me when she's actually hungry. I'll add chasing my kids around the yard and beach to that weekly run. My life will feel healthier, and so will I. I can hardly wait.

Until then, I am content to haul my heavier self around the 'hood in running shoes.