My fat is a muse. Well, perhaps it hasn't been before, but for this exercise, I'm going to let my fat do the talking. My fat no doubt has many things to tell me. I just haven't been listening. I'm not entirely sure what my fat is going to say to me in the coming weeks, and to be honest, I'm a bit nervous about it. It is going to lecture me? Demean me? Or beg me to keep it around for a lifetime?
This blog, as you may have guessed, is about fat. Fat in the food we eat, becoming fat in our veins, clogging our arteries, layering our gray matter with cells that will give us dementia sooner and heart disease for sure. So say the doctors.
And yet, despite all the potential risks to our frail bodies, we gorge on fat. We eat recklessly, because it is so easily available, and mostly inexpensive. What's a small order of golden loveliness at McD's cost? A mere dollar! A fraction of the cost of a gallon of gasoline any more! Even things that should be healthy carry hidden fats to our bodies. Foods that have NO fat in them can magically turn into fat once they enter our system!
Who is to blame? Where does it all end? We see newcast after newscast about obesity, read articles in magazines promising us that we can bust fat in fourteen days! But yet on average, we get fatter every year.
Maybe we're asking the wrong questions. Maybe instead of asking scientists to give us the reasons why we're fat, we should be asking our fat its reasons for sticking around. Maybe, just maybe, there's a good reason. A reason we've never thought of or, if we have, never accepted. Just maybe.
As for me, I'm in that classification of 'obese' based on my body's weight and height. I'm five foot, six-point-something inches and at age forty, weigh in at 205 pounds. Most people don't quite 'get' that number based on appearances; they tell me I don't look that heavy. Maybe they're just being nice?
Very few doctors differentiate the fact that not all people are built alike. My friend Gloria has teeny, tiny, lightweight bones like a bird. I have the bones of a heifer (proving that Darwin had it all wrong... we didn't descent from apes but cows and birds)! So, if per chance Gloria and I were the same height and were to each have the same measurements (waist, hips, etc), I would still step on the scale and weigh in at a good 20+ pounds more than she would.
So right up front, I'm annoyed by all the charts and BMI calculations that tell me that *I* should weigh 150 pounds or less. The last time I weighed in less than 150 pounds, my friends started to wonder if I'd become anorexic!
Because I feel the numbers are all skewed based on a body type that isn't realistic, I'm going to avoid numbers for now. So what? I'm 205 pounds. That doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that I can't zip any of my jeans, and have resorted to sweat pants. Summer is coming. This is not good!
So, I'm aiming for what Queen Latifah touts in her commercials for Jenny Craig (I have my own feelings about her doing those, but her message is spot on). I'm going for a "size healthier".
But if you *insist* on having a number here it is: 35 pounds. That what I need to lose. 35 pounds of back-breaking fat.
The hows and wherefores of weight loss are about as mystifying as trying to guess the winning lottery numbers. I haven't traditionally been one of those people who tries every fad diet or who reads every thing there is to read about dieting. I simply don't have time. This isn't to say that I don't spend a lot of small bytes of time assessing my weight and reminding myself that I must do something about it --- someday. Every time I shower, dress, change clothes and do laundry, I am reminded of the fact that my body has simply grown larger than is comfortable or healthy.
A friend of mine recently emailed a link to an article she read in Good Housekeeping. I'd never heard of the author before, Geneen Roth. The article was about emotional eating and why we do it. Of course, everybody in America has heard of binge eating. But not many of us have stopped to think of the real reasons why we do it. Here's a link to the article: http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/advice/stop-binge-eating
This article talked about how the author had started writing (as writing was her livelihood) about her fat and the relationship she had with her fat and why her fat, though repulsive and despised as it was, served a useful function in her life. While that sounds preposterous and a bit sadistic in a way, it makes perfect sense to me.
So I've thought about it a week and have decided to blog about my fat and in fact, I'm taking it a step further by handing over the reigns to my fat. Let the fat speak!. All 35 pounds of roly-poly, round the belly (thanks to two pregnancies late in my 30's), swaying listlessly under the arms (thanks to flavored coffee creamers), flopping over my kneecaps (thanks to Schwann's chocolate chip cookie dough) and squishing helplessly between my thighs (thanks to strawberry pop tarts) FAT.
Do I expect that this blogging will have a miracle effect on my food choices? Not really. Then why do it? Because expressing oneself on paper (here, on screen) can often bring to light thoughts and revelations that merely sitting around bemoaning ones flaws never will. I may not become thin again (seriously, I doubt I'll ever be thin again) but I may know myself better. And that, friends, is always a good thing.
So join me, if you wish, and share your thoughts about the same things that I'm thinking about. If you are journaling online about your fat's musings, then share your location!
Having had my say, I now turn the mic over to my closest companion; my fat!
No comments:
Post a Comment