Running..talling it up

Arg. What am I doing up...

This current diet plan is somewhat the culmination of all the diet plans that I have ever put myself through. It's a strong statment to make for me because I don't want anything to be the complete sum of my entire existence - not at this point. But don't worry, there aren't that many involved considering the majority of my (extreme/elite) working out was done during what I classify as my skating years, anyway. What is included is everything from my sophomore year of college and on. No, that year I took time off after high school does not count, even with all those raves and whatnot since I still trained for Regionals, and was on an athlete's high, thinking my body was invincible.

Now, my approach to health and body image is from a completely different perspective - from a logical one. If it aches, soothe it. If it hurts, just don't do it. No pain no gain? That has not been the case for a good couple of years. Instead, some light jogging every now and then, and my monthly attendence to a Bikram Yoga class, when time allowed, quieted my worries and fears of weight gain. Unfortunately, many of these thoughts dive towards the disgusting. Dealing with my body and becoming aware of it meant approaching my self maintainence gingerly, and also clearly. It has been a confusing road to body awareness, considering our pubescent selves, our injured selves, and our drunken selves, indeed, it can be quite confusing. Who's to say what the best way is? Is it through medicine, is it through experimentation, is it through exercise, is it through putting ourselves through test after test? Or healing (or educational?) phase after anohter, where we later learn to escape from our bodies, in a sense. Do we even really want to escape our bodies, really, minus terminal sicknesses...

Being in Korea actually helps me talk about it. People in Asia do talk a lot about image, and girls seem especially pressured to act and look a particular way, but there is a healthy dialogue that lightly touches upon women's worries, and allows girls to feel that they can talk about going on a diet, I think. Then again, Korean mothers can become somewhat obessive about their daughter's weight, especially around marriage time, and the crack down may begin later. Of course there are tons of other methods of dieting in Asia, such as buying different pills, elixirs and whatnot, but I am luckily not apart of that addiction.

What I will say about what makes this diet different from all the other diets is that it is natural and completely 100% healthy. And, it's going to stay that way. Yes, my true life is mixture of twists, turns, irresponsible mistakes, and dare I say, desperate attempts to get the results I wanted and at any cost ie: going through Bulimia. Yes, I said it. And I admit, when it comes to working out, I can be an exercise Nazi, and there is no (well, used to be) sympathy involved. I thought I had some dieting tricks up my sleeve, although these tricks are already up the sleeves of the American media, as well as Korean media, and the rest of the world's, too.

The female body is a contested, revered, religious, admired, eroticized, exoticized, fanaticized (and fantasized), objectified, and mythology-ized (is that a word?) concept from the being of time...

But, before we go back to when the universe was created, let's just think abou what's happening today. As a young 20-something woman, I have not experienced discrimination in its fullest form. I have not felt what it was like to feel sexual harassment, nor have I felt less than a man. However, I have seen fake marriages, where a woman will stay with her husband, no matter what he does, just for the sake of the children. It pains me to hear her words, to feel her pain, and to feel her swallow it and let it sink into denial, and later to be wiped away from her pure heart. As a young middle school girl, I learned early on that a woman's body should be maintained and cared for, and not neglected. It IS different from a man's body, and my sister was the first one to tell me this, straight up. "Kimberly, you will be pregnant one day. And you will be 50 pounds over-weight, and you will be completely and utterly vulnerable at this time. If he isn't there to take care of everything, you better think again."