On Weight Loss

Disclaimer: Gentlemen, if you're uninterested in discussion of female body size/shape, you may want to simply skip on down to the next post. I don't get graphic here, but I do speak comfortably, as if to just my lady friends.

I've been going to the gym for a few months now, doing some combination of pilates, cardio, and weights between once and thrice per week. It began just for fun and to get into shape a bit, but the more I've gotten into it, the more it becomes, well, more than that!

Because you can see muscle when I now flex my arm, and that's exhilarating, I've had to fight against the desire to increase the amount of weight I lift in an unhealthy manner. My general goals are less easily observable, and seem even like they're hardly happening: getting into shape (I can still hardly make it 20 mins on the running machine without dying) and reducing the size of the fat deposits on my stomach (looks about the same to me).

My body has become sleeker and more toned, yet my overall shape has been retained (supporting my feelings all along that it's the fault of the manufacturers, not my own, that I sometimes have to shop in plus sizes). However, this brings me to my reason for writing this post:

My hips have shrunk.

Only by an inch or two, I'm sure, and it's quite clear that all that's happened is fat has disappeared. Still, I find myself wondering if my treasured hourglass figure is now going to be lopsided - for which to happen it would take a lot more than a couple inches of shrinkage (I think it'd take some reshaping of bone, actually).

Yes, I know this is pretty much the opposite problem of most American women, but just bear with me. Even in middle school, as puberty loomed large on the horizon, I looked at women and decided that I had no interest in being stick-thin. I want to be curvy, like Topanga, I remember deciding to myself after one of many Boy Meets World-a-thons.

And that's what happened. Before the Rolfes wedding two summers ago, my whole household measured ourselves together (since five out of seven were in the wedding party), and my hips came in at a whopping 43". Forty-three inches! Let me put this in context for you: As far as waist size, our stick-thin sister measured barely a few inches below our most pleasantly plump (similarly, our F-cup girl had at best three inches on our A-cup girl). But everyone else's hips fell in the mid-30's range, to my 43. So really, I have nothing to worry about.

But I still want to measure my hips again. Just to see.

And then maybe sign up for that abs class. To keep myself well-proportioned, of course.

UPDATE:
I asked one of trainers at my gym to measure my hips tonight - 43 1/2". I've got nothing to worry about.

UPDATE 2:
Just for kicks, I checked my score on the "Body Mass Index." I am a 30, which is the low cutoff score for obesity. Seriously!?