Elastic Waist - Rants and musings on weight, body image, celebrities, fitness, food and other fixations.

EATING 07.25.2007 BY ELASTIC WAIST

I've been thinking a lot about weight loss recently. Oh, hi, duh, I contribute to a blog that's about weight, what a profound statement, Weetabix, thank you for playing.

Rather, I should say instead that I've been thinking a lot about my own weight loss. A few years ago, I embarked on this total personal improvement initiative that I called "Operation: Hottie." It involved, among other things, eating fruit instead of sugar, giving up my lifelong habit of biting my nails, whitening my teeth, using moisturizer after every damned shower because I was getting older and needed to take care of my skin, eating no fewer than five fruits and vegetables in a day, taking my vitamins and Glucosamine regardless of how it makes me feel urpy afterwards, and also, exercise. Specifically, a half hour of walking every morning before work and for awhile, swimming a mile every day. It may seem like an insignificant amount of pansy-assed fitness but when your fitness is all based on walking from store to store in the mall carrying bags of shoes, this is tantamount to training for a marathon.

The result was that I lost weight. Go figure. I remember, actually, a defining moment, where I was walking down my street in the cool autumn morning, shoes slapping against wet pavement and thinking, "Wow, I guess the secret really is eating less and moving more." And then feeling as though the fat was all in my head, because Jesus, could there be a loud enough Duh in all the world? I suspect that one does not exist.

I lost a lot of weight, but even at my thinnest, I still had at least that much more to lose to get below a 25 BMI. However, I took it all at face value. It was a great feeling, the losing weight. I felt good. I had a hip bone of my very own, a place that was a little pointy rather than soft and squishy, and I'd rub it, sort of like a dieter's version of masturbation.

And then somewhere along the line, winter happened, and then McGriddles happened, and then another Starbucks opened, and then I got bigger pants and then I told myself that yeah, I backslid, but that's to be expected but hey, I was still not as fat as my very fattest and then there was some cheese and then some bacon-wrapped dates and then I must have had an unfortunate washer/dryer episode because suddenly all of my shirts seemed shorter and all of my pants seemed tighter and then I ate everything in Napa and San Francisco and then Chicago and Las Vegas and I discovered that I really enjoyed an extra 300 calories of wine with dinner at night and then blammo, I'm right back where I had been at the end of 2001 and no longer could I point at the me from 6 years ago and go ha ha! Still not as fat! No. Now, I was "As Fat As." The troops of "Operation: Hottie" had been dishonorably discharged.

And now I'm suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I look at pictures of myself and there is judging. It's so hard to admit this. It's so hard to have this weakness when you've spent a lot of time shouting, "Yay Fat Girls Rock" all over the Internet. Fat girls do rock. I think I rock. Sometimes I rock a lot. I rock every damned pound. And yet, right now, I feel like I failed myself somehow. I feel susceptible and vulnerable in a way that I never felt vulnerable when I was losing weight. In truth, I think it's because this weight, this fat assery, this is my own failure. Everyone can talk about size acceptance until they are blue in the face, and fuck yeah, I'm marching in the Fat Pride parade. But at the same time, whenever I'm having moments of extreme stress in my life, instead of looking at the world and fighting back, I look at my ass and think, "How can you have yourself so together when you can't triumph over this one little thing?"

I often wonder if a genie popped up and granted me one wish, if that wish would be to be thin. On face value, I would have thought that I'd take the easy route and magically have the body of Mandy Moore. But the way that genies work, unlike Jeannie in the "I Dream of Jeannie" series, there's always a catch. And then I wonder if the catch was that the genie would suddenly make someone else fat (Mandy Moore?), like, give them my fat in exchange for my getting their thinness, would I do it? And I would like to say, "Of course not". After all, it's my fat. I earned it. It may have been a buffer against a cruel world, a reaction to external forces, something compelling me to eat and eat and eat. It may have been too many donuts and too few walks around the damned block. But regardless, it was me doing the eating, me doing the couch sitting, and me doing the buffering. For whatever reason, whatever excuse, the barest bones truth of all of this is that it's my fat in every sense of the word.

So instead, I think the genie would instead be told to trade my size 12 feet for size 8s. Because really, there's no emotional baggage related to my feet and quite honestly, no one can feel like a failure if you can find a pair of Jimmy Choos on 90% clearance. --Weetabix

The comments want to know what wish the genie would grant for you.

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13 Comments

GoingLoopy said:

Oh, sister, how I feel you. I believe we are somewhere in the same neighborhood, size-wise, and I lost about 60 pounds. I got rid of my "fat" clothes, or most of them. Now, a stressful job, a broken ankle, and a problem with Hershey bars later, I'm right back where I started, agonizing over clothing decisions, and pissed off at myself for being here again.

My genie would grant me a house with a well-equipped exercise room and the determination to actually use the shit every day. Also, a dose of lactose intolerance wouldn't hurt... :)

July 25, 2007 2:22 PM

Bronwen said:

My genie would grant me an unlimited well of funds to sumptuously clothe the new(ish) body that weight-loss surgery has given me.

I fear I may have to call in naked to work any day now...

July 25, 2007 3:31 PM

gretchen said:

For as long as I can remember, my secret wish has been "make me thin." When I was growing up, I'd get more specific: let me lose 25 pounds; let me fit into a size 6; let me be willowy and slender; let me wear a crop top and a denim miniskirt to school. (In my head, somehow, this was totally appropriate ninth grade attire!)

Eventually, I got into college and lost some weight. And then I graduated from college and gained it back, and I started wishing for other things: happiness, strength; extroversion. But in my head, I always knew that these were just ways to fool myself. What I really wanted, more than anything, was that my wish upon a star would make me thin.

And now I'm thinking to myself that I've wanted to be thin more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. It has been my idee fixe, my lodestar, my impossible dream. And I'm thinking to myself, if this is what I want more than anything else in the world, then why can't I do it for myself? Is it that I don't really want it? Or is there something else that makes it impossible for me to get what I really want?

July 25, 2007 3:32 PM

lisa-marie said:

I would ask my genie to make unhealthy, fattening, fried foods like burgers and fries and chips taste disgusting to me, and make me crave veggies instead.

July 25, 2007 4:11 PM

Victoria said:

I'm with you! Smaller feet. I can find super cute size 26 dresses, but I have nothing for my poor 13W tootsies. Except for polish.

July 25, 2007 4:13 PM

kristina said:

Cigarettes that won’t mess with my health. That’s what I want more than any thing on the planet. And my debt erased.

As far as weight-loss goes, I’m kind of getting off doing it myself.

July 25, 2007 4:25 PM

Sophie said:

Gretchen, I hear you 1000%. Why can't I just do it, I ask myself?

July 25, 2007 4:48 PM

lap said:

Ever since I turned 39, the weight issue has been greater for me, because it's not by its lonesome in the "negatives" column. Which is hard to say because I know I can pull off my weight, and I know I look young for my age, and by definition my weight (211 lbs) and my age do really bother me. I mostly am really quite keen on myself, but sometimes the overweight, older, and alone are quite suddenly less okay when lumped together and I sigh quite heavily during those sometimes. Also there are moments when I consider the sedentary example I sometimes set for my sedentary 10 yr old daughter that give me pause as well. Because I don't really want to be thin, I want to be a size 12.

I would ask my genie for the house I am renting now to have magically 3 bedrooms and a bigger bathroom with perhaps a chandelier, and a fenced-in yard and for it to belong to me. I would also maybe ask that all portraits of my Nana be magical like in Harry Potter so I could ask her what was going on in my sisters' houses as an excuse to make her laugh.

July 25, 2007 5:14 PM

goodwithcheese said:

It pains me to read this because I so recognize myself in much of what you're saying. Particularly the hip bone thing. But fat is not a failure any more than losing weight is a success. We've gotta keep reminding ourselves of that, because if we play the "thin-is-better" game, then we're constantly telling ourselves that the way we are right now isn't good enough. And that's both cruel *and* a lie.
Oh, and I'd probably just ask the genie for cash 'cause I'm kind of money-grubbing.

July 25, 2007 7:45 PM

Thirtini said:

@Goodwithcheese--It's not that fat is necessarily failure, you're right that is not a good way to look at it. But I think losing a lot of weight is absolutely a success. It's a success the same way, say, paying down debt is, or finishing a marathon. It's a goal that we set and work hard to attain. As someone who once lost 100 pounds and then gained back 70 a couple years later...I know it's not that the way I am now is not "good enough," it's that I worked to acheive a goal and then just let it slip away. To use the debt analogy again, it would be like paying off all my credit cards and then maxing them out again less than a year later. It sucks.

As for my genie? Just give me the highest metabolism that's humanly possible, and then losing the weight on my own and keeping it off for good would be so much easier. If the genie just made me thin...I'd probably manage to get fat again within a couple years! :)

July 25, 2007 9:18 PM

Amy said:

Wow! I wrote about this somewhat today as well. Not as well as you wrote about it, but pretty much.

July 25, 2007 9:55 PM

Kate Harding said:

Aw, Weet. This kills me.

Mostly because I totally relate to it, even though I've (mostly) gotten past those feelings of "failure."

Here's what I know: I eat pretty well, without ever feeling deprived. I exercise because I love it. I'm healthy, except that I smoke... and I'm not thin.

Getting thin, for me -- and, I suspect, you -- is a part-time job. One that comes with no pay, a lot of negativity, and loads of emotional stress (albeit also with the highs of touching those hipbones and having everybody and their grandma tell you what AN AWESOME PERSON you are for not being fat anymore).

The way I see it now, I didn't fail. I quit a part-time job that wasn't, on balance, making my life better. It freed up time for other things. I'm much happier now. But that happiness didn't come easy -- and it didn't come without a LOT of self-flagellation for not being able to "triumph over this one little thing." (Which is, of course, the farthest thing from little.)

I had to spend a couple years constantly, consciously asking myself if I'd be better off dieting part-time or trying to take a realistic look at what being fat means for my health and my social life -- i.e., nothing too bad, actually, if I sincerely take care of myself instead of seeing "taking care of myself" as code for "torturing myself to get thin."

You are awesome. And if I met a genie, I'd wish that you and all the other awesome fat chicks I know could have all the old bullshit tapes instantly destroyed and just start moving because it feels good, eating what we crave when we're hungry, and loving ourselves wholeheartedly no matter what weight we end up at.

July 26, 2007 1:54 PM

Milo said:

Word, Weetabix. I feel like I will never truly achieve personal satisfaction unless I maintain a BMI in the healthy weight range.

While I admit that sometimes I eat horribly, and that I don't exercise as often as I should for health's sake alone, I'm bitter that I know people who have the same exact eating/lack of exercise habits that I do, yet they're not overweight.

Therefore, I'd wish for an amazing metabolism.

July 27, 2007 3:28 AM

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