This story was originally published on my vet school blog, “Wet Cleanup on Aisle 5.”
“Her circumference was growing, so she had to go to the Pi D.”
That’s the silly little memory trick we used in 9th grade geometry to remember how to calculate circumference.
I couldn’t help but remember that this week as I noticed how much my circumference has been growing since starting vet school a mere month ago. If only it were as simple as going “Pi D” to get rid of all this excess blubber. Eesh.
I’m a fairly small boned person, so even a couple of extra pounds shows up pretty quickly on my frame. I have to be sporting at least five, if not seven, new pounds. I feel like I’m carrying a tire around my middle. I had a dream last night in which I had a basketball-sized belly bump and people asked me how many months pregnant I was.
It’s pretty easy to see how I got myself into this boat.
1) Lack of exercise. I have become a champion sitter, since we are on our butts something like 6 hours a day. That’s just the class time. Throw in another 3-4 hours for homework, and there’s a whole lotta sittin’ going on.
Alas, I am not one of those people who can just go for a quick run or pop in a half hour workout tape to get exercise. Oh no. I like to take ballet class. And that requires two things I have very little of at the moment: money and time. I also really like to rock climb, but that also takes time. These are not the sorts of things one can easily and quickly squeeze into a vet school schedule. Well, I can’t, at least.
2) Constant eating. This is not unique to me, apparently. Most of our class is constantly stuffing our faces with food, but we’re still hungry all the time. It’s amazing how much food it takes to feed your brain! Sadly, my brain seems to think that storing some for later, just in case, is a good idea. I disagree, but what can I do?
As a former metabolism professor liked to say, “There is no magic pill for weight loss. The magic pill is diet and exercise.”
Also the magic pill to weight gain, it seems.
One student suggested we replace all the desks in the lecture hall with spinning bikes. I’m liking that idea. So is my circumference.
Oooo, I think the Magnetrainer is a GREAT idea!!! I’ve seriously considered getting one myself, but I usually study in the library, where I don’t think the other students would appreciate it as much as I would. 🙂
Every winter I find my weight going up by about 5 pounds, too. I hate it. It’s actually worse than it sounds, because like you I’m small-boned, and I’m LOSING muscle while ADDING fat, so that amount of added fat is actually more than 5 pounds. Yuck. I know you don’t like to run (HOW can you not like to RUN in Colorado? If I lived in Colorado, I think I would do nothing all day long but run in the mountains. I LOVE it when I’m there for meetings!) but the best 2 solutions for me are dogs (who need to be run at least 2-3x/week) and a trainer for my road bike, which I can park in front of the tv and ride hard for half an hour while I watch tv to unwind. It’s a great solution since it lets me do both things at once.
I would LOVE a stationary bike, but my house is way too small for one to fit. That’s why the Magnetrainer seemed like such a good idea, except for the whole costs a hundred and twenty bucks that I don’t have thing. 🙂
And yes! I am losing muscle while adding fat! URG! People who aren’t small boned don’t appreciate it, because they still think I look skinny. Relatively narrower than most people, maybe, but still carrying extra pounds that would NOT look good in a bikini. Not that I would look good in a bikini anyway, but still.
I don’t know why I don’t like to run in CO–maybe I’m too paranoid about being munched by a mountain lion! I like to hike, but you don’t really get anywhere in the 1/2 hour I feel like I can spare… And the street where I live is decidedly not good for walking. (This sounds awfully like I am full of excuses not to exercise, doesn’t it? Oh well.)
Your dream cracked me up! 🙂
Oh, about weird dreams — I had a dream a couple of nights ago that MM and I had a baby! It was a girl, and I was going to breastfeed her, but I was ALSO going to breastfeed two of our dogs!!! So none of them were getting fed while I tried to figure out how the heck this was going to work with the dogs (they’d maim me!!!) and at one point MM asked if maybe we should feed the baby, since she was SEVEN DAYS OLD and had never eaten yet, and I said, “Oh, she’s okay! She’ll start crying when she’s hungry. She can go a couple more days.”