The quirks of women

Last night I went to my yoga class, and Dawn, the chick that teaches the class before (kickboxing, I believe) was packing up. Her, my yoga teacher, and one classmate were talking about last weekend's Music City Marathon, and the 5K fun run at the Y the week before. The classmate made some disparaging remarks about her time and whatnot, so Dawn fusses at her for it. You ran 26 miles! That kind of thing.
They got to talking about women who do stupid things like not eat the day before (Hello, how are you supposed to run with no fuel in your body), and about how women who work out and are amateur athletes are too obsessed with number on a scale and not with how fit they are.

This is so true. When I was a skinny thing, I was totally upset by the fact that I outweighed friends by 20, 30 or even 40 lbs (when your best friend weighs 95 lbs, this isn't hard to do). Through most of my teen years, I lifted weights and rode an exercise bike multiple times a week, plus marching band and show choir and shit. I was in pretty good shape and had pretty good muscle mass.

As an adult, I know people who are like this, too. One woman I know, S, has run marathons and runs on a regular basis and works out a lot. She looks good, thin and fit. Especially when you take into consideration her 4 yr old twins and 9 month old baby girl. Yet, she is upset that she weighs about 160 lbs. But she has to be 160 lbs of muscle, because she is not fat.

C, another woman in the multiples group where I know S, is actually in therapy for her food issues. Not that I think this is a bad idea, since I think I could use some, too, but still, therapy over food. Men would scoff at the idea. I can't even get my man to consider a nutritionist.

Another good friend, T, has put away her scale and is focusing on being healthy and not on a number, which is an awesome thing to do. She itty bitty and very fit and I think was getting upset that the number wasn't what she would like it to be. Remember that the same volume of muscle weighs more than an equal volume of fat. ;)

So, women are strange creatures with our relationships to food and scales and dieting. I do realize that men have their problems, too, otherwise there wouldn't be any fat men, and there are plenty of those. But women do seem to have the larger share of food issues.

I wish all of us could be like my sil, who eats whatever the hell she wants, but knows to stop when she's full, and so far as I've seen, once full, doesn't take another bite and she is a normal, healthy weight. Somehow or other, she has totally managed to avoid having food issues.

The odd thing is that the manwhore does have food issues. How he ended up with them and not his sister is a mystery. I am envious of her food freedom, though. I hope to be there, one day.