Week Twenty-one: The Mission

The accepted modern silhouette is slender. Try to attain it in whatever way is easiest for you. The slim uncorseted look is especially youthful and graceful.

Lily Haxworth Wallace, The New American Etiquette (1941)

As we all know, there was more to the model 1940s housewife than housework. Women of the era were expected to practice good grooming habits throughout their lives. And even middle-aged and older women were encouraged to wear corsets if necessary to achieve a more youthful figure.

I can remember as a teenager being much less interested in makeup, fashion and hairstyles than my peers. I was a little interested, but nowhere near fascinated enough to spend hours poring over fashion magazines, practicing hairstyles, or hanging out at the mall. I guess I was too busy with music. Fast forward nearly two decades, and I'm still uninterested. But I can't get away with that as nicely as I could when I was young. (That youthful glow can make up for a lot!) When you're in your teens, it's the natural, outdoorsy look. When you're in your thirties, it's just frumpy. Frowsy and frumpy.

Like many women in their thirties, my weight has a biography almost as long as my own. Suffice it to say, it's been an issue since I was 18 and my metabolism finally hit puberty. I've had chubby times, slender times, and long periods when I was able to maintain a great figure through hard work. Between 2003 and 2005, though, I gained 75-80 lbs. and have carried most of that weight around for the last few years. Okay, it's very hard for me to put the final figure down in black and white --- but if I can be even half as successful taking the approach that's working for my housekeeping and applying it to my weight problem, it will be worth it --- *deep breath* - I weigh 196 today. I should say "about" 196, because I only get on a scale when I go to the doctor's office and it's been a month or so. Do I beat myself up about it? A little. But what frightens me more is how accepting I've become about the extra weight.

So the frump needs to go. I'm cleaning house now in every sense of the word and all this extra "clutter" needs to be dispensed with. Easier said than done - as I'm sure many of you know from personal experience. I'm encouraged by the fact that the approach I've taken to becoming a better housekeeper is working. The historical side of it intrigues me enough to get things done even when it seems like torture. Maybe this can help me in losing this weight.

There are no mysteries here. We've known forever that all it takes is to moderate your diet and exercise more. They knew sixty years ago that there weren't any magic answers to this age-old issue: "Try to attain it in whatever way is easiest for you." During my twenties, walking was the key. I walked 40 minutes a day, seven days a week. So I'm going to trust that experience and put it to work again. Walking isn't particularly easy when you live in a sketchy city neighborhood, but I do work in a good location for walking and there's the park on weekends. So here is my three-fold mission for the next week:

Fitness
Walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week. I'll probably aim for three times on weekdays (during the lunch hour) and both days on weekends.

Diet
I'm going to knock the empty calorie breakfast menus off the meal plan, i.e. French toast, griddlecakes, and waffles. I don't particularly like them, and they don't do me any favors energy-wise.

Grooming

I came across a grooming routine for teenage girls in the October 1946 issue of Good Housekeeping. Seven steps for the morning, six steps for the evening, and six items to be done "once a week without fail." I'm adopting the first of these this week. First thing in the morning, as soon as you get out of bed and go into the bathroom:

Drink one big glass of water.

Wish me luck... The fitness plan is truly going to be my toughest mission yet!