Valerie, Marie, and Starr

I sat riveted the other day watching the Oprah Winfrey show as she interviewed the 3 skinnies staring down 50: Valerie Bertinelli, Marie Osmond, and Starr Jones. For me the interview with Starr Jones was kind of like watching a car wreck: it’s totally horrifying but you just can’t get yourself to look away.

It was all so hard to watch because I saw myself in these women. They were consumed with self-loathing and body hatred for so long and now here they were “living the dream.”

As they sat there talking about how great they felt and how wonderful their lives were I kept thinking, “what about the part about being hungry all the time? What about the part about structuring your life around your exercise routine? What about the part about not missing a work-out no matter what?

They never got to that part. They just kept going on and on about how euphoric the whole thing was. Let me just say for the record that maintaining a size 6 or under after the age of 35 is serious work. Yes the thrill of being thin either for the first time, or the first time in a long time kind of anesthetizes you but eventually it all wears off and you realize you are tired of being HUNGRY ALL THE TIME and sick of structuring your life around visits to the gym.

I managed to live like this for 10 years and then it occurred to me I hadn’t read a book since I didn’t know when. When I went to school for coaching I realized how much I missed intellectual pursuits and how little time I had for them. I realized that spending so much time exercising my body kept me from doing anything with my mind and being hungry all the time makes you irritable and spacey no matter how many times you check yourself out in the mirror and like what you see.

So now, I’m trying to have more balance and yes, in the interim I have definitely gained some weight but I am so, so much more available for life. And to Valerie, Marie, and Starr I say: eventually the thrill of being thin will wear off and you will have to deal with how out of balance your life has become to maintain your small size. I’m hoping by then, I’ll have my own show and I can tell them how I saw it coming.