Thanks for the memories!

I've been in purging mode lately: cutting my hair shorter, getting rid of clothes, shoes and accessories that I no longer wear or care for, and even cutting out some friendships that I felt were not doing my soul good. I declared just after the new year that instead of making resolutions that I'd pick a word of the year, which ended up being "risk". And so, in the interest of purging and of risk, I've decided to close down and call it a day.

Questioning fat bias is something that I'll always be interested in and working towards, but it's no longer something that I wish to write about on a regular basis. (Well, I always had the best intentions to write on a regular, at least weekly, basis. That counts, right??) I also have quibbles with the fat acceptance movement that have been percolating in the background for awhile now, sometimes alluded to or noted in past posts. In general I'm a skeptical and critical person when it comes to groups based on an ideology, and this is no exception. For instance, Health At Every Size (HAES) is something I believe in, but you won't find me signing a pledge.

My own journey of body acceptance has been riddled with peaks and valleys, potholes and unexpected slippery surfaces. In order to continue, I need to purge the idea that losing weight is succumbing to the enemy, and I need to risk that I can find my way without writing long blog posts to no one in particular in cyberspace. It's time to turn inward and figure some shit out on the pages of my own journal.

To anyone out there who has regularly visited (Ranthropologist in particular), thank you for taking the time to surf here and read my thoughts on the topic of fat!

XOXO,
Zaftig Chick

Body acceptance?

I had a moment of clarity this morning in the shower, which is where and when I have most of my moments of clarity. I was standing there thinking how much I hated the way I looked in some of the pictures from our family holiday photo shoot, and then I thought of a headline I saw yesterday about how If Jennifer Lawrence Needs This Much Airbrushing, We're All Doomed and I also thought of this video about Advertising's Image of Women that my friend posted on Facebook, and then I thought of another Facebook friend, an acquaintance really, who has a similar body shape to mine and how she wears her lumps and rolls loud and proud in all the pictures she posts.

I shook my head at this acquaintance, how even for her wedding day - her wedding day! - she didn't wear a proper bra or support garment under her wedding dress. "She could have been so pretty," I found myself thinking. Her makeup and hair were done so beautifully, and it was all ruined by a too-tight wedding dress that highlighted her sagging breasts and lumpy midsection! Good lord, can she please go get a bra fitting? Like, today??

But, wait... I thought I believed in body acceptance? My judgement of my acquaintance is really a reflection of how I feel about myself and has little to nothing to do with her. On a logical level I feel that what she does with her breasts, her body, her wedding dress, whatever, is totally and completely her choice and that I, as someone who believes in body acceptance, respect that. On an emotional level, however, it all goes to pot (because it's really about me).

I always like and really appreciate when I see things like the above-referenced headline and video cross my desktop, because it makes me feel like there's some measure of truth about body realness out there. It's only a partial truth, though, and that's what my moment in the shower was about. We talk about media's fucked up portrayl of women's bodies but I'm not sure we talk enough about the full impact it has on us on a daily basis, outside of looking at a screen or page. We can look at a magazine cover of Jennifer Lawrence and logically we know it's Photoshopped but what about the emotions we experience the next morning, when there's no magazine around, and we strip down for a shower and catch a glimpse of body in the mirror? I've railed against the Yahoo! Shine channel plenty before today so I won't revisit the issue but suffice to say, I'm not surprised they would come up with a headline insinuating that we're all doomed because our bodies aren't as thin and perfect as Jennifer Lawrence's even before she was Photoshopped.

Today in the shower I confronted an idea that had gotten completely lost or maybe was never there to begin with. What about really and truly making peace with my body exactly as it is right now? What if I stayed this exact same way for the rest of my life? What if every single picture taken of the back of me were like the ones the photographer took of me holding my son's hand, leading him down a garden path: with my bra band riding ridiculously high on my back and digging into my back fat as it wraps around under my arms, and with a muffin top over the waist of my pants, and with a huge, flat, wide butt? I think I assumed that the way I look is only temporary, that tomorrow is when I'll start losing weight (or continue to lose weight) and be on the path to what my "real" size and shape is.

Not to be shunted aside is the feeling that I'll die an early death and miss watching my son grow up if I don't immediately start losing weight to get to this mythical size and shape. It's a very conflicting feeling because my sister did die what was more or less an "early" death due to health conditions rooted in obesity. And, if I'm going to be more honest than I really care to be, the thing the photographer captured about my face that I hate so much is that my eyes look like my sister's. They're crinkled up into squinting because I'm smiling so big and crazy trying to make my son smile big and crazy for the camera. I don't want to look like my sister because I remember my judgmental thoughts of her big body and how I vowed to never look that way. Mostly, I don't want to look like my sister because I don't want to die like my sister did.

But... I also don't want to care what I look like from the back when I'm holding my son's hand, leading him down a garden path because I'd rather just be in the moment feeling his little hand in mine. I don't want to care that my eyes look my sister's when I smile unabashedly because I'd rather just be in the moment feeling happy. Body acceptance folks advocate for "the moment" rather than chasing a mythical size or shape, but sometimes to the exclusion of possible health concerns. That's why I'm not quite sure if I can wholly buy into the notion of total body acceptance.

Food dramas

I've likely mentioned before that for work I do event coordination for a non-profit. 'Tis the season for catered events, and therefore 'tis the season for all the crazy about food to surface. The folks who give me direction about what they want ordered for each event each have their own requests (demands) because of their own food preferences.

Have the caterer bring Diet Coke only! No one drinks regular soda anymore!

Chocolate chip cookies only for dessert! No one likes lemon bars or baklava!

The vegetarians can eat salad and rice pilaf! Meat protein is the most important item at the table!

And yes, I find the last sentiment particularly galling because I'm a vegetarian and somehow us veggies always manage to get stuck with the salad (generally of the fancy cheese and toasted nut variety and therefore, thankfully, good), the rice pilaf (ok, sure), and the limp-dick sauteed-to-death vegetable medley (sigh). At least we get a Diet Coke and a chocolate chip cookie out of the deal, eh?

It's all fun and yummy-in-my-tummy until the food runs out at an event. I've endured what I lovingly refer to as Catering Drama!!!! four event days in a row because we didn't order enough food for how many guests actually showed up.

The number of people who RSVP: 28
The number of people I order catering for: 35
The number of people the caterer actually provides for: 40
The number of people who attend: 63

Gulp. Catering Drama!!!!

Make no mistake. The people who didn't bother to RSVP and who show up 45 minutes late to an event with a clearly stated start time due to keynote speaker or other program are always the ones who are the most indignant about how there's no more food left. "Shame on you," they say. "You should always make sure there's enough food for your guests."

*********

I made friends with a couple of new moms of boys when I was a new mom myself, and we've hung out a couple times a month with our little ones in the almost two years since. At a certain point, I started noticing that whatever snacks I brought for Oliver were not allowed to cross the lips of the other boys. I wondered why and even felt hurt by my friends' decisions to not let their boys eat what I'd deemed worthy and healthy for my own son. I thought, Do they think I'm white trash? Because these sweet potato and cinnamon crackers are gluten free, they're from Whole Foods, and they cost upwards of $6 a box! It's not like I'm feeding him some Nabisco bullshit, sheesh.

After my wound healed over a little, I found some clarity. Food is a classist issue in my world. In the 1980's when "generic" was the big deal, I was embarrassed to be seen with my mom in the grocery store, picking out generic canned cream of celery soup for whatever that week's casserole was going to be and generic beer for my dad to drink after mowing the lawn on a hot day. Surely the rich, popular girls at school had moms who picked branded versions of canned soup and beer. My parents had no sympathy for me when I pointed this out. They viewed, and still view, anyone who spends more money on food than they "need" to as privileged and fancy (not in a good way). My husband and I, and my sister and her husband, all have "fancy" taste in food. We buy organic produce, and prefer to use olive oil or butter to cook with rather than margarine, and, worst of all, not a one of us spoiled brats will eat Jello for dessert. We all prefer dark chocolate... fair trade, 55%+ cacao, small batch, made in the Bay Area, Portland, Seattle or Brooklyn, $4 a bar dark chocolate.

I always wanted to ask my mommy friends why they wouldn't let their kids partake of our food, but I could never find a way to ask in a neutral, not-defensive, way. One day we were all at the park, Oliver was munching on hand-cut sticks of (organic, locally produced, purchased from vegetarian co-op) cheddar cheese when one of the other boys came up while my attention was diverted away from the container I was holding. When I realized the little hands having a cheese free-for-all didn't belong to Oliver, I called over to my friend, the boy's mother, and asked her if it was okay for him to have the cheese. "Oliver and I don't mind if he has some, as long as you don't mind," I said. She told her son to put the cheese back and I reiterated, "I seriously don't mind sharing. There's more here than Oliver will eat on his own." She replied, "Honestly, I don't want him to eat it because then he'll ask for it at home and I can't have cheese in the house because I love cheese and I'll eat it and next thing you know I'll have gained 10 pounds."

Incidentally, having overheard this exchange our other friend took this opportunity to chime in as well. She said, "Everyone tells me I'm a total control freak about what I will and won't let my kid have. My parents were super weird about food when I was growing up. Now as an adult I have food issues, too." I had gotten the answer to my unasked question in one fell swoop. The food drama wasn't really about me and my food. It is about them and their own experiences with food.

*********

Meanwhile, back at work... we are planning our annual holiday party, a luncheon at a popular Mediterranean restaurant. The restaurant has worked up a special menu for us consisting of all their greatest hits served family style. When my coworker sent the final menu out to our staff and queried whether we would like to also add a dessert course, it was met with a strangely reactionary, well, reaction.

That's already so much food!! Why would we need dessert as well??

As a frequenter of this particular restaurant, I think it will likely be an adequate amount of food but certainly nothing crazy. I felt like getting reactionary right back to the reactionary folks by telling them to pick the wad of panties out of their butt cracks and find something else to worry about, for fuck's sake. And, for what it's worth: YES, I would like dessert with my holiday meal, thank you very much.

It just brings home the point that everyone reacts from their own experiences with food and eating.

I miss it

I miss it: being less zaftig. I was just looking at pictures from the first month of my son's life and was shocked at the size of my body and the thinness of my face. I think that I looked better or prettier than I do now but that feels like a fucked up thing to think, and also deeply ironic given how sleep deprived and on the verge I was at that time in my life. The fact of the matter is that I shed almost 30 pounds in two weeks time because I was the most stressed out I've ever been. I largely didn't feed myself for the first month of Oliver's life. I was constantly tending to him in some way or another, and putting him down to feed myself was not an option a lot of the time, so Honey Bunny would spoon my breakfast, lunch, dinner, into my mouth for me. Nothing tasted good anyhow. I just didn't care about food.

Until... my friend Ivy sent us a box of See's Candy. She sent it to us in a bigger box which had several presents for Oliver. I saw the size and shape of the See's box amongst all the other gifts and knew what it was instantly. Ivy's homemade card, stuck to the top, read, "And a gift for the pooped parents!" I thought, Oh my god, she gets it. She gets that I'm tired. She knows what I'm going through. Thank you so so so much for understanding, Ivy! Most, if not all, of my other close friends had also expressed empathy for our newly sleepless plight but for whatever reason Ivy's message hit me in the heart. I remember putting the first piece of chocolate in my mouth and thinking that's what it must be like to come alive after having been dead. Becoming and being pregnant, giving birth, becoming a parent both physically and emotionally -- as wonderful and miraculous as it all was, as it is, it was also absolutely laden with grief. I've only realized that recently, and Oliver is almost two years old! Ivy's chocolate shocked me out of the most intense, immediate, part of the grief I was experiencing and woke a piece of me up. In that moment I remembered who I once was, before I had birthed a child: Oh yeah, I used to really enjoy food! Especially chocolate! I'm so glad to know that that part of me hasn't changed through all this...

I ate like a horse when I was pregnant, and I didn't make very healthy choices. Super burritos were actually the healthy menu item in the midst of daily Diet Cokes and bags of Cheetos. Again, Oliver is almost two years old, and I finally have the ability to reflect on that and wonder, What the hell was I thinking? I wish I had moderated my eating a bit but I also remember thinking at the time that I wasn't going to let the chance pass me by to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, with almost no lasting consequences. I would roll my eyes at other pregnant ladies who lamented about not being able to exercise as much as they did before, and I especially eye-rolled the shit out of the one who whined about how she wanted to keep her super healthy diet of daily kale and tofu but really she just wanted a quesadilla. I wanted to say to her, Really? You're pregnant and you're going to feel bad about craving a quesadilla? You can't just have one and enjoy it? What's the worst that could happen?

My thought process now is more that I needed, that I need, to consider someone other than myself. I wish I had eaten better quality food for Oliver's sake while he was cooking in the womb. I'd like to be in better shape to keep up with him as he grows and gets more and more active. I'd like to be healthier so I can hopefully add to my longevity and see Oliver grow into his 20's and 30's at least. Oliver, after all, has older parents, one of whom has gout and hypothyroidism, and was also diagnosed pre-diabetic this year. This, ironically, is the merely "overweight" parent, not his "obese" parent.

All the while I have the ghost of Weight Loss Past following me around. Six months before I conceived Oliver, when I started losing weight and was actually enjoying getting more fit with the help of my personal trainer, I remember thinking it was a slippery slope. It was all so fun and new to me but I knew that once I stopped eating a calorie-restricted diet and/or stopped doing hardcore interval training that all the magic of seeing the number on the scale gradually going down down down, and feeling my clothes become loose on my body, and hearing people's compliments on my changing figure would come to a grinding halt. It's good, of course, that the reason it DID come to a grinding halt was because I got pregnant. Switching gears from losing weight and working out to gaining weight and not doing a damn thing for fitness for eight months was just the beginning of the sustained grieving process I mentioned above. I hated that I had to switch gears but... I had to.

My post-pregnancy body story is different than most other moms I know. Most moms I know gained a lot of weight and they've had to work, sometimes quite hard, to lose it. I'm unusual in that I didn't gain a whole lot during pregnancy, lost all of it and some change within two weeks of the birth, and since then I've gained all but about five pounds of it back. Ivy's chocolates indeed breathed color into my black and white postpartum existence, but it also unleashed a monster. Chocolate started fueling my happiness. I had Honey Bunny buy a couple large bars of organic, dark, sea salted, beautiful chocolate every week at the grocery store, and it would truly take a few days to nibble through each bar. Then when I was brave enough to venture out in the neighborhood on my own, Oliver in the stroller, I started stopping at the store for a big bar of chocolate every day. Then it turned into buying a pint of organic, whole fat, luscious ice cream each day. HB and I would have a bowl after dinner and then, why not, polish off what was left in the container after putting Oliver to bed. After several months of that, Honey Bunny was diagnosed pre-diabetic. He was plain with the doctor about our daily pint habit and she agreed that's probably what did it. When it was my turn for my annual physical with blood work, I waited for the same exact diagnosis to roll in, but... no. My cholesterol was on the high end of the normal spectrum but otherwise the lab results were good. Better than before Oliver was conceived, in fact. What the fuck? (Sidenote: my poor husband!)

I've been ready for awhile to start losing weight again and have attempted to do so with the two methods that worked so well for me before. Firstly, I went back to personal training as of last May. As I'm in a different financial place in my life now, I can't afford my previous trainer and so I'm seeing her much-nicer-and-not-so-hardcore apprentice. Clearly I'm also in a different physical or emotional place now because training just isn't as fun as I remember it being. I remember feeling high when I left the gym, turning the radio up really high and singing along unabashedly with the moon roof open while I drove home, not caring who could see or hear me, and talking a mile a minute to my husband when I got home, telling him how much I loved training. These days I get in my car afterwards and I feel accomplished and happy, but I also know what awaits me at home which is generally a cranky but wired, over-tired toddler who needs a bath and to be put to bed, and his cranky, over-tired Daddy. Training before I had a kid was awesome because I could just flop on the couch afterwards to eat my take-out dinner while watching TV and joke about how sore I already felt. Training after having a kid kind of sucks because there is no flopping on the couch when I get home, there is no take-out food because we theoretically can't afford it, and if I'm already sore by the time I go to bed then my tomorrow of chasing a toddler around is FUCKED.

The other thing I've attempted to do again is track my food intake, exercise and weight on My Plate at livestrong.com, a system that was paramount to my previous success. Tracking caloric intake was an eye-opening experience when I started doing it. I marveled at how many calories certain things had (things that I often thought of as "healthy" and therefore low in calories) and how few calories other things had (things that I thought of as "bad"). I also didn't realize just how many calories I was eating in a given day, versus what I "should" be eating to simply maintain my weight, until I started tracking them. It was like when eight year old me discovered Pac Man... I was hooked, and I wanted to win the game. I started eating within my caloric limit for the new goal of losing 0.5 pound per week. I remember thinking that it wasn't even hard to eat less because I was having fun trying to meet the challenge, trying to win the game. I lost more in the neighborhood of 1 pound per week which was inexplicable in the numbers game. Afterall, if anything, I could have been accused of obsessively over-tracking everything I ate, sometimes including crumbs. I'd log green tea, Diet Coke and sugarless gum despite the fact that there's not a calorie to be found among them. Again, allllll of that was fun to do when the hardest thing about my day was making sure my cats got their dinner by 7pm. Now that I have a kid, I find that I just, well, don't give a shit. I've got much bigger fish to fry than tracking that I just finished off the remainder of Oliver's string cheese when he was about to throw it out of the stroller onto the sidewalk. There's no way I can remember the name of the cereal I ate this morning because half the time I can't even remember that I HAD a bowl of cereal this morning. Life is different now and if I'm gonna go back to My Plate, it's going to require a Herculean effort to move it up the priority list.

In full disclosure, I also have abandoned my latest attempts at My Plate because I'm a sore loser. I don't like not winning at games. At some point, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to track what I ate just to see what I was eating and how many calories it was. "No judgement!" Yeah, right. If I'm 200 calories over what I'm "supposed" to be eating for the day, and dinner is still three hours away... I'm FUCKED.

So, where do I go from here? Most, if not all, of my life circumstances have changed. The things that made me successful - namely, resources and motivation - aren't working as they did before. Obviously I'm going to have to reexamine the plan to get from point A to point B, and that plan is going to have to include a LOT of flexibility. I hope to talk about it more, blog about it more, as I find my way because I know that helped to keep me both accountable and checked in my previous success.

On a last note, I realize that talking about weight loss, calorie restriction, etc, is verboten among those who identify as anti-fat bias. I realize that even embarking on a weight loss goal is a contradiction when, above all, what I truly want is to be around as long as I can for Oliver and that that can be achieved by simply putting effort into daily exercise and eating good things for the body. All I can say to that is, oh well. I'm a contradiction. I'm human and vain and, in addition to losing weight to theoretically help with overall health and longevity, I want to lose weight because it was fun and novel to watch my body get smaller and the pool of clothes and shoe possibilities get bigger. I also want to lose weight because I think my body felt better that way, or at least by virtue of getting more movement and/or less food than it currently gets. Not that I have much of a readership (thank you for reading, Shasta!) but in case anyone from the anti-bias community ends up here... my apologies if you're offended, if you think I'm the worst hypocrite you've ever laid eyes on, so on and so forth. Truly, best of wishes to you and your anti-bias work. (And no need to visit my site again, unless you've chosen to root for me.)

Fat-calling

I've had a few instances of what I call "fat-calling" in the past couple weeks. Fat-calling is like cat-calling only instead of being degraded for your mere hotness, you're being degraded because of being fat (and, presumably, ugly). Fat-calling always seems to be cyclical in my life. I can go for quite awhile without hearing so much as a peep and then all of a sudden the fat-calls pour in.

The last one, the most notable of them all, was last week as I was leaving work. I was dragging myself down the sidewalk in uncomfortable shoes, in uncomfortable clothes, after a very long day of sitting in front of a computer screen. I remember my back and hips feeling achy from sitting for so long. I remember thinking I was going to throw away my tired, scuffed up, too-stretched-out shoes when I got home (and I did). I remember thinking I hated what I was wearing, that I was going to put my ugly top in the Goodwill box when I got home (and I did). I was feeling ultra pissy because I couldn't believe I spent $60 on jeans that looked great in the mirror when I put them on at 7am but then stretched like bubble gum throughout the day, ending up looking like a baggy, shapeless, fucked up mess on my legs by 5pm.

And then, I spotted them: two guys in their mid-twenties standing on a balcony overlooking the street, where a minor car accident had just happened. They were watching the accident, I guessed, but I had a feeling they were going to fat-call when I walked by on the street below them.

(whisper whisper) (snickering)
Guy 1: Hey, gorgeous!
Guy 2: Owwww!
(more snickering) (sound of high five)

I chose not to say anything in return because that's technically the best defense in these situations. I've learned that if you say something back, it better be a bullseye or else you face even worse, more vicious fat-calling. Expect excessive snickering and high-fiving if you choose only to flip off, because they know they got to you. I guess that's the point of fat-calling... to get to you.

I got in my car afterwards and was stewing about it on the drive home. All of a sudden, I picture myself on the sidewalk again... "Hey, gorgeous!" I turn around and with a crazy, cartoonish happy look on my face I say, with a crazy, cartoonish and quite loud Elle Woods affect: "Oh my god, I think you're super cute too! I love the 50 extra pounds around your middle, sir, but most of all I love your friend's limp-dick ponytail! Have a nice night, byeeeeee!"

Only, I'd actually said (semi-yelled) this aloud in my car, with the moon roof open, at a stop light with many other cars and bicyclists and pedestrians too, while I was having my revenge ideation. Phew, embarrassing. And yes, I had totally profiled those dudes standing on the balcony as I was approaching them, having the gut feeling they would say something to me. I saw paunchy, stout Guy 1 standing there with a baseball cap backwards on his head (there is no surer sign of a fat-caller than the backwards baseball cap, trust me) and I saw tall Guy 2 with a long, scraggly ponytail next to him. They were no prizes themselves. They were also, I will admit, men of color.

I've been thinking over the past couple days about my potential bullseye response. Would I have been "brave" enough to actually deliver that retort with the volume and attitude required? In the vein of Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right, is it wrong to make fun of a fat-caller's fat when that's the very crime he has perpetrated on you?

I've also been thinking about how it felt to be fat-called in that particular situation. As opposed to the other calling I've gotten recently which have been variations on a theme (such as the "Oww!!" yelled from a moving car as I stand waiting on the edge of the crosswalk), this one rocked my world. It's the first time I've ever thought to myself afterwards, "Oh my god, I'm ugly." I actually think that's the normal, generalized feeling I always have after being fat-called, but I've never articulated it further and stayed with it. Naturally, I've always tried to push that thought away because it's so uncomfortable, so punishing.

I actually think in some ways that it was a good thought to stay with and feel. If you're always pushing away the uncomfortable feelings without further articulating why they are a problem for you, then it's an unresolved cycle. I'd honestly never thought through what it might mean to me to be "ugly". Fat is something I can live because I've more or less come to peace with it. Ugly is somehow far more damning than fat. Ugly is something you were born into, something you probably can't change much, and something that belies what's on the inside of you, what's in your soul.

And what a load of bullshit that is, huh? I needed to challenge my bias around "ugly" to realize how loaded that word, that notion, is. It's like what my old friend Teresa used to say about the word "weird":

Don't just call something "weird", because "weird" doesn't mean anything. "Weird" means a million things at once and yet nothing at all. Worse, "weird" is a derisive term people use to describe things they don't understand or relate to. It's the laziest word you could ever choose to use.

"Ugly" (and it's opposite, "pretty") is subjective. It's also something that gets thrown around a lot where fat people are concerned, which is a problem for me. Whether I'm ugly or not, especially to two random strangers, is here nor there in the grand scheme of things. I'm not ugly on the inside which is the most important thing of all. Those two young men saying that I'm ugly... that's pretty darn ugly, if you ask me. It's really fucked up to consciously set out to make someone feel as low as I felt in that moment and in its ensuing wake. That has always weighed heavily on my mind, having been bullied to the point of severe depression as a young person, and weighs all the more heavy on my mind now that I'm raising a child.

Outspoken and radical

Six months ago I joined a Health At Every Size (HAES) group on Facebook, and just now left it. I decided I can no longer stand the way the moderator or group members jump down the throats of any members that post "diet-y" stuff, or stuff that could be considered a "trigger". Really, I felt like, as a member, I needed to exist quietly in a nice, neat box labeled "fat is right, never question it".

To me, fat can be right but it's not always right and it's not always wrong, either. There exist many shades of grey where fat is concerned. Those with a BMI over 30 are considered obese, regardless of current state of health or family histories. I believe those things should help guide our decision making when we're fat because not everyone who is considered fat, overweight and/or obese is "unhealthy", and not everyone who has a BMI under 30 is "healthy". Sometimes thin people think they are fat. Sometimes fat people think they're fatter than they really are. Sometimes fat people genuinely like the way they look. Sometimes they decide that, after looking at factual evidence AND/OR guided by intuition, their risk for disease is too high and they want to exercise or lose weight to help mitigate the risk. Sometimes thin people do this too.

The point is that everyone gets to decide for themselves in a culture where "deciding for yourself" isn't tolerated if your outsides are perceived as fat. I thought the point of anti-bias work and HAES was to challenge and confront bias that exists on a larger scale, not to berate individuals who actually self-identify as anti-bias supporters. The latter, to me, represents the worst of "group": a membership that makes outspoken and radical response the norm without an ounce of restraint or reflection, without any wiggle room for being challenged.

And, yes, as usual I'm being hyperbolic but you see... "group" is a trigger for me.

I left the group with a Wall post saying that the moderator might consider a more neutral approach than threatening expulsion in response to a member's "too diet-y" or "trigger inducing" posts, and also might consider listing posting guidelines and group norms in the "About Us" section. I also said that I chose to leave voluntarily because the group is more outspoken and radical about issues of fat than I'm personally comfortable with, and that I wished everyone the best. The moderator responded almost immediately with, "Oh really?"

And that is that. I'm glad to have moved on.

On the precipice

Last weekend I had an epiphany about how fat can be treated in our culture. Granted, this is largely biased by my own experiences and propelled by my own fears.

It's like you're standing on the precipice, and with each bite of (bad) food you're inching closer... and closer... and closer to falling off the edge into death's waiting arms.

I was reflecting on some recent conversations I've had with my friend S about being fat (we both are), and remembering an unpleasant moment I had with my mother in law in regards to green coffee extract ("I'd like to buy some for you! I saw it on Dr. Oz! It's supposed to be a miracle!"), and also thinking about my sister who died almost 10 years ago due to fat-related health issues (go ahead and call it "obesity" if you must, now that it's an official diagnosis). I wondered in my head: What, truly, is the fuss over fat people?

No doubt I've posted about this before (and am too lazy to find when I did in order to link back to it!) so I won't go on and on about it again. In a nutshell, I think that fat represents something that people don't like to look at because it reminds them of what they could be or what they have been, or it reminds them of a loved one who is fat and struggling and they wish they could save the person (but they can't). It's a little bit like the concepts of cognitive dissonance and subtle contempt that are part of anti-racism theory.

In my life I've had a lot of exposure to people who are on drugs, and to clarify I'm speaking of drugs that are considered "heavier" than alcohol and marijuana. In instances where the person on drugs was a close friend, I would feel sickened by seeing my friend high and I would almost always remove myself from watching him or her use because that was even worse. Those were times when I would sadly think, "this person is on the precipice."

I have a hard time seeing others apply that to a fat person they don't know and his/her perceived eating or health choices. A few months ago I eavesdropped on a conversation between a not-fat couple who we were seated next to in a restaurant, in which they were looking at a very fat man across the restaurant eat his burger dinner. "That is so sad. He obviously needs help," said Person A. Person B replied, "Totally. He should have ordered a salad instead of that burger. He's a heart attack waiting to happen." That's about the time I asked Honey Bunny if we could please re-seat ourselves elsewhere.

The existence of Overeaters Anonymous is also a hard one for me. On one hand, I don't understand how food can be considered an addiction when, unlike alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling and shopping, it's necessary to eat on a daily basis for survival. On the other hand, whether or not a person is considered an "addict" can sometimes be very subjective although thankfully there are documented objective characteristics of addiction, care of the American Psychological Association. There are many shades to an addiction and what constitutes an addict vs. addictive behaviors, in my opinion.

ALL of this has been rolling around in my brain lately because, unfortunately, I feel like I'm on the precipice. I'm not the type of person who openly flirts with death so I consider this more of a warning precipice. Just today I entertained the notion of going to an OA meeting, which, given what I said above about that group, should give you an indication of where my head is at. It's a good thing this article landed in my lap courtesy of a Facebook friend, for a little perspective.

I hesitate to say that what I'm going through is a "problem" because I don't want to provide more fodder for our biased culture. So instead I'll say that I'm finding my behaviors of late - eating things that do not nourish me, eating too much, not making physical activity a priority - a problem for me. For the past couple months I've been chasing a ghost of my past: the physical activity gain and my weight loss successes from before I got pregnant (much documented on this blog in latter 2010 and early 2011). As none of the strategies that worked at that time are working currently, it's time to give up the chase and find something new, to find something that will work for me now. I'm not okay with being on the precipice but I'm also not okay with, as the saying goes, trading seats on the Titanic. I don't want to become consumed with trying to lose weight in the same way that I'm currently consumed by my desire for copious amounts of food and sugar. I don't want to feel like I can never relax or have time off from being physically active in the same way that I'm currently adverse to engaging in anything active. I want to remember that food is not the enemy and that being physical enlivens me, and not feel like I have to change just because I'm standing on a precipice. But, getting there... I'll probably have to walk through all of it, bad and good, thick and thin, before any sort of balance is attained. That's just me.

And my last parting shots are thus:
I refuse to hate myself for awakening to find myself on the precipice.
I refuse to hate myself because I love food.
I refuse to hate myself for my clothes fitting tight.
And I especially refuse to hate myself because other people, whether well-meaning or full of judgement, think that I should just because I'm fat.

Zaftig Chick's Guide to Child

Yesterday I talked with some coworkers about the fat part of my life. Other than the profanity peppered language and end of the day blogging I try to keep things somewhat professional and private at work, so after many years I finally came out of the fat "activism" closet. I explained the concept of Healthy At Every Size (HAES), that about 10 years ago I started subscribing to the notion that a fat you might be able to do pretty much anything any-skinny-one else can do. You know, things like snowboarding, or wearing nice clothes, or falling in love, or even having a baby.

I did, in fact, have a baby... a lovely one! He's 10 months old now, super cute and sometimes super devilish, too. We're over the fat hump for the foreseeable future (I think?) but there were some dicey moments where fat did play a part in something I wanted to do but wasn't able or as able to do. Based solely on my own experience, here are some things to keep in mind if you're fat and wanting to have a kid.

Firstly, if you're fat and want to have a baby, unless there is actual, medical, factual data stating that having a baby would put you and/or the baby at risk: go for it. You should have that experience in life if you want it and your body is up for it. There might be days when naysayers lurk around every corner, whether it be a well-meaning friend or a snarky relative with the letters "MD" behind his name (who doesn't know your personal medical history)(ahem!).

On a related note, be prepared to deal with the reply of "...really?" and it's accompanying befuddled facial expression when someone asks if you have gestational diabetes and you answer, "no." There is no link between being fat and having gestational diabetes. It affects women across the board and has to do with the way the placenta and hormones develop. If you are one of the ladies who ends up developing gestational diabetes, it probably sucks big time to curtail your cravings but pregnancy is (thankfully) a temporary condition and (really, thankfully) generally GD is as well.

Here is some good news! Motherhood Maternity has super cute plus size clothes and they don't break the bank. Sure, they're cheaply made but worry not... by the time you wear 'em out, you don't need them anymore. This was news to me but you do continue to wear maternity clothing for a good several months after the baby is born. Bonus points goes to MM because of their gigantic neckholes; if you choose to breastfeed, you can whip your shirt down to expose just one teet rather than pulling the shirt up to expose your entire midsection. (In the meantime, invest in some Fashion Tape.)

Here's more good news: generally us zaftig ladies gain less weight during pregnancy than our thinner counterparts. Personally I only gained 25 lbs which was almost exactly what I had lost leading up to my pregnancy. I didn't have to even wear maternity clothing until I was almost seven months along. Most people didn't even know I was pregnant. Judging by the shocked and extremely confused expression on the face of Jadice, the tiny Vietnamese woman who does my mani-pedis, when I told her I was just two months away from having a baby I wondered if she thought my baby was being born via surrogate and I was just getting fatter.

And one last piece of good news... losing the baby weight is, again, generally, easier for us plus sized gals than it is for others. That's anecdotal evidence from myself and just a couple other ample moms I've met. In fact, my situation may have been extreme for a variety of circumstances but I lost 25+ lbs within three weeks of giving birth. If you choose to breastfeed, the amount of calories you need to eat on a daily basis to sustain it is mind-boggling. I actually referred to eating that much as a "burden" in those first few weeks after the baby was born. (Eating IS a burden if you have to choose between it and sleep. Sleep wins when you have a newborn. Food is "whatever". Trust me on this one.)

Now for the not great news. I entered parenthood thinking I would be a co-sleeping, sling-wearing, breastfeeding fool of an Attachment Parent. Unfortunately, fat can (and did, in my case) interfere with all three of those things. It's not advised that you co-sleep in the same bed if you and/or your partner are considered overweight, and it's downright verboten if you and/or your partner are considered "obese". As I am the latter, co-sleeping didn't work for our family. We opted instead for a co-sleeper attachment to the bed... a little crib thing that fastens to the side of the bed so that you're sleeping separately but in close proximity. I did co-sleep with my baby for a few naps but it wasn't super restful since I was always paranoid that my fat was going to smother him or that I'd roll over onto him and kill him with my girth. Ugh.

Sling-wearing was an interesting one. Baby hated the sling (we tried three different brands/styles) so we opted for a carrier instead, the only one that has enough belt length for a fat person to actually wear it: the Beco Gemini. Attachment folks always advocate for the Ergo carrier, which is legitimately more snuggly looking but doesn't allow for baby to front-face (a necessity with our little critter), and maybe will fit size 16 hips on a good day. There is the option of a belt extender, "at least they offer that," I say as I roll my eyes. Now, the truth of the matter is that although my Beco allows me to suit up for carrying baby, it doesn't quite sit right on me. I have a thin mommy friend who wears hers and it looks... different. It's a better fit for both her and the baby, it looks more stable and more comfortable. And lastly, the Beco allows me to wear the baby on my back too which is great in theory and doesn't actually work in reality. Baby's legs have to be splayed so far apart to fit around my midsection that it looks like his hips are going to break. It works better on Honey Bunny because he's narrower and baby's legs can wrap slightly around. Ugh.

Breastfeeding, oh breastfeeding. I thought it would be easy and natural, as most women do. It was, in fact, kind of a nightmare. I'll spare the details but my enormous jugs were too big for the baby to fit his mouth around and so I struggled with fun things like "bad latch" and the ensuing "low milk supply". In the end we settled on doing something not many women are insane enough to keep up for eight months which is breastfeeding first (using a nipple shield since we could never establish a good latch) then supplementing with formula to make up the difference (since my supply never went up due to bad latch). It was important to me to breastfeed so I did what I could for as long as possible, but the whole thing was a trying ordeal... an ordeal that very few of my thinner friends endured. Ugh.

Sidenote: breastfeeding in public when you're fat is a completely bizarre experience. Most people can't help but glance at someone who is breastfeeding because it's not the most common thing to see in our culture, but I do think the ante is upped when you're fat and have big boobs. Some people can't help but stare. You pretty much have to adopt the I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude when you do it, or, like in my case, run to the car or even go home to breastfeed because it's just too, too much to expose yourself in that way.

I also want to say that the general experience of giving birth as a fat person in a medical setting was not the most comfortable thing in the world. I don't know anyone who is super great with having hands up the hoo-haw checking cervical thinness and openness, and how far the baby has dropped into your pelvis, and blah blah blah, but personally I couldn't help but think, "oh, here we go... another medical professional gets to see my body in all its glory!" Many folks, including my zaftig doula, told me that I'd be in so much pain/focus/elation/whatever that I wouldn't care, and maybe that's true of most people. But I did care. I cared most of all when the anesthesiologist in the operating room loudly declared he wasn't going to help move a numbed out pre-cesarean me from the gurney to the operating table because he didn't want to break his back. (Scott Disick isn't the only Douche Lord out there.) My beautiful boy was born within 20 minutes of that so, yes, elation took over and I moved on from feeling like a beached whale pretty quickly.

That's it for now! Hopefully I'll get to posting a tad more often now that I'm on the other side of pregnancy.

UGH!

Shit like this makes my blood boil, and it's not just because I'm almost nine months pregnant.

5 Bizarre Weight Loss Tricks That Work

As I stated in the comments section, this is a heap of crap touting disordered eating. I hate Shine in general but somehow this seems like a new (even more manipulative) low for them.

Irony II: Electric Boogaloo

Here's some irony: the day after I wrote the last posting I found out I was pregnant. Zing! It's been a little crazy up in here, in this head, since then.

Honey Bunny and I have been "trying" since January 2009 to have a kid. I think I have to somewhat credit losing weight and getting more fit for becoming pregnant. I did make a couple other life changes in the same basic span of time that I decided to lose weight and I'm sure those had something to do with it, too. I'm saying all this with much hesitation because I don't want to come off as a dieting apologist.

I've had the requisite food aversion and nausea like most women get and it's taught me a few things. Namely, that some of the food I was eating to lose weight doesn't really deserve the title of "food". That was a hard one to swallow (har har!) after so many devoted months of thinking what I was doing was right and sound. After the baby is hatched and I'm ready to again lose some weight, I'll have to remember that.

Also, did you know that physical exertion can cause nausea if you're prone to it? I'm not a barfer under normal circumstances so I didn't know. All the exercise habits I had established are out the window. I would sooner chew my own arm off than go to personal training right now. In fact, I made the decision to put PT on the shelf until all is said and done. It makes no sense to spend money on working out hard because, well, I can't work out hard at the present time. Bah.

Overall being pregnant has put a giant kink in my body image that I didn't quite expect. I was more focused on (obsessed with?) losing weight than I gave myself credit for, as it felt like ceasing equaled death. My doctor said I could continue to track my food intake and weight, and that she wanted me for sure to continue exercising, but that I shouldn't be trying to lose weight at this time. It took me all of a day to stop consistently tracking my food, and in a month's time I've fallen completely off the wagon. I still do track my weight every other day for peace of mind and Dr. reporting purposes. Like I said above, exercising has slowed to a crawl. All of it makes me feel like a big, fat failure. Logically I know that it's not a failure but instead an adjustment to a huge life change in progress. Some charitable folks have even said it's important self care to have stepped away from the focus of losing weight. Emotionally, however, I feel like I'm letting myself down.

Not helping the cause is pressure from a couple of sources in my life about needing to exercise or else. The last time I went to visit my doctor, who I love in all ways but this, she read me about needing to exercise in order to have a healthy pregnancy. On one hand, I buy it hook, line and sinker. I've heard over and over how staying active really does help your body cope with added weight and especially with the act of child birth. Who doesn't want that? On the other hand, I can't help but feel there was bias present in her lecture. Women of all shapes and sizes and cultures have healthy babies every day regardless of how much they exercised during their pregnancies. It's not the only factor in a healthy pregnancy, and I have to wonder if my doctor was stressing the importance of it because I'm fat. If it was my vitals or blood test results that added fuel to the fire, or was the fuel to begin with, I wish she would have shared that information.

I really thought I was going to be immune to all the body image stuff as it relates to pregnancy. I always hated hearing from otherwise thin women "how fat they are" when they're in actuality eight months pregnant. Now I somewhat get it. The changes that happen to your body feel extreme, especially when you've worked to make your body be a certain way. Practically every single day my husband tells me how proud he is to see my body changing because I'm carrying our baby and I have to take a really, really deep breath and try not to FREAK THE FUCK OUT. And, I can't even accept that that's where my head is at right now. I feel shame because I "should" be taking it all in stride, right? I "should" be enjoying this temporary rite-of-passage change, right?

One of the first things I jumped to for solace when I realized everything had to change (the food, the exercise, the body) was the idea of taking the baby weight off afterwards. I had visions of walking the baby around briskly in a stroller or pack every day, getting my exercise. I had visions of once again working out hard in personal training. I had visions of my body changing shape, being even 'better' than it was before I got pregnant. I've thankfully chilled out on this point over the past month, especially as I've told this fantasy to friends who are mothers and they just laugh. "There's really not a lot of time to do anything other than care for your baby in the first couple months, so you'll have to see if that's viable for you." Oh.

I'm happy to be carrying and having a child, but it's a complicated matter for the body (and mind) on a number of levels! If you care to follow me at my other blog, In the Company of Baby, I'll mostly be posting over there for the next nine or so months.

Irony?

Upon finishing the last of many, many pieces of birthday cake I've enjoyed over the past week, I realized something. I love, enjoy and appreciate food even more now that I'm moderating my intake of it. Then I thought, "Huh, that's ironic," but now I'm wondering if it is. I mean, it IS ironic given how very much we demonize food and worship dieting in our culture. (Dieting often seems like the most direct route to hating food.) On the other hand, to say it's normal is to play into the notion that dieting gives you total clarity about food and eating. (The truth is that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.)

Ah, food and fat politics... it's the metaphorical worm eating it's tail, no pun or irony intended.

To call what I'm doing "dieting" is a gross overstatement, thankfully. This week I elected to chow the fuck down for my birthday, and I have some added poundage to show for it. It didn't upset me to see the number on the scale go up and up and up a little bit each day because eating a boatload of super yummy Indian food on my birthday and then a big plateful of Mexican cheesiness and naughty ballpark food over the weekend, not to mention plus or minus seven pieces of various birthday cakeage in seven days time, gave me profound joy. I can also trust that the number will go back down once I reinstate moderation and put in a little effort. No need to panic or start hating myself because I indulged and was able to see a direct consequence to my weight because of it. (FYI, there have been plenty of times over the past five months when I have panicked about the number on the scale. The benefit of experience and perspective is, as always, most beneficial.)

Speaking of numbers on a scale, when I returned from vacation at my parents house (as mentioned in the previous post) I was finally able to weigh in and found myself almost 23 lbs down from my starting point last November. Shiver me timbers, it freaked me out and blew my mind. I actually ended up having an anxiety attack partially because of it. Too much change at once doesn't work well for me, and I will always worry that the change isn't sustainable if it happens quickly.

On a related note, up until that point I didn't have too much awareness of how differently my clothes were fitting. It wasn't a day later that I put a favorite shirt on, looked in the mirror and thought, "WHAT is the deal with this shirt?" It was like the universe turned upside down and I had no idea what I was even looking at. As I have so many times in the past I wanted to blame it on the laundry process, that surely something somewhere got fucked up and my shirt was washed in the wrong temperature or was put in the dryer when it's meant to be line dried, so on and so forth. But, no. It's just too big on my body now to be flattering in any way. This pisses me off on a number of levels, the least of which is the amount of dough I dropped on that particular shirt, thinking it would be a solid investment and would reside in my closet for many years looking spiffy and cute. Moreso it irks me because I have to work (play) hard to even find things that I think look spiffy and cute on me, and, well, another one bites the dust.

And another one gone,
And another one gone,
Another one bites the dust!

I never in a million years thought I'd be complaining about my clothes being too loose or having to go shopping for stuff in a smaller size. The thing is, I don't want to be blowing money on interim sizes if I keep losing weight so I'm holding out until it's no longer fathomable for me to wear what I currently have in my closet. Also, the vain part of me wants to really and truly experience what it's like to walk into a clothing store and get the smaller size. Right now I'm kinda-sorta-mostly into a size smaller and it's irksome to try to fit things correctly. I have a feeling, however, that I'll always walk into a store and struggle to fit into clothes correctly, whether they be too big or too small. Given that part of the reason I want to lose weight is have greater access to cute clothing, that is irony on a stick.

Crabalicious

There's no denying I'm having a full-on crabby attack this evening. It's been an accumulation over the last few days from being out of my element, feeling misunderstood and trying to regulate my eating and exercise in an environment where it's difficult to keep my head above water. Visiting family and being "home" in Southern California for an extended period of time... it's not for the faint of heart.

I remember the moment I knew I was fat, or more precisely, that fat was a Problem. I was all of 10 years old and the biggest fad of them all was Jordache jeans. The popular chicks at school had 'em and there were endless ads in my sisters' Sixteen magazines for 'em. Thus, I WANTED 'EM. NOW. I thought the biggest hurdle would be talking my parents into spending the money on them, my parents being, respectively, a SAHM and a music teacher with a penchant for being hella cheap no matter what the annual household income ever was or is. But, nope. The true problem was that they didn't make Jordache jeans in my size. That was a really shitty day at the mall in 1982, let me tell you. There was no turning back. (And here we sit today... me writing and you reading about big, fat issues.)

You know those times when you learn about something that apparently everyone else has been talking about rabidly, and then all of a sudden that thing is everywhere you turn? Just happened to me a couple days ago at Starbucks in Kettleman City off I-5... Cake Pops. (Who the fuck knew about cake pops and mini desserts? Not me!) That day and the ensuing ones in 1982, I learned that you need and want to be thin - for myriad reasons other than just impressing your peers with Jordache ownership - and everywhere you turn that message is up in your grill.

Aside from the proliferation of french manicures, orange spray tans, Uggs, strip malls and pinner burritos, this is my main problem with Southern California. The second my ass hits the 210 from the 5, every other billboard you see touts the Lap Band or some other crazy weight loss surgery. Not that people in Nor Cal are necessarily any more gracious about fat folk but at least there I don't get packs of frat boys overtly mocking my appearance and size. The worst part of it for me is the irony of it all. People drive everywhere here, you can't fling a tennis ball without hitting a fast food restaurant and damned if I've seen anyone exercising in the several parks I've been to over the past few days. Bah!

On Sunday morning I was reading the Press Enterprise over my breakfast and came across this article. It's remarkably restrained and objective for such a conservative newspaper and one residing in So Cal, so I'll give it props for that. Otherwise, I'd like to slap everyone interviewed within.

1) Oh, you won a lame "Biggest Loser" knock-off contest by losing 68 pounds in 16 weeks, which averages out to approximately 1.5 lbs lost per day, and then accidentally gained all the weight back after the contest? Wow, that is SO shocking. Thanks for giving the general public more fodder for the fat stereotype fire, dude!

2) As for the Beaver Medical Clinic, they can go fuck themselves and their stupid, manipulative contest to engage desperate people wanting quick weight loss and free money. When businesses and "free money" are involved, don't fool yourself... it always comes down to gaining more customers.

3) And yes, let us not forget the "rising cost of obesity". How about all the supposedly well meaning health professionals and researchers, lobbyists and insurance companies (and hey, Michelle Obama even) target patients for the rising cost of treating their cancer and see how far they get before they offend the shit out of pretty much everyone. Obesity is an umbrella term encompassing the potential for a set of diseases. Not everyone who's fat - oh, excuse me, OBESE - has high blood pressure and high cholestorol and is one cheese burger away from dying of a heart attack. Thin people sometimes have just as many genetic, habitual and/or environmental risk factors, and they don't have the pleasure of being called "obese" because their BMI is under 25.

The rising cost thing is what wrankles me the most when I hear about the epidemic and problem of obesity. No lie, fat people DO need to exercise more or start exercising to begin with, and/or they do need to make better choices about types of food and portion size. Most of all, fat folk need to be aware of their own risk factors, whatever they may be and try to offset those factors if they can and want to. After that, I'm not sure that us fat people bear any more responsibility than anyone else to make sure we're not burdening the collective kitty, or our employers or insurance companies with our health care costs. It always comes down to money in a capitalist system. I'm not a person... I'm a goddamn potential waste of dollars to those in power and those who hold the purse strings. That's what really is cared about in this scenario and to quote one of my fine coworkers: it pisses the shit out of me.

When it comes down to it, we all are humans. We're faulty and foolish. We court death and we cheat death every single day. We love some and we hate others. Sometimes we condone unnatural behaviors while condemning natural ones. We're breathing, walking ironies most of the time as much as we don't want to be. It's just how life is, I suppose.

As for myself, I'm really struggling with my weight loss attempt at present. I was lamenting to Honey Bunny the other day that, "I'm stuck at only 15 lbs lost." He replied, "Don't you mean to say that you're proud of yourself for having lost 15 lbs, which is quite an accomplishment?" Nothing like a little perspective; I love that man.

I'm in So Cal for a week with my family, with the associated many, many foodly temptations therein, and without a scale in which to check myself daily. I'm good with 15 lbs as long as I maintain it because, at the risk of sounding like a fat hating clone, there is nothing worse in weight loss than having to lose the same 5 lbs over and over and over again. For me it's more like the same 3-4 lbs but still. It's freakin' irritating and frustrating as sin to have come this far and to feel like I'm barely maintaining not only my weight but the headspace that got me here to begin with.

Let me just get this last thing off my chest, like so many other things. Earlier this evening I rooted around in both bathrooms and all four bedrooms of this house I grew up in for a scale, like a junkie looking for a hit of heroin. Somehow, some way, I need to be checked - and I'm not talking about the act of checking my weight on a scale. Trusting that I'm going to do that for myself (ie. the only person that can rightfully, genuinely and effectively check me) in due time, at the right time, scares the crap out of me. It will happen and I will get there, though. Patience.

Braggadocia: The Good, the Bad and the Supposedly Ugly

Forgive me, readers, for at this moment I am highly annoyed with a Friend who has lost more than half of her starting weight over the past year and loves to talk about it on Facebook. I've been irritated with her for the past six months actually, as she's started posting about it more and more, culminating in today's crowning (er, crowing) glory about how great her ass looks in the smallest pant size she's ever bought. In theory, at least, I want to be happy for this friend for what seems to have been a big accomplishment in her life, so on and so forth. In reality, I get sozzled every single time I read her posts.

For starters, the last time I checked it was considered a bit gauche to brag. Saying you're proud of yourself for losing weight is one thing and saying how awesome your tush looks in the wee pants you just bought is quite another.

As I'm wont to do, I soul-searched a little about why else this friend's very public updates about her weight loss bug me. As someone who is also striving to lose weight, and purposefully doing so very quietly, it makes me uncomfortable. Moreso, as someone who believes in fat acceptance it pisses me off. When formerly-fat folks are so completely happy about not being "fat" anymore it just feeds into our culture's infinite fat-hating loop.

Let me just state again, this time in much more vague terms, that being happy that you met your goal of losing X amount of pounds is one thing while being happy that you're no longer "fat" - and therefore ugly, not worthy of true love, worthless and all the other things the fat-hating loop tells us is wrong about being fat - is quite another.

(Yes, I know that it didn't sound like my Friend stated or insinuated any of this in her post... it is my personal experiences with her that lay the foundation for this rant.)

This, of course, is a battle for me that will never be won. I can wish and pray and hope and blog and talk all I want about the fat-hating loop needing to change or stop, but it won't. It's infinite and it's powerful. It might even have had roots in the well-meaning at some point, which is a truth and fact that even I, as a fat person, acknowledge: that we need to strive for overall health, both physical or mental.

Sidenote: if you hate yourself for the way you look, your mental health probably needs to be looked at (eg. by a therapist). It's maybe normal, or at least normative in this culture, especially for women, to hate the way you look sometimes or for certain periods of your life... but to hate yourself for what you are? Or in the case of those who have lost weight - hate yourself for what you were? It might be normal but in my opinion, no way to live your life.

**********
So, um, speaking of bragging. As of today, I'm down 13 lbs from my mid-November start. It's an odd number in that I honestly never thought I'd make it past the original goal of ten. It's been fucking with my head a little, to be honest. I put on my jeans every morning and definitely notice that they are looser (which is nice because at the height of my weight it was Camel Toe City) but they are not so loose as to necessitate buying a size smaller. That will be a weird day when it comes, trust. This was completely the point of doing slow and quiet loss, though - that my mind needs time to catch up with body reality. I don't do change and transition easily and it's often crossed my mind that I'm even losing TOO fast. My goal was 1/2 lb a week and I'm averaging at just over a pound a week. However, I hold steadfastly to my thought about this entire process: it has to be doable in the moment and sustainable for the long term. I think I'm good to go.

Speaking of doable and sustainable -- can I just tell you how much glee I feel when I hear dieters around me say, "I really shouldn't" to a tasty treat that has been proferred? I want to shout outloud, "Well, I WILL!" As I'm dedicated to being quiet and self-oriented with this process, I don't actually shout that, but I do take said tasty treat and put it in my piehole. "Dieting" isn't worth not having treats, in my opinion. I know I'm a broken record on this one so I'll leave it at that.

Or not. Earlier today, the guy who resides a few cubes down - He Who Is On A Perpetual Diet - ate his requisite microwaved Lean Cuisine for lunch and then complained to his cube mate that, "that sure was not a lot of food for 250 calories." Um, ya think? 250 calories is a pittance for lunch and god forbid he pick up a piece of fruit to supplement it but oh right, I forgot... fruit has carbs. It's exactly when I get a self-satisfied grin on my face and think, "Too bad for you, dude. For lunch I just had homemade mashed potatoes, sauteed green beans and tofu, the biggest and most gorgeous Cara Cara orange you've ever laid eyes on, AND I'mma have a chocolate soy pudding cup for an afternoon treat. Suck on those 550 calories."

Have I drank the weight loss Koolaid?

This is the question I grapple with the most lately. I still have the same aversion to seeing Yahoo! News ("news") postings about The Biggest Loser and it's latest round of winners (er, losers?). Although, if I'm being honest, a perverse part of me always wants to look at the before and after pictures, much the same way I'll be at the salon and flip through the "I've Kept It Off For a Year!" issue of People while my hair cooks.

After reading the offending post in Two Whole Cakes last week, I felt so incensed by what felt like judgement towards those formerly/fat people who diet in the same way judgement gets thrown at fatties for NOT dieting. Must we turn on eachother? Can't we all just get along?

I was always one of those people who judged those who diet... maybe not in any sort of hard core outwardly-judgey way, but definitely in the sense that I'd think a disapproving "Mmmm-hmmm, whatever" in my head when dealing with the offending dieters talking about their diets. Balance in everything, though, and I still feel that big "whatever" when dieters can only seem to talk about how they're perpetually dieting and how many calories that chocolate bar has and how they "need to lose ten pounds in a week before the trip to France because all those women over there are so super-duper tiny!" (The latter is something directly from a coworker's mouth just last week, causing many internal eyerolls in the moment and, well, since.) The only difference now is that I can slightly relate to it. I'm 33 days into calorie-tracking and the novelty of how many calories refried beans have and how many calories circuit training burns has thankfully worn off a bit.

I woke up this morning and thought again about the TWC piece, albeit in much less indignant fashion. What struck me today was that the blogger even chose to rebuttal to that particular article. Granted, I only read what TWC quoted and most of the first page of the actual piece, but I kept thinking, Why would you choose to tear a person down who published something extremely vulnerable about having been fat? It just seems a bit cold.

Of course, I just read page two of the article and had to stop because the eye rolling began. It's not as pro-fat as I thought. I could see how it's perfect fodder for TWC, although I still don't agree with the snarky way TWC decided to rebut. Again: balance. I could see some good in the article, I could see some bad. In the end it's just one person's account of her own personal journey, along with her own associated opinions. None of us are perfect.

I keep wondering if there is an inevitable change in fat acceptance headspace when one who never-ever wanted to diet starts to lose weight, a la the author of the Alternet article. Is there a tipping point where you start to hate your own fat and want it off your body, which propels you to keep losing? I'll admit I've felt this several times over the course of the last month. Instead of pushing forward with trying to love my body as it is, I've felt irritated by it. This has had an especially unfortunate effect on my sex life, as now I don't feel like I can completely enjoy being naked. Again, instead of pushing through and either trying to love my body as it looks now, or at the very least completely ignore that I even have a body, I'm now hyper-conscious. That's not cool.

Here's the part where my scale tips back the other way, no pun intended. If at first I had to eschew the fat acceptance movement a bit to make some progress, and it had to eschew me for eschewing it, now I feel like I need to come back to my acceptance roots if I have any hope of making further progress without being miserable. I do need to remember to love my body for how it is today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on and so forth. I need to remember that fat - and diversity - is beautiful, not inherently dangerous. I need to remember that striving to lose weight is a choice that I've made, not a mandate I must follow. I need to remember those thoughts and several others, too, as this holiday season progresses.

Speaking of which, I'm going to my parents house to celebrate Christmas... the land of a million sweets and no exercise. I doubt there's a scale in their house, and NO I'm not going to bring mine with me. It'll be weird to take a break from climbing onto that scale every morning after my shower. It'll be weird to take a break from my careful breakfasts and lunches, and to have yet another balls-out holiday dinner. I'm holding out hope that I can sneak in just one workout in four days time and maybe even maintain the poundage I've lost. But, something tells me I'm gonna need the proverbial bigger boat. We'll see what happens.

It's official!

I'm no longer a Fat Acceptance blogger! Nor should I really be part of any Fat Acceptance movement!

Phew, I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

It all started this morning. As I'm wont to do, I woke up from crazy dreams to sit bolt upright and have a major revelation about life. I've been struggling for awhile about a few "things", trying to make sense of them and come to a resolution sooner rather than later. Resolve can't be forced, though, at least not in my life, in the way I process information and issues. Well, BAM. Revelation. It always happens eventually.

I'm having an identity crisis. Of course. And on multiple fronts. In fact, all those "things" I'm dealing with... each is a piece of the identity I've constructed for myself over the past 10-20 years, all of which no longer really fit into the grand puzzle that is me. Fat Acceptance activism is one of those things, for sure. I started to realize and come to grips with that about a month ago when I posted about the formation of this blog. I just didn't quite realize how deeply I would end up feeling about it: deeply conflicted, deeply shameful and deeply lost.

I can't tell you how many times Yoga Trainer and I went around and around about my losing weight. Me saying that I felt conflicted since I consider myself part of the Fat Acceptance movement, and him replying that that shouldn't matter. When I made the decision to start calorie-tracking a month ago, I still felt very conflicted. Deeply conflicted, to be precise. However, unlike times previous, I didn't let it stop me from going forth.

Flash forward to today's lunch hour. I have a file of all the websites and blogs I like to peruse daily, one of which is Two Whole Cakes. (I've mentioned this blog in a few earlier posts as well.) I was bowled over by TWC when I first found the blog, because Lesley Kinsel writes about fat politics in the exact manner I always wanted to on this very blog. I found her funny and personal and super smart. I still do, sometimes, agree with her, like in this post about the latest fat girl on Glee. Mostly, though, her blog has started the slow, painful decent from my Lunchtime bookmarks list into the Recycle Bin. The post that killed me today was this one, specifically the section entitled "The confounding". As what I'm doing currently could be called "dieting", I'm apparently not allowed to bring it up in Fat Acceptance circles. Alrighty then, lesson learned! This blog can apparently no longer be about Fat Acceptance because the fact that I'm trying to change the shape of my own personal body, for my own deeply personal reasons, negates the fact that I still believe that there ought to be, in Lesley's own words, "noisy inquiry into what our culture tells us about bodies, ours and other people’s." The cruel irony here, of course, is that I just quoted Lesley in another previous posting, as part of the reason I decided to go ahead with losing some weight. In retrospect, I think I misunderstood what she was trying to say.

Sure, it's just one person's opinion but it's a loud one, one that I previously respected and one that likely speaks for many in the movement. This is honestly why I tend to eschew "movements" in general. (Except for bowel, hee.) In the end, though, please rest assured this isn't really about Lesley and what she says. Lesley's words were just the straw that broke this camel's back.

While I do feel the slightest bit bitter about all this, it's actually more of a relief than anything. Fat Acceptance, at least for the forseeable future, is greatly important to me. Not holding myself to a standard that was more of a moving target than anything else is the part that's the relief.

The previously mentioned deeply shamed and deeply lost parts of me are vastly more concerning. Expressing myself through words and pictures has always been part of my life, since the moment I could put crayon to paper and pencil to newsprint. This is not my only current blog and there have been many attempts at many blogs over the years, but this is the one that always had the finest point, has held the most weight and interest for me, and is the one that's stood the test of time. Nothing lasts forever, though, and I've been wondering if it's time to close up shop. But... it makes me feel like a failure to do so. When I started, I had pretty good readership from people I both knew and had never met. Just recently I looked on my Site Meter statistics and realized that no one really reads this anymore. I get maybe one hit a day, and the days where the hits spike are the days where I'm going back to edit previous posts. Not that readership should necessarily drive the blog, but why would I choose to keep blogging about something I'm no longer passionate about on a blog that no one reads? I might as well keep a journal. OR, just move it all over to my other blog. We'll see how it shakes out.

Eatin' it

In previous postings I've mentioned that this isn't going to be a weight loss blog, that I wasn't going to be a slave to a food journal, that I didn't care how my favorite foods shake out nutritionally, and that I would never turn down dessert. I'm now in the position of eating my words on all of that.

While I'd want to slit my wrists if this really became a blog centered solely on weight loss, I will be talking a lot more about weight loss as it pertains to my own experience. I've felt very alone for the past couple weeks as I've done this food journaling and tried to modify my food intake, and the best thing for me to do right now is to get it all out in the open and talk about it.

In a lot of senses, I feel like I'm backwards from most women. You don't have to delve too far into the movie or book archives to find a storyline involving a woman who has been dieting her whole life only to discover during her mid-life crisis that she's been denying herself some major foodly pleasures. Eat Pray Love is a perfect example, as is the Sylvie Woodruff character in one of the best reads I've had lately, Jennifer Weiner's Fly Away Home. Who knows, of course, if the reality of most real women is like these characters. I do know a lot of real women who have been dieting for the great majority of their lives, and if not dieting at least watching their weight in some way. I guess you could say I've watched my weight over the years, just not quite in the same way. I've always wanted, and sometimes painfully wished, to be thinner but for various reasons I've never embarked on a major weight loss plan. With that has always come the smug satisfaction that at least I'm not constantly fixated on what goes into my mouth, and, at least I can eat what I want without guilt. Of course that's not entirely true because I definitely have gotten fixated on, say, that chocolate birthday cake sitting on the counter and I've definitely felt glimmers of guilt after eating three pieces in a row of said birthday cake. I'm just guessing that it's been nowhere near the degree of fixation and guilt experienced by a lot of folks who are dieting.

Now that I'm in a different place, I can see where the Dieters are coming from. Whereas previously I'd stare onto that gorgeous chocolate cake and dream about the moment it will first cross my lips, now I stare onto that gorgeous chocolate cake and ponder how many calories it has and what I'm not gonna be able to eat later to compensate for having it. Followed by the thought that maybe the cake isn't worth the calories in the end. Followed by the voice in my head mimicking Mr. Garrison that says "WHAT did you just say to me???" So, let me just say that this process has been really confusing and conflicting so far. Because, fuck... am I a Dieter now? Have I crossed some threshold and I'll never be able to go back to eating food normally and thoughtlessly again? It's all so weird!

I've found myself feeling like "that girl" recently. You see, "that girl" is a little game I play with myself in which I'm never the winner. When I was planning my wedding, I never wanted to be "that girl who was so obsessed with planning the details of her wedding that she became a bridezilla." Annnnd, there I found myself... pissy with the world because no one understood my stylistic vision, telling one of my Best Women that she needed to "shut the fuck up and listen to me for once" and being so anxious that I had insomnia for a year. When Honey Bunny and I stopped using birth control to see if we could get pregnant, I never wanted to be "that girl who becomes obsessed with trying to get pregnant." Annnd, here I was (am???)... trying to pretend not to be affected by getting my period month after month but secretly crying on the inside every time, ceasing all social drinking and smoking until it happens eventhough that didn't feel right, and yakking my therapist's ear off week after week about why it hadn't happened for us yet. Now I'm "that girl who's obsessed with counting calories and losing weight." I guess the point is that we will all be "that girl" at various times in our lives, even when we don't want to be. At any rate, it belies some naivety as to what others have gone through, that I haven't been able to relate until the present moment to someone I've judged for being "that girl". Walk a mile in someone else's shoes, right?

While the experience of being a bridezilla, being baby-crazed and being a Dieter are all legitimate, it does say something about taking the experience too far. How to not take it too far is beyond me. Taking it too far is my middle name in a lot of instances. And yet, I wonder if it's just part of the process to take it too far in the beginning. I'm really hoping so because, frankly, I can't live like this. I can't have my love of food taken away and trying to balance my favorite foods in X number of calories per day is making me tear my hair out.

Which bring me to my next point: treats. I went to dinner with a great friend in town for business and my husband the other night, to one of my fave places, Dosa. I enjoyed the food but was sitting there confounded as to how to enter it in MyPlate, and whether I should even track it at all. My friend joked, "just enter that you ate 500 calories and call it a day!" Being a closeted statistician, I felt like I needed to either enter nothing and just know that day's tracking was incomplete, or to try to enter something approximating the dinner. I ended up doing the latter and whoa... my calories for the day red-lined. The next thing I started worrying about was what my weight reading would be for the next day. I've been weighing myself daily and entering that in MyPlate as well. Being on the heels of Thanksgiving extended weekend didn't help a damn thing, as not only was there Thanksgiving dinner but also a big Mexican dinner with a different friend who was in town, and going to the movies twice, where this girl loves herself some buttered popcorn and the giant chocolate dipped rice crispy treat. And maybe there was some movie theater nacho cheese and chips somewhere in there, too. Ahem. Point being: when exactly do you call something a treat? How often is it okay to have a treat? And god damn it, why are so many of the things I love in treat territory??

I've been fortunate in not watching my weight thus far, truly. If I'd been watching my weight this entire time, this entire life, I wouldn't necessarily know the unimpaired depths of foodly pleasure that Tia Margarita has to offer, or Miette, or Vosges Haute Chocolat, or Bolani, or Cowgirl Creamery, and so on and so forth. I've tasted and enjoyed a lot of food, and I'm so glad I have. What I don't get at this point is how to have those things and still watch my weight. The simple answer is that I still get to have what I love, but just less of it. That's such an odd feeling to process. It's logical and it does make me feel better on some level. On other levels, it does nothing at all to appease me, and that's some deep shit that I'll go into another day (maybe).

There is a lot of food to love in this world. I walked through Whole Foods last night after eating humbly all day and then doing 60 minutes of hard circuit training before dinner. To say I was like a kid in a candy store is a gross understatement. To see the magnitude of tasty food they offer, treats or not, on every shelf, in every chafing dish, around every corner, was really overwhelming. For the first time it also felt overwrought and like the huge mixed message my previous therapist, Sharilyn, always said it was. We're supposed to watch what we eat and be thin and lose weight, and essentially we're not supposed to be food's bitch... but isn't that exactly what Whole Foods wants? If you've exercised control over food your whole life, whether by genuine means (ie. you've never been interested in being food's bitch) or by force (ie. Dieter or similar), maybe you can walk into that store and just be totally blase about all. If you're like me at present, if you're food's bitch, and especially if you're trying not to overindulge (or indulge at all) in your little treats, going into that store is like doing battle with the devil. And you want to know the most cruel irony of all? I've gone into Whole Foods at least once a week for the last year to pick up lunch and I've never been confronted like that. I've always known they have lots of tasty things but I've never been overwhelmed by it. I would just pick things to buy and leave. Blase.

Man, I could go on and on about all this stuff. I'm processing a lot of shit in my ol' noggin right now and always appreciate hearing what other people's experiences have been... if you have any wisdom to share, please comment.

Gobbling

In my previous posting, I talked about how I'd taken some actions to lose a little weight. To clarify the "some" or "a little" in regards to losing... two dress sizes is what I told my trainer that I'm going to concentrate on, with no particular timeline in mind other than "I've heard that 2 lbs a month is ideal." On my other blog, 5 lbs is what I said I'm going to concentrate on through December. Clearly it's hard for me to commit to something concrete, consistent and doable. I've never liked to set goals because I'm a horrible project manager. I tend to get jacked up about doing a very exciting something! for a short burst of time and then I'm over it. Chalk it up to being an Aries, or to allegedly having ADD, or whatever you want. It's me, and it's a pain in the ass.

If you take the self awareness that I'm a not great at achieving long-term goals and multiply that by the anxiety that comes with possibly/maybe/I guess losing some of the weight I've gradually gained since I was eight years old (ie. changing part of my identity), what you end up with is someone paralyzed by the mere thought of embarking on a weight loss plan. Then add in the requisite eye rolling and wanting-to-vomit that comes with even THINKING the phrase "weight loss plan", and you've got a big, conflicted, paralyzed ball of sarcastic anxiety on your hands.

But... I think I've found a way.

During my convo with coworker Janie (also in previous posting), she told me she was using the MyPlate food journal tool on livestrong.com. Janie wasn't pushing the use of this tool; I looked it up on my own accord and have been using it for a week now. My dislike for Lance Armstrong is epic and I didn't want to have anything to do with his world, but I admit that I like it quite a bit so far. Not that I've been perusing the site too much... mostly I just login and track my stuff, but honestly livestrong.com offends me far less than, say, some of the shit published in the Glamour magazines I insist on purchasing and reading every few months. And hey, usage is free! I'd say it's pretty groovy as you put in what you've eaten and then you can view and track as many or as few statistics about your food intake as you'd like (for instance, if you want to look at nutrition in addition to - or instead of - calories). You can also input and track your exercise activities and it links back to your caloric intake, showing how many calories you theoretically burned against what your daily calorie intake is. Here's what that means after running it through the fatspeak translator:

I just did an hour of circuit training with minimal rest... shit howdy, that means I can eat 1200 more calories today and still stay within my calorie allocation! I can haz chocolate shake!!

Well, that's what MY fatspeak translator says anyhow.

But, seriously. One thing I've learned from using the MyPlate tool is that it can be a little surprising what you find out from accruing a few days of data. The first two days I logged my intake, I made no change to what I had been eating (to set a baseline) and was over my calorie allocation by 500 calories both days. On the third, and all subsequent days, I switched up to the healthful, planful eating I always say I'm going to do and I've been under each day by 200-500 calories. I honestly don't feel like I've made some big change to my eating. All I did was get humble about it. I was eating like a rock star previously, dreaming up the biggest, bestest meals I could purchase or make for breakfast, lunch and dinner, meanwhile popping Halloween candy into my piehole all workday long. The upside to that is that I was eating things I liked and even expanding my cooking repertoire in a few instances. The downside is that, in the end, it wasn't even about those things tasting good in my mouth. I was really bored at work, stymied with my social life, and looking for a project to occupy my mind. Of course, all I've done now is shift my focus from eating big to eating humbly... we'll see how that works out for me in the end. I'm the first to admit it's dangerous business and it could blow up in my face.

Which brings me to my next point: I totally see how disordered eating can start in a hot second. I've got one foot on the gas and the other on the brake, and I intuited that I needed to do that from the starting gate. There's no way I'm going to let myself get consumed by a calorie tracker to the point that I'm a slave to it and it alone, but I can see how that can happen so very easily for someone who wants weight loss more than I do. I can see how it can happen for someone who is already thin but doesn't know it, and who is consumed by losing more and more weight. Afterall, the part of Janie's story that broke my heart was her talking about her first Overeaters Anonymous meeting. She sat there as a 300 lb radical, sporting her non-profit look and no makeup, and heard the exact same things she was saying also coming out of the mouth of a blonde, uber fashionable woman who was all of a size two.

In lighter news on the food journaling front: some of the things you think have a zillion calories don't really. Some of the things you think are horrible for your cholestorol are not necessarily. Conversely, some of the things you think don't have a zillion calories totally do, and some of the things you think are harmless to your cholestorol are pretty naughty! Shocking on either end. I've never been one to look at the nutrition facts labels on food because, frankly, I never gave a shit. Now I have to look at them to see that I'm tracking what I eat roughly correctly within the tool, but in terms of what the numbers mean for that specific food - I still don't give a shit. I'm not gonna pick that battle with food overall, and especially not with foods that I love. I like what I like and I'm still going to eat what I want. Granted, it might be in a more humble proportion or farther and fewer between, but I'm still gonna eat it. I think I'd die if I couldn't eat what I wanted to and what I crave.

I keep flashing back to this scene at last year's Thanksgiving dinner. My niece, she of junk in the truck, decided during the summertime that it was time for her to lose weight. I saw her briefly late in the summer when she'd already lost about 15 lbs, and she was super psyched to keep losing. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, she had lost quite a bit more weight and was visibly pleased that she was receiving positive feedback from family members and told everyone she was gonna keep on going until she got to the size she wanted to be. As we sat down at the table, I looked around to everyone else's plate to compare portions to mine (I think a lot of people do this and just don't admit it!), and my eyes stopped on her plate. She had about half of what everyone else did on their plates. "Huh," I thought, "I guess that's what you have to do when you're losing weight like that." Later in the evening when it was dessert time, our hostess wheeled out the most amazing array of beautiful, hand-crafted desserts. I practically wanted to diddle myself under the table while taking it all in. Our hosts went person by person, doling out what each person wanted specifically, most people opting for a wanting a bit of everything. When it came time for my niece's plating, she said, "No thanks, I'm can't really eat dessert anymore." I wanted to ask her how long she'd been taking the crazy pills. How could anyone turn down dessert? And, permanently?? I felt a little heartbroken for her.

As it's a taboo subject for most folks, I decided not to pepper her with the million questions floating through my head, even if we'd had a quiet moment. The thing I wanted to know most was, Did she miss it? Did she want dessert eventhough she felt compelled to turn it down? Of course, this belies my personal bias towards dessert (and also flies in the face of not judging others for what they want to do with their bodies, but hey, I'm not perfect). Maybe she's not a dessert person, and if so, lucky for her! I recalled this scene with Honey Bunny last night and he nodded and said he remembered. I told him, "Honey, it doesn't matter where I'm going with this. I'll never turn down dessert*." He said, "Good, I'm glad."

Happy Thanksgiving! Eat well and don't turn down dessert if you don't want to.

* Actually, I'd turn it down if the only thing available was pumpkin pie. Yuck!