Happy & Healthy

A LIFE WITHOUT SCALE AND MIRROR

Look. I am actually quite balanced and okay and content with my body, but I would be lying if I said I don't keep an eye on things a little bit. All the time. It starts when I get up in the morning, then I immediately look at my belly area and how tight or bulging it is. Sometimes I climb on the scale (and then I act very strange), but usually, I stand in my underwear in front of the mirror. If there’s no bulging layer peeking over the edge of my underwear, I’m okay. Is that the case? Well, then I’m slightly irritated.

With this morning ritual, I have kept my body reasonably on track for years. I still fit into a size 36 and my weight has been stable for years. But… Now I was suddenly on vacation, in a house without a scale. I totally get it. People are on vacation, so you don’t want to confront them with the consequences of their daily diet of white wine, gin and tonic, red wine, and Sambuca. It doesn’t matter at all. But now there was also no mirror. Yes, one of those tall ones in the bathroom, but I could never see my whole body in it.

I considered having my daughter take a picture of my profile, but that didn’t seem very wise didactically. I hope I can keep them away from that terrible obsession with their bodies for as long as possible. Asking my beloved was an option, but hey, you want to be the I’m-so-easy-and-I-almost-do-nothing woman instead of a whiny freak.

Anyway. Those things. Still, after a week or so, I wanted to know how things stood, shall I say. But without a mirror and scale, that became tricky. Enter, the measuring jeans. You know it, that’s the pair of jeans that tells you exactly where you stand. Nothing is more honest than your measuring jeans. I grabbed my finest jeans from Rag & Bone. It’s honest and merciful because it actually always fits well, even in rounder periods. One leg in. Other leg. Button up. Oof. It was quite tight. ‘It’s because you just took a bath.“ Beloved had caught on and made an attempt to comfort me. He knows his regulars by now. ”It must have just come out of the washing machine.“ He continued on his positivity journey. ”Next time it will fit like before, I bet?“ Okay, enough, I was already reaching for the wine.

But then came that next time. I had indeed swum a lot of laps in the pool and held back a bit with drinks and food, and what do you think? My measuring jeans completely let me down. Nothing that it had stretched a bit after a day of wearing. It was just as tight as the last time. I quickly took them off and went to study the jeans in question thoroughly. There was a discrepancy between my body, the jeans I knew, and the results of this measurement study. Narrow pencil jeans, it said. Size 27. Seemed to all check out. But where did I see the embroidered Rag & Bone letters? They were gone. What turned out? I had grabbed my extremely tough, tight, and never-stretching pencil jeans from J.Crew. A.k.a.: there was nothing wrong. Nothing.

You know what I need? Not a new, big mirror, but glasses.