In an article by Pregnancy Magazine it states that 94 percent of women surveyed said their primary concern during pregnancy was weight gain. Shocking, isn’t it? I can see people leaping from their seats now with the utter surprise that normal women, who, in American society, spend the majority of their time eating non-fat, low-fat, low-carb or low-calorie foods that taste — let’s admit it — like ass in order to fit into a slightly smaller pair of jeans — that these women would be alarmed to suddenly put on 35 pounds in less than a year and watch their waists stretch to 50-inch “not even maternity clothes fit anymore” proportions by the end of pregnancy. Wow. Hard to believe women are concerned.
Particularly since every middle-aged American woman I ever knew talked about how she was “just a petite little thing” before she had kids, which clearly caused her body to ripple and then grow like an alien being absorbing the atmosphere and feeding on sound waves (or Hometown buffets). Pictures backed their stories up, too — all my aunts, whom I love dearly, are large women. My dad’s sisters (there are eight — yes, eight) tend to be big-boned, big-hipped women with hearty laughs and a tendency to raw humor that I inherited early on. I somehow remember them sitting in a row, laughing about some classmate who was caught…um…doing things with an electric toothbrush. That poor woman is now, I’m sure, an elderly matron who dearly loves to think everyone has forgotten “that little incident” 30 years later. Dream on.
Yes, I caught that “raw humor” despite my mother’s best efforts. At my wedding, to my in-laws and the 9 other attending non-relatives consternation, I pulled my husband’s Marine Corps sword from its sheath to cut the cake, and then… I pushed it back in — and out — and in — and out — to raucous cheers and to the sight of my New husband’s shining, beet-red face (I think he was considering anullment at the time, and I know my mother-in-law was). I couldn’t help it! I had an audience. I also caught — probably from both sides — a tendency to be chunky, and at the ripe old age of 27 looked down at my body, which, interestingly enough, looked like it had rippled and grown and absorbed the atmosphere like an alien being.
My son, however, seems fully human, at least so far.
And now I am pregnant again, and I am suffused with a kind of false hope that, when I have this baby, my body will magically go back to the state it was in when I was 25. I fully expect to continue hoping this, probably until I die.
Who wouldn’t? I saw a quote the other day that said we should have our 19-year-old body at 30, so we can finally start appreciating it. I’m sure at 55 I’m going to look back at this post and think, “but I looked fabulous at 30.” I already look at the pictures of myself pregnant at 26 and think, “Wow, I was so beautiful and perky.”
But that’s the problem with modern society, and cheesecake. Honestly, I got down to a size 4 in Japan, where everyone around me ate healthy food that actually tasted good. Here in America we consider that a sin. It may actually be illegal to eat non-fried foods in some areas of the Bible belt. I know that in Idaho, “salad eaters” were always suspect, particularly if they were male.
In Japan, on the other hand, if I was in a hurry and needed something on the run, I went to a Circle K and had an onigiri. This is a ball of rice stuffed with salmon or tuna or vegetables and wrapped in seaweed. Onigiri are so wonderful I could live on them. Or, I could pop into a convenience store and have some stewed vegetables, served right up from a big pot steaming on the counter. And yes, I mean 7-11 type stores. Here in America, where we believe in choice, I have the option of a dying egg sandwich, topped with salmonella, or something from the sweets/chips aisle, topped with preservatives. It’s hard to believe Americans have an obesity problem. I love all the ads, too — Five A Day the Colorful Way, Three servings of dairy — what the hell is a serving, anyway? Most Americans consider a serving “everything you can fit on your plate plus one item.”
So I am supposed to be eating a low-fat, high-fiber diet for pregnancy. Come on. Everything that is fat reduced is crammed with chemicals, and I’m supposed to avoid those, too. I’m supposed to eat lots of raw vegetables, but also avoid anything that might have been contaminated with pesticides, meaning that I need to buy costly, hard-to-find organic vegetables that are grown locally so that all the essential nutrients haven’t been leached out in the delivery process and then eat them raw every day. Fat chance in Arizona. Essentially, to have a healthy pregnancy in American, it is best to be sent to Japan.
I’m booking my ticket. See you in 25 pounds.
