Archive for May, 2009
Mortal Enemy of My Thighs
Finally, medical research that verifies the reason I can’t resist donuts: the perfect ratio of fat/sugar:
Dieters’ Best Intentions hijacked by their brains at MSNBC.com
So does this mean I don’t have to feel guilty about that half-dozen disaster around Easter?
Every fat girl's worst sporting nightmare
Since I recently posted the 5 scary things for fat girls, I didn’t want to do another fear list, but don’t be confused: this is a hate/fear combination. Nothing good about the lot. And I don’t presume to speak for all fat girls. Just this one.
1. Modern standardized seats built for people with 1920s hips.
I am seriously bothered (to the point of potentially needing therapy) about this one. Airplanes are included. Now, mind you, I don’t need a shoehorn to wedge myself in and out–or anything like that–but when you put two people (perfect strangers) together who actually have womanly hips (even if one happens to be a man) for 9 innings in 80 degree weather…not a good combo. I’m not grossed out by the amount of sweat generated between those two said legs, I’m bothered by the fact that I infringe on the personal space of another person I don’t know and don’t want to know. Our rubbing fat regions were an embarassment to me but a conversation starter for him. Ugh.
2. Plastic, solid seats.
On the same note, what happened to the wooden, slatted seats in the days of Babe Ruth, where the sun and personal sweating didn’t conspire to leave you feeling like a big, fat sweat target stuck itself to your ass while you’re enjoying a baseball game? Worse, there’s no way to check and make sure. It just feels gross. Slatted seats will at least help with the ventilation.
3. Standing Up To Cheer
Of all my womanly features, my ass is the most embarassing. I take every precaution to cover it and hide it (which, I figure, only draws more attention to it). So when the row of seats behind me is about a foot apart, it makes for a long sitting night. I don’t even like to go out of the row to the bathroom. Of course, sitting in a puddle of pee IS more embarrassing than having someone see my ass, but it’s still not a fun thing to do.
4. Obnoxious, skinny girls (who know nothing about baseball) in short skirts with no boobs who talk as loud as humanly possible about sex and their personal lives with men who don’t know them/are stupid enough to listen, laugh, ask perverted questions and buy the girl more beer.
Two reasons:
1. My son does not need to learn about your nipples at a baseball game and
2. I hate short skirts at sporting events. Especially when worn by skinny, loud, drunk sluts.
5. Eliminating the DH at NL ballparks in interleague play.
Not everything in my life is related to my bad body image obsession. But I do hate watching my AL pitcher try to bat in an NL ballpark. Seriously painful. Enough with the showed/real bunt already.
What about you? What do you hate most about major sporting events from your perspective as a beautifully curved woman? And don’t say “the game” because I’m as much a sports junkie as a donut lover. Leave me a comment so we can lament (and bitch) together!
Something funny happened on my way to demolish an entire bag of mini Twix yesterday: I stopped before eating a single one.
This incident alone isn’t enough to get me to seek medical attention but combined with a few other seemingly innocent events is a little more startling. Judge for yourself…
1. I haven’t spent more than five bucks on fast food in the past two weeks, and that was only for a large iced tea and hot tea from Tim Horton’s.
2. I made a pan of brownies on Weds. night and it was still available for chomping yesterday after school
3. I ate 3 Lay’s potato chips and closed the bag. (Ok, not so odd. I’m not a chip girl, even on my most binging days)
4. The most telling problem that something’s amiss? Alone in the teacher’s lounge with half a dozen delish donuts from the fab corner bakery, I nibbled half a jelly-filled gem around the edges and tossed the rest in the trash.
Don’t worry too much. I weighed in on the scale and found a two-pound gain from last week despite two weight lifting sessions and two 20 minute jogs. I sense a little less puff in my gut, and my pants are a wee bit looser, so I’m not stressing on the number. But the changes in my dietary habits are really interesting.
Are you hearing me? Reading between the lines?
Junk food is not calling my name. I continue to hear a quiet little voice in the back of my mind that says “You’re practically killing yourself every two days: burning thighs, burning lungs, sucking wind because you’ve ate more donuts over the last 38 years than the population of some towns in Rhode Island, and it’s working. More junk means more pain. Less junk, faster results. Do you really need/want to continue eating garbage when you could be burning off that pound of cookie dough you ate in ’97?”
(I said the voice was quiet. I didn’t say it was succinct).
At this point I must agree with the voice. I’m thinking I want to keep jogging and working out in order to eat more of the good stuff I like that my body needs, and not just fuel my addiction to shiny-wrappered candy or tasteless sprinkles. (You do know the sprinkles really don’t taste like anything but wax, don’t you? Eat a few spoonfuls and find out).
Today is a weightlifting/ab day; tomorrow is jogging. Tonight is a major-league baseball game with beer, hotdogs and possibly crackerjack. Don’t worry, I heard the voice. Besides, they don’t sell donuts in the aisles anyway.
Just made a pan of brownies and read the fine print on the box:
For cakelike brownies, use three eggs.
Isn’t the point of brownies to make brownies and not cake? If I wanted chococlate cake, can I make brownies with one less egg? Just curious.
Still working out, if anyone cares. Jogged twice, third time tomorrow. Lifting weights…gonna hit that class reunion ready to wow. And to eat!
I’m not rational. I view the world through the lens of a girl who went to prom in a size 14, not a 4 or 2 like the rest of my friends. Today, while lounging by the pool, I started thinking about things I obssess on which I doubt most skinny girls ever contemplate.
In no particular order:
1. Snapping a diving board in half with one bounce
2. My pants splitting down the back when I bend to pick up a pencil in front of the 7th grade class. Those kids are mean.
3. Spanx going bankrupt. Don’t even joke about that one.
4. Extinction of sprinkle trees in the rainforest with the growth of global warming.
5. Scales at the BMV. Nothing worse than the notion of putting your actual weight on your driver’s license.
More to come. These are just the big ones.
Granted, it’s a pound less than the last time, but 10 more pounds than I started the school year with, and 20 more pounds than when I felt really good.
Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those “If a train leaves Chicago going east at 800 mph and a train leaves Boston going west at 740, where will they meet?” questions. (I hate math. Passionately.) Rather, it’s a lament on the fact that I’ve worked out for a solid week, am attempting to eat better (save the 3pm jinx..read more about that yesterday) and the only thing I’m losing is time I might otherwise spend napping by lifting weights.
I like to imagine it’s because my muscles have grown so much in 7 days that they’re equalling the fat I’ve burned (muscle does weigh more than fat, kids!) but it’s more likely that I’m not working as hard as I could to shed the pounds.
Why does it matter so much now? Class reunion. In a little over a month.
Mind you, I’m not one of those obsessive types that worries about social gatherings. I was happy to be able to squeeze this ass into a pair of nicely tailored, albeit fat-girl pants and a pretty top for this gathering of people I can’t wait to see (I’m weird. Love class reunions. Small school, lots of fun. And a little like a family reunion of sorts). I’m less about the dress size and more about the memories.
That was, until mom called and laid down a challenge. One of my friends from school who still lives near mom dropped off a birthday present for me a few weeks ago at mom’s, so when she called she mentioned it. Our conversation went something like this:
“M. stopped by today to drop off your birthday present. She looks great.”
“Really? Do you have any idea what it might be?”
“No, but she looks amazing. Her hair is really long and straight, she had on this cute…”
“Mom, the present. Focus with me. What does it sound like? Is it Bath and Body Works? Something Ohio State?”
“It’s got beautiful wrapping. And her skirt was so cute. She looks like she’s lost weight. And her glasses…oh, how adora…”
“The present? Just unwrap it and tell me what it is so I can send her a thank-you note.” (Because I don’t want to come home if you’re going to tell me how skinny and pretty my friends are BEFORE my class reunion. You’re MY cheerleader, not theirs). “Go unwrap it.”
Unable to resist the siren’s call to unwrap a present, mom padded off to the front closet while I plotted and planned. At the time, it was almost two months to the day of the reunion, so I had +/- 60 days to drop 20 pounds. As I scratched out some kind of division problem on my notepad ( I didn’t know what number went under the bracket so I had to do a few trial and error runs), mom came back to the phone.
“Great stuff. Bath and Body Works and a Buckeye thingie.” While she attempted to describe the presents, I finished the math. Long division short, it was too little time in which to whittle myself into the body I envisioned but a really good reason to start. Or get serious, as the case may be.
Which is why this number is frustrating. It’s 3 more than I started with a few weeks ago and I’m exercising. One of my pet peeves is people who scale-obsess, and I will not turn into that beast. But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know where the hell this number came from. Maybe God is a practical joker. Maybe the scale is out of whack. Or maybe I need to step up the exercise and shake my booty a little faster to get it moving in the right direction.
Whatever–I don’t ever want to see this number on my scale again. Time to get serious.
The problem every time I diet is 3. Yes, you read that right. 3 is the problem.
It seems, after years of research conducted by me and the junk food industry of America, 3pm is some type of mystical witching hour over which I have little to no control. Each day, 3pm arrives with minimal fanfare (which is good, because it’s quiet. My students are gone for the day) except the blaring of Bugles (the crispy kind) and Pretzel Proclamations. I have zero ability to resist the Call of the Wild blueberry muffins in my freezer or pass up invitations from Mayor McFry to hit the drive through on my way home. (It’s not even really on my way home).
From 4:30 in the morning til 3pm, I’m the patron saint of control. Really. I don’t always plan healthy breakfasts but I end up stashing one away in my lunch bag to eat at school before the kids arrive. I have been really diligent about getting a healthy lunch together in said bag as well. I’ve only been out for lunch once in approximately a month and a half–which is a major coup considering the girl at Arby’s and I were on a first-name-on-the-debit-card basis. But when 3 comes, all hell breaks loose. I even have reasonable, healthy snacks at home, but I eat too many. I get in this frenzied state of…tomorrow the world will end…must pack on pounds to survive winter conditions…or…tonight there will be a rush on Twinkies and I must eat every one in the box now to keep my family safe…or something equally inane.
I believe this is mental conditioning…at its worst. I don’t think healthy snacks are the answer. I’ll just eat more of them. I need to figure out some meaningful way of spending that dead zone of time between after school and dinner so that no food comes within a 50 mile radius of my mouth. Hmmm…I’m up for suggestions.
Yesterday, in an effort to rouse the boy from sleeping at a time when most people are already up and mowing the lawn, I yelled downstairs to ask if he’d like some breakfast.
When a suprising “yes” confirmed his interest in eating as well as his actual state of being in the land of the living, I realized I didn’t really have anything remotely healthy to make. I conceded by taking a tube of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls out of the fridge.
I unwrapped the tight, silvery paper and set them on the counter for a mere four seconds while I preheated the oven. As I dialed in the temp (love my convection microwave), a loud “POP!” shattered the silence and startled me.
My first reaction was to look at my jeans. I’d popped a button once before, on a pair of brown dress slacks, and was familiar with the drill: pull down the shirt, find a jacket and some safety pins and hunker down behind a desk for 8 straight hours. In retrospect, it was a humiliating experience but I was fortunate it had been the front and not the back blown out. Lucky for me, I was home and could change before anyone noticed.
Convinced I’d blown the button and it’d dented (or worse, chipped) my stove, I felt around for evidence. Nothing.
Still curious, I set the oven temperature and went back to my tube of cinnamony goodness to discover the roll of rolls had popped itself. Instead of a perfect cardboard cylinder, doughy bits now squirted free of their squished situation, puffing through the grease-spotted cardboard seams. I just nodded and smiled sympathetically as I twisted the can to let the little ones out of their confinement. I have more in common with Poppin’ Fresh than most people know–and I’m not talking the giggle when he gets poked.
I did and I feel fab. Gonna be a bit sore tomorrow, and I only lifted 5-15 pounds for all of the workout but I stuck with it from warmup to cooldown.
I even ate pretty well today. The good news is that I weighed in at one less pound today than yesterday (231 to 230, don’t get used to it. Daily weigh-ins are about as sadistic as locking myself in a room with Rachael Ray reruns looping 24/7). By “well” I mean four mini-Snickers instead of half a bag and half a donut (!)(it’s the first sign of the apocalypse) from the stash my friend brought to school. My other meals were really reasonable: fruit & yogurt with coffee for breakfast, 3 squares of leftover veggie (as in cream cheese, not real pizza) pizza and a diet soda for lunch, risotto and stir fried chicken for dinner.
I’ve got the meal part down, it’s the in-between times that do me in. Now that I’m filling them with some type of metabolically stimulating activity, let’s see where we end up.
E-Day. The thing I hate most in the weight-loss effort (though if I want to sustain it, I probably should change my mindset and not hate it).
Exercise.
For me, it’s as impossible to lose weight without exercise as it is for me to fit into single-digit size clothing. My last huge success (I’ve had smaller ones since), which took place back in the days when big hair made me appear thinner (it’s coming back someday! I can’t wait!) was a result of jogging and weight lifting on a regular basis. Regular meaning more than once a fortnight, for my British readers.
I’m not going with one set program. I like the idea and buy all types of infomercials that promise me one simple way to drop the weight, but the truth is, they bore me out of my mind. This time it’s a combination of ChaLean Extreme (I admit I do LOVE weight lifting. Not as much as I love eating frosting from a tub but it’s all in your perspective, but enough to stick with it a month or two at a time), yoga (another love), walking and occasional jogging (hate). Maybe the synergy of the weights and yoga will conspire with the jogging in my brain to bring it over to the light side.
Anyone have any tricks or tips to make me like jogging, other than the weight loss? I’m up for suggestions…