commenting

I wasn't being entirely truthful when I said that I had no time for blogging. The truth is, I have found plenty of time for reading all your wonderful blogs and commenting on them.

Today I realised that I'd spent 15 minutes composing a post which I then discarded as a pile of crap, and then I spent another 15 minutes writing a comment on another blog. That's a lot of writing for someone who can't find the time to construct her own post.

I think sometimes a word count can be deceptive. I know it's much easier, for example, to write out 3 or 4 pages of notes on a topic than a 3 or 4 page essay. It's definitely easier writing a 5 paragraph blog post than adding 5 measly paragraphs to a short story.

And easiest of all, is to copy and paste the reply I wrote to Sal's beautiful post on her blog Already Pretty today on body image.

You know, until two days ago, I hadn't weighed myself since August, when staying at a friend's house.

In the many months since August, I knew my weight was roughly the same; clothes fit the same, etc etc. And in that time, there were days I felt great about my body, days I felt awful. In recent weeks I began to feel a mounting body hatred which had nothing to do with any number, and everything to do with my messed up body image.

Two days ago, I stepped on some scales and weighed 3kg more than I weighed in August. I was upset for all of one evening, until the next morning I pulled out the scales again and noticed there was a zero error, so I actually only weighed 2 kg more. Oh, wait, I stepped on the scales and I only weighed 1 kg more. And I reasoned that maybe because they're different scales I actually weigh the same.

Immediately I felt better. I completely hear where you're coming from about muscle weighing more than fat, rugby players registering as obese on the BMI scales, crazy clothes sizing.

BUT sometimes, a couple of numbers in front of you in black and white can be the perfect antidote to the wrong person I see when I look in the mirror. That's probably a bad thing, I should probably read more of your posts.

By the end of my comment, I knew that what I had written highlighted something wrong in the way I thought about this topic. I knew she was right, and as I said, I knew I needed to read a lot more of Sal's body image posts.

So, I suppose, in some ways, reading blogs is not only easier but better than writing posts.

Note: for those who are at all interested, my lack of inspiration led me to taking photos of the lunch I had assembled and rambling about how if the food you are eating looks pretty on the plate you are more likely to eat it, so you should make your food look nice when trying to eat boring healthy food. Um, OK.