Of late I’ve been gaining weight. But it was only last week for the first time in a long while that I felt like I’d arrived at *overweight.*

You may scoff at my use of the term. I know overweight is loaded. If you’ve ever struggled to lose some, or tried to talk about it with someone who was struggling to lose some, you’ll know. When I was at my most sensitive about my own weight, I was quick to whip out an analysis of how cultural and media projections of ideal bodies skew real life. (I’ve been the girl obsessed about her food, diets, pounds, and pudge. That was me between about 1989 and 1998, a period in which my mother would frequently call me “a little heavy.”)

But these days, being more aware of my body in every way (a legacy of the California lifestyle), I think that * overweightness * exists, but as a personal standard that should be calculated based on my own feelings (emotional and physical) inside my skin as opposed to anyone outside me (like mother or fashion magazines).

I mean, I know girls like my willowy hooptroupemate Claudia, whose tornado metabolism keeps them regularly skinnier than weight-discrimination-activists will say is healthy or “normal,” but who seem to me to be at their Ideal Weight. And I know women who have been lusher and curvier ever since I’ve known them—some of them since high school or college (here I’ll not name names)—and that’s clearly their Ideal Weight. “Overweight,” then, is when you get above your personal “Ideal Weight.”

For me, overweight means my hips feel strained– they ache in this new way, and my skin feels tighter across my belly, ass and thighs. I feel like I run hotter, and smell (and, um, probably taste) different. Just so we’re clear, I’m talking maybe 10 pounds (though it would be interesting to find out exactly how much, and compare it to my perception– *to do). I know that’s not a huge amount, but on my small 5′5″ (on an elongated day) frame, those f/suckers show. And all of my clothes are tighter; I don’t really have a set of “fat-clothes” anymore.

This weekend as I was hanging out with a cozy friend of mine, I noticed that I was walking differently, with less confidence and sass, secretly (self-) conscious of my thighs straining against my pants. I was sitting differently, shoulders hunched forward over the amplified Girls. On top, trainwreck thinking about my body distracted me from intimacy.  I’m clear: I don’t like any of these impacts.

It’s no mystery to me how this happened to my body, which helps me keep perspective. Over 80% of my work over the past year and a half has involved sitting and reading and writing. Since I moved (last October), I’m further away from my friends and from interesting neighborhoods in walking distance, and from the Sunday gatherings of Bay Area Hoopers . At the same time I stepped away from the hooptroupe and our 2-hour per week rehearsals plus required personal practice time. Then my dog left my life, and with her went the twice daily 40-60+ minute walks.

So I’m gonna Lose It, that extra poundage. No specified amount, just enough to leave me feeling healthy and easy and confident.  I’m aiming to start walking around the Lake regularly, and hoop every day for at least a half hour, and see how it goes. I promise to report back.