It must be hell to be a woman

This is what my husband said to me a few days after Christmas.

He quickly made sure I knew that he was not being facetious. For days I had been complaining about feeling fat, having too much salt and sugar, not moving my body and just my general feelings of disdain for myself, my body, my weight. I had been out of my routine and had not been out of the house, not eating well, not going 100 miles an hour, not dressing or putting on make-up or doing anything “productive.” So, my natural default setting for wallowing in these uncomfortable feelings is self-loathing. And correct me if I am wrong here, but I think that may be the “factory setting” for a lot of women. If you’re not perfect, if you had too much cake, or too many glasses of wine, or you didn’t get off the couch for one whole day (some of the best things in life!), you are now a worthless blob of under achieving cells, bloated cells at that. 

My husband says women are so strange, and to him, we are. I hear men at my moving company embellishing their weight to each other, but in a way that you would never hear come out of a woman’s mouth. “Yeah, I’m 210, gonna get to 230, you not gonna be able to grab me.” Meanwhile, we are over here dying over 3lbs of water weight and some tight buttons on our pants. Child, go pee, it will go away, and if it doesn’t well then, someone will have a little bit harder time “grabbing” you. 

I have refused to step on a scale for about a month because I have been terrified of the possible holiday weight gain, as if that weight defines who I am, my heart, my purpose, my love. But you know what? It doesn’t mean a damn thing. 

Ladies, can we just live our lives, like our best lives, and stop beating ourselves up over the smallest things, like 3 pounds of holiday bloat? Because let me tell you, that tiramisu and Christmas Day Chinese food were worth it, and I’d do it again.