I mentioned in an earlier post (more like fixated on) how much easier it would be to stick with a fitness plan if I were totally isolated. Living, eating, and existing in solitude would make for a lonely life, but I would essentially only have to face one struggle: me versus me.
In recent days, I have found myself encountering an unexpected foe: Dan. I'm not talking about the "oh, he likes to be sedentary" stuff, where his natural state is counterproductive for my rejuvenated ("You hear that? Rejuvenated. He was juvenated before, lost it...and got juvenated again. Rejuvenated!") enthusiasm for a healthier lifestyle. And it's not as though he's secretly switching out my 1% milk for whole, or fucking with my scale's calibration...nothing nearly that intentional or direct. In fact, what he is doing, he probably doesn't even realize. Dan has never been extremely conscious of the emotional effects of his words and actions (look for my next investigative series: Is Dan a Cylon?), and it always seems to confuse him when I tell him that something he did made me upset. In fact, on those relatively rare occasions, he gets defensive and takes the (unstated) position that essentially any negative reaction I am having is either a misplacement of feelings or an overreaction, or a combination of the two. It's a pretty good mindfuck, and I'm 90% sure he doesn't realize he's doing it. If it is a coping mechanism to help him deal with people who are inherently more emotional than he is, which I think it is, it's hard for me to think of a more subtly damaging one.
But I digress. Now, Dan would have to be blind, deaf, and mostly retarded not to have noticed how much I've been exercising in the last month or so, and how much I've been using the food scale for that matter. He's working his normal schedule and I'm at home, so he doesn't often see the work being done, but when he asks what I did that day, I tell him, including any exercise. So he knows. Let me relate to you a brief exchange we had (paraphrased). For reference, the cruise I refer to leaves on August 14th, and this conversation took place around July 27th or so.
Amber: I'm trying to work out and do as much as I can before the cruise.
Dan: *sour face* Isn't that kind of...like...isn't is not going to really matter? Since the cruise is so soon?
Amber: *momentary surprised silence* Yeah, well, isn't that kind of go fuck yourself?
Dan: *arches eyebrows, walks away confused*
Of course I understand what Dan is saying. My clothing size is not going to change drastically over the course of fewer than 20 days. Even if I tried some extreme diet plan and never got off the elliptical, I would still only drop like 10 pounds, which would be unhealthy for such a short amount of time (unless we're talking water weight or something). So I understand where he is coming from. Objectively, unsentimentally, technically, he makes a good point. Working out and eating right for a little over two weeks, in the long run, is not going to have a huge effect all by itself. In order to see the kind of changes I want to see, I would need to maintain this for 6 months or more, and that's just to lose the weight initially; to keep it off, I would have to incorporate many of these habits into my life everyday forever. What's 2 weeks in the scheme of forever?
What Dan didn't understand, and probably still doesn't, is that a lot of the work I've been doing recently has been mental and emotional. Getting myself into the mindset of long term health and forming healthy habits. Working on the emotional eating side of the issue and trying to extricate my biological needs/urges from things like "yay for good news, I want chocolate!" and "oh no, bad news, I want chocolate!" Making my health and wellness (which right now almost exclusively means weight loss and proper nutrition for a more active lifestyle) the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about before bed has been difficult, and it's a big change for me, and not without its challenges.
I have been, almost always successfully, fighting back against all the pessimistic, negative, hurtful things I think to myself when I think about losing weight. I'll never get to a healthy weight. My metabolism won't let that happen. If I don't start dropping pounds soon, I'm not going to have the willpower to stick with this. I'm not going to have time for this when school starts back up. Keeping "skinny clothes" around in the closet isn't a symbol of hope, it's a reminder of repeated failure. I'll never fit into that awesome bomber jacket I bought on sale despite it being a size too small. Nobody is going to want to see me in a bikini on the cruise, and I don't particularly want to be seen in one. It's so pathetic that most naturally-skinny people would cry if they had to go up to a size 10, but I've got size 10 shorts hung up as my goal. By the time I lose any significant amount of weight, assuming I do, it's going to be winter and I'll be wearing big bulky clothes anyway, so it won't mean as much to be thinner. Losing weight will mean losing boob fat, which means I'll go down a cup size; my boobs are the only thing I like about my body right now. I'm going to have to work against this my entire life, and I don't know if I can do it.
I could go on like this for pages. I know you know I could.
But when these thoughts crop up, I eat some veggies. Or put in TurboJam (I know I bring it up a lot...it really is that good. Come over sometime with your yoga pants and I'll indoctrinate you). Or write a blog post. Or meditate. Or go for a walk. Anything except put in a movie and eat junk food, which is my default response. I have been working very, very hard to identify the sources of these feelings, work through them, and find healthy responses to them. It has been incredibly challenging.
So then when Dan says what I've been trying NOT to think for the last month, it kind of fucking destroys my soul. To hear my own venomous negativity come out of his mouth, in a matter-of-fact, amused-by-my-naivete tone...it's hard to explain the effect of that. The hardest part to reconcile is that I know he wants me to be healthier. He has never been judgmental or negative about my weight in terms of attractiveness or anything (though, when I bring it up first, he does carefully say that he wants me to be a healthy weight so that I don't have a heart attack when I'm 32...at least he goes with tact on that one). He has only ever wavered between supportive-but-not-that-helpful and oblivious.
So in order to put his reaction in our conversation into the same person who wants nothing but the best for me, I have to fill in the blanks with some rather unsettling and/or disappointing assumptions. Maybe he doesn't understand that his objectivity came through as negativity. Maybe he doesn't understand that there is an emotional component to my weight. Maybe he thinks my effort is temporary (which wouldn't be unwarranted) and thinks I'm being foolish to expect results in the short term. Maybe he doesn't think I can do it. I don't know. But I don't want any of those "maybes" to be true, because none of them paint him in a particularly good light.
A more amusing but similarly demonstrative exchange occurred last night, when a friend of mine responded to my "hang out?" inquiry. He was already with another mutual friend of ours and they were planning to go out for dinner. He asked if I wanted to join, and I told him that I was trying not to go out to eat as much and that maybe we could hang out after. He said okay. After dinner, he texted me to see if I wanted to join them for JP Licks.
Sigh.
Even if I begged off earlier because of money and not nutrition, JP Licks is like the most expensive fucking ice cream around (okay, maybe not as bad as Coldstone, but at least those bitches will put a whole Kit-Kat in there). Yeah, $7 is less than I would have paid at dinner, but it's still more than I paid for the ice cream in my own freezer that I still haven't eaten. They ended up skipping JP Licks altogether (you're welcome) and coming over to hang out, but by then it was like 10pm, and my normal bedtime is between 11 and 12. Not the most comforting social experience when I'm trying to believe that my new goals won't interfere with my friendships.
While the aforementioned friends were at dinner, I expressed my sadness to Dan that all anyone ever wanted to do socially was go out to eat. He asked, again matter-of-factly, "what else is there to do?" I wanted to shake him and cry, "Are you fucking serious?!?" but I didn't want to put myself out there, not after his comment the other day. My friend Jen came over Tuesday and Thursday of this week. We went on a walk both times, did TurboJam both times, then parted so we could each rinse off the unattractive sheen of sweat we had acquired. At neither occasion did one of us suggest going out to eat. Or ordering in. Or even eating the junk food already present. To answer Dan's question, here are all the things I can think of off the top of my head that I'd like to do: go to the movies, watch a movie at home, lay on a blanket outside and read, go to the beach, go to a pool, go to an amusement park, go to a water park, go to a state park, drive someplace and look at the stars at night (I have mentioned this desire to him many times yet we have never gone; I am psyched to be able to do this in the middle of the ocean on the cruise), window shop at the mall, take a class (there are too many subjects I'm interested in to name them here), or just sit around and talk. None of these activities necessitates a meal. None. Some of them would probably last long enough that we'd have to eat, but the eating is not the center of the activity, nor is it the purpose for gathering. Yet Dan, and apparently most of my other friends, find it impossible to think of just one thing that doesn't involve shoving fried food into our faces. (And yes, it has to be junk food. If you don't already know about my weird pickiness issues, look for the next episode.)
I hesitate to talk to Dan about this for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I have great difficulty initiating uncomfortable conversations (or, at least, ones I presume will be uncomfortable) and I would honestly rather not talk about something than have a painful conversation about it. It's not a healthy way to approach communication and it's not going to strengthen our relationship by any means, but in my head, I would rather live with tension for days than have a 20-minute conversation where someone might get mad. God forbid. Additionally, I have not had mainly positive results when approaching Dan with the aforementioned types of conversations. Of course, there are many factors in this issue (the nature of the conversations being negative to begin with, how I approach Dan/how he perceives it, et al), but honestly, Dan's own communication and interrelation issues make it very difficult to approach him about things because, well, he does get mad, or at the very least, extremely defensive. He sees disagreements as things one wins or loses, not things that people work out together to a mutually satisfying conclusion. I think he is so uncomfortable with the feeling of being in the wrong (whether he is being "accused" or "blamed", or if he just feels that way) that he allows his perceptions and feelings to become tangible "evidence" that he uses to make a case for whatever we're discussing. I don't think anyone has ever accused Dan of being too ready to compromise or not interested enough in arguing, so I don't think he'd disagree with me entirely on these points.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Another reason I don't bring this shit up with him is that I worry about the fallout. I doubt anything obvious and certainly not anything disastrous would come from such conversations. But I do worry about Dan talking to me awkwardly and being unsure how to proceed, trying to insert himself into my wellness goals without really understanding them and certainly not joining them for his own health, or avoiding talking about any of it altogether in order to avoid hurting my feelings accidentally. If all my meals are designed for a specific purpose, and my activities are altered and scheduled for that same purpose, how does one have an open and communicative relationship while not incorporating the reality of those changes? It's like the Dursleys trying to talk to Harry about Hogwarts and Voldemort without mentioning magic.
Finally, and perhaps most abstractly, I worry that Dan will never really be able to get me. What I mean is that....I am, sometimes unknowingly/unwittingly, a total participant in everything around me. I empathize with people unintentionally. When I'm talking to someone (or watching someone in a movie) who's making a sad face, I make a sad face. I don't do it on purpose. I automatically put myself in that person's shoes, and then I express what I imagine they are feeling. I don't mirror their expressions; it's not quite so autistic. I'm not aping, exactly. It seems like I feel everything, I have to relate to people on that level. I've never had any difficulty taking another's perspective or imagining the reactions of others to different situations; I always do it. When I see someone ahead of me trying to get on the T and they're fumbling with their bag, trying to find their T pass, I realize that the driver must see this all the time and get annoyed that people didn't extricate their passes when they saw the T coming. I assume that they must hate it, so I do too. I do the same thing in basically every situation I'm in. It can be exhausting, but it's how I interact with the world. It's also why I cry when I watch sad movies. It's not that the situations are sad, which does pull at my heartstrings, but it's that the characters are sad. If they start to cry, I'm done for. Music does the same thing. I can be profoundly affected by music in a way that is sometimes embarrassing (if only internally, since this is not something I share often). If a singer sings a mournful tune, or even if an instrument plays something sad (in D-minor, for instance, which is the saddest of all keys), I feel that. Deeply and completely.
So interacting with Dan, who seems so numb to everything, especially compared to how I feel, is pretty challenging. Food isn't an emotional issue to him because very few things qualify as emotional issues for him. It's not that he can't feel or anything; I've seen him be sad, frustrated, joyful, excited, nervous, and all the other things one would expect to see in someone. But if his emotional state were a number line, he would rarely stray very far from the zero in the center. He is even almost all the time. I don't know if it's a strength that things don't "get to him" or if it's a weakness that he's so closed off. Maybe it's both, or neither.
But I do know that this gulf between how we each operate can make communicating about emotional issues incredibly challenging. I can't expect him to empathize with me or feel what I'm feeling, nor can he expect me to be objective or to "take myself out of the situation". I'm in it, that's the deal. It's like we're shouting at each other from two distant mountain peaks, both eager to communicate but also frustrated with the other person for not yelling loud enough.
It's hard for Dan to understand this, I think. Much like it would be hard for him to understand how a very specific moment (our conversation about my cruise-related exercise) really represents a piece of a whole host of other intertwined and messy issues that are much larger than this conversation (and yet, the conversation is still important to address specifically). I suspect it would also be hard for him to understand that this post isn't really about him. It is, but it isn't. That's why I'm not announcing this post via social networking. If someone wants to read it, that's all well and fine, but the main point of all this was the writing. The publishing gives a sense of accomplishment and purpose, yes, but frankly my darlings, this one is for me, not you.
I'm tired. It's past midnight now. Dan's already in bed, as rare as it is for him to beat me to it. I don't this post is a very good piece of writing, but I also don't think it needs to be. It was helpful to write it. I hope I still feel that in the morning.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 3: Working Around the Stupid Bullshit (i.e. Life)
It has become exceptionally clear to me that I will pounce upon any and every opportunity to be healthtarded that presents itself. This impulse is served by both internal and external forces. Internal forces are difficult to ignore (c'mon me, let's do that thing we love - nothing!) but also have the fewest consequences when they are ignored (fuck you, me...I'm going to do something, with or without you!). External forces, like life, are a little trickier. They are also difficult to ignore, but unlike the internal forces, sometimes shit actually happens depending on what a person does.
For example, this past weekend we had Dan's sister and her family over. She has a 3-year-old son, so whenever he is involved in any plans, we basically just try to keep up and prevent him from accidentally killing himself every two minutes. He is of the rare ilk that cannot often bear to sit in front of the television for long periods or otherwise be stationary. He requires movement, and more importantly, he requires being outside. It was 92 degrees out this Saturday, but goddammit, this kid wanted to be outside. He has no concept of heat stroke or, you know, death, so he fidgeted endlessly while his mother sunscreen'd him, then proceeded to work his way through a huge playground like I work my way through a plate of rice-a-roni. Thankfully, when we had spent over an hour at the park and his naptime was approaching, he did not throw a shit-fit when we left the playground, and we happily returned to the house, where we watched some of Cars and waited for the child to finish his tiny servings of various random foods (this kid is about as picky an eater as I am, which would be amazing, except he's 3, so that shit is normal). When he finally fell asleep, we had about two hours to kill before he would require us to go do more things.
These two hours could have been spent doing anything in the house that didn't make noise. I could have easily stolen away to hop on the elliptical and listen to my amazing workout jams via headphones without disturbing anyone. I could have done some high-intensity (but nearly stationary) ab work. Shit, the kid's not mine, I could have left the house and gone for a very, very sweaty walk. But instead, I did what everyone else did: I rested. I engaged in conversation not based on repeating a three-year-old's observations of the world around him, watched some programming not appropriate for children, and ate the grown-up lunch. I knew that from about 4pm to 8pm, I would be on again, and I would need all the energy I could muster. So I rested. That evening, after the child had rather maturely announced that he was tired, so we should pause Cars and finish it in the morning (I shit you not, he clearly and casually stated this intention, then marched into the bedroom...it was fucking hilarious), the events of his nap time pretty much continued into the evening. We watched a movie, talked, and eventually I read a little Harry Potter and went to sleep. The next day, we did the same shit again, only after the family left in the afternoon, I was basically comatose for the rest of the evening. I had no plans, no requirements, no commitments, nothing. I sat, laid, and plopped. Not necessarily in that order.
Now with an entire day of retrospect, I can still say that I was not overestimating how absolutely exhausted I was by the end of the whirlwind 30-hour visit. But I look back at the activities and I wonder why the hell I was so tired. On Saturday, I stood in the shade at the park with my desperately-panting dogs. That evening, I went to the library and colored. Sunday morning, I slowly walked around the Museum of Science. There was no triathlon to be run, just some casual family activities. Granted, I'm not used to trucking around my ass trying to keep up with the ADHD-like behavior of a toddler, but it really wasn't that difficult. In fact, I enjoyed all of it and was happy throughout.
But examining things closer, it becomes all too clear where my exhaustion came from. It wasn't that I was tired from being active; I was tired from being social. Interacting with other humans is so incredibly tiring for me, you would not fucking believe it. I can't really explain why, nor can I justify why a small list of people do not make me tired when they're around (these are, naturally, those closest to me). I don't know why it's so difficult for me to just be with people. It's fucking exhausting. If I know that I have social plans on a Saturday, I will consciously avoid making plans Friday night, just because I know I can't book back to back like that. It doesn't work for me. Even if the two events are inherently different - say, a family dinner for one and some friends at the movies for the other - I still feel so drained after the first event that I find it difficult to power through the second.
Thankfully, a few things are exempt from this. Work doesn't count. The structures of my job and the blessed ability to isolate outside of class time make it easy to recharge in small bursts, and teaching actually energizes me as opposed to drains me. Of course, there are plenty of instances in and around teaching that are huge energy sinks, but the actual instruction, collaboration, and discussion-leadership in teaching is a source of energy for me. So work doesn't tire me out. But basically everything else where I'm interacting with people does. Which kind of sucks.
Dan loves being social. He doesn't need it desperately, but he truly enjoys it, much like I imagine most normal humans do. If he doesn't leave the house for an entire day, he gets cabin fever pretty acutely. I don't understand this feeling, nor does he understand how I can stay inside literally all day and be fine (happy, even). Now I know where his nephew gets it from.
The problem with being exhausted from extended social circumstances is that they happen all the time. That's life, son. It's much easier for me to get into exercise and push myself to do work or get moving if I'm isolated. When I have social commitments scattered throughout my schedule, those become my periods of activity, and I use the remaining free time to recover from the social events. If I go out to lunch with friends on a Saturday, I am much more likely to nap, watch a movie, and/or sit around on the computer for the rest of the evening than I am to suggest going out again or even just being active around the house. I went out; I'm tired. That's how that shit works.
There is another insidious feature of social engagements that I've mentioned briefly before: everyone, myself included, always needs to eat shitty food when we get together. Hey, want to grab lunch this week? Why don't we make a date for that restaurant we both love? Why don't we go celebrate by horking down 1000 calories? No one ever offers to bring offer a nice salad or to join me in preparing a delicious home-cooked meal. That shit does not happen, ever. People do that at home, if ever, so when they go see friends, they want to use that time to indulge. Which makes sense. Unfortunately, it adds up pretty quickly if you have more than two friends, which I'd like to think I do.
I'll give you an example. Tuesday of last week, I had a chicken finger date with two friends of mine. We met up at Kelly's Roast Beef. It was fucking delicious. I got the kid's meal, but it doesn't matter, it's still pretty bad for you. Then, Thursday of the same week, I made plans to meet up with another friend; she suggested going out for lunch, but I talked her down to coffee. I don't even drink coffee, but a "cold beverage on a hot fucking day date" sounds a little geh. I had a Coke, which isn't the worst thing in the world, especially compared to another bout of Chicken Finger Influenza (tastiest. illness. ever.), but it's still a soda I wouldn't have had if I had stayed home. By myself. Like a healthy person...right?
Then we get to the weekend. Dan's family arrived Saturday morning and left Sunday afternoon. In that time, we managed to order in chinese food, italian (for me, chicken fingers, of course), and then BBQ (fried chicken for me, of course). We could have prepared food at the house, but again, that's the shit you do in your own domicile. They don't come to Boston very often, so we all felt the impulse to eat our way through many restaurants, some favorites and some new experiences. So we did. I did what I could with the meals I selected (ate smaller portions, took the skin off the fried chicken, drank milk or Pepsi Max instead of full-calorie soda) but I was still doing the exact fucking opposite of everything I've been running my mouth about. So when they left on Sunday and all I could bear to do was rest some more, I (understandably, I think), felt rather shitty about myself and did not have a very positive start to the week.
But this is the bullshit that happens all the time. And if I can't find a way to deal with it, then I lose. I lose at whatever this thing is I'm trying to do. As much as part of me would enjoy being the fitness-nut hermit that lives on a craggy mountain precipice, I know that it's not plausible nor healthy to isolate myself to the point of becoming asocial. I like these people whom I choose to see, which is why I choose to see them, so I have to find a way to incorporate the social element into the life I want to be living. If it's hard to do this shit with just Dan around, how the fuck am I supposed to make it so that my entire social circle is on board with my fitness and wellbeing goals? "Oh, I'm sorry guys, I can't go out to eat for another two weeks because of my eating plan. Do you want to go for a walk instead? I have Slim Fast snack bars in the cabinet for when we get baa-a-a-a-ack!"
On a side note, the Double Dutch Chocolate ones are actually really good. They're not candy bars - let's not be rediculos - but they're pretty good.
But yeah, it's hard to figure out how to be social and not derail all the shit I'm trying to do. Of course, as a friend-of-my-brother's-and-former-childhood-tormentor-turned-facebook-friend pointed out to me, it's not all or nothing. You can't approach this shit with the black-or-white mindset, because that sets you up to fail. Going to Kelly's last week didn't "ruin" anything. Ordering out this whole weekend, while unwise, didn't "ruin" anything either. They were negatives that should be accounted for in other ways, like other meals being healthier or workouts being harder/longer. But to determine how to make the negatives be less common...that's a tricky one. And it's something I'm still working on.
I'd probably write more, but Gus has been slowly working his way into a position that makes it very difficult to type. His body is against my leg with his entire head wrapped around the side of my monitor so that I have to move the Firefox window just to be able to see what I'm typing. He is looking soulfully into my eyes as I write this. Okay...he can haz attenshunz. Night all.
For example, this past weekend we had Dan's sister and her family over. She has a 3-year-old son, so whenever he is involved in any plans, we basically just try to keep up and prevent him from accidentally killing himself every two minutes. He is of the rare ilk that cannot often bear to sit in front of the television for long periods or otherwise be stationary. He requires movement, and more importantly, he requires being outside. It was 92 degrees out this Saturday, but goddammit, this kid wanted to be outside. He has no concept of heat stroke or, you know, death, so he fidgeted endlessly while his mother sunscreen'd him, then proceeded to work his way through a huge playground like I work my way through a plate of rice-a-roni. Thankfully, when we had spent over an hour at the park and his naptime was approaching, he did not throw a shit-fit when we left the playground, and we happily returned to the house, where we watched some of Cars and waited for the child to finish his tiny servings of various random foods (this kid is about as picky an eater as I am, which would be amazing, except he's 3, so that shit is normal). When he finally fell asleep, we had about two hours to kill before he would require us to go do more things.
These two hours could have been spent doing anything in the house that didn't make noise. I could have easily stolen away to hop on the elliptical and listen to my amazing workout jams via headphones without disturbing anyone. I could have done some high-intensity (but nearly stationary) ab work. Shit, the kid's not mine, I could have left the house and gone for a very, very sweaty walk. But instead, I did what everyone else did: I rested. I engaged in conversation not based on repeating a three-year-old's observations of the world around him, watched some programming not appropriate for children, and ate the grown-up lunch. I knew that from about 4pm to 8pm, I would be on again, and I would need all the energy I could muster. So I rested. That evening, after the child had rather maturely announced that he was tired, so we should pause Cars and finish it in the morning (I shit you not, he clearly and casually stated this intention, then marched into the bedroom...it was fucking hilarious), the events of his nap time pretty much continued into the evening. We watched a movie, talked, and eventually I read a little Harry Potter and went to sleep. The next day, we did the same shit again, only after the family left in the afternoon, I was basically comatose for the rest of the evening. I had no plans, no requirements, no commitments, nothing. I sat, laid, and plopped. Not necessarily in that order.
Now with an entire day of retrospect, I can still say that I was not overestimating how absolutely exhausted I was by the end of the whirlwind 30-hour visit. But I look back at the activities and I wonder why the hell I was so tired. On Saturday, I stood in the shade at the park with my desperately-panting dogs. That evening, I went to the library and colored. Sunday morning, I slowly walked around the Museum of Science. There was no triathlon to be run, just some casual family activities. Granted, I'm not used to trucking around my ass trying to keep up with the ADHD-like behavior of a toddler, but it really wasn't that difficult. In fact, I enjoyed all of it and was happy throughout.
But examining things closer, it becomes all too clear where my exhaustion came from. It wasn't that I was tired from being active; I was tired from being social. Interacting with other humans is so incredibly tiring for me, you would not fucking believe it. I can't really explain why, nor can I justify why a small list of people do not make me tired when they're around (these are, naturally, those closest to me). I don't know why it's so difficult for me to just be with people. It's fucking exhausting. If I know that I have social plans on a Saturday, I will consciously avoid making plans Friday night, just because I know I can't book back to back like that. It doesn't work for me. Even if the two events are inherently different - say, a family dinner for one and some friends at the movies for the other - I still feel so drained after the first event that I find it difficult to power through the second.
Thankfully, a few things are exempt from this. Work doesn't count. The structures of my job and the blessed ability to isolate outside of class time make it easy to recharge in small bursts, and teaching actually energizes me as opposed to drains me. Of course, there are plenty of instances in and around teaching that are huge energy sinks, but the actual instruction, collaboration, and discussion-leadership in teaching is a source of energy for me. So work doesn't tire me out. But basically everything else where I'm interacting with people does. Which kind of sucks.
Dan loves being social. He doesn't need it desperately, but he truly enjoys it, much like I imagine most normal humans do. If he doesn't leave the house for an entire day, he gets cabin fever pretty acutely. I don't understand this feeling, nor does he understand how I can stay inside literally all day and be fine (happy, even). Now I know where his nephew gets it from.
The problem with being exhausted from extended social circumstances is that they happen all the time. That's life, son. It's much easier for me to get into exercise and push myself to do work or get moving if I'm isolated. When I have social commitments scattered throughout my schedule, those become my periods of activity, and I use the remaining free time to recover from the social events. If I go out to lunch with friends on a Saturday, I am much more likely to nap, watch a movie, and/or sit around on the computer for the rest of the evening than I am to suggest going out again or even just being active around the house. I went out; I'm tired. That's how that shit works.
There is another insidious feature of social engagements that I've mentioned briefly before: everyone, myself included, always needs to eat shitty food when we get together. Hey, want to grab lunch this week? Why don't we make a date for that restaurant we both love? Why don't we go celebrate by horking down 1000 calories? No one ever offers to bring offer a nice salad or to join me in preparing a delicious home-cooked meal. That shit does not happen, ever. People do that at home, if ever, so when they go see friends, they want to use that time to indulge. Which makes sense. Unfortunately, it adds up pretty quickly if you have more than two friends, which I'd like to think I do.
I'll give you an example. Tuesday of last week, I had a chicken finger date with two friends of mine. We met up at Kelly's Roast Beef. It was fucking delicious. I got the kid's meal, but it doesn't matter, it's still pretty bad for you. Then, Thursday of the same week, I made plans to meet up with another friend; she suggested going out for lunch, but I talked her down to coffee. I don't even drink coffee, but a "cold beverage on a hot fucking day date" sounds a little geh. I had a Coke, which isn't the worst thing in the world, especially compared to another bout of Chicken Finger Influenza (tastiest. illness. ever.), but it's still a soda I wouldn't have had if I had stayed home. By myself. Like a healthy person...right?
Then we get to the weekend. Dan's family arrived Saturday morning and left Sunday afternoon. In that time, we managed to order in chinese food, italian (for me, chicken fingers, of course), and then BBQ (fried chicken for me, of course). We could have prepared food at the house, but again, that's the shit you do in your own domicile. They don't come to Boston very often, so we all felt the impulse to eat our way through many restaurants, some favorites and some new experiences. So we did. I did what I could with the meals I selected (ate smaller portions, took the skin off the fried chicken, drank milk or Pepsi Max instead of full-calorie soda) but I was still doing the exact fucking opposite of everything I've been running my mouth about. So when they left on Sunday and all I could bear to do was rest some more, I (understandably, I think), felt rather shitty about myself and did not have a very positive start to the week.
But this is the bullshit that happens all the time. And if I can't find a way to deal with it, then I lose. I lose at whatever this thing is I'm trying to do. As much as part of me would enjoy being the fitness-nut hermit that lives on a craggy mountain precipice, I know that it's not plausible nor healthy to isolate myself to the point of becoming asocial. I like these people whom I choose to see, which is why I choose to see them, so I have to find a way to incorporate the social element into the life I want to be living. If it's hard to do this shit with just Dan around, how the fuck am I supposed to make it so that my entire social circle is on board with my fitness and wellbeing goals? "Oh, I'm sorry guys, I can't go out to eat for another two weeks because of my eating plan. Do you want to go for a walk instead? I have Slim Fast snack bars in the cabinet for when we get baa-a-a-a-ack!"
On a side note, the Double Dutch Chocolate ones are actually really good. They're not candy bars - let's not be rediculos - but they're pretty good.
But yeah, it's hard to figure out how to be social and not derail all the shit I'm trying to do. Of course, as a friend-of-my-brother's-and-former-childhood-tormentor-turned-facebook-friend pointed out to me, it's not all or nothing. You can't approach this shit with the black-or-white mindset, because that sets you up to fail. Going to Kelly's last week didn't "ruin" anything. Ordering out this whole weekend, while unwise, didn't "ruin" anything either. They were negatives that should be accounted for in other ways, like other meals being healthier or workouts being harder/longer. But to determine how to make the negatives be less common...that's a tricky one. And it's something I'm still working on.
I'd probably write more, but Gus has been slowly working his way into a position that makes it very difficult to type. His body is against my leg with his entire head wrapped around the side of my monitor so that I have to move the Firefox window just to be able to see what I'm typing. He is looking soulfully into my eyes as I write this. Okay...he can haz attenshunz. Night all.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 2: Living with a Skinny Kid
First off, thanks to the people who actually contacted me personally after reading my last post. Who would have thought you could use the internet to connect with people?
Today I'd like to talk about an issue that has become increasingly pressing over the last year. As many of you know, Dan and I bought a condo last year and moved in together at the beginning of last summer. For the most part, it's been a lovely journey through commitment-ville and relationship-town, and we actually get along rather well, which I suppose is important if you're going to cohabitate.
If you have had the incredible misfortune of never having met Dan, he's basically a super tall Harry Potter. He's like 6'3" or some preposterous height, he wears glasses, he's got brown hair...all he's missing is a lightning bolt scar and Ralph Fiennes as a mortal enemy. Anyway, for all that vertical mass, he's like 165 pounds (for reference, this puts him on the lower end of the "healthy" weight range, if we're talking BMI).
The problem here is that Dan has all the same shitty habits that I do, but for whatever reason, his body reacts by ignoring all the calories and inactivity, and just kinda...staying skinny. It's not that he eats a lot, he just eats incredibly bad food. He has bread for entire meals on a relatively regular basis, eats snacks before dinner when he gets home from work, and spends every waking moment either on the couch or in front of the computer (and this is after being at a computer at work all day). The most vigorous physical activity I've ever seen him do is play pool. He will admit, so I don't feel bad stating it publicly, that he is a truly, impressively lazy person. This, of course, means that he is not at all muscular, but I don't think he really minds that.
So, basically, I have a partner in crime who will eat junk food and order out for wings and stay on the couch with me watching Firefly allllll day, except I will gain five pounds and he will go on looking exactly the same. And don't get me wrong...this isn't an "it's not fair" kind of thing. Different people have different metabolisms and reactions to food; shit happens. His mom's relatives all pretty much look like Dan: taller than average, skinnier than average. My family...well, my size is not a surprise to anyone who has met my family. I'm not bitter about my genetic profile versus Dan's. It's just how it is.
No, instead it has simply become increasingly apparent how unhealthy our household dynamic is. I don't have enough passion and strength to cry, "no! I will NOT get T. Anthony's with you!" because, well, T. Anthony's was probably my idea, and I tend to get rather grumpy when having to make food decisions (as many of you are all too aware). And I like eating dinner with Dan, but my incredibly limited palate (again, another issue for another day) means that we only really have like 5 meals in common, which get old pretty fast. I love pasta with red sauce, but how many times a week can you have that before you go crazy? Keep in mind, too, that I'm making my own lunches now that I'm home for the summer, so I'm getting sick of all my food options twice as quickly as normal.
I tried to involve Dan, at his request, in my weight loss goals some years ago. We had a particularly emotional conversation wherein I essentially told him that feeling fat and horrible makes me not want to bone. Well that got him invested, let me tell you. Unfortunately, and not that it's his fault, Dan doesn't really know how to provide support in the way that I need. I don't like being policed and monitored, so having him watch me look at food in the cabinet was not working for me. He's one of those objective, left-brain people I addressed in my last post, so it's hard for him to understand the emotional, subjective side of this whole issue. He can identify the issues, project possible solutions, and create action plans to implement those solutions. He does that all day at work. But that's not really what I need, so at this point, he is on the outside looking in, wondering WTF is going on when one day I'm working out for two hours and the next I'm eating french fries.
Maybe if he were a picky eater with weight issues and bad knees who wanted to shed a few pounds, then we could work together. But he's not a picky eater, and he doesn't want to lose weight. So basically, we're doing two different things and if I'm going to make any progress, we have to be living two different lifestyles. Which sucks, because we live together and like spending time together. And unless I want to start preparing elaborate healthy meals for us every night, we're going to end up eating separately almost all the time, because half the meals we both enjoy come in styrofoam boxes. That makes me kind of sad.
But at the same time, it's not fair to me if all of the things he likes to do are actually hurting me. I like doing them too, which is why we do them together, but I also like going for walks. And shit, I even like doing Turbo Jam, despite the fact that it kicks my ass. I'm one of those people who gets delightful endorphin rushes from exercising (I know everyone is supposed to feel that way, but most people I know feel like puking, or napping, or eating after exercise); that's one reason why it's even sadder that I'm still fat. I like physical activity. But I also like sitting around. And Dan does, too. So we do that together. And it ain't healthy. Really, it's bad for both of us; just because he's skinny doesn't mean he's in shape. But I'm not the boss of him and it's not my job to keep him healthy. I have enough to worry about with my own body.
I suppose I could try to get him to exercise with me, but I know he wouldn't want to and wouldn't enjoy it. The Venn diagram of foods that we both like and foods that are healthy would basically just be two distinct circles, so a shared healthy menu is out, too. If all of our meals and all of our activities are different, then did he just become my roommate? Blech, this sucks. Stupid skinny kid.
Today I'd like to talk about an issue that has become increasingly pressing over the last year. As many of you know, Dan and I bought a condo last year and moved in together at the beginning of last summer. For the most part, it's been a lovely journey through commitment-ville and relationship-town, and we actually get along rather well, which I suppose is important if you're going to cohabitate.
If you have had the incredible misfortune of never having met Dan, he's basically a super tall Harry Potter. He's like 6'3" or some preposterous height, he wears glasses, he's got brown hair...all he's missing is a lightning bolt scar and Ralph Fiennes as a mortal enemy. Anyway, for all that vertical mass, he's like 165 pounds (for reference, this puts him on the lower end of the "healthy" weight range, if we're talking BMI).
The problem here is that Dan has all the same shitty habits that I do, but for whatever reason, his body reacts by ignoring all the calories and inactivity, and just kinda...staying skinny. It's not that he eats a lot, he just eats incredibly bad food. He has bread for entire meals on a relatively regular basis, eats snacks before dinner when he gets home from work, and spends every waking moment either on the couch or in front of the computer (and this is after being at a computer at work all day). The most vigorous physical activity I've ever seen him do is play pool. He will admit, so I don't feel bad stating it publicly, that he is a truly, impressively lazy person. This, of course, means that he is not at all muscular, but I don't think he really minds that.
So, basically, I have a partner in crime who will eat junk food and order out for wings and stay on the couch with me watching Firefly allllll day, except I will gain five pounds and he will go on looking exactly the same. And don't get me wrong...this isn't an "it's not fair" kind of thing. Different people have different metabolisms and reactions to food; shit happens. His mom's relatives all pretty much look like Dan: taller than average, skinnier than average. My family...well, my size is not a surprise to anyone who has met my family. I'm not bitter about my genetic profile versus Dan's. It's just how it is.
No, instead it has simply become increasingly apparent how unhealthy our household dynamic is. I don't have enough passion and strength to cry, "no! I will NOT get T. Anthony's with you!" because, well, T. Anthony's was probably my idea, and I tend to get rather grumpy when having to make food decisions (as many of you are all too aware). And I like eating dinner with Dan, but my incredibly limited palate (again, another issue for another day) means that we only really have like 5 meals in common, which get old pretty fast. I love pasta with red sauce, but how many times a week can you have that before you go crazy? Keep in mind, too, that I'm making my own lunches now that I'm home for the summer, so I'm getting sick of all my food options twice as quickly as normal.
I tried to involve Dan, at his request, in my weight loss goals some years ago. We had a particularly emotional conversation wherein I essentially told him that feeling fat and horrible makes me not want to bone. Well that got him invested, let me tell you. Unfortunately, and not that it's his fault, Dan doesn't really know how to provide support in the way that I need. I don't like being policed and monitored, so having him watch me look at food in the cabinet was not working for me. He's one of those objective, left-brain people I addressed in my last post, so it's hard for him to understand the emotional, subjective side of this whole issue. He can identify the issues, project possible solutions, and create action plans to implement those solutions. He does that all day at work. But that's not really what I need, so at this point, he is on the outside looking in, wondering WTF is going on when one day I'm working out for two hours and the next I'm eating french fries.
Maybe if he were a picky eater with weight issues and bad knees who wanted to shed a few pounds, then we could work together. But he's not a picky eater, and he doesn't want to lose weight. So basically, we're doing two different things and if I'm going to make any progress, we have to be living two different lifestyles. Which sucks, because we live together and like spending time together. And unless I want to start preparing elaborate healthy meals for us every night, we're going to end up eating separately almost all the time, because half the meals we both enjoy come in styrofoam boxes. That makes me kind of sad.
But at the same time, it's not fair to me if all of the things he likes to do are actually hurting me. I like doing them too, which is why we do them together, but I also like going for walks. And shit, I even like doing Turbo Jam, despite the fact that it kicks my ass. I'm one of those people who gets delightful endorphin rushes from exercising (I know everyone is supposed to feel that way, but most people I know feel like puking, or napping, or eating after exercise); that's one reason why it's even sadder that I'm still fat. I like physical activity. But I also like sitting around. And Dan does, too. So we do that together. And it ain't healthy. Really, it's bad for both of us; just because he's skinny doesn't mean he's in shape. But I'm not the boss of him and it's not my job to keep him healthy. I have enough to worry about with my own body.
I suppose I could try to get him to exercise with me, but I know he wouldn't want to and wouldn't enjoy it. The Venn diagram of foods that we both like and foods that are healthy would basically just be two distinct circles, so a shared healthy menu is out, too. If all of our meals and all of our activities are different, then did he just become my roommate? Blech, this sucks. Stupid skinny kid.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 1: What a (Fat) Girl Wants
Hi, my name is Amber, and I'm a fat girl.
Hi Amber.
And yeah, I said it..."fat." People act like that word is the n-word of body shapes. Euphemisms may make people feel better (I could be husky, plump, curvy, heavy, big, or whatever else) but as any writer will tell you, often the simplest words are the best. Those same writers (and Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From the Train) will say that you should write what you know. Well, this I know.
I've been fat for almost as long as I can remember. I wasn't one of those 70-pound kindergartners who ends up in background shots for news stories about childhood obesity, but by middle school I had started plumping up like baking bread. Coincidentally, that was around the time I discovered that Mountain Dew and Doritos were FUCKING AWESOME.
Since then, it's been a steady rise with a few brief excursions down to "not as fat" land. By the start of college, I was in the 170s. I actually lost weight my freshman year because Nico and I occasionally dragged each other down to Case Gym at 8am to zone out on a recumbent bike for a half hour before our 10am classes (Jesus Christ, just typing that reminds me how fucking awesome college was. 10am is the start of the day? Holy hell.). Given that I'm barely 5'4", I should be between 110 and 145 lbs, give or take (though I seriously doubt I'd look normal at 110lbs). Right now I'm around 193, with a BMI over 30. As the Wii Fit so cheerfully tells me every time I do the body test, "that's obese!" Optimistically speaking, I need to lose about 50 pounds. That's a lot.
That's not to say that 193 is the heaviest I've ever been, though; for a good portion of the last 12-18 months, I've been between 195 and 198. To most, the difference between 193 and 198 may not seem like much. But 193 is basically 190, and 198 is basically 200. Remember the episode of Sex & the City where they talked about their scary ages? Well aging doesn't scare me. I'm comfortable being 27, and I'm fine with the looming spectre of 30. Treating time like an enemy doesn't go well for people. But 200 pounds is my scary weight. For whatever reason, if I hit 200 pounds, the world fucking ends. So when I got on a scale after a long estrangement and saw the unforgiving digital read-out pop up 198.2lbs, something happened. The high E string broke. Twwwiiiing!
If I had started consistently exercising and eating better at that point, well, I certainly wouldn't be writing this post, would I? "But Amber," you say to your computer screen, "if you freaked out when you saw your weight and you're not functionally retarded, why didn't you just do what you needed to do and get down to a healthier weight? You know what to do and you have the means with which to do it, so what gives?"
That's the question, dear friends. For anyone who's never been a fat kid, it probably doesn't make sense. This must be especially perplexing for you left-brain people out there. And trust me, I know. Objectively, anyone who is medically capable of losing weight and is able to exercise should be able to trim down. This is especially true if the person has the means to afford fresh food, the desire to be skinnier, and an unparalleled passion for raw cucumber. Why the hell wouldn't this person already be at a healthy weight, much less be actively remaining fat?
Remember what I said before about the Mountain Dew and Doritos? Well, that goes for a lot of other things too. The things that make you fat are FUCKING AWESOME. Sitting on the couch all day is awesome. Chinese food is awesome. Those little Dove squares with the "indulgent"-type sayings printed on the inside of the wrapper are awesome. I had one after lunch today. It was fucking delicious. It is genuinely difficult for me not to go get another one (or 8) right now, knowing that they are freely available in the kitchen. I'm not hungry, I just want one.
And this is the real crux of the problem, at least for me. All the positive visualization, Excel spreadsheets, and determination in the world don't make me not want chocolate. Or soda. Or chicken fingers, god I fucking love chicken fingers. I actually have a date to go eat chicken fingers tomorrow. At like 3 in the afternoon. I don't even know what meal that is. But I'm already pretty excited.
I digress. The point is, I still want all the bad food and the bad habits. I enjoy them, on a very basic and fundamental level. Fried foods = happiness. Sedentary lifestyle = happiness. Chocolate = happiness. Like many children in the 80s, I was rewarded for accomplishments with a trip to McDonalds. The kids' meals are appropriately named. Those meals did genuinely make me happy. But, like some children of the 80s, I continued to equate food with happiness, and not often the healthiest food either. Sure, veggies make me happy too, but they're not exactly filling or readily available on the go (that's a whole 'nother topic for a whole 'nother day).
So now that I've got 20+ years of emotional dependence on food under my belt (har har), I find it a bit difficult to decide to stop eating fried foods, for example. I can decide to keep less of it in the house, which does work in some short term situations, but I'm a grown-ass woman now. I can just go to the store. And shit, the walk back from the CVS is uphill, so I can even justify whatever shitty candy I purchase there with the 50 calories I burn on the walk to and fro'.
In order to be healthier and lose any substantial amount of weight in the long term, I have to want to do the things that I often don't want to do, and I have to not want to do the things I so completely DO want to do. I know, a lot of auxiliary verbs, not the clearest sentence. But I think you get my point. I have to invert all the current ratios of food and activity. Ordering delivery or going out to eat three times a week has to become a once-a-week-or-less thing. Making plain chicken breasts in a skillet has to become a more-than-once-a-week thing. The amounts of time that I spend on the couch versus on my feet need to be reversed. And, in a very basic sense, I don't wanna.
That isn't to say that I can't, or even that I am not currently trying to do that. I have exercised more in the last two weeks than I did in the 6 months preceding that period. Of course, that sudden increase in activity also practically paralyzed me, so then I had to go back to the couch to rest up, so that back-fired a little bit. I have DVDs of Turbo Jam, 10-Minute Solutions: Pilates, 10-Minute Solutions: Blast Off the Belly Fat, and Jillian Michaels - 30 Day Shred. I have Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, and even a Zumba Fitness game for the Wii (I've never done Zumba before and this game is fucking impossible to play if you can't already do the moves). I have some horrible contraption called 3D Abs, and another called Leg Magic. I have a twist board that I think I've used once. To top it all off, I have a $600 elliptical machine. I'm one week into a month membership at The Ring Boxing Club (hence the fucked up muscles and rest time) and in August, I have 5 90-minute Zumba classes with Jackie, both of which I got through Groupon. Considering the arsenal of machines, workouts, and classes at my immediate disposal, I should be basically jacked, or at least "beach-ready," right? Yeah, right.
I don't think I can possibly explain coherently why I'm still fat. Except maybe to say that I still really like doing and eating all the things that made me fat in the first place. I'm in love with the idea of being skinnier, healthier, and all-around happier. It does motivate me to make some smarter choices. It's motivating me to go into school tomorrow to help move furniture around and do other physical labor that I'm not being paid to do; it may seem altruistic on the surface, but really it's just a workout that has some real purpose. I think maybe if my job were to dig ditches or help people move then I'd be in much better shape because the exercise would be built in and have an actual goal associated with it. One of the most jacked Ninja Warrior All-Stars delivered water to office buildings; if I could even lift a single Poland Spring jug, that'd be something, and this guy just skips up multiple flights of stairs with the things.
But for now, my exercise is fragmented, unconnected, and unincorporated into my reality matrix. Getting on the elliptical for a half hour might give me a sense of accomplishment and boost my energy for the day, but it's completely separate from everything else that day. It need not come before or after anything else, no one else cares whether I do it or not, and there's no immediate consequence if I don't bother. During the school year, it's much much harder. Do I really want to wake up at 5:30am to work out before I have to go try to shove knowledge into 50 unwilling brains? I'm tired just writing that. Do I really want to come home, drop my bags at the door, and change into work-out clothes so I can use my last remaining minutes of energy to run in place (or kickbox in place or whatever else)? I even take multivitamins with caffeine in them to help get my ass in gear, but I don't think anyone told my body that the caffeine was for exercise and not obsessive internet gaming.
The fact that I find it so difficult to get into good habits over the summer is pretty depressing. My whole idea was that I would have the summer, about 9 weeks in all, to get going with this whole exercise-and-better-eating thing (I don't like to use the word "diet" because that implies a finite starvation plan), so that by the time September rolled around I would just have to make some adjustments and keep it going. The fact that my time would be limited would be less of an issue because the workouts would be integrated into my lifestyle. I'd already have momentum and I'd be used to the healthier habits, so it wouldn't seem like such an impossible chore to exercise after work or to eat leftover chicken and rice for lunch. IT WAS A GOOD PLAN, GODDAMMIT.
Of course, I am just now entering my 20th day of vacation. It's still the first chunk of summer, so using the past tense might be jumping the gun a wee bit. But it's hard not to get dismayed. In the past, I've been used to a quick loss of 5 or even 10 pounds because of all the water weight I'm carrying around in case I get lost in the desert, I guess. But according to that damned Wii Fit, I'm down about a pound in the last 3 weeks. I know that there are so many factors in play and that my body could be healthier without being lighter, but it's disconcerting. Healthy weight loss is like 2 pounds a week, and I'm not even close. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I'm still sitting on my ass too much and much of my better-eating work is undone by all of the dining out we've been doing recently. Everyone is available and wants to hang out, and for whatever reason, this always means going out to eat. I guess I should be happy in one sense, since we're all in such comfortable financial places that we can afford dinner out more than weekly, but it's really not helping me. Trust me, it's delicious, but at like 1500 calories per meal, I should be fasting for a day after that shit.
I feel like I'm at a crossroads, and it's one I've been at before. I can choose to keep doing what I've always done, maintain these unhealthy habits, but also be tortured by the desire for a thinner body and a healthier life. I know there are a lot of people out there who are happy-fat; these people don't care how many calories are in a milkshake because it tastes good and they are going to have one. With the incredible depth and breadth of knowledge the internet has given me, I can no longer be blissfully ignorant; happy-fat is out for me. My other choice is to actually try, all the time and really hard, to do what I know I should do. There are no good reasons not to do the latter, but I can think of lots and lots of weak, shitty reasons not to. It's hard. I don't have time. I'm too tired. I don't wanna.
Perhaps my underlying fear is that I really can't do it. That all the effort in the world won't amount to jack shit, and I'm going to be fat no matter what I do. I have enough biology and chemistry working against me where I worry that it's a real possibility. Perhaps even scarier is the idea that I could actually get to a healthy weight and be in a much better place, but that the work required to get and stay there is more than I am actually willing to do. I'm not in the mindset right now where I would literally do anything to be thinner. It should be clear by now that I wouldn't do anything...I didn't put down that Dove chocolate after lunch, did I? I didn't get my ass on the elliptical today, even though my muscles are finally starting to calm the fuck down, did I? Maybe instead of asking myself Can I? I should be asking myself Will I?
That's a good fucking question.
Hi Amber.
And yeah, I said it..."fat." People act like that word is the n-word of body shapes. Euphemisms may make people feel better (I could be husky, plump, curvy, heavy, big, or whatever else) but as any writer will tell you, often the simplest words are the best. Those same writers (and Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From the Train) will say that you should write what you know. Well, this I know.
I've been fat for almost as long as I can remember. I wasn't one of those 70-pound kindergartners who ends up in background shots for news stories about childhood obesity, but by middle school I had started plumping up like baking bread. Coincidentally, that was around the time I discovered that Mountain Dew and Doritos were FUCKING AWESOME.
Since then, it's been a steady rise with a few brief excursions down to "not as fat" land. By the start of college, I was in the 170s. I actually lost weight my freshman year because Nico and I occasionally dragged each other down to Case Gym at 8am to zone out on a recumbent bike for a half hour before our 10am classes (Jesus Christ, just typing that reminds me how fucking awesome college was. 10am is the start of the day? Holy hell.). Given that I'm barely 5'4", I should be between 110 and 145 lbs, give or take (though I seriously doubt I'd look normal at 110lbs). Right now I'm around 193, with a BMI over 30. As the Wii Fit so cheerfully tells me every time I do the body test, "that's obese!" Optimistically speaking, I need to lose about 50 pounds. That's a lot.
That's not to say that 193 is the heaviest I've ever been, though; for a good portion of the last 12-18 months, I've been between 195 and 198. To most, the difference between 193 and 198 may not seem like much. But 193 is basically 190, and 198 is basically 200. Remember the episode of Sex & the City where they talked about their scary ages? Well aging doesn't scare me. I'm comfortable being 27, and I'm fine with the looming spectre of 30. Treating time like an enemy doesn't go well for people. But 200 pounds is my scary weight. For whatever reason, if I hit 200 pounds, the world fucking ends. So when I got on a scale after a long estrangement and saw the unforgiving digital read-out pop up 198.2lbs, something happened. The high E string broke. Twwwiiiing!
If I had started consistently exercising and eating better at that point, well, I certainly wouldn't be writing this post, would I? "But Amber," you say to your computer screen, "if you freaked out when you saw your weight and you're not functionally retarded, why didn't you just do what you needed to do and get down to a healthier weight? You know what to do and you have the means with which to do it, so what gives?"
That's the question, dear friends. For anyone who's never been a fat kid, it probably doesn't make sense. This must be especially perplexing for you left-brain people out there. And trust me, I know. Objectively, anyone who is medically capable of losing weight and is able to exercise should be able to trim down. This is especially true if the person has the means to afford fresh food, the desire to be skinnier, and an unparalleled passion for raw cucumber. Why the hell wouldn't this person already be at a healthy weight, much less be actively remaining fat?
Remember what I said before about the Mountain Dew and Doritos? Well, that goes for a lot of other things too. The things that make you fat are FUCKING AWESOME. Sitting on the couch all day is awesome. Chinese food is awesome. Those little Dove squares with the "indulgent"-type sayings printed on the inside of the wrapper are awesome. I had one after lunch today. It was fucking delicious. It is genuinely difficult for me not to go get another one (or 8) right now, knowing that they are freely available in the kitchen. I'm not hungry, I just want one.
And this is the real crux of the problem, at least for me. All the positive visualization, Excel spreadsheets, and determination in the world don't make me not want chocolate. Or soda. Or chicken fingers, god I fucking love chicken fingers. I actually have a date to go eat chicken fingers tomorrow. At like 3 in the afternoon. I don't even know what meal that is. But I'm already pretty excited.
I digress. The point is, I still want all the bad food and the bad habits. I enjoy them, on a very basic and fundamental level. Fried foods = happiness. Sedentary lifestyle = happiness. Chocolate = happiness. Like many children in the 80s, I was rewarded for accomplishments with a trip to McDonalds. The kids' meals are appropriately named. Those meals did genuinely make me happy. But, like some children of the 80s, I continued to equate food with happiness, and not often the healthiest food either. Sure, veggies make me happy too, but they're not exactly filling or readily available on the go (that's a whole 'nother topic for a whole 'nother day).
So now that I've got 20+ years of emotional dependence on food under my belt (har har), I find it a bit difficult to decide to stop eating fried foods, for example. I can decide to keep less of it in the house, which does work in some short term situations, but I'm a grown-ass woman now. I can just go to the store. And shit, the walk back from the CVS is uphill, so I can even justify whatever shitty candy I purchase there with the 50 calories I burn on the walk to and fro'.
In order to be healthier and lose any substantial amount of weight in the long term, I have to want to do the things that I often don't want to do, and I have to not want to do the things I so completely DO want to do. I know, a lot of auxiliary verbs, not the clearest sentence. But I think you get my point. I have to invert all the current ratios of food and activity. Ordering delivery or going out to eat three times a week has to become a once-a-week-or-less thing. Making plain chicken breasts in a skillet has to become a more-than-once-a-week thing. The amounts of time that I spend on the couch versus on my feet need to be reversed. And, in a very basic sense, I don't wanna.
That isn't to say that I can't, or even that I am not currently trying to do that. I have exercised more in the last two weeks than I did in the 6 months preceding that period. Of course, that sudden increase in activity also practically paralyzed me, so then I had to go back to the couch to rest up, so that back-fired a little bit. I have DVDs of Turbo Jam, 10-Minute Solutions: Pilates, 10-Minute Solutions: Blast Off the Belly Fat, and Jillian Michaels - 30 Day Shred. I have Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, and even a Zumba Fitness game for the Wii (I've never done Zumba before and this game is fucking impossible to play if you can't already do the moves). I have some horrible contraption called 3D Abs, and another called Leg Magic. I have a twist board that I think I've used once. To top it all off, I have a $600 elliptical machine. I'm one week into a month membership at The Ring Boxing Club (hence the fucked up muscles and rest time) and in August, I have 5 90-minute Zumba classes with Jackie, both of which I got through Groupon. Considering the arsenal of machines, workouts, and classes at my immediate disposal, I should be basically jacked, or at least "beach-ready," right? Yeah, right.
I don't think I can possibly explain coherently why I'm still fat. Except maybe to say that I still really like doing and eating all the things that made me fat in the first place. I'm in love with the idea of being skinnier, healthier, and all-around happier. It does motivate me to make some smarter choices. It's motivating me to go into school tomorrow to help move furniture around and do other physical labor that I'm not being paid to do; it may seem altruistic on the surface, but really it's just a workout that has some real purpose. I think maybe if my job were to dig ditches or help people move then I'd be in much better shape because the exercise would be built in and have an actual goal associated with it. One of the most jacked Ninja Warrior All-Stars delivered water to office buildings; if I could even lift a single Poland Spring jug, that'd be something, and this guy just skips up multiple flights of stairs with the things.
But for now, my exercise is fragmented, unconnected, and unincorporated into my reality matrix. Getting on the elliptical for a half hour might give me a sense of accomplishment and boost my energy for the day, but it's completely separate from everything else that day. It need not come before or after anything else, no one else cares whether I do it or not, and there's no immediate consequence if I don't bother. During the school year, it's much much harder. Do I really want to wake up at 5:30am to work out before I have to go try to shove knowledge into 50 unwilling brains? I'm tired just writing that. Do I really want to come home, drop my bags at the door, and change into work-out clothes so I can use my last remaining minutes of energy to run in place (or kickbox in place or whatever else)? I even take multivitamins with caffeine in them to help get my ass in gear, but I don't think anyone told my body that the caffeine was for exercise and not obsessive internet gaming.
The fact that I find it so difficult to get into good habits over the summer is pretty depressing. My whole idea was that I would have the summer, about 9 weeks in all, to get going with this whole exercise-and-better-eating thing (I don't like to use the word "diet" because that implies a finite starvation plan), so that by the time September rolled around I would just have to make some adjustments and keep it going. The fact that my time would be limited would be less of an issue because the workouts would be integrated into my lifestyle. I'd already have momentum and I'd be used to the healthier habits, so it wouldn't seem like such an impossible chore to exercise after work or to eat leftover chicken and rice for lunch. IT WAS A GOOD PLAN, GODDAMMIT.
Of course, I am just now entering my 20th day of vacation. It's still the first chunk of summer, so using the past tense might be jumping the gun a wee bit. But it's hard not to get dismayed. In the past, I've been used to a quick loss of 5 or even 10 pounds because of all the water weight I'm carrying around in case I get lost in the desert, I guess. But according to that damned Wii Fit, I'm down about a pound in the last 3 weeks. I know that there are so many factors in play and that my body could be healthier without being lighter, but it's disconcerting. Healthy weight loss is like 2 pounds a week, and I'm not even close. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I'm still sitting on my ass too much and much of my better-eating work is undone by all of the dining out we've been doing recently. Everyone is available and wants to hang out, and for whatever reason, this always means going out to eat. I guess I should be happy in one sense, since we're all in such comfortable financial places that we can afford dinner out more than weekly, but it's really not helping me. Trust me, it's delicious, but at like 1500 calories per meal, I should be fasting for a day after that shit.
I feel like I'm at a crossroads, and it's one I've been at before. I can choose to keep doing what I've always done, maintain these unhealthy habits, but also be tortured by the desire for a thinner body and a healthier life. I know there are a lot of people out there who are happy-fat; these people don't care how many calories are in a milkshake because it tastes good and they are going to have one. With the incredible depth and breadth of knowledge the internet has given me, I can no longer be blissfully ignorant; happy-fat is out for me. My other choice is to actually try, all the time and really hard, to do what I know I should do. There are no good reasons not to do the latter, but I can think of lots and lots of weak, shitty reasons not to. It's hard. I don't have time. I'm too tired. I don't wanna.
Perhaps my underlying fear is that I really can't do it. That all the effort in the world won't amount to jack shit, and I'm going to be fat no matter what I do. I have enough biology and chemistry working against me where I worry that it's a real possibility. Perhaps even scarier is the idea that I could actually get to a healthy weight and be in a much better place, but that the work required to get and stay there is more than I am actually willing to do. I'm not in the mindset right now where I would literally do anything to be thinner. It should be clear by now that I wouldn't do anything...I didn't put down that Dove chocolate after lunch, did I? I didn't get my ass on the elliptical today, even though my muscles are finally starting to calm the fuck down, did I? Maybe instead of asking myself Can I? I should be asking myself Will I?
That's a good fucking question.
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