~Brown Eyed Gurl~: No Smoking

(this post is more of a second part to the previous post 'i WANT chocolate')

The other day when my boyfriend kindly suggested I should try out Zumba, I was enraged and then upset. Being the 'feminist' that I am, I sit there thinking, how dare he!?! I thought he loved me for who I was and not expected me to be one of those girls you see in magazines! I think to myself, there is NO WAY I will ever lose weight just because someone tells me I need to lose weight (well I guess a doctor would have the right). I mean, my BMI is fine, I'm not over weight... I just like to indulge myself in the normal junk food every now and then. And yes, during that time of the month I do have a slightly greater desire to chuck down more chocolates and more comfort food.

And so there started my personal debate of whether to make my boyfriend happy or to stick to my guns about losing the weight only for myself. As you will see from my previous post about weight loss and body image, I strongly believe that losing weight should not be because that's what society is pressurizing us to do, but about something you are doing to make yourself happy and for your own wellbeing- whether it be mental or physical. I guess it does sound selfish, and I agree it is. But why should you torture yourself only to make yourself miserable?

While thinking about this, I began to ponder. If I get all defensive for him asking me to 'watch my weight', is it fair for me to ask him to quit smoking?

It's been almost a year we've become serious and his smoking has always bothered me. And it's been awhile I've been hinting that he needs to quit and more recently I've REALLY begun to stress on the fact that it needs to happen.

Now me asking him to quit smoking is for his own health; and me being a non-smoker... well I would say I qualify to say that smoking is bad. But if I think that it's not fair for him to expect me to change because he doesn't like what I eat, why should I expect him to stop smoking because I don't like him smoking.

I guess I still feel confused as to what is really fair in this situation; but one thing I am certain about is my boy. I know that he'd never be happy knowing that I'm not and he'd never ask me to do something against my will or something that would make me miserable. I also know how hard he is trying to give up smoking, something which he really does not seem to want to do, but is doing just to make me happy. Taking these things into consideration plus the fact that I, myself, feel I need to do something about my oh-so-lovely love-handles, I've decided to give Zumba a try....