Well, it's up.

The first post is finally up on It's All About The Ass. Sorry that took so long.

For the record: nobody offended me. You're fine. I just got really worried about what this could turn into, and the fact that days and days kept going by with the debate still raging in the comments was something that took me completely off-guard. My ranting about the way political debate happens in this country was more a reaction to outside forces than to anything that was posted here. I shut everything down on those posts because I hadn't expected there to be such a big response, and I was unprepared for it; I've seen downward spirals occur elsewhere and I'd rather set up a whole new blog to discuss these matters-- with ground rules set from the get-go-- rather than run the risk of de-railing the original purpose of this blog. If I'd had my brain on straight, I would have done this before posting about Katrina; as it is, you all have my sincere apology for my clumsy handling of the whole thing.

I didn't want to have a political blog, but I'm going to try. If I start talking about professional wrestling or go completely fangirl over Veronica Mars this fall, please, somebody remind me to stop hijacking my own damn blog and stick to the subject.

SPEAKING OF WHICH...

I seem to have more people popping up from all over. As a way of re-dedicating this blog to the weight-loss/maintenance thing, let's have an introduction party in the comments: everybody say HI and where you're from. I don't need to know specifics, but I love seeing the wide range of folks out there, so wave, y'all!

Hrm, let's see. I keep doing yoga, so there's that; I feel like I'm covering the trifecta of cardio, strength, and flexibility. YAY.

Granted, I'm so inflexible these days that I keep cramping up during yoga, and my knee is bothering me again during lower-body strength training (lunges, grr). I have faith that these things will work themselves out; I'm nothing if not a hopeless optimist. A practical optimist, though; I'm not going to flail blindly around assuming that they'll work out without me doing anything about them. I've been wrapping my knee for lunges, and I'm making notes on other exercises to switch to; I'm also making sure to stretch out the contracted muscles from some of those yoga poses. As per usual, this may not work, but what the hell, I'm giving it a shot, and if it doesn't work, I'll try something else.

My Hub remains the independent Meg Mood Barometer. When I announced that I was going to make a habit of doing 20 minutes of yoga every day upon getting home from work, he was deeply relieved. "Good," he said, "because you get in a much better headspace when you do yoga regularly." I opened my mouth to get defensive about it, then closed my mouth again because, yeah, he's right. It's entirely too easy for me to disassociate myself from my body, and yoga is one of the few things that forces me to be a whole mind-and-body pair, not just a brain rattling around in a container.

It's occurred to me that my brain disassociated from my body a long, long time ago, and that may be the root of all this-- well, at least part of it. I learned to read when I was very, very tiny, so literally I don't remember a time in my life when I wasn't spending much of my spare time either a) curled up with a book or b) making up my own stories, which at first were acted out with great vim and vigor with my sister and other playmates, either with ourselves as the actors or with our Barbie dolls as stand-ins. I liked stories. Everything else was kind of... faded. Unimportant. It took serious jolts to get me out of that mode (and still does, sadly) and get me to pay attention to the outside world.

I was a space cadet in high school, only halfway interacting with the rest of the world and otherwise writing my own highly dramatic version of events inside my head, which bore little resemblance to what was going on. When startled out of my dreamworld by things that didn't go as I'd thought they would, I'd react with fear and nausea and general freak-out. When I got to college, I think I was still reacting to things like that; it's just that the concerns of the real world became much more pressing and so it was very hard to retreat to my wooly mental cocoon. That's when the binging started, and in retrospect I think that's part of the reason why. I wanted my wooly mental cocoon back, and food overdosing was the fastest way to get there.

I didn't drink too much (okay, occasionally; it WAS college), start smoking, or start doing drugs, but to be perfectly honest that's because I realized very early on that I was better off not knowing how those things would affect me. I was reasonably sure that they'd be even more effective at taking me away from my own head and relieving my anxiety, but I was aware of the health and life dangers of those things, and aware of my own tendencies toward addict behaviors, so... no. Food, though...

I don't like being in my own head when it becomes an uncomfortable place. I have all sorts of free-floating anxiety (my Hub describes me, generously, as "tightly wound") that can just utterly paralyze me into a complete lack of movement. I do well (remarkably well, sometimes) as long as I'm working in my own happy little headspace, but if anything jolts me out of that-- BOOM. I'm pretty certain that I'd benefit greatly from Cognative-Behavioral Therapy, but (oh, yay) our medical plan doesn't cover any head-health problems and so I'd either have to pay out of pocket, which isn't an option for us at the moment, or... well, go without and see what I can do on my own.

I'm not well. I don't like this. Consider this a placeholder for a very long rant about what is and is not covered under our medical plan; I checked out of curiosity to see what they cover re: weight problems and lo, pretty much nothing. If you weigh twice the "average weight" for your height, they'll put you through one course of treatment (what that treatment is, nobody says; this worries me) and then you're on your own, bucko. Anyone weighing less than that can go to hell. The NUMBER ONE THING that most people can do to change their health for the better, and insurance does NOTHING. I'm going to fume now. An ounce of prevention... yeah, well. Grr.

The point, back when I was babbling before, is that yoga helps. A bit. And what the hell, every little bit counts.