Summer fat

It appears to be official: my body has reverted to its pre-Max weight and seems to be maintaining it.  When I started walking back in 1999, I found that a half an hour was enough exercise for me to lose about 5 pounds a year without dieting, but 45 minutes or more really shed the pounds.  Whenever I found myself plateauing in the weight loss, I'd add another 15 minutes of walking to the routine, and that would get it going again.  But by the time we got Max's referral I was walking an hour and fifteen minutes a day and was finding it hard fitting more time in for exercise (little did I know how much free time I actually had then).  I'd gotten stuck at the same weight I am now, well within normal BMI guidelines, but hardly what anyone would call "skinny."

Then I had a massive three-month anxiety attack with all the travel and to-do over adopting Max.  This completely suppressed my appetite and nine extra pounds slid off before I could say, "Jiminy Cricket."  Living with the anxiety was terrible, truly awful, but losing the weight was a fantastic side benefit.  I got into size 2 clothes.  I bought new bathing suits.   I swanned around feeling all skinny-like.  I felt so good about myself that I started lifting weights for extra tone (that didn't last long; how boring is lifting weights?). 

Then slowly, gradually, the weight crept on again.   The first summer I chalked it up to the cookie dough addiction I developed.  Then I gained a little at Thanksgiving and maybe a pound or two over Christmas.  It was distressing at first.   Then it was even more distressing.  I'd thought the hard part was losing it, not keeping it off.  And I was still exercising!  I was up to an hour and a half a day of walking or more.  Perhaps it's rationalizing on my part, but, having read Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin, I think my body was slowly dragging itself to its set point, like a lodestone pulls the needle to N.  The cookie dough was no help, but the body's ability to maintain a set point, speeding or slowing metabolism to accomplish it, is nothing to laugh at.  

So now here we are.  Or here I am.  Back to where I was before Max.  No more and no less.  I don't seem to be gaining, but I'm certainly not losing.  And it's summer and I hate the way I look in my summer clothes.  My arms feel fat in tank tops, my thighs look white and chubby in shorts.  I have no heat tolerance.  When it gets above 80 degrees, I want to shave my head and go naked all the time.  Except I can't, because it's illegal.  And also because I've lost all confidence in the way I look.  At least my winter mom clothes hide the flaws.  My summer mom clothes accentuate the flaws.  In   the summer I don't just want to lose 9 pounds, I want to lose 19 just so nothing on my body can touch and sweat.

I love summer, but I feel so old and matronly looking right now.  Argh.