7k – Just Undo It.

The day you realize you had just been rambling on about five k, when what the amount really was, was seven, nearing already eight, and should that happen, you could might as well give up.

Practicing writing down itemized descriptions of all your meals, but then you go shopping for food related planner book stickers to make it more fun, and end up getting the kind that says things like Favorite Recipe and Delicious! instead of warnings, or pep.

Breakfast: one apple, in penance for eating the entire chocolate bar yesterday, and four cups of coffee. Favorite Recipe. Delicious!

Fuck it. Or maybe not.

Then you put on some electro with a beat and go for a two-and-a-half-hour power walk. After that, you go straight to the grocery store, where you shop for tomatoes. Because if you have to get something, get the thing that won’t make you feel bad. Shopping for clothes is out of the question.

When you open the door to you clothes rack, the sight is beyond depressing. The yellow and green pleated skirt? You’re lucky if you can fit one thigh in.

You speak at length with a friend on the phone, sharing your pain over the seven k. She is having similar issues. What woman in her late thirties isn’t? And the older one gets, the harder it becomes to lose it, you say. It’s like all control is lost for good, you say. The feeling is like no other, when you know it is all your own fault, you say.

Prosecco, and Rocky Road ice cream. Chocolate. Red and white wine. Pasta. This is especially hard for the both of you. How important is bread? Totally irrelevant. Everything else can go, even wine, even chocolate. But with pasta, we become whole again. It is like a robbery.

The bikini season is almost upon us, you say, as if you were bikini wearing people. But who knows, perhaps you would be, were you seven to ten kilos lighter. Nora Ephron wrote that were she able to tell her twenty-something self a little titbit about life, she would tell herself to immediately put on some bikini, and wear it, continuously, all the time until her mid-thirties. That is good advice, but the catch is that you have to already have exceeded the time limit to understand the wisdom here.

Lunch: Green salad, with those pesky tomatoes, and some strawberries, equally bothersome, because they were fifty percent off and almost gone already. Favorite Recipe. Delicious!

You discuss how you have been using a strong mouthwash from the pharmacy, and as consequence, have lost all sense of taste from the tip of your tongue. How that can be good for you, is beyond you, but reducing the need to eat all the time has been a welcome side effect.

But eating is a way of life, you say. Going all out with dieting, having a pea for lunch, sounds like suicide. But the lovely summer skirts! Oh!

How these garments ever fitted, you wonder, caressing the skirts and dresses in their hangers. It isn’t that you look horrible, you are just a little bigger. And you have always said the fifty-something actresses in Hollywood, still desperately trying to cling on to those same sized little dresses as when they were in their twenties, look horrible, it is like a collection of miserable, starving, self-denigrating lives on display on the red carpet. How can Nicole Kidman possibly be happy with herself now?

But it is one thing to fast, until you are about to faint, to fit into the ball gown for the Oscars, and just try and live a healthy life, and maintain the dress size you have grown into in your thirties and feel comfortable in. You had accepted the fact that you’ll never again be a 36 again. The problem is now somewhere between 38 and 40.

Woman’s body changes, you say. It is like with bra sizes. You can’t just automatically go buying the cup size you had when you were the size 36 girl who defied gravity. This is something you have always known, and feel totally comfortable with. Even the fact that when you buy clothes from your best friend’s boutique, she who is on the other end of the phone just now, you have to buy size 44, or 46 even, because the Italians are too small for their own good, and she is wise enough to buy in stuff tall, busty and leggy Finns can dream of fitting into, and always remembers to remind new customers to just ignore the size tag and try it on, it is always the best way to see what is really going on with a nice blouse or a fabulous cardigan. This doesn’t bother you in the slightest. It doesn’t matter, because the clothes are so beautiful, and you’ll know when the fat lady starts singing for quitting while you are ahead, and you know that the new things look beautiful on, and make you look gorgeous. Your friend won’t let anybody leave the store with unflattering things in their basket.

But the yellow and green pleated skirt! Oh! To one day be able to wear it again! What great irony of the universe, that when the skirt season is starting, this is when those bad eating habits of the dark winter months cash in their winnings.

You have an ace in the drawer, though. Working out is always more fun, if you get to buy a whole new outfit. You will run like the wind in these new Nikes, you will lose two k just putting on the new lovely sweats. The add-ons will rue the day they decided to plant themselves around your waist, and thighs, and upper arms!

Dinner: Three glasses of white wine, and a Pizza Margherita. When you cave, do it like you mean it. Favorite recipe! Delicious!