Insulin weight

I've gained 5-8 pounds since diagnosis. It sounds like a small amount, and I'm still a small person. Compared to people who talk about wanting to lose 30+ or 100+ pounds, it seems so trivial. Vain, even. Talking about it makes me feel like I'm betraying my feminist background and buying into patriarchal notions of female beauty. I've never obsessed about my weight before, so why start now? Why not just be grateful that insulin is keeping me alive?

The truth is that I've always suspected that the reason I never worried about my weight was because I was so small that height aside, my body honestly didn't look that different from the ones in fashion magazines. And I didn't worry much about comparing the rest of my appearance to them because they were all white, and I was never going to be white.

But back to how I'm feeling about my body right now, and how a lot of diabetics feel about their bodies. I don't like how my body looks, and I don't like how it feels. Most of all, I don't like how my clothes fit now. I spent a lot of money on them so I have no intention of replacing them... but they don't hang the same way. They don't skim my frame the same way. Some of them are no longer flattering at all. Others pull uncomfortably. There's the tiniest bit of spillover in one of my bras, and I'm convinced that I look like I have back fat in all of them.

Again, I should be ok with all of this. The tyranny of size 0 is a crock of shit, right? But I'm not. I'm really unhappy. I briefly reminisced about how much weight I lost when I had jaw surgery and was on a liquid diet for two weeks, before remembering that I also had almost no energy. I decided to look for a better way.

The big problem is that I've always eaten healthy food. I love salad like most people love ice cream, and I only like ice cream on rare occasions. I have a weakness for french fries, but I don't eat them that often. I put very little dressing on my salads and very little mayo on my sandwiches when I bother. The only place that I can really cut calories is with the late-night snack that I always end up eating when I can't sleep.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that NOT eating that snack makes me dump glycogen, because I wake up really high when I don't eat something. Yes, despite all the complaining, staying within range is still more important to me than losing weight. So what to do? Exercise, I guess. I've never been that strong and since being diagnosed, I've barely exercised at all. It brings up a lot of insecurities for me, and going to the gym has always bored me to tears.

But I think this gave me the motivation to get over those insecurities, find something that I actually like to do, and do something positive for myself.