mardecides

As a fat person, I am clearly biased against The Talk. And no, I don’t mean explaining sex to your child, but god, I’d rather have to explain the Kuma Sutra to my son’s first grade class than engage in The Talk. And maybe it’s my own self-consciousness emphasizing the issue, but it seems I can’t escape it: those thin, beautiful people talking incessantly at every opportunity about food, fat, weight, exercise and the size of their ass/thighs/abs. Usually all the above mixed together with fake self-deprecation of their own beautiful selves.  

“I biked to Iowa and back last night trying to get rid of this lard!” laments Thinnest Legs in the Department, slapping a hand on her slim thigh, which makes a sound like skin hitting steel.  “Oh god, I know. I just ate this HUGE lettuce leaf and feel like a total blob. I’m totally going to work out for 4 hours tonight instead of my regular 2,” confides Flattest Abs I Have Ever Seen.  “I just wish I knew of a good non-fat, non-carb, non-sugar, no calorie salad dressing,” interjects Does Not Need to Lose a Pound. “I need to lose at least 2.35 lbs but I’m getting tired of plain greens. I tried spritzing lemon water on it, but it just didn’t provide enough flavor.”  

“Well,” tentatively offers Fat Girl (me), “if you dip your fork into the dressing first, you get the flavor but with less the calories.”   This comment is met with blank stares that slowly dissolve into Pity Look for the Fat Girl Acting Like She Knows Anything About Getting Thin.  “Oh, no!” exclaims Thin Legs, “That would just make your just salad sopping with fat!” Confirming nods from Flat Abs and her friend, coupled with a little bit of smugness.  “No,” maintains Fat Girl, now reverting to a tone of voice that she hopes conveys “you are morons”. “Obviously you don’t dip the fork with the salad already on it into the dressing. However, if you dip the tines of your fork into the dressing before spearing the salad, you get flavor, but less intake of the fatty dressing.”  

Now the stares are more disbelieving than anything, knowing it sounds right but coming from the mouth of Fat Girl makes it less believable. Like, if I know so much about tine-dipping and salad dressing, the size of my ass should reflect this knowledge. I now regret even this small engagement in The Talk. One, because I don’t effing care and there are other things more interesting to discuss than their non-existent fat; two, because it reinforces their belief that other people care about this inane conversation; and three, because I always feel obligated to get to the Must Justify segment.  “It’s something my father-in-law used to do when he was trying to lose weight,” I throw in.  “Oh…” Now I receive understanding and acceptance. Because this comment has confirmed a popular belief that The Fat do not know anything useful about food, fat, weight, and exercise. To the contrary, this Fat Girl probably knows a bookstore more than her thin counterparts.  It’s not the knowledge that’s the problem, it’s the implementation.

That’s the sound I made today as I fell off the wagon and it ran me over and then even dragged me a little. Ok, ok, so it wasn’t that bad. A chili dog and cheese curds down the gullet when I should have had a salad. But, it tasted good and for some reason, I don’t feel that awful guilty feeling that I usually do. I already know what I’m going to eat tomorrow and this weekend and I’m shrugging it off for the day.

Oh, and my cold is “this close” to being gone. Just a few hacks every hour now. Yay! I will probably be silent until Monday or so due to travel, so everyone have a safe and healthy and most importantly, FUN weekend!

My cold is finally starting to leave my body, thank God. Although, I have to wonder if coughing up a lung counts as cardio. I mean, my abs actually hurt from the coughing. And, I have drank more water than normal because of it too.

It’s birthday week here at the house. My husband’s bday was yesterday and our son’s bday was today. Two days of cupcakes. I only had one yesterday and one today though. Not the two or three I’d normally snarf (yes, that is too a word! It means to “swallow in such huge quantities you barf “; hence, snarf) down. But the scale didn’t like it. Or the pizza I had. Two slices, but still, not cool.

However, I’ve got to think all the snot I’m blowing out every hour accounts for some of the weight. Right? I’m pretty sure I read that snot is heavier than fat. Definitely heavier than the cupcakes. Maybe I can skip Pilates (or, as I have taken to calling it, “Elephilates”) this week if I continue to hack and blow. The Hack and Blow! I think I’ve stumbled upon a new fitness craze. It will make me a lot of money which I will then use to hire a trainer, personal chef and get some plastic surgery.

A sound plan, if I do say so myself.

Please don’t think I’m the Eeyore of the buddy boards. I don’t mean to be a downer. I just naturally write what pops into my head. Sometimes it’s sarcastic, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s negative and sometimes it’s just blah. I’m trying to faithfully write something every day and I missed yesterday, which is disappointing.

My cold is in full force. I can’t breathe without hacking up junk, my body aches, and even staying in bed this morning for an extra hour and a half didn’t help as I can’t sleep restfully. In the scheme of things, it’s still just a cold though and it shouldn’t be dragging me down like this. I think the real reason I’m Eeyoring it today is because I ate nachos last night. Not the whole plate or even half the plate, but it still wasn’t on my list of “ok” Phase I foods. But that’s what I get for not eating beforehand (went boating with friends and didn’t grab something for the ride).

The bright side, though, is that I also had microwave popcorn (about 1 cup) and a glass of lemonade last night as a “treat”.  Even three weeks ago, that wouldn’t have been a treat, that would have been me grazing as I made a real treat of a can of pop and a bag of chips and dip. By the way, chips are my kryptonite. Ruffles, in particular, but any kind will do). I haven’t had a chip in 2 weeks. Anyway, I commented to my husband that it’s weird how things change once you are trying to lose weight.

Anyway, this post isn’t making much sense nor is it flowing in any logical way. But I felt compelled to write something because I don’t want to skip a day. Tomorrow is weigh in day (I admit that I weighed myself this morning but will wait to see what tomorrow brings).

Well, after a week of getting my courage up, I attended my first Pilates class at the fitness center. It was me and two senior ladies that made up the class. The instructor was an 18 year old high school figure skater with a body like I could not believe. That actually made me excited…a very good endorsement for the class.

Turns out I have no balance. No flexibility. No agility. And very little else required to do the movement of Pilates. And the floor to ceiling mirrors emphasized this fact and the fact that I did not choose the most flattering shorts and t-shirts for the class.

I felt like an elephant at the circus standing beside the trapeze artists. Especially when the body ball was brought into the mix and I lumbered around the studio chasing it around as it shot out from under my legs, my stomach and my back. A look in the mirror verified that I indeed looked as ridiculous as I felt.

Lifting my pelvis toward the ceiling sounds easy, right? Well, not so easy when my ass is weighing it down. I also have a chest cold, so I didn’t even excel at the inhale/exhale parts of the class because I would inhale and hack for 2 minutes as my exhale.  

 Sigh. Oh well. I’m proud of myself for going in the first place and the two other ladies were super-supportive of me. And the instructor was the most bubbly, encouraging person I have ever met. Eventually, I’m told, it gets easier.

Not much to say today. More salad, more vegetables. Yay. I’m excited for the end of the 2-week of carb detox to be over. I need some fruit or something. Definitely something.

Work sucked. My baby girl is sick. My lower back is throbbing. And when I got home from work tonight, all I wanted was a large glass of wine and a pizza. Wanted it so badly I could taste it in my mouth and feel it in my tummy. And as I stood in the kitchen, rehashing my day with my husband, my little boy - dressed in feetie pajammas and smelling the comforting smell of his baby shampoo and lotion - hands me a handwritten note that says, “Sore you had a bad day. I hope you have a good day tmorow” signed with a heart and his name. It was like the storm cloud over my head moved away.  That one little note cleared away a day’s worth of crap.

I had a big salad for dinner instead. And I feel full in more ways than one tonight.

Perception is a funny thing. Some days, I look in the mirror and I see a pretty girl looking back at me. Too fat, yes, but still pretty. Other days, I look in the mirror and see a disgusting creature that looks like a haggard blob. I look at my boobs and wish for a fork lift. I look at my hanging gut and wish I could just slice off the fat rolls. I want to stretch my neck and never show my upper arms.  

But as I’ve been reading other blogs and looking at profiles, I constantly find myself thinking, “God, I only wish I weighed what this chick weighs and she thinks she needs to lose weight?!” Or, more commonly, I look at the profile pictures and I swear the women who’ve graciously accepted to be this cranky, smart-ass’s buddy are GORGEOUS. Simply beautiful. Take a look.  

Belle, whose model’s face makes me want to go clubbing with her. Lara, with her blinding, killer smile, has an energy that jumps off the page. Ashley’s perfect lips – I want your lip gloss secret! Julie’s silky hair and glowing skin looks so healthy. Jenn rocks a tank top I wish I could wear. And I’m pretty sure both Tammy and Rebecca could be eye models for L’Oreal. I have lash-envy something fierce. 

And I’m not posting this to get a whole bunch of compliments back. My point is about perception. I can so easily see beauty in others, but yet I had to force myself to post my own weight stats and a picture. I was ashamed. It’s shaming to be fat and feel ugly because it’s a reflection of what I’ve allowed to happen throughout the years.

But, I’m slowly starting to lose the shame because I realized that as I’m envying the profiles of other people here, other people are probably looking at me and my profile and seeing something beautiful that I can’t or something that I’ve lost sight of throughout the years too. It’s a two-way street. Or rather, a magic mirror. And that’s a beautiful, and motivating, thing.

Happy Mother’s Day. My gift to myself was not eating the homemade dinner rolls dripping with butter, not reaching for the bowl full of potatoes and carrots and only eating part of a small slice of ice cream cake. My Mother’s Day dinner was spring salad, vinagrette dressing (which is surprisingly tasty!), and zesty herb chicken breast. And while I missed the dinner rolls and the butter and the huge slice of cake and I also missed the buttered popcorn and pop at the movie yesterday, I didn’t miss feeling crappy about myself after eating it.  I didn’t miss the internal rationalization. I didn’t miss the stuffed feeling. In fact, I found myself thinking that next Mother’s Day, maybe my gift to myself would be something designer, in a single digit size. Who knows?

I’m boycotting Self magazine. I went for a relaxing massage (Happy Pre-Mother’s Day to me!), and out of the huge basketful of magazines to choose from in the waiting area, I fought my instinct to pick up People and thought a good step forward to fitness would be to read Self.  After flipping through page after page of slender, sexy bodies glowing with pride at their sleek selves, (and studying the “Find a Swimsuit Perfect For Your Body Type” while naively thinking “Wow, maybe they’ve come up with a flattering swimsuit for body type labeled Fat” only to realize I’d been had again) I stumbled on a “Getting Fit is Easy!” article. Since I was already cranky (ok, jealous), that just sent me right over the edge. 

Getting fit is not “easy.” Maybe it’s easy for those who are already fit, but then it’s not “getting fit” anymore, it’s “staying fit.” If getting fit were so very easy, as proclaimed by Self magazine, then there would not be people like me, fat and unfit. Right?  Easy is sitting on the couch watching Grey’s Anatomy, munching on Ruffles, and guzzling a Pepsi. Easy is running through the McDonald’s drive-through because you’re stressed from work, bone tired, and have kids fighting in the backseat and the thought of going home to cook a nutritious meal (or at least a non-McDonald’s meal) makes you want to scream right along with your two-year-old. Easy is driving to the store even though you could probably walk but you don’t. Easy is convenience. Easy is getting fat. That was easy. It took very little effort on my part.  

Getting fit is hard and I haven’t met a success story yet that has told me otherwise. Losing weight and finding that healthy lifestyle after years and years of “easy” is damn hard. And I take issue with some sleek, hard-body magazine proclaiming it’s easy. That hurts. Telling me it’s easy is the first step to setting me up for failure. So from now on I’ll stick to People. At least they put weight loss success stories on their cover from time to time that inspire me. I kept one of those issues for months because the woman on the cover looked like me. Not her features, but I recognized her “Before” body. That was me. And when I read her journey to her “After” body, I could relate. I’d like to ask her if she thought it was “easy”.

My guess is I already know her answer.