Archive for the ‘FoodLife’ Category
Yeah, life’s a little crazy again. Hopefully things will settle down after this weekend and I can get into some type of blog routine. More for me than you.
Still chugging along on the P90X project. Even though I started two weeks ago and am a workout away from completing a two week cycle of workouts, I’m still doing it. That’s nothing short of a miracle. Not to mention my 39th birthday (and dinner out with friends) thrown in there for the fun of it. I really have gotten myself into a good mindset of working out as soon as I get home from school (or, more correctly, as soon as I get home, change clothes, log on to Facebook for a bit and then work out). I feel a difference and I see a little difference. I have much more energy–no real urge to nap after school like before (if you’re not a teacher and you laugh at that, come to school with me one day and see how much other people’s hyper kids wear you out–just try it). I feel I’m getting stronger even if I can’t do a pullup yet without a chair. There’s a little less muffin top froth on the capris. All in all, a good thing.
Now, to work on the eating thing. Did ok the first week, the honeymoon phase. I just don’t do well with lots of protein. I mean, the body loves the protein. Always slims me down, especially in the gut. It’s just a matter of finding protein I like. I can’t do eggs for breakfast. Never could. But I’m trying. And I really don’t dig chicken all that much unless it’s fried with 11 herbs and spices (the right herbs and spices), so I’m trying to find a handful of new protein sources I love as much as fish (I know, I’m not right) and cottage cheese to add to the variety. You think growing up on a farm I’d be more of a meat eater, but I have a harder time battling my donut tooth than I do my meat tooth.
So anyway, I’m hanging in there and being a good girl. Tomorrow is the last day of that for four days, though. Hub and I managed to wrangle a free cruise last year that we never got around to taking and Thursday night we ship off for three days in the Bahamas. I hadn’t planned to take a bathing suit (I only wear one in my back yard, protected on four sides by 10′ fences for the safety and vision protection of all involved) but he just informed me that we’ll be taking a parasailing excursion. Has he not heard me make fun of fat people parasailing before and now is subjecting me to this horror? For a fat girl, I can’t imagine a scarier moment than realizing you’re flying half-naked in a clear blue sky in a bathing suit giving those below the ability to look at you from underneath. The idea frightens me. I think I might just wear jeans.
I sometimes think I have this weight problem thing backwards. From what I’ve seen in the movies, on TV and in books, it seems to me that women are most prone to eating tubs of Ben & Jerry’s followed by a dozen Jolly Pirates following a breakup of a relationship, a bad job review, a fight with a friend or a nagging phone call from mom. In essence, drowning their sorrows in a box of Twinkies.
Not me. I have the exact opposite problem. Bad news sends me into a welcomed tailspin of appetite suppression. Not even a fistful of Dexatrim has the same effect as finding out bad news or being publicly castigated or humiliated. When I fail at something, I succeed at losing weight. I just don’t care enough about food to eat.
On the flip side, when things are going well–like getting good news about a trip or selling an article to an editor or hearing from an old friend or having an earth-shattering conversation with someone important–I tend to run for the Ho-Ho Hills. I can’t find enough junk to stuff in the piehole (as my friend Lewis would say). These are the rare days I would make myself stop at the corner UDF or CVS or Walgreens and actually buy a candy bar, Coke and cupcakes (the holy trinity of sugar) to eat on the way home if I still did things like that. Now, I just scrounge around my writing reward shelf and scarf squares of raspberry dark chocolate.
Still, doesn’t this seem totally ass-backwards? If I’m depressed, shouldn’t I want to eat to bolster my confidence, my belief in mankind, my sinking heart? And if I’m happy, shouldn’t I just feel like dancing around in all that good energy? Of course I should but somewhere along the line my synaptic connections got all messed up. Maybe when I ate that box of cake mix as a teenager or when my sister and I made a secret donut run to the Valley General when the parents were gone.
It’s hard to tell why I’m backwards on this. What’s interesting is that the whole happy/depressed continuum is not a normal thing for me, food or not. If I’m happy about something, I’m reservedly happy. I have a very difficult time believing something is as good as I think, and I hold back in my celebration, knowing the other shoe will eventually drop. But if I’m depressed, nothing can stop me from sinking to the lowest of lows. When I’m sad, in other words, I hit a sort of low-high. Why is it easier to believe the bad stuff instead of the good?
Over the last few months I’ve hit, quite possibly, the lowest of the lows. The absolute low was on my son’s 18th birthday (not the birthday, the low just ironically happened on that day) and I truthfully think I lost about three pounds that week. I sustained myself on water and soup. Maybe a little bit of cereal and milk. I could barely even stomach those. Think about this: the kid wanted Golden Corral for his birthday dinner and I spent almost 50 bucks on the three of us and stomached half a plate of salad and a chicken wing. And I only ate a bite of the wing. If I could bottle that feeling of food hatred and revulsion, I’d be a bazillionaire.
I mention this because I notice my life (in regards to that issue) is improving and I notice myself unconsciously picking up bits and pieces of the junk that repulsed me for most of the last two months. While the pain those two incidents caused in the overall scheme of my life, by limiting my desire to eat, they also granted me some odd perspective I haven’t had before. I took the time to notice what was going in the piehole, and in many cases, ate only because I had to–which led me to make better choices. I don’t think there was a fast food day in there at all. Not even the interest of one, which doesn’t say much because I’m not a fast-food type of girl anymore. I wasn’t really an any-food kind of girl.
So now it’s back to pitting the mind against the urges. Sounds much more perverted than it is. All it comes down to is eliminating the junky garbagey-type stuff: a handful of jelly beans (which I don’t even like!) on my teaching assistant’s desk, a cookie in the teacher’s lounge, a bite of this or that while I’m making dinner. These are the little things that wrecked me in the past and got my ass into, at one time, size 18 jeans.
Never again. As God (and WordPress) is my witness, I’ll never inhale Ho-Hos again.
What is your emotional eating cycle? I’m really curious to know if anyone out there is a happy eater like me or if I’m just out in left field (not the first time nor the last). What sends you over the edge into a binge eating everything in sight? Happiness, sadness or a combination? A certain emotional trigger issue? A certain person or situation? I’m just curious here…
So, I’ve had this “plan” the last three days…
When I got my iPod Touch at Christmas, I downloaded this nifty app called, “Lose It”. Yeah, a weight loss gizmo that works by you putting in your food and exercise for the day to keep track of where your mouth and ass have been. For the first month, I logged everything down to the last Lifesaver stolen from my student candy reward bin. It was fun seeing those numbers in the negative. (Remember, dealing with depression stops me from wanting to eat).
Like all good toys, it fell by the wayside after about six weeks. I’ve used it a handful more times but not on a regular basis. What’s really cool (or really sadistic, take your pick) is that you can have all your daily data from Lose It sent to an email address for you to look at later. I read over those first few reports but the novelty wore off. However–I got to thinking about how to enhance my weight loss efforts and realized that posting those daily here on the blog might be a way to either publicly laud or publicly humiliate myself into more action.
So on Monday I restarted Lose It tracking with a purpose. It worked well until the hubby brought home a large pizza from the local bar for which I have no calorie count in Lose It. (I will say Lose It has the largest food/calorie database for any program I’ve worked with. And I’ve worked with a lot over the years). It worked on Tuesday until the boy wanted to go to Popeye’s for dinner while we were out school supply shopping and I ate the entire two piece meal, side and biscuit and promptly fell asleep when I got home. It worked yesterday, even with my skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte and blueberry scone (BTW, those things are *NOT* tasty enough to EVER waste another 400+ calories on them. They’re not even good. They were just there. Lesson learned) until my 12 boxes of Girl Scout cookies were delivered. No, it wasn’t the cookies that were my undoing. I only had two when I got home. But an hour later, on a stomach filled only by a Ziplock container of Lucky Charms at lunch, after two glasses of wine, the cookies began to talk. They didn’t like the uneven rows my son had left them in, so I was obliged to even them out, which meant just eating the whole damned row. Combined with the wine, I don’t know how many I actually ate so I couldn’t put it in the Lose It.
Ok, so today I’m unloading this to make myself come clean. Today I’ll start back on the Lose It so I have something to post and to have the mental seatbelt of restraint when I “think” it will be OK to eat out of control (I’ve really not been binging like this at all these last two weeks. Really.). It’s not. And if I don’t want to look like a whale on the cruise, I’d better start working on losing more blubber now.
Since I take a sort of sadistic-humorous pleasure in nicknaming myself “the fat girl”, (with help from dad, because that’s kind of been his pet name for me for a long time. It wasn’t created from maliciousness, it was a defense mechanism. He’s about 3 inches shorter than me, so I call him “shorty”. It works for us both), I figured it was high time I figure out just where this entire concept of self-fatness came from.
This isn’t a self-loathing kind of thing. I don’t sit around thinking of myself as “the fat girl” and cry Kleenex boxes dry, all the while munching a can of Pringles and sipping away on soda. I won’t lie, though–comparing myself to others, noting my extra fleshy bits compared to their wafer-thin profiles does, at times, send me into fits of self-hatred and spits of bad words directed at my reflection–most often, when I’m unfortunate enough to have to try on something new in a fitting room. The grip of being a fat girl has lost its power to make me drop into a sobbing heap and compare my life to nothing for days at a time, but it’s still there, lurking.
And I want to know where it came from.
I’ve been pondering this and, as a result, have come up with a startling revelation: I am the originator of seeing myself as a fat girl but not by myself. (Dad’s nickname didn’t start until well into high school, maybe even college. By then, the damage was done.) Even though I was in a 6X at age six, I didn’t see the X as a negative. I wore a bigger size only because Patti and Alice commented that I wore a bigger size. I didn’t have any idea of what size girls wore in kindergarten and first grade. I was more worried about getting picked for the freeze tag team at recess and in making sure I had enough fat pencils to write on my fat-lined green flecked paper during handwriting time. (The theme of elementary writing does not escape my observation) I didn’t lament the issue that Dina, Cathy and Darla were probably wearing 4T jeans to my 6X: as a first grader, size didn’t mattter.
I don’t think that size ever mattered throughout elementary. Sure, there are bits and pieces of random comments I recall from Patti and Alice about jean sizes while shopping, or a reminder that I didn’t need to eat “all of that”, or that I should go out and play instead of watching Tom & Jerry some days after school. Those are the suggestions all moms and grandmas make to their kids. I wasn’t a lazy kid; I was active. I liked to veg out on occasion just as much as others, but I had a great group of neighborhood (if you could call the houses my friends lived in that bordered the edge of my parents’ field as a ‘neighborhood’) friends, and we were always doing something, into something, getting in trouble for something.
I know that there were times in 4th and 5th grade that brought my taller size (in looking back, I still don’t consider myself “fat” at those ages. I was one of the two tallest girls in 1981′s class photo, and there were other, more qualified entrants in the fat contest for that picture, name and initials withheld because graduating with a class of 54 kinda makes it easy to single folks out) made me self-conscious, made me wish my legs were only made of bones and skin like the other girls’, not bones, skin and a layer of blubber and that my chub rub would magically disappear, but overall I don’t remember feeling (or being made to feel like) a fat freak of nature incapable of being considered a normal human.
No, those thoughts didn’t arise until 6th grade and the period of time I’ve consider the 180 Days of Howard to Bladensburg Hell, aka The Daily 28 Mile (round trip) Bullying Session. As luck had it, my friend Michaela and I managed to snag the next-to-last-seat on the right side of the bus that first day, the day that determined our bus seating arrangement for the remaining 179 days. As unluck had it, the 8th graders behind us wanted their friends to sit in the seat, not a couple of snot-nosed 6th graders. Instead of being intrepid youths, we were bullheads and refused to move, thereby cementing the name-calling and bullying for ourselves, twice a day for the rest of the year.
The two bullies, let’s call them Deidre and Kathryn, took it upon themselves to never let us forget that we had stolen the seats their friends evidently earned as a birthright. The 2 bullies were a little more lenient toward Michaela, for one reason: her brother was in 8th grade and a friend of both girls. Me, on the other hand, had no such luck. In fact, Deidre had haunted and taunted me for years–as we had been in the same Girl Scout troop, the same 4-H Club and lived within half a mile of each other. She despised me from the start, for whatever reason I never knew, and appointed herself the Queen of Mean when it came to me. You think I’d have had the smarts to steer away from her but the seat was just too good and we hit numerous bouncy spots on the ride every day–jolts that couldn’t be felt in the front seats.
I think back and wonder if I’d have developed such a strong dislike for myself in those (and subsequent) years if I’d have had the smarts to move to a seat away from her, but…who knows at this point.
From almost the first day, I remember her comments. She started low and quiet, almost as if she might convince me that I was hearing things, or that if questioned, neither of her two seat mates (another friend of theirs, Dora, sat in the single last seat on the right side and was also an 8th grader–but she was nice to me) would be able to swear they heard her. Deidre’s first comments were about not my body but my trumpet. Yes, my trumpet. My parents didn’t have the money to fork over for a new piece of shiny brass like hers had, but I still wanted to be in band. Grandma R. remedied this by digging out the coronet my dad had played in the high school band. Deidre’s case was shiny, hard, gray plastic. Mine was circa 1964, fake leather covered veneer with a very becoming red velvet interior and the scent of valve oil from years gone by. The case was formed almost exactly in the shape of the coronet (hers was smooth, rounded and had flip-snaps) and the bell of the case was worn and shaggy. I didn’t mind–I thought it was kind of cool that I’d be playing the same trumpet dad did.But it was a carved invitation to Deidre to start picking apart what little self-confidence I had.
“Where’d you get that trumpet? A junkyard?” she’d whisper against the window from the seat behind me, mean spite dripping from her words. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” I’d scootch away from the window, more toward the middle and get Holly into a conversation to avoid being near Deidre’s mouth.
My proximity from her mouth increased but she’d successfully bored into my brain. In the world of 6th grade, I didn’t know the rules–that to be popular, you had to wear the right thing, dress the right way, have the right hairstyle and makeup (which I wasn’t allowed to use until 8th grade), hang out with the right people, and have the right parents. As I discovered over the course of the school year, I had none of those. Each day it was a stomach-sinking adventure to discover which of those elements I lacked any certain day.
Her snarls ranged from my clothing (“Are those hand-me downs? Don’t you own a pair of Jordache jeans? Wrangler jeans are ugly. Nobody wears a sweater vest. Don’t you have any Nikes? Nikes are just the best. A sweater with a horse is totally ugly. Who wears purple penny loafers besides geeks?”) to my appearance (“Hey, buck teeth–here’s a carrot. If you walk so pigeon-toed all the time, you’re going to trip yourself. Your perm is so ugly/frizzy/curly/short. Your nose is so ugly it looks like a bird beak. You better not ask anyone for crackers or they’ll think you’re a parrot.” (This one she took all the way to high school. When I was a freshman in band class, she had the upperclassman nickname me “Polly”, as in “Polly want a cracker?” She was the reason I left the trumpet section to pursue a career in the percussion section on the marimba. And by upperclassmen, I actually mean everyone in the band from the lowest to the highest members.)) to my social status (“You have loser friends. Your boyfriend is a loser because he isn’t on the football team. Who has boyfriends not on the football team? No boys will dance with you at the dance if you wear that. If you were as popular as me, all the boys would like you.”)
She commented about my parents, my sister, my grades and my friends. If there was a subject she could degrade me about, she didn’t save it for later. She made it known. As the year progressed, she even got her seatmates to make comments about me.
The most unique facet to Deidre’s raging meanness toward me was that she never (as much as I can recall–remember, this is coming from age 11) called me fat. She was my first experience with a mean girl (and by far, the worst I’ve ever encountered in life) and I had so little awareness of what to do and so little actual self-confidence at 11, I had no choice but to believe her. She never called me a fat girl but did make it known what girls she considered fat. One of the nicest 8th graders, and one who became my friend in high school when she joined me in the percussion section from the trumpet section (interesting correlation there), T.A., was a taller, bigger girl too. Not in my wildest dreams would I have considered her fat. She was beautiful, with her Charlie’s Angel flipped hair and bright smile. But Deidre commented nearly daily when T.A. got on the bus at her stop about T.A.’s “thunder thighs” and “wide hips”–a comment I remember Deidre making out loud in high school band.
No, Deidre and The Evilettes never called me fat or really brought my weight into question. But with her/their constant, continual barrage of insults and bitch-rants (I was such a threat in my Wranglers, plaid-snap shirts, purple penny loafers and bad Toni-home permed hair), I soon became aware that one way to stem the tide of tears I’d cry about three times a week into my Care Bear pillow case was to be a step ahead of the hatred. I would lie in bed in the mornings before boarding the bus and dream up what new, fresh hell these meanies would greet me with. It was easier to take their hatred if I hated myself first–and hated myself worse than they did. I ran through every possible disgusting, mean, ugly, uncouth truth about me that I could muster, feeling slightly triumphant as I clomped down the bus steps each day in my uncool Converses if I had come up with a way to rag on myself that they hadn’t realized. It was a game, a challenge, a puzzle: hate yourself worse than others then they can’t hurt you. That became the lesson of the 6th grade, more so than learning how to read novels and pre-algebra equations.
It worked like a charm. I don’t remember when I first came up with the belief that I was a fat girl–no doubt a subliminal creation aided by their commentary on T.A. and other innocent bus-riders–but it was my go-to answer. I could start with that one and work my way down, hoping against hope that they didn’t call me fat because I’d have to really do some searching that night in addition to my science homework. Reflecting back, it really was a sick state of mind to think that I took pleasure in “knowing” I was fat but not having them call me fat. Like I was hiding a secret in my size 10 Wranglers while they sat perfectly unaware in their size 6 Jordaches. I had something on them and they weren’t going to get it.
Even if they didn’t call me fat, the thought started me thinking of myself that way. Boys didn’t dance with me at the Jr. High dance–not because I was a shy wallflower afraid to talk to them but because I was fat. I got a tiny role in the school play not because I didn’t try out for the lead, but because I was fat. No one tried to kiss me behind the baseball dugout because I was fat–not because the boys always went for the easy girls and I wasn’t one.
The name-calling began early and it began hard and continued unrelenting, not from someone outside myself, as I’d like to think. It came from me. Indirectly I can blame the bullies, for without their chiding, I wouldn’t have had the need to scrounge up the worst parts of myself and highlight them for future reference. But directly, the advent of viewing myself as a fat girl and living life as such has but one sole point of reference…myself.
So, yeah. Remember me? The one who owns this blog? Yeah. Bet you thought I got lost in a sprinkle factory, huh? Heck, I don’t blame you. It certainly would have been a much more exciting two week missing span of time in my life to discuss–unfortunately, it’s not.
Again on the mysterious bent, let’s just say that as of today, February 16th, I think the worst of the surprises to my personal life will be at a minimum. Yes, of course, I realize that I’ve just jinxed myself and invited all kinds of horrible things to befall my path. However, given the two issues I’ve just survived over the last 30 days and lived to tell about, not much can shock or pin me down the way these two have, at least in terms of my personal life that is.
And no, I won’t tell you what. Maybe later, maybe in another couple of months when I feel able to discuss them, but for now you’re just going to have to deal with the secrecy.
What I find most interesting (aside from the fact that both events happened on the 10th–one on the 10th of January, one on the 10th of February–dear god, look out March 10th…) is that I didnt’ give up my weight-loss pursuit as a result. In the past it would truthfully take one-quarter the amount of life distress to make me flee my diet plans and run to the nearest Jolly Pirate (sadly at the end of my street, across from the Tim Horton’s) and drown my cursed luck in a vat of Boston Cream. Something is different this time, something that pulled me back and made me remember–hey, you’ve made progress (almost 10 pounds lost since the start of the year, three workouts weekly, being mindful of what goes in the old piehole). Don’t let some idiot’s bad decisions (which do ultimately affect you) that had nothing to do with you ruin YOUR GOALS.
I actually took ownership of my weight loss goals this time around. While I can’t control what people do, say or lie about, what I realized is that I ***I*** can (and need to) control my own actions. And when I aligned my actions and thoughts to losing sixty pounds (more or less) by my 40th birthday next year, I determined that nothing external can get in the way of that. That’s my constant. My escape and my resolve. I can’t make people tell me the truth, I can’t make them realize how much they’ve hurt me but I can make myself work out when I feel like crying, can limit what I eat to healthy foods, can add a twenty minute powerwalk to my lunch time at school.
I’ve never been a fan of (or friend with, for long) people who constantly say “I can’t”. Honestly, it gets on my nerves. If you want something bad enough, you will. If you can’t, you’re not trying hard enough or going in the right direction. Granted, I’ve said “I can’t” plenty of times, but not when it comes to something I want. I’m stronger than that. Smarter. More clever than that. If I think I can’t, then I can’t. If I think I can but it will be hard, I need to find ways around the “can’t” part of the equation.
Right now, my way around the problems in my personal life are teaching me that people are not what they seem, that truth is evidently subjective to interpretation and that what you think you want may not be what you want. But my way around is also forcing me to take the only action to improve myself that I know how–eating healthy and exercising–which I know without reservation will serve me best in the long run, no matter how other things shake out.
In contemplating the many reasons for my diets (if you want to call them that) failing in the past, one of the biggest, IMHO (which is all that matters here on my blog) is the need, the necessity and the basic human compulsion to get results right away. By results, I don’t mean progress. I mean 60 pounds of excess weight gained over the course of 38 odd years being shed in nine days.
There’s something ingrained in the human mind–perhaps the result of genetic coding, perhaps with the advent of instant sea monkeys you can reconstitute as soon as you tear open the package–that makes us believe that if we do x for any extended period of time (and, by ‘extended period of time’, I mean longer than it takes a laptop to reboot), Y and Z will happen miraculously, instantaneously before our eyes. We can’t help it. We can’t fight it. Even if we say that we are patient, there are times we’re not. Even if we believe we’re in for the long hall, we still want a little bit o’that instant gratification we believe is our birthright.
It’s part of the reason I decided that my weight loss goal wasn’t even going to be met in this calendar year. When I went back and assessed (and obsessed) over why I haven’t lost and/or managed to keep off the weight before, that time factor came back to bite me in my very fleshy ass. It occurred to me that in setting my goals within a specific (read: short) time frame, I was unintentionally setting myself up for failure in one huge way–miss a target, give up on a goal. I’m an all-or-nothing thinker (something else I’m also working on this year) and to set a close (I even consider six months “close”) goal, I expected myself to have this absolutely 100% perfect start and continuation of my goals right out of the gate. I didn’t give myself any time whatsoever to adjust my bad habits into good ones. There was no room for experimenting, no room for really even reflecting. When I woke up in the morning, I had to work out. I could only eat salads. I must be in size 14s in two months. Those were ultimatums I gave myself for measuring progress but I didn’t give myself the tool–the mental adjustments and time–required to get there.
If I could have changed my behavior and habits that easily, don’t you think I would have?
I’m more about taking notice of the small things on this particular fat-burning journey. I’m enjoying taking my lunch to school in all my Ziplock containers. Finding fun in portion control. Feeling a sense of accomplishment by working out in 20 minute increments rather than a hunk of an hour. And observing the fact that my body is changing–ever so slightly–in the direction that I want.
Yesterday I had a day-long teacher’s meeting which equates to jeans and a sweatshirt. Normally I stuff myself into a pair of jeans and wear something long enough to hide the muffin top because, let’s face it, the only attractive muffin top is one with a pat of butter melting down the sides. Instead of the usual long sweater, at the suggestion of Stacy and Clinton, I chose something with a little bit of shape and a shorter hemline. (and because it was clean and because it was pink, but don’t tell Stacy. She’ll yell at me.) This seemed like a good choice until I’d been sitting for about two hours at the meeting and we got a potty break. I realized I’d not worn a belt–under normal circumstances, an activity to cause abject horror and blindness in anyone who witnessed a chunky girl in low-cut jeans (stupidest things invented, BTW. I only kept mine because I’m too cheap to throw them out) try to get herself and her muffin top back together incognito.
When I reached down to my waist line (as inconspicuously as a fat girl can fix her clothes) to fold up my waistband that had surely been flattened by my gut as usual, I was pleased to discover no rollover. The denim band holding my pants to my body had not been assaulted by my baby fat. (So what if the baby just turned 18?). My pants were still happy. I could stand up from the chair in my shorter fleece and jeans and not be petrified every eye was on my gut and my rearranging myself to get presentable again.
And that was just the kind of progress I needed. Sure, it’d be nice to fit into a size 10 for my sorority’s 20 year reunion on Saturday night, but I’ll take the little bits of progress I can find here and there. Besides, I’d have had to start in December to lose those 60 pounds by this weekend….
Don’t revolt. My title’s not referring to the F word you’re thinking of. (Potty mouth!) I’m thinking of the other F word–
Fat.
Most of my adult life (for me, it began at age 19, when I got married), I’ve thought of and referred to myself as fat. The fat girl, fatso, fatty-licious. Even my dad calls me Fat Girl (and I call him Shorty). I know it’s negative and self-defeating, according to all the shrinks and self-help gurus. On one hand, I agree with them–if you don’t like something about yourself, you probably shouldn’t refer to yourself with that nickname. Like nerds calling themselves nerds (I am a nerd at times too but my knowledge is a good thing.) (Only a nerd would think so…)
But, in all honesty, I’m also comfortable calling myself Fat Girl. On a superficial level, it doesn’t bother me. I actually find it somewhat funny. So when I sat down and started thinking about the history of how I got here, how I came to see myself as fat (for the record, I am always corrected by friends when I say I’m fat. None of them agree with me–since I’m not busting-out-of-my-jeans obese, I guess they don’t think I’m fat. Maybe they should compare my BMI with the insurance charts–they’d probably wonder how I’m still living, in that case), I came to a startling realization:
I created the F word–fat–in reference to myself. Meaning that in all my reflection on childhood and growing up, no one ever called me fat (that I remember). I decided that myself.
There is no indelible moment when someone called me fattie or fatso that scarred my subconscious. We reserved that nickname for B.C., the kid in town who always smelled of his mom’s bait shop and dirty clothes. B.C. was round, and for some reason, his mom always put him in horizontally striped shirts–not a good combination. I wasn’t round (and didn’t have Garanimals with stripes), I was just big. Not in a giant, overactive glandular kind of way, either. I don’t stand out in any of my elementary school photos like Shaq (I’m trying to find one, use your imagination). When my Playskool Plastic kKtchen girlfriends were frying imaginary eggs for their pretend husbands in kindergarten wearing size 2 elastic pants, I was in the 6X pants–but no one noticed. When we got our uniforms for Jr. High volleyball, I could never get anything lower than 13 since that’s where the Large tops started. I couldn’t borrow a pair of shorts if I forgot them and I wondered why the girls in A and B cups even bothered to snap on that medieval torture device known as a bra if they didn’t need a C cup to corral their “girls.”
Never did any of those times produce discussions about my weight. It was more my observations of myself in comparison to them that started me along the mental path of thinking I wasn’t “normal” like them. When we shopped for homecoming dresses, I knew better than to even turn my head toward the Juniors section. I started in Misses and occasionally ended up in Women’s. When money was tight and we borrowed from family friends whose daughters had graduated five or more years ahead of us, there was only one girl I could borrow from–my sister had her pick of racks of hand-me-downs, but I had to fall in love with the 1978 powder blue fashion sensation covered in crocheted lace or stay home. (and I hate all forms of blue. Especially powder blue). My girlfriends showed up at the pool in a bikini, I had two one-pieces to choose from. (I actually did wear a bikini once. I was four. Mom has a photo to prove it, but I wonder if the back wasn’t held together with duct tape. My memory fades after so long…)
So how did I get “fat”? I remember pictures of myself as a kid: feeding our pet goat, standing in front of dad’s Volkswagen ‘Thing’ with all my cousins, standing next to my cousin Casey and Mickey Mouse in Disneyland and I don’t look –fat–. I look strong and healthy and like I should have been born into a farming family (I was one generation too late). I don’t have the rolls I have today, but I do have the chub rub that I’ve never been without. There’s no bra overhang in those photos, but I am bigger than my oldest male cousin who played football. (I’m the oldest of this generation of kids; he’s three years younger than me). In team photos, J.B. is bigger than me (but my heinous home perm is the ugliest thing going).
I think what I’m searching for is that very first moment someone called me ‘fat’ so that I have a crutch to fall back on, a place to lay blame for my feeling as though my body has kept me from getting involved in life in a more assertive way. My weight doesn’t stop me from doing anything (except sky-diving and bungee-jumping, which I fully intend to do before I kick the bucket) but it does keep me more on the sidelines than the real game. I’m content being quiet, because when I’m in the spotlight, I get nervous about what people think.
It’s a very odd nervousness, too. Like I think people can’t see past my size 16 ass to realize that I’ve got solid knowledge and that I”m a really great person. I don’t ever judge the abilities and knowledge of other people based on their weight–so why do I constantly second-guess my own self on criteria I don’t use for others? Makes no sense. I know there are shallow, self-centered people who like to think they’re better than the fat girl because they’re skinny, but most of the time they’re just genetically gifted in the body and not the brain. If you can’t see past a person’s size to the heart of the matter, then no amount of knowledge you possess is valuable.
I think there’s more to the advent of the F word–in relationship to me–than I’ve said, but I’m going to be thinking more about it now that that train of thought has left the station (toot toot!). In the meantime…I have a date with the Wii. He better go easy on me today–he gave me sore thighs yesterday (if only that were as dirty as it sounded….).
Have you ever had a problem and not known you’ve had a problem until someone mentions it? Maybe you’re always tapping your pencil when you think. Or pacing the room when you’re nervous. Or randomly stealing silverware from fancy restaurants. Whatever your vice, when it’s brought up, brought out into the open, it’s almost see it as a problem at first. After all, this is how I behave. It happens for some subconscious reason to keep me safe (even the kleptomania). And it’s very hard to change.
I know you’re thinking that I steal things for fun. Not true. My problem is that I have been, for much of my natural-born life, unable to accept personal compliments. There are very, very few things that, when commented upon by an outside person in a positive manner, I am able to take at face value. My writing skills and creativity are the only things I can accept. (why? Because I’m a creative genius and I’m underappreciated).
Retrieving my mail Tuesday after school, the secretary commented on how I look like I’m ‘thinning in the middle’. She’s shorter than me, so I didn’t assume I had a growing bald spot. She made curvy motions down the length of her torso, so common sense led me to deduce she meant my lump of clay was being shaped into something slightly human.
“Are you sure you don’t need new glasses?”
She giggled. “I’m sure. I actually noticed it earlier today but was too busy to say anything.”
“I’m not sure what there is to notice.”
She punched my arm. You’re looking thinner through the middle. Like something’s going on.”
“Something’s going on for sure,” I said. “Trying not to buy a bigger pant size after the holidays is what’s going on.”
She shook her head at me. “No, I mean it. You’re looking good. Whatever you’re doing is working.”
I’d just spent two weeks scarfing too much food and doing zero exercise. True, I’d walked twice since Monday, but doubted it had anything to do with her perception.
“Great! I’ll keep eating junk food in front of the tv! I’m so glad you gave me the go-ahead!”
She leveled a serious stare at me. “Hey. Just say ‘thank you’ and get it over with, ok? You look good. Stop trying to convince me to change my mind.”
Her words were painfully familiar. I’d heard them from a friend once, years ago, when I lost forty pounds through hard work. He’d complimented me, I’d trashed myself in some form and he’d chastised me for not accepting the compliment. “Just say ‘thank you,’” he’d said. “If you make a smart-ass compliment, it’s like you don’t trust my judgment to notice things.”
I didn’t want to second-guess his observation, so I’d quietly thanked him and moved on with my day. Likewise, I thanked the secretary and headed back to my room, deep in thought why I can’t take compliments. I came up with a two-fold reason: one, if I don’t feel the compliment is true, I can’t agree with it. I generally don’t go along with things in general that I don’t agree with without some type of feedback, so why would I agree that I look thinner if I feel like a beached whale? And the second reason, I think, goes way back: protection. Mean girls in school gave compliments only to have them twisted when you accepted them. If they said your hair looked nice today, they’d follow it with “nice for a rat’s nest, that is.” Or if they mentioned your eyeshadow color, you immediately ran to the bathroom and scrubbed it off with those lovely sandpaper-based paper towels. The worst were weight comments: love those pants! (they make them in your size?). Love that sweater! (look what the thrift store has now!). Pretty prom dress! (I know it’s a hand-me-down, I’ve seen it before.) Your cookies are delicious! (and you shouldn’t be eating them.)
The smarminess of their tone still echoes in my head. When anyone–even an honestly nice adult person far removed from my growing-up days makes a positive comment, I hold my breath and wait for the punch line, expecting a rim shot and howling laughter from the other mean girls in a pack (ever notice they can’t travel alone?). It’s easier for me to hate on myself and control the situation than it is for me to allow their compliment to glimmer, even if for a second, with the potential for belief only to have it snapped away by their slobbery jaws.
If I’d only have lost a fraction of a pound or not have felt I was bursting at the seams I might have smiled and agreed, if only half. But there’s more to being a fat girl than just the weight. There’s all kinds of mental baggage, ingrained habits, ways of thinking and behaving that come from years of protecting ourselves from bullies that takes just as long to undo as it takes to take off the weight. One without the other will never lead to success, so not only do I need to start acting and eating like a healthy person, I need to start thinking like one. Far easier said than done.
As for the kleptomania…
Just a word of warning…this might be a long post, but if that bugs you–tough. It’s my blog. I’m feeling the urge to write, and I’ve got a solid hour before I even think about bedtime. Take those two reasons combined with the fact that I’ve really started feeling crappy about my personal health (yes, read that as “fatness”) lately, you’re in for a treat. (Not a chocolate-covered one, either).
You may have noticed my absence from the blogging arena over the last few months. (then again, maybe not). I’ll be honest–I’ve really not felt like blogging (not just here, don’t feel neglected) but at my main (writing) blog as well. I think part of the reason–possibly a big part of it–is in going back to school. I just don’t have the time, motivation or energy some days to sit and type. My schedule has adjusted from waking up at 6:30 to now waking at 4:30. (Yes, AM). Instead of enjoying the sunset and going to bed around 11, I wake up in the dark and go to bed in the dark–I usually hop into bed before 9:30. In the meantime, I’m making dinner, cleaning, napping…all things I must do to maintain sanity and some type of healthy lifestyle to keep going.
But it’s wreaked total and complete havoc on my body. In the past two years, I think I have gained almost 30 pounds. I attribute this to a few things–a job change where I don’t get to set my own schedule, where I wake up so early it feels like I’m still on the day before, a really rotten lunch time (my lunchtime is 10:10 am, leaving me desperately famished when it’s time to go home despite a snack or two during my lesson prep time), being mentally, emotionally, physically & psychologically drained after raising other people’s kids for an entire day and literally needing a nap to keep myself awake past 5pm. (no longer than a 20 minute power nap, but still).
The jogging phase last spring worked really well for me. Coming out of a cold, dreary Ohio winter, stopping at the park three days a week and getting my creaky body to move was refreshing. Energizing. And novel. I had no false hopes that I would magically transform into a jogger (even if I led you to believe that here). I don’t enjoy jogging enough to keep at it for the rest of my life (despite my previous blog comments). And this time, there wasn’t a lot of weight loss/muscle tightening as there has been during past jogging lapses…I mean session.
And why keep at something if you don’t like it and it doesn’t seem to be working? (I could insert a comment here about a teacher I work with, but I’ll keep that to myself).
I think I’m rambling, and it’s 30 minutes til bedtime. What I got on here to say tonight, mostly for myself, is that over the last few months, I’ve really been feeling shitty and I have no one but myself to blame. Period. Well, I could pass a bit of that on to the hub, since he takes me out to dinner now and then and has good intentions, like tonight, of getting me dessert after a fairly decent dinner at home by buying me Hostess SnoBalls which I feel obligated to eat just to make him feel good (I’d rather have HoHos). But no one is pointing a gun at my temple and forcing me to eat. (no one except the voices).
Here’s what’s pissing me off about this whole extra 30 pounds thing (I like lists, in no particular order)
1. I am eating a healthy breakfast every day. I have only had donuts approximately 3 times in the last three months. If that. And one donut was a gift from my son’s best friend who works at Jolly Pirate. (He always was my favorite).
2. I’m eating light lunches. A Lean Cuisine and some type of veggie or fresh fruit to go with, a water or diet Ginger Ale or plain iced tea. I’ve had a cafeteria lunch twice. Once was the new pizza, which was the first and last time that creature gets near my mouth, and once was when I was sick and had salad for lunch…and it made me queasy. Corn dogs at school never make me queasy. Occasionally I’ll add in a yogurt. Or maybe sunflower seeds. All properly portioned, of course.
3. I’m having this issue with severe sugar/chocolate/candy cravings after lunch and dinner. For example, today I as 110% satisfied with my roasted turkey lean cuisine and apple. But about ten minutes later, I practically ate my arm off to get a piece of halloween candy from my good-reward-for-the-kids stash, which turned into two pieces which turned into four and a hunk of Dove chocolate. And I wasn’t even remotely hungry. I kept telling myself as I shoveled in the mini Twix, but the connection to the brain was lost when those chocolately atoms hit my tongue. Like I’ve lost all common sense. I have two degrees from college yet I don’t know how to stop eating when I’m not hungry? Ridiculous.
4. Likewise, I was a fool and purchased a huge-ass (I can use that word because it’s what the candy creates) bag of tootsie roll-related candy. I didn’t do this under the premise of halloween, but under the premise (is it a premise if it’s true and factual?) of being very dedicated to my writing over the last few months, and in preparation for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November, which I’ll be doing for the first time ever. Why tootsie rolls for writing? Because in grad school (I told you I have two degrees) I did a research project on how I learn using different multiple intelligences (modalities, if you’re into that type of stuff). My discovery was that when I have something chewy or something to suck on (Hey, candy. This is the food blog, not the porno blog), it literally helps me focus on the work I’m doing. If I start working on an essay, if I suck on a tootsie pop, it really does help keep me focused for much longer than if I didn’t. So I bought the candy in hopes I’d be a NYT best selling author by now. All I got was a New York sized waistline.
5. Another thing that pisses me off (in case you’ve forgotten why I started this list): my Wii Fit. The kid forced me to get one a month ago. I like it. Fun, cute, interactive, my Mii is utterly adorable and never has a bad hair day…but the body test every morning was pissing me off to no end. I know weight fluctuates. But in the days before the gianormous bag of candy in my kitchen, I was gaining three pounds a day after walking, eating healthy and drinking all my water. Oh, and 45 minutes of Wii Fit thrown in for good measure. WTF? I know I’m fat but I did not gain 5.4 pounds in a single day. Unless the dog was on my back on the balance board.
There are other reasons I’m pissed but it’s close to bedtime and I’m losing steam. I think what I’m most hacked off about is that I’ve let this weight creep up while bitching about it but doing nothing about it, really, except giving in to my stupid behaviors that are leading me right into trouble. I can’t diss the entire candy bag, but I need to stop eating three pieces here, three there, six later, two for midnight, etc. And I need to exercise more. Period. I recently read a research report where they found that folks who did an average of 300 minutes of exercise per week were the best losers of all. I used to do that, count minutes. Then my pedometer ran out of batteries.
I just found the pedometer today, accidentally, in the bathroom drawer. Do you think that’s a sign?
Thanks for letting me vent. You know I’ll be back. Except next time, I’ll make it entertaining.
I’m still here, battling the forces of sugar and evil. About to put on my mask and cape (so slimming!) to head to the state fair where I know I’ll lose a minimum of one deep-fried battle.
I’m still jogging, albeit at a slower clip since coming back from a week at summer camp.
I’ll catch you up soon. In the meantime, donuts of the world–unite!