Recently, I came across a clip of a young boy doing a mukbang with his grandmother on YouTube. During that clip he declared it\u2019s big back season. Indeed it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not sure when the term \u201cbig back\u201d got popularized and infused into the culture. Even though I sometimes use it, I\u2019m a bit ambivalent towards the phrase given that I find it funny, but also feel attacked at the same damn time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This time of year, from Thanksgiving through the end of the year is when I often gain weight\u2026like to the tune of 10 pounds perennially. So it\u2019s scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m not depriving myself of all the yummy treats that go hand and hand with the holidays. I would even go as far to say, some foods are worth being fat. Of course I say that as a plus-sized woman who has no idea what it\u2019s like to wear clothes in the single digits, so there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Single digits, however, for me are the goal. I remember a long time ago \u2013 perhaps I was still in high school, maybe a bit older \u2013 I was watching one of those news magazine shows, something like 20\/20, and they were interviewing these women, all in the same family I think, that lost a lot of weight. I don\u2019t remember the question that was asked, but one of them said, \u201cno food tastes as good and thin feels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a feeling she\u2019s right. I must admit, a strong part of my desire to lose weight is to see what I would look at as single-digit size. I didn\u2019t experience it in my teens or twenties, thirties and now forties. I be thinkin\u2019 to myself I better make an effort at it now while I steal can<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the thing that I\u2019m after even more than how I look is how I feel \u2013 not just being smaller, but being healthy. I\u2019m pretty healthy now \u2013 thank, God. The older I get, the more things like that are important to me. I realize that the older I get, things like health don\u2019t come as easily. For me, the effects of a bad diet actually started pretty early. For me it started in my thirties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I grew up eating pints of ice cream. I remember my mom, my sister and I used to go to the liquor store not too far from our house and get a pint of Haagen Dazs ice cream each. I would get cookies and cream, or this vanilla and raspberry sherbert swirl flavor they used to have, or sometimes I\u2019d get the vanilla and orange swirl one. My mom always got the butter pecan. I can\u2019t remember the kind my sister used to get. I think back a pint was like $2, but anyway. Eventually I switched to strawberry cheesecake Haagen Daz, before I discovered Ben & Jerry\u2019s chocolate chip cookie dough around 9th <\/sup>grade, and that became my flavor of choice. But my point is, I could eat that whole pint of ice cream, no problem. I didn\u2019t feel bad afterwards, I didn\u2019t feel sluggish. I just ate and was merry. I could do that all through my teens and twenties. But somewhere around 30, eating a pint of ice cream in a single sitting left me feeling sluggish, left me with low energy, sometimes even feeling sick. It was like immediately upon finishing the pint, I could feel the bad effects of whatever it is in that ice cream that\u2019s not good for me. And that has continued ever since then. Now I must admit that I don\u2019t always feel that way after eating a pint of ice cream. And interestingly enough, now in my forties, I don\u2019t feel that way as much as I did in my thirties, but it does come back from time to time. If for no other reason, all though we there are definitely other reasons, for this reason alone I have to be mindful when I indulge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides the optical aspect of it, I also want to be fit. I want to have the energy and the strength to carry on with life like I always have and not be encumbered by a hurt leg, a broken hip, weak lungs or whatever it is that stops one from making it up a flight of stairs without heaving. I don\u2019t want shit like that to be part of my experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That feeling you get when you know you\u2019ve eaten too much \u2013 that lethargic, sluggish, tired, don\u2019t feel like doing anything, stomach a bit upset feeling \u2013 that\u2019s what I want to avoid as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More often than not, I want to feel like I do after a workout, when I feel like I could run for miles and leap and touch the sky. Even though, for the record, I have never ran a mile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, I saw another video on YouTube that caught my attention. This one was a short and the thumbnail showed people working out in a cycling class. I was like, let me click on this and see what it\u2019s about<\/em>. The video played and I was mesmerized. Take a look and see what I mean:<\/p>\n\n\n\n