Last night I made brownies. I noticed while I was doing it, that the subatomic structure of the universe was weakened considerably. I could almost see through the veil that separates these threads, into one where an alternate me was skinny.
Seriously, last night, this fat lady made brownies. Not diet brownies, but real brownies with sugar in them, and I put chocolate frosting on them too. That's how I roll!
Ooh! I made a funny.
Get it? Fat lady, Rolls, like down the hill, as fast as you can.
Or you could like the old joke says, role me in flour and look for the wet spot. Fat is hilarious, I oughta know.
The cool thing about being fat, is that it makes me mysterious.
How on earth do I get that good looking guy that lives with me, to willingly have sex with me?
Well first I have to turn out the lights, then I put two bags over my head, in case one falls off.
Fat makes you sexually adventurous that way.
I never thought that I would get fat. Ever.
I was an athlete. I was in the military. I still undertake strenuous activities.
This week: I have hoed up, hand weeded, and raked several raised beds, and planted them with onions, potatoes, carrots and radishes.
I haul 50 lb bags of feed into the yard and transfer it into barrels.
I raked up the chicken yard, which is a quarter of an acre. I turned my compost which is quite large and then filled it from the stuff we raked out of the hen house.
Last weekend, we went on a 8 mile hike. I haven't gotten as much exercise lately because the weather has been back and forth with rain and very cold snaps.
That's not counting housework, or dragging the kids around to do things. In the Spring, Summer and Fall--we are never home. We are outside. During the winter it's more problematic. The cold and bad weather sometimes precludes certain activities, or even driving to some places to do something.
But I could do sit ups at home you say? Not any more, I injured myself giving birth and am limited in doing certain kinds of exercises that involve the back and abdominal core. I would love nothing more than a six pack, but first I would need to reattach some things I suspect. Sometimes there aren't enough hours in my day, to exercise. Is that a weak will? Or just busy--you tell me.
I know this affects how people interact with me. I should be horrified, but I discussed earlier that as I age, and move away from the center of the attractiveness paradigm--young and thin, I have more freedom of movement.
I would walk more, but I have issues with loose dogs here. Sometimes a stick isn't enough. There are no sidewalks here. No bike lanes, no trails to cut across to get to town. Only a shoulder and mean dogs to keep you company.
But I am lazy. That's how I got fat. It's not the other health problems that I was knowingly and unknowingly fighting all these years. It was simply laziness. I sat on my ass and it got fat magically.
Yesterday I made brownies. Other times I have gone out for an artisan soda pop, or an ice cream. I was fat those times too. And by doing that I no doubt, made myself instantly fatter.
Should I be eating such things? Aren't those rewards for people with a faster metabolism? And not for the likes of me! I have also eaten hamburgers--Bacon Cheese Burgers to be exact. I have also made pancakes.
I know that I am breaking some cardinal rules by eating all these fattening foods while being fat. But I have to say, I like to live.
When I am done with my 8 mile hike and I hit the place that has a good cream soda, it's nice. I feel alive. Not miserable. Tasting the bouquet of vanilla, and caramel on my tongue, exploding in the carbonation, washing down that bacon cheeseburger with a big fat slice of tomato on it, and some romaine lettuce.
Oh it's like childhood, only better.
When I gnaw on a greasy, barbequed chicken thigh, and I get a little on my fat face, and I have to wipe the grease off, I can taste that the chicken had been brined before it was baked, before it was coated in BBQ sauce. I can taste the hint of jalapenos in there, too. It's lovely. Like swimming in amniotic fluid, you could fairly breathe it in.
Sitting at a table, with a friend or with family, serving spaghetti that I cooked, carmalized onions and bell peppers, fresh cut rosemary, in a tomato sauce with buttered garlic toast--man I am going straight to fat-lady hell for that one.
Spaghetti--that's a cardinal sin for fat people isn't it? Worthy of flogging?
I do this, because I have yo-yoed all my life. I got tired of missing out on the fun. Ask a person on a special diet--any kind of diet at all, how much fun it is to be stoic while people are slurping down greasy cheese burgers.
No, that's okay, I have my sunflower seed and my coconut water. MMMM this tastes just like cardboard.
Are you ready to condemn me even more now? I mean before I was just fat, but you were willing to give me a chance, but now this? This is just over the top! I deserve your hatred, and your judgement.
THIS! This is why I am fat right here right?
Or could it be, that you really only notice me when you see me eating these foods. Would you notice me when I am eating a Caesar Salad with chicken? Do you feel relieved?
Oh thank god that fat lady is eating a salad--maybe in 10 years she will look like a young Bo Derek?
Because you know when you loose weight, you age in reverse too--LOL
Will you notice me at the Juice bar with two shots of wheat grass and a shot of OJ?
Will you notice me buying a espresso-black with a vegetarian dish? Do you see me when I am eating yogurt and chia seeds? Or a handful of dried cherries and walnuts on the trail?
Every once in a great while, I make the kind of food that if you ate it every day, It would kill you. Artery clogging, greasy goodness with extra frosting, and I enjoy every moment of it. Not because I am fat, but because this kind of food is what it feels like to be alive in this culture.
When is it okay for me to enjoy my food? To not be on a diet? To eat something that you don't approve of? When is it okay for me to be successful at anything? Or happy?
Fat people are never successful or happy--that would defeat the entire purpose of being fat.
How can you get through life, having to wait for me to drop dead so you can be right? The anticipation could cause you to stress, and lead to a build up of cortisol, and then watch out!
There is more to fat than the myth of a weak will. If will power could make one skinny, I would be skinny by now. But after a decade of that, not working, after being ignored by so-called medical professionals, I gave up on relying on will power, to deliver to me, something that might not be worth having.
I still eat very well, very healthy 90 percent of the time. I still get lots of exercise, not as strenuous as I would like, but I have kids, I have to go at their speed, which is getting a little faster each year.
But sadly I get older each year too, and the pounds become more stubborn in terms of losing them.
If I focus on my fat all the time, which I used to--how unhappy would I be on a daily basis, and what effect would that have on my children?
Or I can be happy. I can accept what I have to accept. I can do what I can do, and I can let the fat chips fall where they may. The question for me, is will you allow that to happen? Or will you feel the need to moralize my weight and remind me each and every day, how unhappy and unsuccessful I should be, in order to reflect the moral failings of my fat?
Update: 2/11/2013 10:35 AM
Lots of discussions going on here and at other diaries. I wanted to reflect on why I get so angry at some of the things that people say with the best of intentions--what sets me off. So here it is. Maybe this will help improve the discussion a little bit.
As a child, when I first dealt with my unusual health problems, I had a few years where I was very chubby. Even though I played team sports and was outside all the time, I kept getting fatter and sicker and no one knew why.
After finally getting a diagnosis, I had to learn before the age of 10, how to read labels on food. I had to be on a strict diet. Me, and the kid with Type I Diabetes were not allowed to have a piece of B-day cake, or cookies from the moms, or even eat regular cafeteria food.
I knew what was in processed food from a very early age. Most people do not know, to the point that they will deny it if you tell them, especially if they cannot read the labels, and a lot of people cannot read those chemical words and comprehend what it is, much less what it does to a body.
But there is another toll here that I think a lot of people do not understand.
By having to be on a strict diet, for whatever reason, you are denied the ability to participate in a most ancient human ritual, the ritual of sharing food with friends or with new friends.
You are denied the opportunity to share food with people at celebrations, you are cut out of community events.
You are denied shared identity with an entire community.
This is the basis for peer pressure, but also of shared identity if you see it in a more benign state. I can say, from personal experience, that dealing with that as either a child or an adult is difficult and it is emotionally draining.
Have you ever been on the phone with a friend, trying to figure out where to eat, and one person always says:
Nope--cannot go there, they put [whatever the forbidden ingredient is] in their dishes. Rinse and repeat about 10 times.
Right off the bat, for someone like me, the usual fast food places are off the menu. It's a pain in the ass and there is the possibility of people just not calling next time, because my "special" requirements are a pain in their ass too. As a child, I was not invited to a lot of birthday parties, because I couldn't eat the cake--so what was the point?
It is a constant battle to keep track not only of calories, and carbs, but also ingredients. It doesn't sound hard, but you juggle this with daily living. Sometimes you just don't want to think about it at all. You just want to be in the moment. You want to taste the food without having to analyze it in your brain like a chemical spectrometer.
You want to raise your glass with no caveats. You want to just say yes, to people without having to question and analyze where they are going and why. This complicates everything.
This is how dieting can further isolate someone who is already slipping through the cracks.
Do this for 30 or 40 years and tell me how often you actively choose to "backslide" because you just need a break from pathologizing your food and the act of eating. Because you need to connect with people, with food, with society in some kind of emotionally, healthy, normal way. YOU need to be normal, even if the food isn't.
So when someone [even with the best of intentions] stomps on your ass for needing this, this is a major source of the hostile response. They are essentially telling you to explain yourself--justify yourself to them.
What gives you the right to break from this social punishment? Who said you could stop being in exile?
The arrogance in assuming they have the right to inventory you is astounding. Because they assume that you aren't doing anything. Or that if you are, you are doing it half-assed, or not doing it right. They are assuming that no progress has been made--because if progress had been made [to their satisfaction], you would be skinny by now. They assume that you should be doing something about this and that they have the power and authority to shame you if you aren't.
They are also pushing the assumption that your weight is about eating exclusively. You are doing it wrong! There are no other significant factors that perpetuate this problem--just you and your out-of-control-mouth.
Tell me, if you were targeted like this--that you wouldn't just curse a blue streak right in someone's face. Tell me this wouldn't piss you off and hurt your feelings.
When you are overweight, and you begin to shed the pounds, it's a long process. Rome wasn't built in a day--that's the old saying. It took time to put that fat on, and it will take time to take it off.
The difficulty in achieving that is often complicated by a host of factors, some medical, some social or emotional. Many of us get to juggle all three, and as we age, it just keeps getting harder.
So I advise people out there to just be patient with us. Let us be. Accusations hidden beneath the veneer of care don't help at all.