Cthulhu's Cafeteria

this blog is moving to Wordpress

2008-05-07T12:19:00.002-04:00

For anyone who has this blog bookmarked or is getting it through a feed, I'm moving over to Wordpress. I just like their features a lot better than the ones here.

The address is the same, except swap "blogspot" for "wordpress" -- ccafeteria.wordpress.com.

See you there!

The first word in HAES is Health

2008-04-30T19:13:00.002-04:00

Good with Cheese reminded me at exactly the right time that the "health" part of HAES means a lot more than just eating well and moving my body regularly.

See, I came down with a nasty cold Monday. One of those where you feel fine all day, and then suddenly, after dinner, WHAMMO! Sore throat, stuffy head, general ick. I've been coughing, blowing my nose nonstop, have a fever on and off, have been trying to come up with a way to make the insides of my ears stop itching, and generally being a sickie.

Here's the thing: having this cold has been making me have long, INSANE conversations with myself (no, the conversations aren't insane just by virtue of the fact that I'm talking to myself; THAT'S completely normal) about how I need to get to the gym to keep up my pattern of exercising 3x a week (sometimes even 4x a week, if the dogs can con me into a W-A-L-K).

I feel strong and clearheaded when I exercise regularly, and I love the endorphin rush. And since I couldn't work out for most of November, all of December, and all of January because of a sprained ankle, when I got back to the gym in February, I vowed to make it a regular part of my schedule. Not to lose weight, but because it makes me FEEL GOOD.

After not working out for almost 3 months, and then getting back into the habit of regular exercise for the past 3 months, my lizard brain keeps zipping around, yelling "Must...work...out!!! Get to the gym!!! Go go go!!! Can't miss a week!!!" I even said in my comment to Good with Cheese's post that I've "been good" by working out 3x a week for the past 3 months.

Yup. I fell into the trap of the good/bad mindset, where exercise = good and not exercising = bad. I didn't mean to, but I think that's the whole point -- it's still ingrained in me that some behavior is "good" and other behavior is "bad," and if I don't stop once in a while to check my brain, I can be hip-deep in self-congratulation for my exercise streak.

You know what IS "bad"? Pushing myself to work out when I can hardly breathe because I have an icky cough. Convincing myself that I can go to the gym and "just walk around the track slowly" when I hardly have the energy to read a book.

I said in my comment to Good with Cheese's post that my "row of gold stars" is broken. But, hell, who deserves a gold star for pushing herself too hard and maybe getting sicker, for exposing lots of other people to her cold, for NOT listening to her body? No gold star there.

I needed the reminder in Good with Cheese's post that the "health" part of HAES comes from listening to my body to find out what it truly needs, and then giving that to my body. Some days my body does need to move, and I try to honor that. But this week, today? My body just needs to rest and get better. Anything else doesn't qualify as "health" and damn well doesn't earn me a gold star.

Why is the US in a recession? Because of all the fat people, that's why!

2008-04-25T10:47:00.003-04:00

I was reading the beautiful Love Letter to a Fat Man at Men in Full, and clicked on the link that inspired it — an MSN Finance article titled "What if No One Were Fat?"

It doesn't use the kind of vile sentiments that many fat-hating articles do, but make no mistake, the author of this article hates fat people. She must, given the fact that she blames all of society's financial problems on The Fat People. No, seriously.

"The estimates below assume the average American adult is at least 20 pounds overweight, a figure nutritionists see as fair."

"Savings on fuel for cars and airlines due to their lighter loads would top $5 billion, according to industry studies. Researchers say each overweight driver burns about 18 additional gallons (70 litres) of gas a year, or just under a billion gallons (3.89 billion litres) altogether."

What about all the trucks/SUVs/Hummers that are, in and of themselves, significantly heavier than sedans, economy cars, and the much-loved Prius? I drive a Toyota Echo, which weighs literally less than a ton — FAR lighter than most of the other vehicles on the road. I think that MORE than makes up for my "extra 20 pounds."

"Savings in the air are far greater: The jet-fuel savings alone could double North American airlines' forecast 2008 profits to $3.8 billion and maybe persuade them to stop stranding passengers because they can't afford the fuel for flights."

Yes, you read that correctly: fat people are responsible for airlines' bankruptcy, and, worse than that, for all the Skinny Folk getting stranded at the airport. Because it has nothing to do with fuel prices, or airlines' fiscal planning. Your fat ass is why Delta and Northwest just merged.

Kind of makes you feel powerful, doesn't it? I'm getting a headrush from all my Fat Power! Let's see what other financial woes I'm responsible for!

"Plus-sized clothing costs 10% to 15% more, so shoppers would save $10 billion on shirts, pants and dresses. And clothes might fit better too. Cynthia Istook, an associate professor in textile apparel at North Carolina State University, says the economies of making fewer sizes would be tremendous. Clothing makers could then afford to offer more variety in hip and bust sizes, rather than asking every woman to squeeze into an hourglass shape."

God, if you FAT PEOPLE would stop being so selfishly fat and demanding clothes that actually fit properly and look good, why, the rest of the Skinny Folk would have more clothing options! My skinny mom is going to be forced to go to work in a POTATO SACK because I just won't stop being fat!

"Because 3,500 calories translates into a pound of fat, somewhere along the way, America's 227 million adults have eaten 16 trillion calories too many. That's 14 billion Big Mac meals, with fries and a soda."

Do I even need to address this one? I'm so tired of hearing that "3,500 calories" line, along with the implication that my body is a laboratory-calibrated calorimeter.

Besides, lots of Skinny Folk eat Big Macs, too. Surely at least one or two of those 14 billion Big Mac meals were consumed by a non-fat person.

"The medical costs of obesity-related problems such as diabetes, stroke and heart disease run near $140 billion, or more than 6% of all health-care costs."

(Sigh.) Say it with me: CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. Oh, but wait. Skinny Folk ever get diabetes, strokes, or heart disease. (Except, for example, my Dad's ENTIRE FAMILY.)

"Productivity in the workplace would jump as people took fewer sick days and spent less time at work feeling unwell. Ross DeVol, the director of health economics at the Milken Institute, says the loss of productivity due to people showing up at work sick is "immense." Using a recent Milken report on the subject, he calculates that if no one were obese, the added output from workers and their caregivers would give the country a $257 billion boost."

This, however, is the biggest crock of shit in the entire article. (And that's hard to do, given how utterly ignorant the rest of the article is.) Can anyone find for me where in that paragraph "being sick" is caused by obesity? How does being overweight give me the flu? Or migraines?

Ignorant, ignorant, ignorant. That paragraph is based on the utterly incorrect assumption that fat = unhealthy. I know as a matter of goddamn fact that I don't take any more sick days than my non-fat co-workers. Seriously, now. Are we to assume that more fat people call in sick to work because they're pinned to their bed by the sheer gravitational pull of their ASSES?!?

You tell me. Because I can't think of any other reason.

" 'Jenny Craig would be very unhappy' if everyone were slim, says Rand's Sturm. And so she would, along with the rest of the $55 billion weight-loss industry."

I certainly can't argue with this, but I have a more realistic way to put Jenny Craig out of business: JUST STOP DIETING.

"Manufacturers and builders wouldn't have to make doorways bigger, car seats wider, furniture stouter."

Because of all those selfish goddamn fat people who have the nerve to demand that they be treated like human beings!

"Some even argue that global warming would slow a mite, as consumption of gas, energy, fertilizer and methane-producing cattle decreased."

Ahahahahahaha!!!!! I'm actually PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for global warming!!!!!

The POWER!!! I'm drunk on the sheer force of my AWESOME FAT POWER!!!!

"...the net effect on the economy of a slimmer population would be a lot of reshuffled resources, with a nice rise in productivity that should take living standards up a notch."

And back to the main point of the article (well, one of the main points; the other being ignorant fat hatred): You Big Fat Fatties Have Put America In A Recession — Are You Happy Now???

I didn't know I had it in me.

skewed perception

2008-03-31T09:51:00.002-04:00

The other night, I was looking through the photo galleries at The Judgment of Paris. My boyfriend, as he often does, plopped down on the couch next to me to see what I was doing and if he could do it with me (sometimes he's very high-maintenance).

"What are you doing?"

"Looking at pictures of plus-sized models."

"Can I look, too?" (Pause.) "Wow...she's HOT!"

As we looked through the photo galleries, I commented that most of the pictures don't look "plus-sized" to me. They look normal size. Not big, not small — normal. For instance, this cover from the dearly departed, sorely missed MODE absolutely doesn't look "plus-size" to me. I mean, what would make it "plus-size"? Her boobs? There's nothing about Natalie Laughlin on that cover that — to me — looks larger than normal.

Almost every photo we came to, I said, "In what world is THAT 'plus-sized'? I don't get it!"

Finally, T. said to me, "You don't read fashion magazines, do you? I mean, I've never seen you reading anything other than Health and Macworld."

I said that no, I don't read fashion magazines, because I'm not terribly interested in them, and they generally feature clothes that I could never afford anyway.

"Well," T. said, "I think that's why these models don't seem 'plus-size' to you — you just aren't used to seeing the very skinny models in fashion magazines these days."

Huh. I hadn't even thought about that. He's right, though. The models in Vogue, et al., aren't on my radar these days. I used to read fashion magazines like Glamour and Mademoiselle years ago, but I haven't for a long time. And when I see photos of plus-size models, who are my size (or smaller), they look normal to me, because they look like what I see in the mirror every day.

And even though I have my own struggles with accepting my body, I'm glad — I'm THRILLED — that I've internalized a standard for "normal" beauty that truly IS closer to the average woman than most advertisers would have me believe.

Non-Specific Intuitive Eating

2008-03-25T11:27:00.005-04:00

I tend to make things harder than they should be. (Never, EVER ask me to give you directions. I write paragraphs just to get someone 2 miles in a straight line. I feel more detail is always better.) Apparently, I've been doing the same thing with intuitive eating.

I've been walking around thinking that intuitive eating means that, whenever I'm hungry, I'll know PRECISELY what I want to eat. Like, Trader Joe's chicken-and-apple sausage cut up into scrambled eggs with finely shredded asiago cheese, with a hunk of toasted sourdough bread from the tiny indie bakery down the street.

And sometimes my stomach DOES get that specific, and I honor that request to the best of my ability. (The best Thai food I ever had was in London, at Thai on the Thames in Richmond. Since I live right smack in midwestern America, I seriously doubt that my stomach will ever get Thai on the Thames again, so when it craves Pad See Ew, it's got to be from the Thai place around the corner.)

But sometimes my stomach just says, "Hey, I'm hungry. Do we have any protein?" Or, even more vaguely, "Hey, I'm hungry. Put something in me soon, or there's going to be fallout." I had assumed that "real" intuitive eating involved honoring the craving for specific foods, not just honoring your hunger in general.

That's silly, isn't it? At its most basic level, intuitive eating starts with the non-specific idea that if you're hungry, EAT! And from there, if your stomach requests something that's within your power to provide, you eat that instead of a substitute that will inevitably be less satisfying.

But since I make things harder than they need to be, I've been stubborn and not eating when I'm hungry UNLESS I know specifically what it is that I want to eat. This has led, unsurprisingly, to low blood sugar, headaches, crankiness, and, ultimately, eating way past full because I waited too long to eat and my hunger became overwhelming.

Yesterday, it was 11:30-ish in the morning. And I was undeniably, stomach-growling HUNGRY. I kept looking at the clock and telling myself to just hold on and wait until noon. Why? Because noon is when you're "supposed" to eat lunch. (For the record, no one at my company has to follow a rigid time schedule, so some people eat lunch at 2:30, some eat at noon — basically, we can eat whenever we want.)

After about 5 minutes of telling my stomach to stop growling, the sheer absurdity of it suddenly hit me. What the HELL? I'm an adult with a flexible schedule and a turkey sandwich in the refrigerator. There was no reason I couldn't eat my lunch at 11:30 instead of noon.

My hunger wasn't for a specific food; it was just general mealtime hunger. And that's when it hit me that the foundation of intuitive eating is the simple act of eating when you're hungry; from there, it can be more specific, but it doesn't have to be. The Rotund talks about this in a recent post, saying, "The day I realized that I felt better and was happier and far more pleasant to be around when I actually, you know, ate food instead of ignoring my hunger cues, was a hugely important day."

The best part was that, because I finally came to my senses and ate when I was hungry instead of forcing myself to wait, I stopped obsessing over how soon I'd be "allowed" to eat, and just got on with my day. Non-intuitive eating just creates an obsession — when you're allowed to eat, what you're allowed to eat, the amount you're allowed to eat of the approved foods...and then when you'll be allowed to eat AGAIN.

Eat when you're hungry. It's the simplest damn thing in the world. So then WHY is it so hard for so many people?

Medication-Related Weight Gain and Loss

2008-03-17T10:03:00.005-04:00

Seeworthy has a recent post about an article discussing the possibility that medications are making us fat. Specifically, medications for psychiatric conditions.

Speaking for my own fat self, I've gained about 50-60 pounds since I started Zoloft about 10 years ago. And just googling "zoloft + weight gain" leads to a hell of a lot of anecdotal stories about people who, after starting Zoloft (or other SSRI antidepressants), began to gain weight even though their diet and level of activity was unchanged.

My whole adult life, I've been overweight by all external measures. Through college I was a size 14, and after college I settled at a size 16 for years. And no matter how much exercise I engaged in, no matter how little fat I ate (remember the 1990s, when fat was the demon and carbs were good? Mmmmm....pasta!), I always stayed at a size 16.

(Of course, it never occurred to me, back then, that maybe the fact that nothing made my weight budge might be an indication that that was the size my body wanted to be. I was still in the mindset that losing weight, being the smallest size possible, was a goal worth achieving at all costs.)

Then I started taking Zoloft, and despite exercise, despite Weight Watchers, despite fervently embracing low-carb when it came around (bye-bye, low-fat diet beliefs of the 1990s!), my weight crept up. And oh, how I hated myself. It had to be *me,* didn't it? I just wasn't exercising hard enough, or long enough, or maybe it was the oatmeal I had for breakfast instead of eggs and turkey bacon.

Truly, it didn't make sense. And, 10 years ago, all the information available about Zoloft and other SSRIs was that they could actually cause weight *loss.* The fact that it didn't, for me, made me hate myself even more — it was like my body couldn't even get the side effects right!

Now, I don't exaggerate when I say that Zoloft literally saved my life. Even if I had known back then that it was causing me to gain weight, I wouldn't have stopped taking it. And now I'm up to a size 20-22.

I've been tapering down my Zoloft dose since last summer — but before I made that decision, I had NO idea that Zoloft can cause weight gain. I made that decision based on a lot of reasons, all of which had to do with my mental health, not my weight. That never entered into it.

But the tapering of my dose caused withdrawal (which I expected) bad enough that I started researching ways to deal with the withdrawal, and THAT led me to tons of the aforementioned anecdotal stories about people gaining weight on SSRIs.

I admit that I'm extremely curious to see what happens to my weight once I'm totally off of the Zoloft. Anecdotal evidence is not clinical evidence, certainly, but anecdotal evidence CAN lead to clinical studies, which can then verify or disprove the anecdotal evidence. In any case, if I don't lose weight, I won't be disappointed, and if I *do* lose weight, I'm not going to view it as some praise-worthy accomplishment on my part. Let me offer an example:

I was at a party over the weekend, and one of the women there was crowing about how she'd lost about 3 or 4 sizes after stopping some medication she was on. And the thing is, I get that. Medication can do weird things to your body, in terms of hormones and metabolism and all kinds of other processes.

It's just — she was SO fucking proud of her weight loss. It was all she could talk about, in a fake-self-effacing way: "The biggest pain about LOSING ALL THIS WEIGHT is that I totally have to buy all new clothes! My old ones just literally FALL OFF ME! Look at this waistband!" Here she pulled her skirt away from her waist, to demonstrate her incredible shrinking midsection. "I bought this after I started LOSING WEIGHT, because I never dreamed I'd LOSE THIS MUCH MORE! Now I have to get rid of this skirt, too!"

People were praising her, and congratulating her, and telling her how tight her butt looked, etc. And I just wanted to say, "You didn't DO anything! You stopped taking a medication — that doesn't mean you starved yourself or jogged holes in your Nikes!" (Not that *those* are praise-worthy, either; my point is that people were treating her like she worked SO hard to lose weight, when all she did was stop taking one medication.)

When people tell me I have pretty eyes, I don't think "Thank you" is the appropriate response, because I didn't DO anything to get them, you know? But I'll pass the compliment on to my parents and their good DNA. And losing weight because I stop a medication falls in the same category.

Sure, stopping a medication can, obviously, lead to weight loss. But don't expect me to fall at your skinny feet with admiration.

I Love my Doctor

2008-03-14T19:18:00.004-04:00

I've been seeing the same primary-care doctor for 15 years, since I graduated from college. He is truly outstanding. He's very thorough, very attentive, extremely funny — and never blames my fat for causing illnesses. In the 15 years I've been going to him, I've probably gained 50 pounds, and yet he never brings up the topic of losing weight. About 5 years ago, my blood pressure was — for the first time in my life — consistently high. And *I* brought up my weight, asking if I should try to lose weight to lower my blood pressure.

Do you know what he said? "It might help, but it might not; there are a lot of skinny people with hypertension, and a lot of fat people without it."

I could have kissed him. (And, eventually, after taking blood pressure meds for a couple of years, my blood pressure went back to normal, so I could stop taking the drugs. That was despite the fact that I *gained,* not lost, weight. So my kick-ass doctor was right!)

Anyway, I saw him today, because I'm fairly sure I have an ulcer, and after the appointment was over and I was driving back to work, it occurred to me how utterly fucking lucky I am to have such a good doctor who truly feels like he's working *with* me, who never ever falls for the "But don't you know FAT IS UNHEALTHY?!?" trap.

I wish everyone could have a doctor like him. We all deserve it.

"You're losing weight!" — and — "Good Enough" Fat Activism?

2008-03-12T11:12:00.008-04:00

Yesterday, one of my co-workers said to me, "I just wanted to let you know — I can really tell that you're losing weight!" And she gestured towards her jawline, and then her general abdomen area. "Here, and here."

And I agree with her; I'm pretty sure that I have lost some weight recently. After spraining the same ankle twice — in November and again at the end of December — my ability to exercise was extremely curtailed. But at the end of January, my ankle had healed enough that I could get back to the gym.

After 3 months of virtually no exercise, apparently the past 10 weeks of exercise (moderate though it is) has moved my body back in the direction of the shape it's in when I regularly work out. Set point? Equilibrium? Whatever you want to call it, there's a shape/size/weight my body settles at when I feed it well and move it frequently. Not being able to exercise for 3 months, quite understandably, skewed my size upwards. And now it's skewing back down.

The reason I've gone back to the gym is NOT to lose weight; it's because my ankle is healed enough to handle working out. I like the endorphin buzz. I like feeling — being — strong. I like watching the kids' basketball games in the gym that the walking track overlooks.

It just happens that, because of the period of inactivity before I went back to the gym, I *am* losing some weight as my body settles where it wants to, based on how much I move it and what I feed it.

So when my co-worker said "I can tell you're losing weight!" my reaction was, "Yeah, I think I am." Because I didn't realize at first that she was couching her statement as praise. So when I affirmed that there was less of me, she said, "Good job! Keep up the good work!"

And for the first time in my life, I didn't react by being self-effacing ("Oh, well, it's hard, but I'm trying!") or self-hating ("Well, if I just lose 50/75/100 more pounds, then I'll be happy!"). What I said, when she told me to keep up the good work, was, "Actually, I'm not *trying* to lose weight; I'm just exercising more than I had been able to do since before Thanksgiving."

Her response to that? "Well, you *are* losing weight, and that's GREAT!"

Honestly, it was almost 5:00, and I had no desire to start a long, drawn-out thing, so what I said back was, "Like I said, I'm not trying to lose weight; I'm just enjoying being able to exercise regularly again. It feels good."

Should I have said more? Maybe. But I'm still so new to fat activism, and I'm still feeling the boundaries of how much education to offer people in different settings. I'd say much more to a friend or some family members, but at work, I don't feel that it's my place to sit someone down for a long discussion with charts and graphs and Web links.

Does that make me a "bad" fat activist? I don't think so. Others might, and that's their prerogative.

I also have to confess that there's still part of me — the part that went to WW, the part that exercised compulsively in college, the part that was always told that I have "such a pretty face; the boys will line up for dates" if only I lost weight — that *did* feel a momentary thrill at my co-worker's recognition. I'm *not* trying to lose weight; that never was the reason I started back at the gym. But over 20 years of wanting to lose weight, trying to lose weight, believing I should lose weight, believing I *can* lose weight if only I "try harder" — it installed a lot of bad beliefs that I'm having a hard time erasing. One of those is the desire for recognition of my "accomplishment."

Does THAT make me a bad fat activist? I've read some fatosphere blogs recently where the sentiment has been expressed that anyone who wants to lose weight can't really be a fat activist. I believe it was expressed something like "I don't want you accepting my fat if you can't accept your own." Well, does that also include people who are pleased that someone noticed their weight loss, even if they hadn't been trying to lose weight? Despite that contradiction, can *they* (and here I mean *me*) not be fat activists? I don't think that attitude takes into account the reality that fat acceptance is a process, and not even a one-way process.

For me, it was a HUGE step forward that the reason I went back to the gym was NOT because I wanted to lose weight, but ONLY because I wanted to move my body. I missed working out, missed the endorphin buzz, missed the feeling of physical exertion.

That's one step. Maybe the next step is not feeling that momentary flush of accomplishment if anyone remarks that I seem to have lost weight. But I obviously haven't hit that step, and what I'm wondering is: where do I have to be in the fat acceptance process before my fat activism is legitimate to others in the fatosphere?

I'm not perfect. I'm deeply flawed. I thrill to *any* acknowledgment of my accomplishments — good grades in school, a promotion at work, having my writing published — so, yes, over 20 years of trying to lose weight instilled in me the desire to have weight loss acknowledged. And even now, when I *am* able to look at it and see that weight loss isn't an "accomplishment" any more than weight gain is a "failure," my old, ingrained reactions still kick in, even if it's only for a moment.

I want to get past that. And I believe that I *am* getting past that. Is it good enough for the fat acceptance movement that I'm on the continuum, even if I'm not as far along as others?

I figure, as utterly ridiculous and damaging as hating myself for my weight is, it's just as ridiculous to consider myself a "bad" fat activist for not being at the same stage of fat acceptance as others. Why trade one form of self-hatred for another? I won't do that.

Where I am is where I am. *I* recognize that it's a much healthier frame of mind than I've ever had, even if it still has contradictions in it. And I intend to keep moving forward, to get past those contradictions.

That's good enough for me. It HAS to be.

Listening to My Body

2008-03-05T11:47:00.003-05:00

I mentioned in my previous post that I sprained my left ankle — badly — twice in the span of 5 weeks. Sprain #2 happened on Christmas Eve, and since sprain #1 hadn't even totally healed at that point (I was wearing a [crappy] ankle brace when I re-sprained my ankle, as a matter of fact), it's taken a good 8 weeks for me to feel like my ankle is well on the road to recovery. I still wear a brace (a much better one than the one I was wearing for sprain #2) when I work out, but for the most part it feels pretty good.

Because of my ankle's self-destructive streak, from early November through the end of January, I didn't exercise at all. So when I got back to the gym at the end of January, I wasn't able to do very much at first, partly because my ankle couldn't tolerate much exercise, and partly because 10+ weeks of inactivity left me extremely out of shape. It almost felt like I was starting a "fitness regime" from scratch. And, I guess, in a way I was.

At first, all I could do was walk around the track for 10 minutes, at a fairly slow pace, before my ankle screamed in protest. I limited that to twice a week in the beginning. And then as my ankle got stronger, allowing me to increase the time and pace and frequency of workouts, the rest of my body screamed in protest. My body at rest wanted to stay at rest.

I'm up to 3 times a week, 30 minutes of walking or stationary biking at a time, and I feel pretty good about that. I mean to say — my body feels good with that level of activity. I love the endorphin buzz I get when it's all over, and I love that I'm starting to feel stronger and more energetic.

Adding more activity is making me hungrier on a daily basis, which makes sense. And I'm doing pretty well at not berating myself for needing more food to fuel my activity, which is a nice mental change.

However, adding more activity is also leading to muscle fatigue when I increase the amount of time or intensity of my workout. This also makes sense. And yet, when I decided to skip my workout yesterday because my legs were sore and trembling, I felt like I had just committed a HUGE sin. Like the equivalent of eating a puppy. A cute puppy.

But here's the thing: despite the guilt, I still listened to my body and actually gave it what it needed. I didn't try to push through the fatigue and get in a workout because I "was supposed" to. I went home, pulled out my MegaYoga book, and did some yoga poses for about 20 minutes to try to alleviate the soreness in my legs. And then I ate a good dinner because I was hungry, watched some TV with the boyfriend, and got a good night's sleep.

Today, I don't feel one bit of guilt about not going to the gym. And it's weird, but I can feel my body thanking me.

It's Been a While

2008-02-27T13:25:00.003-05:00

Hi, y'all.

Truly, I didn't intend to abandon my blog — or fat acceptance — after my last entry. The issue (my boyfriend asking me if I was "going to get bigger") did spin my head, in a lot of ways. It brought up a LOT of old, ugly feelings from my childhood, and let me tell you, old shit is so much harder to deal with than new shit. So there was that.

Also, when I recounted the "Are you going to get bigger?" story to a close friend, instead of sympathy, what I got was this reply: "You're fooling yourself if you think you're healthy." Followed by "I'm only saying this because I love you and don't want to see you hurting yourself."

I seethed for about a month, avoided the friend, and then sat him down and told him exactly what a load of crap he was dealing. In response, he was...patronizing, let's say. So there's been some fallout from that.

Also, I did, in fact, move in with my boyfriend at the beginning of December, and while actually living together is great, relationship-wise, the logistics have consumed all my extra energy. We combined 2 households into his tiny (900 square feet) house that has only 2 closets (one in each bedroom, and that's it), and the upshot is that we're STILL unpacking, 3 months after the move date.

All of that, plus the rest of real life (work, holidays, family) has just kept me from blogging. I've been reading the fatosphere, but I haven't had the time or energy to actually write, myself.

I want to get back to it, though, because this is important to me. This is important, period.

And because I'm back in a mindset that I don't like. Here's the sitch: back in mid-November, I sprained my ankle pretty badly, but it was recovering nicely after about a month. On Christmas Eve — 5 weeks after the sprain — I re-sprained the same ankle, horribly. So it's been about 8 weeks since Sprain II, and (with the help of a really good brace), I've been going back to the gym. I need to walk so that my ankle stays flexible and gets stronger. Plus, I don't like the way I feel when I'm sedentary — I feel sluggish, and I sleep poorly, and, well, I miss the endorphin buzz.

So I've been gradually increasing my walking time, as well as using the stationary bike at the gym, and I am loving that feeling I have when I'm finished — all warm and limp-dishrag-y yet energized and content. It's good.

Except, of course, for the mindset that I've slid back into. That's the mindset, of course, that kicks in the moment I do any vigorous physical activity: "Hey, I just worked out! I'll probably start losing weight any minute now, right? Right? I mean, I just burned calories! Why am I not losing weight? Why? WHYYYYYYYY?"

I'm not doing this to lose weight; I'm doing it for ankle rehab and because I love the endorphin buzz. Except, apparently, some part of me DOES think I'm doing this to lose weight, and now I'm getting buggy and obsessive about it — like, if I don't get to the gym 3 times in a week, I castigate myself for being "lazy" and tell myself I'll NEVER make any progress, now.

I definitely DON'T want to think that way. I'm trying so hard not to, but I can't eradicate it totally. I wish I knew how.

Anyway, hi again, y'all. I'm back.

Radio Silence (or Internet Silence, I Guess)

2007-10-08T16:32:00.001-04:00

After my last post, I had a lot of discussions with my boyfriend. And I've been AWOL from posting here — even from reading other fatosphere blogs — because I feel like the only acceptable reaction I could have had to him asking me (re: the future) "Are you going to get bigger?" would have been to triumphantly return and proclaim that, for my own good AND the good of fat activists everywhere, I dumped his ass!!!

But I didn't.

And, see, while I appreciate all the thoughtful comments on my last post — MORE than any of you will EVER know — I still feel like any attempts I make to explain our relationship, the length, depth, and breadth of it, all the nooks and crannies of it, will just be seen as excuses. That, because of one question, one literally unprecedented hurtful action, I should have kicked him to the curb and strode away powerfully in my Right Fit jeans. That there could be NO EXCUSE for staying with a boyfriend who asked such a question of me (even though it was, as I said, literally the first hurtful thing he had done in the course of our relationship).

Anything I say right now sounds like an excuse, and in the face of the comments urging me to ditch him and look for someone who is truly accepting, I don't think there IS any way to explain my decision to stay together, and have it not sound like a pathetic excuse. It's NOT a pathetic excuse, and it certainly wasn't a decision I made without a lot of thought.

Don't get me wrong — his question left me upset, angry, pissed, emotionally bruised, stunned, bewildered — you pick the adjective. I didn't take his question lightly (obviously, if you read my previous post). I didn't take his attitude behind it lightly. We talked. A hell of a lot. And then more. And still more.

Ultimately, we are who we are, he and I. Either you believe me or you don't when I say that this one incident — severe though it was, and not without repercussions — isn't indicative of our relationship. How we dealt with it, however, IS.

"...are you going to get bigger?"

2007-08-30T10:41:00.000-04:00

Backstory:
I grew up with a mother who was a model before she met my dad. She has always kept her weight low, and she has a very ectomorphic body type, in addition to being 3-4 inches taller than me.

The pursuit of thinness has always been paramount to her, and got foisted onto me as I grew up. It didn't matter that I'm built differently than she is (I'm shorter, and I put on muscle really easily, and my fat is distributed in a curvy hips-ass-boobs pattern), she was still as obsessed with my weight as she was with hers. She truly believes — and always told me so — that "the boys will line up to date you if you just lose some weight."

Meaning, my weight makes me unlovable. And I've always believed that, partly because it seemed to be true — no one ever wanted to date me. (When I was a teenager, I didn't understand the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy, and how believing something can *make* it true.) So I've always considered my weight to be something much more than just excess fat and flesh; if it made me so damned unloveable, then it must be something horrible and disgusting.

I've been dating my boyfriend for over a year now, and we've been seriously considering moving in together. In fact, our recent vacation was somewhat of a test to see if we could tolerate each other in close quarters for an extended period of time.

I really can't over-emphasize what a good relationship this is. He is truly the kindest, most gentle person I have ever known. He's never careless with my feelings. I feel totally safe with him.

Currentstory:
My boyfriend and I talked last night about the prospect of moving in together, now that the vacation "experiment" is over. We talked about still having some fears, but that for the most part we want to do it.

And then my boyfriend said, "Okay, here comes a major question...." And he paused, and then asked, "....are you going to get bigger?"

For a split second, I just wanted to die.

You know, people can't help who they're attracted to, or what physical attributes they find attractive/unattractive. But I had just been assuming that my weight wasn't an issue with him, because he regularly demonstrates that he is *very* attracted to me. I mean, I *thought* so. You can't fake sexual arousal; or, at least, I can't fathom why anyone would fake it that frequently for such a long period of time.

So, if I go with the assumption that he *is* currently attracted to me, his question still makes me think only one thing: that there is a point — a weight — at which I would be unattractive and disgusting to him.

Just like my mom said.

I'm really thrown for such a loop right now. After he asked me that question, every old fear and old ugly belief came rushing back, and crushed any semblance of body acceptance I had developed. I cried and cried and cried and could hardly even talk, for at least an hour. Finally I calmed down a little, and we talked through it. I explained all the old shit with my mom, and my old ugly fears. He told me that he *is* attracted to me. However, he didn't address the issue of whether or not he'd find me unattractive if I gained any more weight. And I certainly wasn't going to press the issue.

He has always been so careful with my feelings, and I know that he didn't ask that question to hurt me. But I also don't know how he thought it would do anything *but* hurt.

I feel like shit right now. I feel disgusting and ugly and worthless. I woke up this morning with my head full of plans to exercise 7 days a week and go back to Weight Watchers. That's not the answer, I realize that. Accepting my body is the answer, I guess. But all I can think at this particular moment is: does it matter if *I* accept my body, when the man I love *doesn't*?

Vacation and Exercise

2007-08-29T14:10:00.001-04:00

I was on vacation last week, in gorgeous northern California. It was the first trip that my boyfriend and I took together, and we were both privately wondering if this would sound the death knell for the relationship. (I am, without question, difficult to travel with; The Boy thinks that *he* is difficult to travel with. The result, of course, is that we got on like peas in a pod, and had an excellent time.)

These days, I don't exercise as much as I used to, due to the ever-present time crunch (and, okay, laziness). In an "active" week, I walk on the treadmill 2 or 3 times, and do yoga 1 or 2 times. I'm trying to do yoga more frequently, because I am astonishingly inflexible. Some days I feel like I'm made of stone.

I'd like to get back to walking on the treadmill (or around the neighborhood) 4 or 5 times a week. Not because I think it'll make me lose weight, but because that's always been the level of activity that makes my body feel the best — I feel alert and energized all day, and I sleep well at night, and everything just seems to function better.

But even though I get less exercise than I used to, I'm not sedentary. Walking around a city and sightseeing isn't a daunting task for me. Granted, northern California is all hills, and I cheerfully loathe walking uphill — but I have no problem doing it. Yes, walking up a big hill makes me breathe harder, but that's the point — it's *supposed* to be harder than just walking on level ground.

While we were on vacation, we returned the rental car once we got to San Francisco, preferring public transportation to the hell of trying to park in San Francisco. After we dropped off the rental car, we had to walk back to where we were staying, maybe a mile or so. Not a difficult walk.

I don't know if I looked like I was about to collapse, or if I was sweaty and red-faced, or if I was just muttering too loudly about being lazy and wanting to take a cab, but whatever the reason, after we finished our walk, my boyfriend told me, "I'm proud of you for walking back and sticking with it." I said, "It really *wasn't* difficult; I was serious about just being lazy." My boyfriend said, "Still, I'm proud of you."

And it made me think, oh my god — is that how he sees me? As a Jabba-the-Hutt-esque blob who can barely move? I mean, he was *proud* of me for walking A MILE? That isn't exactly Olympics-level. Which then (of course) launches me into all kinds of related panicky thoughts: Is he disgusted by my body? Is he embarassed by my weight? Does he want me to lose weight but just doesn't know how to say so? Was that a hint?

And then, of course, I get angry with myself for even thinking those things, and for caring about whether he thinks I'm too fat, when I should be focusing on accepting my body the way it is, and giving it the exercise it needs.

Arrrgh.

When 12 Pounds Might as Well be 100 Pounds

2007-08-16T22:20:00.001-04:00

Dr. Stacy, of Every Woman Has An Eating Disorder, mentioned in a recent post that she's gained some weight. Twelve pounds, to be exact, which she confirmed by stepping on a scale.

Most women I know would react to the confirmation of a 12-pound weight gain by (1) massive self-hatred, (2) excessive exercise, (3) renewed zeal to consume only lettuce and water, and (4) even more self-hatred.

I'll be honest with you: *I* would probably react that way. The excessive exercise and lettuce-and-water diet would probably last for only one day, but the extra helping of self-hatred would stick around for a long, LONG time. I'm trying to get past that mindset, but I'm *so* not there yet.

The eminently sensible Dr. Stacy, however, reacted like so:

I did nothing. I went about my shower, getting dressed, and returned to work. My exercise and eating habits didn't change a bit, and I really wasn't distressed at all. Would I like to have seen less of a weight-gain, or not one at all? Sure. I'd be lying if I said I didn't, especially because some of my favorite wardrobe items have been neglected as of late. But, I've bought some new stuff, bringing the mountain to Mohammed, and I'm really not sweating the 12 pounds at all. Because in the scope of what I do and who I am and the world I live in, 12 pounds of extra flesh amount to absolutely nothing.

DAMN. I want to be able to react that way — with perspective and balance.

Not all of Dr. Stacy's commenters felt that her reaction was sensible, however. (Interestingly, only the *anonymous* commenters thought her weight gain and subsequent reaction was bad. Seriously.)

One commenter said:

BUT....12 pounds is not a small amount of weight to gain in six months. The reasons ARE important. Because if you continue to do the same thing you're doing to gain that weight, then eventually, one should be concerned about what health effects it would have.

And by "one should be concerned," she means "I know what's healthiest for your body, even though I've never met you or looked at your medical history, and I'm not a doctor either, but listen to my anti-fat rhetoric disguised as concern, anyway!" I mean, really. Dr. Stacy is an adult. I trust that a blogger who I've never met is going to be a mature enough person to note the point at which her health is affected (IF it's affected).

Or, you know, maybe she WON'T notice it. And the thing is, SHE'S AN ADULT. She has every right to not be concerned about her health, even if she has an alien baby growing out of the back of her head. That's what being an adult human being with self-determination MEANS — you have the right to do stupid shit. (I don't think that gaining weight is "stupid shit," but even if it were, it's still up to the individual to keep on gaining, or not.)

Unless, of course, you've had the temerity to gain weight recently. Then "one should be concerned."

Another anonymous commenter said:

But it CAN amount to something- stress on your joints, increased blood pressure... 12 lbs is not "nothing". 3 lbs is nothing.

So, this is either a doctor who's concealing her medical degree, or some sort of omniscient being who KNOWS — again, even though she's never met Dr. Stacy — exactly how much extra weight is bad for her body. (Or possibly it's my mom.) But really. A stranger on the other end of the Interpipe has no idea what 3, 5, or 12 pounds means on Dr. Stacy's frame, or with her medical history. But still Anonymous #2 feels compelled to comment on it, because surely Dr. Stacy doesn't pay attention to something as silly as joint pain!

And my favorite anonymous commenter (also a crack mathematician) said:

I mean, if you gained 12lbs. in the past 6 months, that means you could potentially gain 24 in one year...48 in two years...100 in four years...

That's really the gist of the "concern," isn't it? Dear god, the fat person has just let herself go completely, and unless she's stopped, she'll gain 100 pounds! We can't have THAT!!! Gaining 12 pounds is suddenly conflated with gaining 100 pounds. Again, completely discounting Dr. Stacy's own intelligence (do you think that maybe, just MAYBE, she would notice if she gained 100 pounds???) and self-determination, AND ignoring the fact that if she DID gain 100 pounds, so the fuck WHAT??? It's Dr. Stacy's own body. Not yours, Anonymous #1, #2, and #3. Take the concern trolling elsewhere.

This is my own rant; it's not meant to fight Dr. Stacy's battles for her. She does that just fine all on her own, anyway, and more power to her.

The Fruits (or Cookies) of Demand Feeding

2007-08-14T16:16:00.001-04:00

I just keep on blogging about demand feeding, don't I? I do actually have other things on my mind that I intend to blog about, such as the hairy, scary beast called Exercise, but right now I'm going to talk about demand feeding and my rejection of wafer cookies.

Remember wafer cookies?

They came in packages of vanilla, chocolate, and pink (which I think were strawberry). I loved them as a kid, though in truth, I loved just about anything made out of sugar.

Since I started paying closer attention to what my body wants to eat — and then actually eating the food my body requests — I've been slowly wending my way through the foods that I wasn't allowed to eat as a kid. What I'm finding is that, after I eat a moderate-to-large amount of whatever the food is (c.f., Little Debbie Creme pies), it doesn't actually taste that good to me.

My memory of the food is, it seems, not very accurate. Or, possibly, it IS accurate, but my taste buds have matured past the age at which snacky cakes and wafer cookies were forbidden. After all, when I was 8, if I had known about sushi, I would have run screaming from anyone who tried to get me to eat unagi, but NOW — well, I don't exaggerate when I say that I could probably eat sushi every night and not get sick of it.

So my 36-year-old taste buds are not impressed with the foods that my 8-year-old self was banned from eating. This shouldn't be as surprising as it is, particularly when I remember the Great Cereal Rebellion that took place in my first post-college apartment. The only cereal that I ate for about 6 months during that first heady rush of "My own place! My own place!" was Frankenberry. Because, of course, I wasn't allowed to eat it as a kid.

The thing was, I got tired of Frankenberry after those 6 months, and, in fact, am not terribly fond of super-sugary breakfast cereals now. I guess I was actually engaging in demand feeding back then, without knowing it had a name or a purpose. (Of course, all other forbidden foods were still forbidden.)

And that's what I'm seeing now — I don't want the wafer cookies (they have a weird bitterness under all the sugar), and the oatmeal creme pies left my tongue with a waxy coating.

I wonder what I'll discover I actually *enjoy* eating, as this process continues? Other than sushi, of course; my love for that continues unabated.

The Cult of Right Fit jeans

2007-08-12T17:23:00.001-04:00

Oh. My. God.

You know what recently released product lives up to its hype, and more? It's not the iPhone (okay, I don't have one, so I can't say that for sure, but come on — nothing could live up to the hype the iPhone got pre-release, not even if it baked muffins). It's not Spider-Man 3 (God, no).

Lane Bryant's Right Fit jeans. Remember what it was like when jeans started being made with just a tiny bit of *stretch* fabric? How, even if they fit in your hips but were tight in the waist, the tightness wasn't *quite* as bad as it was when jeans were made of 100% non-stretchy denim (plus, as I suspect, just a hint of steel)? How jeans with some stretch were a godsend? (And they SO were, compared to what came before.)

Right Fit jeans are like that, only lightyears better. They are the fucking HOLY GRAIL of jeans. Not only are they made with stretch, and not only are they actually cut for large women's bodies (versus other stores' "plus-size" clothing that's just regular-size but made bigger all over, instead of made bigger specifically where plus-sized bodies are bigger) — they're available in 3 different shapes, based on the waist-to-hip ratio. So women with a small ratio (i.e., waist and hips just a few inches different in size) get a straighter jean, that doesn't bag and sag in weird places, and women with a large ratio (i.e., with hips that are 10 inches larger than their waist; yes, that would be ME) get a jean that's cut for those curves, so that both the waist and the hips actually fit.

Let me repeat myself: Oh. My. GOD. I had to try on a few different sizes and styles to see what would work best with my big ol' peasant hips, but when I buttoned the winning pair, I actually yelled (in the dressing room) "Oh my God! I LOVE THESE!!!" They just....FIT. All over. My waist, my hips, my ass, my thighs — everything fits the way it should.

I would have cried out of sheer joy, except I was grinning like a deranged chimpanzee and clapping my hands. The sales associate was grinning, too — it must be fantastic to be able to help women find clothing that makes them yell (in excitement) in the dressing room.

An article in St. Louis Today describes how these marvels of clothing came about:

Albert Charpentier is still amazed at the difference he made. In the before pictures, he says, none of the women looked that great. In the afters, they looked so much better he could hardly believe they were the same people: Had they lost weight or something?

Nope. They were exactly the same women — professional models hired by Lane Bryant to test modifications to its sizing system. In the first set of photos, the models were wearing clothes made the old-fashioned way: from patterns graded up and down from a sample size by adding so much to the waist, so much to the hips, etc. In the second set of photos, the same models were wearing the same styles — only produced from patterns developed from the actual measurements of real Lane Bryant customers.

The clothes made to fit the real measurements of real women fit so much better, and the models looked so much better in them, that Charpentier could barely believe his eyes.

. . . .

The publicity photo for Right Fit shows three gorgeous women — but which is which? I couldn't tell which was "straight," which "moderately curvy" and which "curvy." None of them looked "hippy" or out of proportion. They all looked fine — and I think there's a lesson there. Looking good isn't just a question of how ideal your body is; it's also about how well your clothes fit the body you have.

What's revolutionary here is the fact that fat women are finally able to get clothes that DO, in fact, fit the bodies that we have. It's almost like we deserve to be treated like real human beings, or something.

Amazing.

(I'm a Blue 4 Petite — dig that, a *petite,* even! — stretch bootcut, by the way.)

Holy crap! Women order real food on dates! The apocalypse must be nigh.

2007-08-09T15:22:00.000-04:00

An article in today's New York Times, "Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye," is about how it's apparently socially acceptable for women to order beef on a date, as opposed to Ye Olden Times, when a gal had to eat at home before a date so that she wouldn't perish of starvation when she ordered the chopped salad and water.

No, really:

Salad, it seems, is out. Gusto, medium rare, is in.

Restaurateurs and veterans of the dating scene say that for many women, meat is no longer murder. Instead, meat is strategy. “I’ve been shocked at the number of women actually ordering steak,” said Michael Stillman, vice president of concept development for the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group, which opened the restaurant Quality Meats in April 2006 on West 58th Street. He said Quality Meats’ contemporary design and menu, including extensive seafood offerings, were designed to attract more women than a traditional steakhouse. “But the meat is appealing to them, much more than what I saw two or three years ago at our other restaurants,” Mr. Stillman said. “They are going for our bone-in sirloin and our cowboy-cut rib steak.”

In an earlier era, conventional dating wisdom for women was to eat something at home alone before a date, and then in company order a light dinner to portray oneself as dainty and ladylike.

Translated: holy crap! Women have the audacity to eat whatever the hell they want....in front of a man!!!

Apprently, the article says, this gusto for the cow-flesh impresses the modern menfolk:

Saehee Hwang, 30, a production director at Artnet.com, found herself out with friends at DuMont restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when she started feeling attracted to a new guy in the group. She said she had wanted to order a burger, but started having second thoughts. “I didn’t want to appear too much of a carnivore,” she said. “It might be off-putting.”

But then she decided she should not change her order to fit a preconceived idea of what a man might want. She ordered the house specialty, a half-pound of beef on a toasted brioche bun with Gruyère cheese. “We started dating afterward,” Ms. Hwang said. “And he told me he liked the fact that I ordered the burger.”

Holy crap! You mean a man might actually like me if I act like a real human being, with actual physiological needs as well as the right and self-determination to eat whatever the hell I want? Say it ain't so!

Well...maybe not. You see, the article ALSO mentions — twice — that ordering meat on a date is much more acceptable if you're a thin woman:

Red meat sent a message that she was “unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic,” she said, “that I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin, and I don’t have any food issues.”

and:

But others, especially those who are thin, say ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness.

Well, shit. What if you're a fat woman? Will your date scream and flee into the night, emerging much later on the internet to tell the tale of My Date Ordered A Whole Cow To Pad Her Already-Ample Rump? I guess I'm back to ordering lettuce and water with lemon when I want to impress the menfolk.

Oh, wait — my boyfriend doesn't give a shit what I eat (and because he's a vegetarian, I know he won't steal my burger, which is a bonus).

Thank god! Garcon, bring on the seared cow-flesh!!!

Demand Feeding in Real Life

2007-08-05T13:01:00.001-04:00

My last post, which contained many references to Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies, actually created a craving for them. So on the way home from work Friday, I stopped at the grocery store and got sushi (supermarket sushi isn't the best sushi ever, obviously, but it's fresh and tasty and convenient), along with a quart of sherbet and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Vermonty Python (it's been in the mid-90s here all week, and ice cream just sounded SO good), and 2 boxes of Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies.

It's Sunday afternoon, and the oatmeal cream pies are GONE. Both boxes. All 24 pies. And...I feel a little sick (physically, that is; as in nauseated). And annoyed with myself — NOT because I ate them all, but because it takes eating enough to make myself nauseated to get it through my brain that maybe, just *maybe*, snarfing them all down isn't what I want. I don't *like* feeling nauseated and sort of sugar-hungover.

My inner 10-year-old wanted to know she could have all the oatmeal cream pies. So she did. Unfortunately, my physical 36-year-old is paying the consequences.

It's like I have to *prove* to my inner 10-year-old, or my stomach, or something, that (1) there's always more food, (2) I can have whatever I want, and as much of it as I want, and (3) nothing bad will happen if I *do* have 2 boxes of oatmeal cream pies (other than the nausea).

But then again — and it's an extreme way to learn, I grant you that — if it takes making myself nauseated to realize that I can have snacky cakes whenever I want, and I don't have to eat them all just in case they get taken away, then I can live with the nausea.

The 2 cartons of ice cream? Untouched. (By my lips, that is; the boyfriend dug into the Ben & Jerry's with true glee. One of the many reasons I love him so.)

And today I'm eating scrambled eggs over cooked bulgur, and it tastes fantastic. I don't even want anything sugary.

I'd like to hit a balance in my eating and in what I'm hungry for, although I know it takes time. Possibly a lot of time. And I'm okay with that. I just hope it happens before I cause the stock prices of Little Debbie Inc. to shoot through the roof.

Demand Feeding

2007-08-02T15:34:00.003-04:00

I've been reading When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies, on the recommendation of Good with Cheese. I can only read a little bit at a time, because the issues it brings up are such powerful ones for me, and they either make me put the book down to think things through, or they make me put the book down because I'm so shaken, emotionally, by what I've just read.

One of the main topics of the book is demand feeding, where you eat what you want when you're hungry for it, and eat as much of it as you want, and stop when you're full. Legalizing all foods and responding to your stomach hunger is supposed to lead to the increased ability to really listen to what your body wants/needs to eat AND reduces frantic binges of "forbidden" foods, because nothing is forbidden. If you can have whatever you want, then you're not viewing food from a position of deprivation, and the previously forbidden foods will eventually lose their power over you, because you know you can have them any time you want. It's actually pretty fucking revolutionary of an idea in the face of Atkins and South Beach and Weight Watchers and the Zone and Eat Right For Your Blood Type and Sugar Busters and countless other diets that tell you what you can eat, how much of it you can eat, when you can eat it, and what you cannot, ever, eat, lest you flip out and eat your weight in Chips Ahoy cookies.

My initial response to demand feeding is, "Eat what I want? But I don't KNOW what I want!" That's the twisted beauty of a diet like Weight Watchers (although their schtick is "there are no forbidden foods!") or Atkins — they tell you what you're allowed to eat. You have a list of choices, and you have to pick from the list. It doesn't matter what you want; what matters is sticking to the list. On a diet, I know what I'm *allowed* to have, but I don't know what I actually *want.*

Then when I think about what I want, it's all foods that have been forbidden in the past (because although Weight Watchers says that there are no forbidden foods, you can't actually eat half a bag of Doritos and still be following the POINTS plan). Cheetos, Doritos, cookie-dough ice cream, Oreos, those wafer cookies that have the cream in the middle that come in brown (chocolate), tan (vanilla), and pink (I have no idea what flavor they were supposed to be). McDonald's hash browns and a sausage and egg mcmuffin (my love of which dates back to a high-school job at McDonad's). Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies (did you know there's a double-decker version? sweet sugary mother of god, it's snack food nirvana).

So I bought Doritos, and I ate them when I wanted them. And now I don't have the urge for Doritos. I got the McDonald's breakfast last weekend, and it was as full of fatty, tasty goodness as I remembered. And now I don't have the urge for it. (Well, I don't have the urge for a McMuffin. I *always* want hash browns.)

I've always had this fear, which has been encouraged and strengthened by the many diets I've been on, that if I ate what I actually wanted, then I would devour the WORLD. Well, I already wrote about this. But to really embrace demand feeding, I have to face that fear. I know, intellectually, that my fear is unfounded. I cannot possibly eat my own weight in Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies. I *know* it, but I still don't *believe* it.

I haven't gained weight, despite eating Doritos and McDonald's. I think it's possible that I've merely adjusted the rest of my food intake around the addition of the previously forbidden foods. And I don't mean adjusted in the sense of "Oh, since I ate this McMuffin, I'll have to fast on celery juice for the next 2 days!" I mean adjusted in the sense that eating what I wanted actually filled me up (imagine that — eating fat does what fat is supposed to do — satiate your hunger!), and so I didn't get hungry again as soon as I normally do. If that makes sense.

I'm still afraid that I'll devour the whole WORLD, but I'm going to stick with demand feeding for now, and really try to listen to what my body wants and needs.

Social Networks and Transmission of The Fat

2007-07-27T14:39:00.001-04:00

I edit for a scientific journal, and I've been doing it for over 11 years (see previous entry). I can pick apart epidemiological studies with the best of them, so I pulled up the New England Journal of Medicine article about how social networks facilitate the spread of obesity to see how the authors reached this conclusion.

(Note: that link is to the full-text version, so anyone can read the whole damn article themselves.)

The article tells us nothing. I mean that. NOTHING.

The only data in the article tell us this: friends of fat people have a greater tendency to become fat themselves than do the friends of thin people. It doesn't tell us WHY. Essentially, the article says, "Look, here's a connection!" That's normally the starting point for a study. Scientist sees a connection, and then tries to figure out what causes the connection. "Figure out," in a scientific setting, does NOT mean "guess." It does not mean "assume." It means "generate reproducible facts and data."

This article did NOT generate reproducible facts and data to explain this connection. Basically, the upshot of the entire article is that the authors think that, merely by being fat, fat people make their friends believe it's okay to be fat. I mean, seriously. Unless there's a significant portion of the article not present on NEJM's Web site, that's the only conclusion the article makes.

That's NOT evidence; it's merely reporting of a correlation. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. And I know that NEJM knows damn well that that's so.

And it pisses me off mightily that the mainstream media grabbed this utterly specious piece of crap and ran with it, just to fan the flames of fat hatred. That's just WEAK.

"Boss? I can't come in to work today. Yeah, I've got The Fat, and I don't want everyone to catch it...."

2007-07-26T13:54:00.000-04:00

What? Isn't that the next logical step from the news that OMG fat is contagious!!!?

I have, for the record, worked at the same job for over 11 years, and of the people who have also worked here for those 11 years, none of them have caught The Fat from me. A couple actually have lost weight, to what they say is their "true weight," and since they haven't gained it back, either that IS their natural weight, or they've been exercising/starving very, VERY hard for the past few years.

My boyfriend is a lean guy, with a 30-inch waist and corresponding lean measurements all over. We've been together for over a year, and he hasn't caught The Fat from me, despite the fact that he eats enough ice cream to ensure that neither Ben nor Jerry will ever have to worry about going broke.

To echo what the eminently wise Kate Harding says here, my not-fat friends from high school are still not fat. My not-fat friends from college are still not fat. My not-fat co-workers and assorted friends have stayed not-fat despite knowing me, sharing meals with me, and breathing my fat air.

My fat co-workers and assorted friends were already fat when I met them and still are, for the most part, fat. This is despite many Weight Watchers cycles, low-carb evangelism, and the Spinning craze. I'm pretty damned sure that their fat has NOTHING to do with me.

Unless....I helped "make" (keep) them fat by having the attitude that it's OKAY to be whatever size your body naturally wants to be, even if that's what society calls "fat." Because it IS okay. And I want people to know I believe that.

If THAT'S contagious, well, then, call me Typhoid Teppy.

Panic

2007-07-10T11:30:00.001-04:00

This is what panic feels like: a frenetic fluttery feeling at the base of my throat, all my nerves wound too tight — like I have to get out of my skin before I explode from being trapped in it, and the realization that I'm holding my breath.

Kind of like Martin Sheen in the hotel room at the beginning of Apocalypse Now.

This panic is from my increasing conviction that I have to de-criminalize foods, take away the moral connotations of ice cream and Cheetos, and let them back in my house. And make sure that I have quantities enough that I won't feel like they're about to be taken away because they're forbidden.

Whenever I buy ice cream, I eat it in 2 days. Not a pint, mind you — whatever that size is that Edy's/Dreyer's comes in. Two days. I do the same thing with cookies, with almonds, with peanut butter, with snacky treats of any sort (c.f., Cheetos).

And I start to eat them the first day or 2 after buying them. I can't let them just sit there until I actually want those specific foods. Here's an example: this past Saturday, I did my weekly grocery shopping, and one of the things I bought was Edy's chocolate-with-peanut-butter-cup ice cream. (This stuff? SO GOOD.) Saturday afternoon I made myself exactly the lunch/dinner I had been craving — a liverwurst sandwich with juicy ripe tomato, swiss cheese, and mayo. Man, was that good! As a side dish I had a bulgur-tomato-black bean-corn concoction I devised.

I was full, I was happy, I had eaten exactly what I wanted.

And 5 minutes later, while I was still (obviously) full, the savage pig animal part of my brain started chanting. "Hey, we have ice cream. There's ice cream in the freezer. We have ice cream. Let's have that ice cream! Now! Let's have that ice cream now! Ice cream NOW! Ice cream NOW! NOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!"

I managed to make the savage pig animal shut up, by talking over its litany. I was full, I was satisfied, I had eaten exactly what I wanted, and, whenever I *did* get around to wanting the ice cream — truly being hungry for specifically the ice cream — I would eat it. Triumph! I did not eat the ice cream, because I didn't want it.

Midnight-ish, I woke up, checked to make sure the BF was sound asleep, and went out to the kitchen, took the whole carton of ice cream to the couch, and ate my way through half of it.

I hadn't wanted the ice cream, specifically. But I had to had to had to HAD TO eat it. The savage pig animal gets the better of me in the middle of the night. I'm too sleep-addled to talk over its litany. So I eat. And eat and eat and eat.

The issue here isn't that I'm eating a "forbidden" food; it's that I'm eating something — anything — when I don't actually want it. And the issue is also that I still view any food as "forbidden." Because THAT is exactly what drives me to eat it, and eat it all, as fast as I can. Because if I don't eat it right now now NOW, maybe it'll be taken away. Because it's BAD.

I recognize all this. I understand, too, that identifying your disordered relationship with food and its whys and wherefores is a GOOD thing.

I still view foods as having moral connotations. Broccoli = virtuous, ice cream = SIN. That comes from years and years (and YEARS) of dieting. And the years of dieting created the mindset of constant deprivation, which makes me devour "forbidden" foods at the speed of light.

Which is why, now that I'm making a concerted effort to love my body exactly the way it is, and take care of myself by eating what my body needs to be well-nourished and by engaging in "exercise" activity that feels good and is fun, I'm also trying very hard to de-criminalize food. To make nothing forbidden. Cheetos might not be optimum nutrition, but I will crave and crave and crave them because I've told myself I can't have them. And when I cave in and do get them, I eat the whole bag.

Cheetos are neither good nor bad. But I can't make myself believe that, not really.

At least, not yet.

I read an essay in — I think — one of Geneen Roth's books about a little girl who was gaining weight and who had issues with foods that were deemed "forbidden" to her. The therapist (or it might have been Geneen Roth; I can't remember and I'm at work and not near my books) told the parents to buy pounds and pounds and pounds of M&Ms, because they were the little girl's favorite food. Buy enough M&Ms that they would not run out, take a pillowcase, fill it with M&Ms, and let the little girl have the pillowcase to carry around and eat M&Ms whenever she damn well pleased.

The parents were petrified that this would lead to the little girl gaining massive amounts of weight, but they did it anyway. And the little girl did eat huge amounts of M&Ms...for about a week (possibly less). And then the parents realized that the pillowcase — which still had M&Ms in it — was lying abandoned on the floor, and the little girl wasn't frantically eating them. Because she KNEW THEY WERE THERE if she wanted more.

Why didn't that work with me and the ice cream the other night?

Well, I seriously think that I need to buy 2, or even 3, cartons of ice cream at a time. That way I'll have visual evidence that I won't run out, that it'll be there if I want it.

And THAT, to go all the way back to the topic of this post, is why I'm gripped with panic. Because I utterly, utterly fear that if I have 3 cartons of ice cream in my freezer, I'll devour all 3 within 2 days. Which will lead to the dreaded F-A-T.

I know that I need to (1) trust myself to eat what I want, when (and IF) I truly want it, (2) realize that no food is forbidden, and (3) realize that the possibility of gaining weight is NOT something to dread.

I know if I can feed myself what my body needs — and wants, TRULY wants — and engage in fun, joyful physical activity on a regular basis, my body will settle at the weight it's supposed to be. I've been reading the archives at Good with Cheese, because she's been going through a similar process, and — most importantly, realizing that she's happier this way. Infinitely happier.

I want that. But getting there? Well, THAT scares the crap out of me, because I'm afraid it won't "work" for me. And I don't know how to make it through the panic.

Diane Rehm Misses by a Mile

2007-07-09T10:58:00.001-04:00

I listen to NPR all morning at work, and the Diane Rehm show rarely fails to entertain/edify me. I particularly admire (and, okay, LOVE) the way she firmly smacks down guests who get belligerent and try to talk over other guests who have opposing viewpoints. She kicks ass.

However, she really let me down today. The first hour of her show today was about stress and obesity, specifically if/how stress can lead to accumulation of belly fat. Her guests were all university instructors, in the areas of: (1) Physiology and Biophysics; (2) Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Neuroscience; and (3) Psychiatry; #3 is ALSO the director of research of the UCSF Obesity Center.

Some of the program was interesting in a biochemistry sense; stress DOES make the body do really weird things. But some of it, sadly, was the same old crap about fat people: at the end of the first hour, Diane asked her guests, "Will we ever get to a point where everyone wants to be slim?"

Gee, Diane, we probably won't, because I know that, as a big fat fattie, I want to be fat. I love being the object of bigotry and derision and discrimination. Why, don't you know I wake up every morning and make the decision to KEEP BEING FAT? (Which is similar to a point that Kate Harding makes about how anti-fat bigots sound an awful lot like gay-bashers: being gay/fat is, apparently, a CHOICE. Uh, yeah. Talk to Matthew Shepard about that. Oh, wait — you can't.)

Diane Rehm is normally so incisive and scary smart. I admit I'm extremely disappointed that she got this so wrong.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go KEEP BEING FAT.

Am I a Hypocrite?

2007-07-06T18:25:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty sure that, yeah, I qualify as a hypocrite.

I read these amazing, kick-ass blogs by people like Kate Harding, The Rotund, and mo pie at Big Fat Deal (to name just a few), and they make me want to run down the street waving a fat acceptance banner. I want to spread the word that you can be fat and healthy. And beautiful, and smart, and kind, and powerful.

Hell, I jumped on the blog bandwagon so that I could talk more about fat and health and beauty.

But I'm a hypocrite, because I catch myself thinking, "Oh, if/when I do xyz, I'll lose weight....", probably 50 times a day.

You see, losing weight has been my number one life goal for probably 25 years of my 36 years on the planet. (Which is so fucking sad to see the numbers just staring back at me like that — a quarter of a century in which the size of my body has trumped every other concern, bar none.) I know that I'm far from the only person who can say that. I realize that the fat-hating that has been inculcated in me doesn't make me unique.

I started dieting when I was 11 or 12, because I was tall for my age and therefore larger than the other girls in my class. I wasn't fat. I wasn't even overweight by the weight/height charts of the 1980s. But I had the misfortune of reaching my maximum height by the time I was 13 or 14, which made me a beast next to my classmates who weren't finished growing.

I started dieting when I was 11 or 12 because my mom was a model before she met my dad, and she never "lost" her model's figure. She worked absurdly hard to keep that slender frame, actually, and put a very high value on attaining and maintaining thinness.

Of course, I'm built like my dad, rather than like my mom — she's 5' 9", flat-chested, and not prone to building muscle, even with hard work. I, on the other hand, am 5' 6", have always had a generous bosom, and I build muscle literally within days. She and I are built completely differently.

The problem is, her frame is the one our society values. So telling myself that I was just built differently didn't really help my outlook. I figured I'd just have to try as hard as I could to be as thin as my build would allow. (And, when I couldn't lose weight past a certain point even when I fasted, I can see now that that was all my body would allow.) And my mom encouraged my pursuit of weight-loss, instead of promoting body acceptance. But then, how could she promote accepting a heavy body, when all her energies went into preventing her own body from gaining even an ounce?

(I have friends who talk about their overweight mothers, and I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a female role model whose physical shape was one that wasn't literally impossible for me to achieve. How different would I be now?)

This is the part of the post where someone will tell me I'm blaming my fat on my mother. And I did do that, for a long time. Face it, parents lay down the psychological foundation — good AND bad — for their children. Growing up with a mother who valued thinness did affect how I viewed — and still view — my never-thin body.

But I'm an adult, and I'm responsible for my own well-being now, both psychological and physical. My mom may have laid the foundation, but (to continue the metaphor), I can build something new over it. Or, hell, I can just move somewhere else, where I can lay my own damn foundation. It's not a perfect metaphor, but I think my point is clear: I don't blame anyone for my fat these days.

....except I still blame me. Which brings me back to the subject of this post, which is that I feel like a hypocrite for promoting fat acceptance when I still think about things in terms of weight loss or gain. When I think that, if only I weren't so lazy, if I walked on the treadmill for an hour a day, I'd lose weight.

Yeah, that's blaming myself. And demonstrates a mindset that preaches fat acceptance while still hoping to lose weight. Blaming AND hypocrisy.

But I want to get to a point where I accept my fat self exactly as I am, and stop viewing things in terms of how they'll impact my weight. I watched Joy Nash's amazing Fat Rant for the first time tonight, and I so so SO want to be that self-assured and self-accepting.

I'm not there yet. Not even close. But I'm trying very hard to get there. And I hope that counts for something.

(Sort of) Inaugural Post

2007-07-03T14:20:00.001-04:00

I created this blog a while ago, with the idea that I had Deep And Important Thoughts that the world should know. But my intrinsic laziness, combined with the idea that there are already so many bloggers out there who are talking about the same Deep And Important Thoughts, led to me abandoning the idea after a few posts.

(This kind of an introduction isn't going to make people inclined to read me, I realize. But I believe in giving fair warning, so consider this my own caveat lector.)

I've been reading a lot lately about weight, and weight-vs.-health, and fat acceptance, and the whack-ass things that doctors/the government/other talking heads have been saying about being overweight. As in, "Don't you know being fat will KILL YOU OH MY GOD?!?!?" And, you know, I'm a fat chick who's tired of being treated like a leper/puppy molester/dimwit just because my body size doesn't fit into a slot on a chart. So, although the blogosphere already has a cornucopia of excellent fat-acceptance bloggers, well, I feel the egotistical need to add my voice to the chorus.

One of the blogs I am LOVING is Kate Harding's Shapely Prose. She's wicked smart and a fantastic writer, and I'd happily read even her grocery list, if she posted it. Her most recent post, "Despite Being Obese, My 'Chances of Suffering from Obesity are Very Slim' ", is what moved me to drag this blog out of the mothballs.

Actually, I was motivated *specifically* by one of the comments in that post, in which the commenter talked about a shortsighted doctor who disregarded good cholesterol test results and still advised her to eat better and exercise in order to lose weight, without ever asking her about whether she already did so.

Goddamn doctors.

I have a primary-care doctor who I've been seeing for 15 years, and he has always told me that he doesn't care whether my weight fits into a slot on a chart; what he cares about is my actual health, as demonstrated by cholesterol/blood sugar/blood pressure/activity level, etc. He is OUTSTANDING. I don't know what I'll do if he ever moves away or retires. He just GETS it, you know?

A few years ago, I was seeing a psychiatrist because my insurance required that I do so if I wanted them to cover my Zoloft. So, 4 times a year, I checked in with the psychiatrist, we concurred that it's all good, he wrote me a prescription for Zoloft, and I went on my merry way. Then he left the practice, so I got handed off to another shrink in that practice, but I figured that since I would have to see her only 4 times a year, it would be no big deal.

(Obviously, there was a VERY big deal, or else this is a lame-ass post.)

On my second visit to her, literally the only thing that she asked me about my mental health was: "How was your summer?" When I said, "It was good," she didn't bother to ask further if it was good in the sense of going on vacation, or falling in love with a lifeguard, or if it was good in the sense of not wanting to jump in a running shower with a plugged-in hairdryer.

She, however, looked in my chart, and followed up on my blood pressure. (I had started taking BP meds about 6 months prior.) I told her that my BP was good, and my primary-care doctor said that if my BP stayed stable, I could go off the meds.

So then she asked, "What are you doing to try to lose weight?"

The sad thing is, that question didn't seem inappropriate. (Let me emphasize: THAT question didn't seem inappropriate.) It's just so commonplace for anyone and everyone to have an opinion on others' extra weight, that my *mental* health doctor asking me about my weight — a *physical* state of being — didn't even raise a red flag.

I told her I was exercising and keeping an eye on my diet. She asked, "How's that going?" I thought she meant how was keeping an eye on my diet going, so I said, "Well, I have a sweet tooth, but it's not too hard to keep under control."

She said, "No, I meant how much weight have you lost so far?"

Huh? Okay. I told her 10 pounds, even though I had no idea if it was true.

Then she asked me what I weighed. Finally, this was where I started to wonder how this related to my mental health. But because I had gone along with this line of questions so far, I figured I had to keep going along with it, and I thought that if I was resistant to the idea, she'd label me with some horrible psychological term (she was, after all, my shrink, and I had no idea what her analysis of me might mean in terms of my medical record), so I told her my weight. She asked me how tall I was, and calculated my BMI right then and there, and told me what my BMI *must* be if I wanted to be healthy.

HUH? The HELL?

Then she told me, "Well, try to lose weight on your own for now, and when you see me in 3 months, if you haven't made good progress I'll put you on a weight-loss drug." She got up, and bopped over to her desk, wrote the refill for my Zoloft, and a thought struck her! Did I know about Pilates? I should do Pilates! Pilates would be very good for getting rid of the fat around my waist!

All I could do was stare at her and wonder how many of her patients killed themselves.

As she walked me out, she said, "Now, 10 pounds in 3 months is pretty good, so really stick to your goals!"

This happened just about 3 years ago, and after that appointment, I never went back. The next time I saw my primary-care doctor, I asked him if he could prescribe my Zoloft, and he checked with my insurance, and said that he absolutely could. And he said that she was full of crap on the weight-loss drug plan. He has always been very opposed to weight-loss drugs, because he actually reads the results of drug studies, and he tends to think that a 5- to 10-pound weight loss (at most) isn't worth the side effects and potential drug interactions. (Not to mention the Alli poopy-pants.)

I *know* that I should have told that shrink as soon as she asked about my weight that I already HAD a doctor taking care of my physical problems and that she was there to take care of my insanity. I *should* have told her "Lady, I *know* I'm fat. I see myself naked every day. But I will not take diet drugs. And by the way, the BMI is pretty flawed, and I will never, not in a million years and no matter how much Pilates I take, have a BMI of 24. But I didn't. ask. you. Go fuck yourself."

I didn't say that, though, because I was a different person 3 years ago. A lot more conflict-avoidant, and believing that You Don't Contradict Authority (even when they're wrong).

But now? Well, I'm different now, and like I said above, I'm sick and tired of the bullshit.

Welcome to my blog.