Miss Ashley Pants

Let’s get something straight right now.

I don’t “count” calories. I add them via my mouth, and subtract them from my ass via low impact cardio. That’s just me. That’s just what I do. Everyone else doesn’t have to…but I will say that if more people did do this, there might be a hell of a lot less carping about size.

It might also keep fewer women from lying to themselves and making their boyfriends do the same, by posing the same cognitive dissonance based question (you know, the perpetual plump rump rhetorical query to which there is only one “right” answer, regardless of whether it is true or not).

Blaming the “thyroid”, genes, and metabolism is getting old too. I mean, I have a terrible metabolism. My ass doubles in size if I look sideways at a cheesecake. So, you know what I do? I CONTROL MY PORTIONS. It’s called eating to live instead of living to eat. You can lie all day long to me, your friends, and your boyfriend about how your depression drugs cause weight gain and how it’s making you… well… depressed. But you know who you can’t lie to?

Your ass.

Sidenote – I wonder how many more dieters would reach their goal weight and maintain it, if more boyfriends (or friends in general) decided to be honest when replying to “Do I look like I’ve gained weight?”

While we’re at getting facts straight, let’s clear up my soapbox bit on “weight management”. Adipose versus aesthetics: It’s not just about looking cute in that houndstooth pencil skirt you’ve been eyeing for Fall.

A sleek physique is clearly a nice benefit, but from a health standpoint, this isn’t just about getting the teardrop tricep, thin thighs, or beach booty. That’s great if you can achieve all that, but some of you girls have gotten married and have families to look after now, so looking “cute” is fun, but fitness likely is multi-purposed.

That being said, the excuse I’ve heard a lot is how “busy” women and men alike are. Being busy with children, chores, errands, work, housekeeping, etc. is a legitimate reason for having little to no extra “free time”; But what it isn’t is a legit reason for failing at a reasonable diet and exercise routine. There are always workarounds. If my single mom girlfriends can manage it, anyone can.

In fact, having children should be your reason for staying fit. If you have kids, and you’re morbidly obese, you’re setting yourself up for things like a heart attack, diabetes, and so on. You have to think… Do you really want them to grow up without a mom or dad because you couldn’t exercise… or even just exercise portion control?

People tend to make the vice of gluttony into a cute or funny thing. Others identify because of how they can relate to how much fun it is to be fat and lazy, and thus initiates the vicious cycle of lying to yourself. Then the whopping two gym trips you made this week are what stand out to you because of how hard they were (not the four quarts of ice cream you inhaled which just couldn’t be what’s keeping those scale numbers from dropping.)

Did your diet really fail? Or did you just fail your diet?

So, we come full circle to the calorie watch.

I myself tend to look at calorie intake and burn-off as being like a credit card. If I intake roughly a certain amount, then that’s what I’ve “spent”. So my “bill” is going to cost me burning off that amount somehow. If I work out early in the day, then I’ve “credited” myself about that much to enjoy my sugary fruits or occasional hot chocolate guilt-free.

With that concept and the aforementioned fact that the modern woman is so busy, I’ve been thinking how beneficial an iphone app would be if it factored in/added up your calories for you, gave you an update on how you’re doing throughout the day, and offered a suggestion on good cardio options. All you’d need to do is input the Starbucks, Chipotle, etc. product you had, and it could take into account your body and age stats to determine what you’ve consumed versus what workout regime would be optimal for you.

No one is perfect when it comes to willpower; But I tend to think that if fewer people mindlessly shoved food into their mouths, and had an actual daily reflection of what and how much they were consuming, it’d make for a lot more “I had no idea my intake was like that!” wake up calls and fitness excursions alike.

I can see it now…

I’m sure there’s some kind of diet app out there, but would you use something this in-your-face interactive? I think it’d yield some serious results. After all, you can’t make your phone feel guilty about telling you like it is…

xoxo
<3~A