Weight Woes

At least one week per month, I go through what I call a "hungry phase."

During these periods and if I happen to be in the office, I then become a much too frequent visitor of the 2/F pantry's vendo machine, from where I usually snag three items: a can of soda, a bag of chips and a chocolate bar. This, mostly after lunch--which is an entirely different feast: a half cup of rice, beef tapa or chicken flakes and orange juice in a plastic cup. On "extra-hungry" days, there will almost always be sprints to McDonald's or Hen-Lin, which stand so conveniently near to my workplace. And, an hour into my shift, I would already have finished off a medium-sized frappucino--an appetizer of sorts before lunch.

Tsk, tsk. Bad, bad, bad.

It's a good thing this happens only 7 days (give or take a few days, I can never really be sure), or else it wouldn't take that long for me to double my present size, which isn't something I'm proud of, in the first place. Like a number of, if not most, women, I have a never-ending preoccupation with my weight. Reed-thin is beautiful, and any pound of flesh (or fat, for that matter) that goes beyond that, is something to be alarmed about.

I am aware that this will sound superficial to some, but the fact remains that this subject goes far, far deeper than most of us would be willing to take it to be. The compulsion to be "un-fat" may be traced back to any number of things, like: a problematic childhood, a deeply-rooted insecurity brought about by an extremely low self-esteem, severe depression, some long-forgotten trauma that surfaces again and again, pressure from the mass media, etc., in the same way that it could subsequently lead to any number of things, like: (again) severe depression, a continuously deteriorating self-esteem, anorexia or bulimia (I had the latter when I was in second-year college), numerous sicknesses (like hyperacidity, ulcers and hypertension), and many other results with scary-sounding names, I'm sure.

The cure?

I wish I knew.