It's Glandular!

remember how homer simpson is always saying that when people tell him he's fat?

well, he said it at least once. i remember. where were you?

anyway, the point is, NOW I GET TO SAY IT!!!

isn't it exciting!

actually, its really depressing, and i feel like a whale. i don't look like a whale. i just feel like one. its a feeling that has no basis in objective, physical reality. but in my brain, man... its fuckin' REAL! i hate brains. i think they should be outlawed.

no, the thing is, i apparently have a hypo-thyroid condition. the thyroid controls your metabolism. hence, if its functioning at diminished capacity, you may feel very tired often (check), feel sluggish and slow (check), and have trouble with prolonged activity and losing weight (aaaaand CHECK). also, i got the news about this new bit of fun (completely treatable with a simple pill, mind you) the same day i get told twice that my BMI is twenty-nine.

for those of you blessed enough to not know or care what one's BMI is (and go to hell, every last one of you...), its a measure of the percentage of your body weight that is made up of FAT. anything over twenty-five is overweight. over thirty is obese, or fat as hell, or something like that. over forty means you are a failure as a human being and completely unlovable. not really. that's just how it all FEELS...

feelings are real. they are real, and completely valid. they may not be an accurate reflection of reality, but they are totally real.

ain't that a fuckin' bitch?

so anyway, i'm having an issue with this. because i've been working out, hard, for the past nine months. and i'm pleased with the results i've attained. but i feel like they've been slow in coming. and now i can't even get to the gym as often as i want to (thyroid) and when i go to yoga, i feel weak (thyroid), even though i'm now on my feet and moving at the store most days and shouldn't reasonably expect to be able to exert myself as much because of that.

it all just makes me want to stop. its really discouraging.

and the fuck of it is, i know that the BMI results i'm looking at are wrong. they're skewed. i haven't had any actual BMI tests run on me, which means the results are using my height and weight. and those mathematics are flawed. they don't take into account your frame, (i.e. someone with size forty-two shoulders versus size thirty-six shoulders. ditto a woman with wide hips versus one with narrow hips.) nor do they take into account the fact that the taller a person is, the more bone and basic connective tissue mass there is to support the larger frame. that relationship isn't linear. you can't "start at five feet and one hundred pounds. add a pound for every inch. when you hit your height, that's the middle of your ideal weight range. anything fifteen pounds above or below that is within your thirty pound window." it doesn't work that way.

case in point. for the sake of argument, let's say a man is six feet tall and two hundred pounds. we don't know exactly what his body looks like, but we have a basic idea of how he might be put together. the tallest man in the world, was eight feet and a couple inches. he weighed, four hundred pounds. you wouldn't know it to look at him. he didn't look like what we imagine four hundred pounds of human would look like. but to keep the human body functional at a two foot height increase (133% of our six foot man) another two hundred pounds were needed (200% of our six foot man).

the ratio is exponential, not linear.

so i know, rationally, i know, that these measurements are incorrect. not that you can't do a real and accurate BMI exam. but i haven't had one done. these results are incorrect. and all my other numbers are good. my cholesterol, my hemoglobin A1c, etc. i have none of the indicators that an overweight person would have.

but it's still fuckin' me up.

on the plus side, brother's birthday was today. we had breakfast as a family at the geunther house by the river, and there was totally a hen mallard duck nesting in the hedge. it was the cutest thing i have seen in recent memory. she had the nest all lined with down feathers, and she was snuggled up, presumably on some eggs, with her head resting on her wing. and it made me really, really happy.

the meal made me sick. i cannot, eat waffles. they make me sick. i thought i would vomit.

duck...

i love ducks. i almost typed "i love dicks" by accident. which is totally true, but not what i was actually thinking about right now. i was thinking about ducks. and my strange, extreme love of them. i just think they're like, the best fluffy cute things ever. and i want some of my own. which is not going to happen. right now.

oh, but the best/saddest part of my BMI crisis was when i was telling mom about all this, and ended by saying "i would rather expend my energy freaking out about the results than on examining my assumption that i must be skinny and attractive, otherwise i don't deserve love and affection." which we both know is not how things work in reality. i mean, how many ugly people are in perfectly satisfactory relationships? then we both laughed. we are sooo going to hell...

i totally love dicks...

do you know how long its been since i've seen a dick in real life, other than my own? years. YEARS!!! too long.

this is degenerating. i'm done.