Weight - Goal, Happiness, Or Just Numbers

Our columnist Daria Korolkova is about ideal weight, harmony with oneself and a reasonable attitude to kilograms.

In my youth, I had a fantastic metabolism: I could eat three Big Macs for breakfast, a dozen pies with meat for lunch (not a joke, I did this trick several times for a bet), dine with cake, drink Coca-Cola and continue to weigh 54 kg with an increase of 170 see. I was sure that this is how any human body works, and I was terribly surprised where fat people come from. I hated sports all my life, I have never seen the point in physical activity, I have not thought about nutrition - why? I eat what I want. Does it somehow relate to appearance?

During pregnancy, I gained a modest 8 kg, eating as I wanted.

I was sure that in the process of carrying a child, my body knows better what it needs, so I smeared the meat with marmalade, ate chips with bacon flavor, seized fish with fermented baked milk and regularly applied to the potato cake.

I lost all the pounds I gained before leaving the hospital. 10 days after giving birth, I returned to the university, and no one could believe that I had just become a mother. My 54 kg were with me, and six months later, the weight approached 52 with the complete connivance on my part. Moreover: I got scared and leaned on cinnamon rolls, washed down with 6% milk, because I did not smile at all to turn into skin and bones.

About five years have passed, I remember that very day. My husband and I were sitting in sun loungers at the dacha when I discovered that my belly lay in a rounded fold on my thighs. Well, I'm exaggerating, of course, but there was a fold. Impressive. I quickly pulled on some kind of hoodie until my husband noticed this nightmare (as if he had seen me for the first time, yeah). On the way to Moscow that day, I bought a scale. And stood on them. And she almost died on the spot: the electronic reptile showed some strange, incomprehensible 64 kg. More than the weight with which I went to give birth.

I had to do something. And I did: I went online. There I came across an article by some (as it turned out later) pseudo-scientist who claimed that a woman has 10 years after giving birth to a child during which she can lose weight. I didn't have time - that's all, it's a matter of seams. My veins began to shake: I must hurry. I switched to lettuce, boiled chicken breasts, and low fat cottage cheese.

I was freezing almost all the time, I hated the whole world, but I was rapidly losing weight, which somewhat reconciled me with the gray, dull, bleak reality. After six months of self-torture, I weighed the coveted 54 kg.

Uf. You can breathe out.

I exhaled so that after another six months the scales showed 63 kg. I realized that diet is nonsense. And she went to the damn gym. Pancakes 5 kg for breakfast, 7 kg for lunch. The weight stood still, but the volume and relief of the muscles made me happy. Then for the first time the thought crept into my brain that weight, in general, is not the most important thing, but I wanted my 54 kg. I reduced the calorie content of the diet, learned to count the balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, and in a year I achieved the ideal: both muscles with me, and on a scale of 54 kg. There’s just no joy, because there’s a calculator in my head, at a party I’m thinking whether I can still have a glass of dry red, and how much I’ll need to get in the hall for that canapé.

And then I went to a new job, which took away all my thoughts and all the time. I stupidly did not make it to the gym, because in the evenings I fell from fatigue, and in the morning I could not get up 2 hours earlier. Otherwise, she simply would not have survived. And at some point I asked my husband if I didn’t look too awful, because I don’t keep track of my weight at all (I was afraid to weigh myself). He shrugged his shoulders and said: "You have looked the same for the last 10 years." That is, I gained 10 kg, lost them, gained again, and the closest person did not notice it?

Was tortured. No, he noticed that sometimes I look fuller and sometimes thinner. Of course, he saw that I was eating chicken breast and lettuce leaves, but that’s my own business. No, he does not consider my weight to be over or underweight. Well, the folds on the sides are a little more or a little less. Well, the belly is less flat or more. The key is the big picture. And - attention - the ability of a given body to function. That is, if I can walk 20 km a day, when we walk around the city, I am flexible, mobile and active, I am happy with my life and do not nervously mow for a hamburger, everything is fine. Angry and thin, I scared him much more than calm, but 4 kg thicker. Moreover, when I asked him how much, in his opinion, I weigh at the moment, he said: "Well, 55-65 kg." Is this a normal assumption?

And I calmed down. I realized what overweight is for me: it is weight that prevents me from leading the lifestyle that I enjoy. I love walking and I need healthy joints. I like to wear tight clothes, and I also like a flat stomach.

I love fried potatoes and hate chicken breasts, but I don’t like and don’t eat sweets, so it’s okay if I fry myself potato pancakes now.

I’m used to myself wearing a size 44, and I don’t want to spend money changing my wardrobe. A certain image of "beautiful me" has formed in my head, which I consider to be a comfortable model for me. And this has nothing to do with the exact figure on the scales. I need a healthy and comfortable body, not centimeters, kilograms and indicators.

As I wrote this column, I remembered that I never threw away the scales. It turns out that I weigh 58 kilograms. And I am absolutely not worried about this.