…is that you spend your day noting “things” about the weight loss.

The thing about unintentional weight loss is that it’s probably not a symptom of good things. I mean, it doesn’t have to be something terrible like a malignancy or digestive disorder – but even if it’s not something terrifying, it’s just not generally good. It’s not caused by praying hard enough to the thin-fairy, it’s not the result of a strengthened metabolism (strong metabolisms are good at getting everything they need out of their food), it’s a sign that something about your daily activities is consuming more fuel than you can supply.

The bad thing about unintentional weight loss is having nothing to wear. I bought a round of new bras and jeans at the beginning of the summer and then new bras and jeans at the end of the summer, and I don’t want to repeat the cycle, but it’s been at least six weeks since the last one and I’m back to cinching up my jeans with a belt and having my bra ride up so it shows above my shirt neckline all the damn time.

The thing about unintentional weight loss is that you can’t really complain to your friends about your health worries (what? but thin is healthy) or your wardrobe problems – not even about its effect on your pocketbook. Because you can try as hard as you want to explain, “no, set aside the ‘I wish I could lose weight effortlessly’ and think about how it really would impact your daily life” you know that no matter what you say they will hear “blah blah blah weight loss, blah blah blah weight loss,” and will assume you’re going ON about it because you’re pleased and bragging. Unless you want to irritate people, it’s probably best to say as little as possible.

The thing about unintentional weight loss is that even when you’re being silenced by other people’s teasing or sour grapes (whichever) you also know that their reaction is the more understandable one because we are all expected to play the “who can be thin? who can be beautiful?” game. If you are winning at it, insisting that you’re not playing is rude and disingenuous. Whether you tried to win or not, the winners still get prizes.

The great thing about unintentional weight loss is that you can convince your husband that you need the last cupcake, even though you’ve already eaten more than your share. …Haha. I mean, I actually told that joke today.

And then I spent the afternoon thinking, holy shut the fuck up. For real, the thing about unintentional weight loss is that I can eat more than my share of cupcakes. I can fucking eat cupcakes for supper and no one will call me names. No one will tell me that I disgust them. No one will even wrinkle their nose and look disapproving.

The thing about unintentional weight loss is that you can be worryingly thin and yet also Never Thin Enough. Even if you’re approaching the bottom weight in your healthy range and you’re beginning to be able to see your ribs, the fat you still have will be distributed so that some of it is on your belly. Quelle horreur.

The thing about losing weight is that in spite of having spent a lifetime working REALLY hard to not only be fat positive but to be weight neutral with regards to your own body image, suddenly your weight is all you think about. And then you catch yourself with phrases in your head like, “still not thin enough” and WTF?

Seriously. WTF?