I call it a Pasta Pocket -- as in the place where I store my pasta.
When I was younger, I played soccer. I was never coordinated, nor the fastest, nor the most cooperative. But I was mean and I always went after the tallest kids on the opposite team. I was also a competitive cheerleader, an afternoon figure skater, a ballerina, a beginner gymnast, and I did a brief stint as a tennis player but the aforementioned lack of coordination helped me to quickly reach my lifetime's quota on tennis balls to the throat.
I tore my achilles playing soccer at age twelve. Up until then, I was what you might call athletic. I hiked, played outside, I had a seven-minute mile in grade eight. I made the mistake of attempting a 5k that year. For three years I was made to believe it was a bad sprain, and I was exaggerating when I said I felt something tearing when I ran. I couldn't do things anymore. I gave up soccer, then cheer, then skating. I finally saw a chiropractor who remedied the pain issue but I had become reliant on a mass of scar tissue for balance during those three years and as a result, I still to this day, sixteen years after the incident, have poor balance on my left foot.
No longer the athlete I was, and never achieving the potential that the active childhood I had could have given me, I am complacent. I hate the gym, I refuse to go. I like yoga but I am incapable of doing the same routine twice. I still enjoy running, but I don't do it nearly often enough. I like weights but I never know if I'm doing them properly.
Perhaps the strongest of my pitfalls as a would be fit-person is that I do not see food as fuel. I enjoy food. Not garbage food, I prefer fresh dishes, high quality ingredients, a touch of pizazz. What I can't appreciate is boring, food for the sake of living, survivalist meals without flare, without spark, and without butter. Oh man, do I love butter. I even have an all butter chocolate chip cookie recipe that is utter perfection. I sub melted butter in for vegetable oil in baking recipes for flavor purposes. I firmly believe that a pat of high quality butter can elevate any dish. I fawned over Julia Child's butter yellow Georgetown cottage, because of course its butter yellow.
Beyond butter, there's the normal culprits -- bread, pasta, soy. I have been a vegetarian for just about as long as I've had a bum achilles, and I can personally tell you, modern day vegetarians have it easy. You think it's tough to find a veggie-friendly meal in your neighborhood? I didn't even eat tofu until I was in high school simply because it wasn't readily available. I have family in the Allegheny Mountains, it's weird enough that my father married a Jew let alone that I don't eat anything with a face. I have been primed for a lifetime of mashed potatoes and sides of peas. Or, as I was served multiple times on my first trip to France, french fries and boiled green-beans. It's okay -- I was 16, my metabolism was at it's peak.
At Rutgers, I lost 15-20 pounds as a freshman. It was a reverse freshman fifteen. I didn't have my car, I didn't like the deep fried, over cooked, under seasoned, and frequently soggy options of the campus dining halls. There were takeout places but they were mostly burgers or wings. I pretty much ate ten vegetable soup and nachos that year. I also walked a lot because I tend to get lost frequently, and my campus job was half receptionist, half facilities checker at the student center so I had to walk the whole building multiple times a day multiple times a week.
Freshman year was probably the last time I was in great shape. Although, I didn't really notice any changes to my physical form until the year I was technically off between college graduation and real life. Sure, I was doing crazy road trips to visit friends, I was working part time scooping ice cream, eventually got an internship at a gallery and a paid part time gig entering lots at an antiques auction. But I had lost crucial socialization. I was lost, floating in a liminal place that existed partially at my parents' house and partially on the road. I would get really down, I would eat my feelings and my feelings wanted artisan bread, cinnamon rolls, chipotle takeout, and high fat lattes. I still cooked my pizazz foods, I made tofu and sweet potato bowls with black rice and steamed bok choy, but that was about the best thing I did. I taught myself how to make gnocchi. I would eat tons of fresh bread. I was ordering takeout non-stop. And to boot, I got really into cheese.
I did join a gym during that year, went a few times, but quickly got fed up with everyone from high school asking me what I was doing with my life so I stopped going. When I started working as a recruiter in Manhattan, my only work friend pretty much ate exclusively salads, so I did that too. We both have since left that place and my new office is in a great area with lots of takeout options. I almost never cook lunch to bring and when I do, I forget it at home. My hours are longer and I am too tired to do anything most nights when I get home so I eat the lunch I forgot or I order take out. I never go for runs because it's always very dark by the time I get home and I don't want to get murdered.
The worst of all, I am very happy in my job. Some people gain weight in relationships, like happy weight. Contentment weight. Complacency weight. Me, I am never in a relationship but I do really like my job. And I know for a fact I have gained weight since working there because the cute J. Crew dress I used to wear to work all the time no longer zips up. I have gone up a cup size. And the pasta pocket has expanded.
Today, I measured myself in centimeters because doing it in inches was upsetting. In my head, centimeters don't make sense so it's a better way for me to record how far I've gone, and how much progress I can make if I keep it up. I have been taking the dog out for runs when the feeling of creeping depression blended with claustrophobia and the relentless dread of a global pandemic are about to put me over the edge. We'll see how it goes.
When I was younger, I played soccer. I was never coordinated, nor the fastest, nor the most cooperative. But I was mean and I always went after the tallest kids on the opposite team. I was also a competitive cheerleader, an afternoon figure skater, a ballerina, a beginner gymnast, and I did a brief stint as a tennis player but the aforementioned lack of coordination helped me to quickly reach my lifetime's quota on tennis balls to the throat.
I tore my achilles playing soccer at age twelve. Up until then, I was what you might call athletic. I hiked, played outside, I had a seven-minute mile in grade eight. I made the mistake of attempting a 5k that year. For three years I was made to believe it was a bad sprain, and I was exaggerating when I said I felt something tearing when I ran. I couldn't do things anymore. I gave up soccer, then cheer, then skating. I finally saw a chiropractor who remedied the pain issue but I had become reliant on a mass of scar tissue for balance during those three years and as a result, I still to this day, sixteen years after the incident, have poor balance on my left foot.
No longer the athlete I was, and never achieving the potential that the active childhood I had could have given me, I am complacent. I hate the gym, I refuse to go. I like yoga but I am incapable of doing the same routine twice. I still enjoy running, but I don't do it nearly often enough. I like weights but I never know if I'm doing them properly.
Perhaps the strongest of my pitfalls as a would be fit-person is that I do not see food as fuel. I enjoy food. Not garbage food, I prefer fresh dishes, high quality ingredients, a touch of pizazz. What I can't appreciate is boring, food for the sake of living, survivalist meals without flare, without spark, and without butter. Oh man, do I love butter. I even have an all butter chocolate chip cookie recipe that is utter perfection. I sub melted butter in for vegetable oil in baking recipes for flavor purposes. I firmly believe that a pat of high quality butter can elevate any dish. I fawned over Julia Child's butter yellow Georgetown cottage, because of course its butter yellow.
Beyond butter, there's the normal culprits -- bread, pasta, soy. I have been a vegetarian for just about as long as I've had a bum achilles, and I can personally tell you, modern day vegetarians have it easy. You think it's tough to find a veggie-friendly meal in your neighborhood? I didn't even eat tofu until I was in high school simply because it wasn't readily available. I have family in the Allegheny Mountains, it's weird enough that my father married a Jew let alone that I don't eat anything with a face. I have been primed for a lifetime of mashed potatoes and sides of peas. Or, as I was served multiple times on my first trip to France, french fries and boiled green-beans. It's okay -- I was 16, my metabolism was at it's peak.
At Rutgers, I lost 15-20 pounds as a freshman. It was a reverse freshman fifteen. I didn't have my car, I didn't like the deep fried, over cooked, under seasoned, and frequently soggy options of the campus dining halls. There were takeout places but they were mostly burgers or wings. I pretty much ate ten vegetable soup and nachos that year. I also walked a lot because I tend to get lost frequently, and my campus job was half receptionist, half facilities checker at the student center so I had to walk the whole building multiple times a day multiple times a week.
Freshman year was probably the last time I was in great shape. Although, I didn't really notice any changes to my physical form until the year I was technically off between college graduation and real life. Sure, I was doing crazy road trips to visit friends, I was working part time scooping ice cream, eventually got an internship at a gallery and a paid part time gig entering lots at an antiques auction. But I had lost crucial socialization. I was lost, floating in a liminal place that existed partially at my parents' house and partially on the road. I would get really down, I would eat my feelings and my feelings wanted artisan bread, cinnamon rolls, chipotle takeout, and high fat lattes. I still cooked my pizazz foods, I made tofu and sweet potato bowls with black rice and steamed bok choy, but that was about the best thing I did. I taught myself how to make gnocchi. I would eat tons of fresh bread. I was ordering takeout non-stop. And to boot, I got really into cheese.
I did join a gym during that year, went a few times, but quickly got fed up with everyone from high school asking me what I was doing with my life so I stopped going. When I started working as a recruiter in Manhattan, my only work friend pretty much ate exclusively salads, so I did that too. We both have since left that place and my new office is in a great area with lots of takeout options. I almost never cook lunch to bring and when I do, I forget it at home. My hours are longer and I am too tired to do anything most nights when I get home so I eat the lunch I forgot or I order take out. I never go for runs because it's always very dark by the time I get home and I don't want to get murdered.
The worst of all, I am very happy in my job. Some people gain weight in relationships, like happy weight. Contentment weight. Complacency weight. Me, I am never in a relationship but I do really like my job. And I know for a fact I have gained weight since working there because the cute J. Crew dress I used to wear to work all the time no longer zips up. I have gone up a cup size. And the pasta pocket has expanded.
Today, I measured myself in centimeters because doing it in inches was upsetting. In my head, centimeters don't make sense so it's a better way for me to record how far I've gone, and how much progress I can make if I keep it up. I have been taking the dog out for runs when the feeling of creeping depression blended with claustrophobia and the relentless dread of a global pandemic are about to put me over the edge. We'll see how it goes.
