It's a real nail-biter

So, Nervous Nellie doesn't like my nickname for her, huh? Why doesn't that surprise me? She's never been overly fond of nicknames, even those that weren't particularly offensive in any way. Names, as an issue, are a sensitive spot for Nellie. Yeah, she's weird. I've been telling you that all along, though, haven't I?

Nellie used to be a nail-biter, starting about the time she and her sisters were put into foster care (just before her 12th birthday). It got pretty bad at times to where she'd have bleeding fingers.

What finally cured her? Well, mostly it was piano lessons. She'd always wanted to play, and when her foster parents asked her "if you could play one musical instrument, what would it be?" she replied "piano or flute". In a stroke of genius, and one of the few nice things they did for her, they sent her to piano lessons for 2 years. While she didn't become a virtuoso or anything, the lessons allowed Nellie the basic knowledge to continue teaching herself for many years, and became an important emotional outlet for her in the years to come.

But how did Nellie stop biting her fingernails? Well, some days her fingers were so sore from biting them that she could not practice the piano. She had been given a key to the church next door to practice at her own will and she so desired the solitude and peace of the church (and the freedom to be there as long as she wished) that she spent countless hours practicing. And when her fingers hurt, she couldn't practice as long. In short, it became a simple choice. She chose music.

However, some things about Nellie's personality have not been so easy to banish. Recently, I overheard her and her oldest daughter having a conversation. They were talking about the daughter's father (Nellie's first husband). Leaving lots of unimportant details out, I will say that Nellie was explaining to her daughter that she needs to just understand that how her dad is is just how he is. It's a part of his personality and he likely isn't conscious of most of his behaviors that so alienate him from her.

The daughter shook her head as if she didn't want to believe it (it's always easier to blame someone than to try and understand them) . Nellie replied: "Well, look at me. There are things about my personality that I might not like but I can't really control them."

Daughter: what?

Nellie: for instance, in my brain, there's a hamster running on a little wheel and it never stops. Not when I sleep, not when I'm awake, not when I'm busy, happy, sad, bored, angry or working.
Daughter: a what?

Nellie: no matter what I'm doing, whether I like it or not, deep in my subconscious there's always something that my brain is worrying about. I can't control it, and it annoys the heck out of me, and no matter how irrational I know it is, it is there.

Daughter: what do you worry about?

Nellie: well, you know... there's the usual suspects: money, relationships, the economy, war, the health of my kids, and if there's nothing else to worry about, I go to bed at night and lay there awake, plotting out escape plans in case of a house fire and wondering if I locked all the doors or fed all the pets.

Daughter: oh [insert pause] so that's where I get it from.

It was a bit funny for Nellie to hear her daughter (who's now an adult) admit to having the same little hamster in the back of her mind, continuously ruminating on all the things there are to worry about in this world. Incidentally, Nellie has been trying for years to get this daughter not to bite her nails. Although she doesn't do it as much as chronic nail biters, she does nibble.

But on another level, it's also sad for Nellie to realize that her own inability to control her demons of worry have migrated to her daughter. Was this something genetic, or environmental, she wonders? If it was environmental--that is, growing up with a mother whose own nervousness and worry-wart mentality have impacted her, then Nellie feels somewhat to blame for passing it on.

It was a bit of an eye opener for Nellie, actually. She told her daughter how, more than a decade ago, she'd taken a low dose of anti-depressant for about a year after some particularly stressful events (sudden unemployment through no fault of her own, twice in one year, and mounting debt that eventually led to bankruptcy). Eventually the stressful events faded and she stopped taking the medications with her doctor's blessing.

However, now in looking back, the current stresses of life are mounting pretty heavily again and
perhaps it's not a bad thing to consider a little 'prescription boost' again. She's been considering a trip to her doctor, but hasn't yet made the call.

Her argument against the medication is that while it did indeed slow down the hamster, it also dulled her emotions such that she was mildly happy about things that previously made her very happy. Its as if she just existed in a world of pleasantness. Taking away the lows also took away the highs. It's not something Nellie looks forward to experiencing again, but it might be a trade off necessary to get her through the next year or so.

What does all this have to do with Nellie's eating and weight issues? Well, as you probably guess, they're all tied in together. When she worries a lot, she eats a lot. Obviously. Worry and stress are siblings of a twisted family that seems to branch ever so easily off Nellie's family tree.

I'll keep you posted on the status of Nellie's thinking on this. I rather think it might be a good idea for her. Anything that will reduce her reception to stress and slow down the hamster is fine by me!

Nellie gets a say

Hey Flo, it's me, Nellie here. Just to let you know, I stepped on the scale the other day and found that I've GAINED 5 pounds!

So pray tell, what exactly is your plan here?? How is it you think that all this emotional dredging and psycho-babble is going to help me?

Oh, and I think calling me 'Nervous Nellie' is kinda stupid. Reminds me of Nellie Olsen from "Little House"! But whatever, this is your thing, so you do it.

The G-Bomb

It is I, Flo. And I apologize. It's taken me more than a week to get around to the next promised segment in our discussion of Nellie's eating issues. It's not that Nellie hasn't been at the computer, but she certainly has been there less in the previous days.

Work on the construction continues, and in the past week Nellie has (as the General Contractor and money-manager of the project) had the misfortune of seeing her construction budget go from -$246 to well over -$3700 in less than one week.

If you might imagine, the stress has been considerable and poor Nellie has been suffering from migraines and other issues brought on by the stress. Between that and actually helping one contractor (right down there in the muddy ditches around the house, alongside the actual workers) she's been pretty wiped out and computer time has been minimal.

Oh, but she *did* do one thing of which I am proud! She entered a short story into a writing contest. While it's not mind-blowing, every time I read it, I am moved emotionally. Even now, Nellie herself has read and edited it dozens of times, and she still gets emotional at the end. It's an emotional topic: families separated and kids growing up not knowing their father. That's a hot topic for Nellie. However, one for another day perhaps.

Today, as promised, I am going to talk to you about the G-Bomb. Yeah, I'm having a little too much fun with this "Bomb" theory here, I admit. But it's catchy perhaps?

The G-Bomb, as you probably can guess, is God. Now, is it God's fault that Nellie over eats and under-exercises? Not hardly. I'm not even going to try and persuade you to that course of thinking. To try would be a shallow attempt at finger-pointing.

No, God doesn't control, or cause, Nellie's eating. But what I'm trying to say here is that Nellie's on-again/off-again/confused-again relationship with God adds to her other emotional issues, which then fuels her eating and exercising (lack thereof, to be precise).

How can God affect ones mood that much? Well, if you'd been raised as Nellie was, you wouldn't be asking that question.

Nellie's understanding of God has had as many twists and turns as a the famous road along Mt. Tamalpais. There are places along that road where you can't see anything but the trees around you, and at other points, you are treated to the most stunning views. That's about how Nellie has related to God. At times, she can't even fathom his/her/its existence. At others, she's speechless with the wonder of the seemingly obvious proof before her eyes.

Nellie's mother had a very strange indoctrination in religion. Her mother's father was raised Catholic, but strayed. He married a woman, had a child, divorced her and took up with Nellie's grandmother. They had Nellie's mother, and eventually married before Nellie's Uncle came along. So not exactly living the Catholic lifestyle. Eventually Nellie's grandfather decided to get his religious lifestyle right and started attending church properly. (oh boy, another topic for the docket!)

Nellie's mother recalls going to church and religious education at a very young age and participating in all the Catholic rituals such as first communion and such. Nellie's grandmother, however, was not raised Catholic but desired to become one. She spent considerable time (years) studying and attending classes and becoming active in the parish in an attempt to "be" Catholic. She carried little drawings of saints in her wallet, placed crucifixes above every doorway and never missed Mass.

But it apparently wasn't enough, and when Nellie's mother was 16 years old, her grandmother died of cancer. Unconfirmed and unable to receive last rites, she died believing that she wasn't good enough for God because she had not become Catholic.

The entire episode sent Nellie's mother and Grandfather into chaos and a rejection of the Catholic church. They never went to church after that, as far as Nellie knows.

So growing up, Nellie's mother only told them the basics about God. He lives in heaven. He is nice and loves everybody. Nellie was cool with this and when her mom (in order to get some sleep after long Saturday nights out on the town) sent her and her sisters to whatever church was closest on Sunday mornings, Nellie felt comfortable that she was doing a good thing. God loved her. God was nice. What more must one know?

The downhill slide in Nellie's understanding/acceptance of God began when she was 9. If you've been reading carefully, you already know that Nellie's foster parents were uber-religious freaks that imposed their strict views of God onto her.

But, you may be surprised to know that it wasn't them who started the slippery slope. They just kept her on it.

When Nellie was 9, she met a new girl at her school (she herself had moved to this town a few months earlier, so Nellie was anxious to befriend anybody she could). This girl invited Nellie to come to her church on a weeknight for something called "Awana". Don't ask what it stands for, I've long since forgotten. But anybody who's been to Awana knows exactly what it is.

In short it's a group of team-oriented games that are played around a colored circle (divided into quadrants) on a floor. The games themselves were fun and all that jazz. No problem. But, as Nellie soon discovered, the games and prizes are only there to lure kids into the "devotional" time that soon follows. And it's there, in that time, that the high pressure sales tactics of the church were revealed.

Starting with the very first week, and every single week afterwards, the preacher talked incessantly about one 'fact'. He sprinkled this 'fact' in between fun stories of Jesus, miracles and Old Testament lore of great battles and people like Moses and King David.

This starting, frightening and dreadful 'fact' that was pointedly inserted into every story and message was this: you, Nellie, are a sinner! Your heart is as black as coal! And unless you accept Jesus as your personal Savior by saying this "prayer" you will go to hell and burn forever. You could die at any moment and you do not want to miss this opportunity to listen to God!

Nellie, whose only knowledge of God prior to this revelation was that God loves her and is nice, was more than a bit shocked by this news. Was it true? Did God really wish to send her, a helpless 9-year old, to hell forever? Just because she had not come to the understanding that she was a sinner, whatever that was!

Well, it didn't take too many weeks of this high-pressure tactics for Nellie to 'give in' and 'accept Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior'. Not only did the pastor harp on it endlessly in his messages, but when the entire group broke into smaller groups for lessons by age range, the teacher of that group took her aside privately to assess her "born-again'ness" and eagerly offer to help her "get saved" (after all, there were stars in a crown to be had in Heaven for each person you 'brought to the Lord').

Nellie, being somewhat on the shy side (okay, okay, a bit stubborn and skeptical as well), decided to "ask Jesus into her heart" privately. She'd heard the "prayer" they were to say dozens of times, knew the Bible verses that applied to salvation and just decided she would be a DIY'er of Salvation!

To her shock and dismay, when she said "the prayer" nothing happened. There was no "shock" to her system (as apparently she was expecting some physical reaction in her heart when Jesus 'came into' it). She didn't feel this great weight of relief come upon her (after all, by age 9 she hadn't yet got around to committing adultery or murder yet) and the entire experience was completely anti-climatic.

However, Nellie assured herself that she'd done the right thing, even if for purposes of insurance. Who knows...perhaps they are right? Perhaps God really does send everybody to hell unless they've said "the prayer"?

Fast forward to the following summer. The family has moved yet again, and this time, the nearest church is of the same denomination that Nellie's friend belonged to. This church doesn't have Awana, but they have Sunday school and youth group meetings and such. Nellie's mother finds a neighbor who attends and lines up for the girls to be picked up for every church activity and service. More free time to sleep off her partying, I suppose.

The high-pressure sales tactics were present at this church as well, but Nellie smugly informed them that she'd already been 'born again' so they more or less let her be. Towards the end of the summer, some family in the church sponsored her to attend a week of Bible camp nearby. That was really a lot of fun, except for the twice-daily chapel sessions fully loaded with the sales pitch again (I wonder if all these people became timeshare salesmen in the future? The tactics of inviting you to a free weekend at a hotel IF you sit through the sales pitch seems vaguely familiar here!).

Well, Nellie stuck to her story and informed her cabin counselor that indeed, she was already 'born again.' But this time, the counselor demanded proof. Proof? What sort of proof does one provide for having said a prayer? When Nellie asked what kind of proof she desired, the counselor asked to see the date written in Nellie's Bible. Say what? Doggone it! Sure as shit, they have a fool-proof system for determining if you did it "their way". Frank Sinatra be damned, apparently there is no "I did it my way" allowed in Salvation?

Well, Nellie didn't have any proof because at that time she had not yet earned her free Bible for attendance. The counselor didn't stop with the questioning. "Who led you to the Lord?" she asks. Oops. When Nellie told her that she said the prayer on her own after hearing about it, the counselor replied that 'she may not have done it right' and offered to 'lead her to the Lord' again!

Well, Nellie wasn't having any of that, let me tell you! She'd done it once, and in her opinion, done it correctly. She'd said "the prayer" exactly as quoted by the pastor and could recite all the Bible verses to back it up! She politely declined the counselor's offer.

However, that incident wasn't the last of the subject. Somehow, it seemed as if everybody Nellie came in contact with at the camp just knew that she wasn't 'born again' the right way! The pressure mounted and at the last evening chapel session, it seemed as if they were not going to let her attend the bonfire unless she raised her hand, went forward during what's referred to as the 'altar call' (wherein the sinners who wish to be born again come to the front of the church to be gawked at by all those smug already-born-again people) to 'receive Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior'.

Nellie hated the thought of giving in to them, but she'd decided that 1. there would be no peace for her until she did... the counselors no doubt would find a way to get word to the pastor at the church she attended and they would go back to the high pressures sales tactics every week with her and 2. she'd at least get a date and signature in her Bible this time, so that nobody would EVER question her born-again'ness again! To be constantly scrutinized under a religious microscope, having everything questioned as "would someone who's reallllllllllllly a Christian say this, do that, listen to this, read that, wear this, laugh at that..." was infuriating. If she had a date and a signature in her Bible, she could show anybody who questioned her as proof!

So yes, Nellie raised her hand when the preacher asked for everybody to bow their heads and for those who wished to be born-again to hold up their hands. She went forward at the altar call and allowed herself to be led to a dark side-room where counselors with flashlights sat waiting for their prey. She allowed herself to nod and make the appropriate responses to the Bible verses as they were outlined and managed to stumble through the prayer, as though it weren't rote. And when she emerged, she had a date and a signature in her Bible.

Can you see where this is all going? Can you see how Nellie's early interactions with a rabid crowd of fundamentalist religious wackos set her up for a lifetime of sensitivity to the ever-changing face of God?

Well, luckily for Nellie, the family soon moved again and when they landed in the same small town where she'd lived her early years, she was comfortable with taking up with old friends and classmates. There was no church nearby and Nellie's mom seemed to have forgotten to look for someone to take them away on Sunday mornings. Nellie's older sister was now 12 and 'old enough' to look after her younger sisters whenever their mother needed "space".

However, as fate would have it, shortly after that move, Nellie's mom broke up with the boyfriend (whom they'd been living with) and they moved to the other side of the bay. And per another stroke of fate, their landlord was the local doctor (oh boy, another topic for another day) and the real estate agent who handled his properties was none other than Mr. Smith (future foster father).

As his religion dictated, Mr. Smith wasted no time in inviting Nellie's entire family to his church (notably, of the same denomination that the previous 2 churches and Bible camp had been) and while Nellie's mother politely declined, she more than willingly offered up her three daughters to the wolves.

Nellie's mother never questioned anything these churches taught her kids (because, frankly, she never inquired or cared). So without anybody to speak any reason to her, Nellie just assumed eventually that indeed what these churches were saying must be true.

In less than a year, things went from bad to worse there and Nellie's mother began to party long hours, days on end, often leaving the girls alone with no idea of her whereabouts. The girls were accustomed to this behavior from their mother; it had been going on for years. But Mr. Smith, who was 'just doing his duty' as the landlord's agent, soon figured out what was going on and began putting calls into the county's child welfare workers.

And such is how Nellie and her sisters landed in foster care. At first, all three of them. Soon, the youngest was returned to their mother. Yes, as you might guess, a story for another day.

In what surely must have been a rigged setup, Nellie and her older sister became wards of the state in the care of... Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Yes, indeedy.

By the time Nellie left their home, she'd pretty much concluded that their religion, while it had grains of truth in it, was seriously whacked out of line. Her foster parents refused to allow her to apply at anything other than Bible colleges, so she spent her first year at a Bible college and promptly transferred away. She broke ties with them a few months after leaving their home.

But what she never could break, and in some ways still hasn't, is her frustration and disgust at the way religion was used to put her down, force her into an unrealistic and narrow-minded mold and keep her 'under the grip' of the preachers and leaders of the church.

Unfortunately, Nellie's first husband had been raised in much the same religious bent, and while he outwardly rejected religion as she did, he conveniently wished Nellie to live under its rules (while he conveniently did not). Can you imagine the problems that caused? Massive.

After her divorce, Nellie determined she would not raise her daughter in any religion whatsoever. It was simply too full of contradictions and meaningless rules.

So you might be surprised to learn that a couple years later, Nellie became Catholic. That's a story for another day perhaps. But she moved away to college and met a wonderful group of Catholic people who run a homeless shelter system in that small town. They are the epitome of what God wants of his people. Non judgmental, accepting, non-preachy nor demanding. Nellie was drawn to their views of God.

So she became Catholic. Well, to make a long story short, she's discovered in the past dozen years that how those people are Catholic is not representative of Catholics as a whole. And even though she learned this lesson fairly quickly (when she moved from that small town for a job), it took a decade before she truly gave up on the Catholic faith.

Nellie's religious turmoil just adds to her emotional turmoil overall. And emotional turmoil, as we already have established, leads to stressed out eating and lack of energy/motivation for doing the things she ought to be doing (exercising and remaining active).

Sometimes I think that Nellie just thinks too much. She carries too many hurts too close to her heart still. And those hurts cause her to be in continual pain. And pain can be exhibited in all sorts of twisted ways. Some people cut themselves, hurt themselves, fall into depression, fail to maintain any normal lifestyle. Nellie manages to avoid most of those destructive behaviors and cycles, but her pain comes out as food stuffed in.

How to get Nellie to stop thinking about this stuff all the time... I don't know. Maybe it's a bit of OCD in her that ruminates her pain, turning it like a flapjack so that it's perfectly well done on all sides?

Some things to consider. Until next time, I bid you all a good day.

Flo

The B-Bomb

It's a beautiful, albeit somewhat chilly, May day in the Midwest. Nellie is enjoying the view out the window--a pair of robins that are nesting in her yard are worm-hunting in the great piles of freshly pushed around dirt. The landscape has gone from huge piles to piles spread back out. Good for the birds!

I sit contentedly turning vanilla nut coffee cream into stores of future calories. Yeah, it's not the fat-free stuff. That only comes in a couple of flavors and it gets boring having that all the time. However, even the fat-free creamer has calories, so I still get to do some work, since she drinks creamer in her coffee every day. Not as much, perhaps, but it doesn't take much for me, Flo, to do my thing!

Well, I must report something quite interesting. Ever since I let the cat out of the bag last week, Nellie hasn't been behaving tooooooo terribly. I expected her to really go hog-wild with the snacking. Not to say she's all 'fixed' or anything, but she didn't go on a splurge-of-horrific-proportions. Hmmm. We'll have to do some speculating about what that means.

At any rate, now I'm back to my mental list of other topics I wished to bring up in our discussion about myself. To remind you all (read: for those of you who are just dull enough to have missed it in the first place) my name is Flo. Short for 'Floret'. And I am Nellie's fat. Yes, fat. Need I repeat myself again? Yes, fat. Take a good laugh and get over it. I am writing this blog so that I can share with you why I exist.

I exist, obviously, for medical necessity. Zero fat is not good. We've established this. However, I am more rotund than is desirable for Nellie's body. And let me say again, this is not my fault! I am merely doing my job. It is Nellie who must realize why she overfeeds me and under-exercises her body (causing me to be ever more efficient) and how she can modify this behavior.

In an effort to get to the bottom of this issue, I have been pointing out the reasons that I (being a somewhat passive and unbiased observer of all things concerning Nellie) can so easily see to explain Nellie's eating behaviors.

I've already pinpointed several of them:
1. her nervous disposition
2. her stubborn insistence that she can damn well do whatever she wants as an adult
3. her nagging fear of failure as a writer
4. her lonely existence

Now, since last time we talked about the L-Bombs (love and loneliness) this time I thought I'd talk about the B-Bomb. Not to say that we're entirely done with the L-Bombs. We'll come back to them later. But today I want to talk about Nellie's perception of Beauty and what it means to her to be thought of as 'beautiful' by her husband Ned.

Nellie grew up with conflicting ideas about her beauty, or lack thereof. Her older sister used to put her down a lot, probably in reaction to her own self-esteem issues. Her mother always told her how much she "looked like Grandma" and apparently that was a good thing, but then this was coming from the same mother who gave her nicknames such as "urchin" and "hog jaws". Nellie was (by the standards of the '70's) a chubby child. This of course set her up for a lifetime of confusion when her mother fed her as much as she desired to eat (during times when food was plentiful) and yet put her down for being chubby.

So Nellie didn't feel beautiful growing up. When she turned 10, she had a growth spurt and slimmed down quite a bit naturally. She had beautiful blond hair and earrings and straight teeth, plus she was as tall as her 12 year old sister (who by contrast had thin brown hair, no earrings and crooked teeth) and suddenly began to attract the attention of boys at school. This infuriated her older sister, who did her part to beef up Nellie's low self-esteem by beefing up her criticism of her sister.

When Nellie was nearing her 12th birthday, she and her sisters were put into foster care. During the years that Nellie stayed with that family, whom I'll call the Smiths, she was given messages regarding beauty as well. Her foster parents didn't pick on her about being chubby (and she grew much chubbier during the first few years there as there was never a scarcity of food). But they equated 'beauty' all in terms of Biblical views of the subject.

For instance, she was told that having her hair cut short, which had long been a preference even though she rarely could afford a haircut, wasn't beautiful. Proper young women have long, flowing hair that they pin back modestly or wear in braids or buns. Permanents, dye and other hair-altering concoctions were discouraged until adulthood.

Jewelry, clothing and behavior also was expected to be appropriately modest, in order to conform to the Bible's view on femininity and beauty. Dresses were strongly encouraged, jeans and tee shirts were discouraged (or forbidden...things that did not meet the approval of Mrs. Smith disappeared from closets and dressers). Wearing shorts in the summer was strictly forbidden. After all, a proper young woman does not go about displaying her body for boys and men to see!

So much of what Nellie was taught about beauty during her teen years was rooted in shame. You will be shamed, a hussy and a slut, if you wear X,Y or Z. Everything you chose, from your clothing to your hairdo to the way you walked and talked, was all for the sole purpose of not bringing shame to yourself by appearing as if you wish to attract the opposite sex at all.

Let's just say it was modesty in the extreme. But Nellie adapted and while she internally rejected most of what was taught her in that culture, she complied for the sake of keeping peace with her foster family and 'doing her time' there.

Nellie's first serious boyfriend, who later became her first husband, had strange notions of beauty himself. While he outwardly claimed to lean toward the modesty-theory (as his mother was the perfect example of such) he inwardly had a rather tawdry desire for the neighborhood slut-types. Hahaha! If only his mother had known! For the sake of this blog, we'll call him Bobby.

Bobby didn't dare break out of his 'good son' image and seek to date the neighborhood sluts. His brother got to do that instead (as the bad-sheep of the family). So Nellie was a good choice on some levels. Safe.

During all the years they dated and were married, Nellie was never made to feel that she was beautiful. She lost a considerable amount of weight late in high school, but yet her status as a church-going-goody-two-shoes (pushed upon her by the Smith's) kept anybody but Bobby from being interested in her.

Often during those years when Nellie was dating/married to Bobby, she'd ask him "am I beautiful?" and he'd always give her the same answer: "you're cute." He refused to tell her she was beautiful because, as he frankly put it, she didn't fit the mold of traditional beauty. But that's okay, he told her, she should just be happy with what she is.

She accepted it and just ignored her nagging concern about being 'beautiful.'

After her divorce, she dated some but never really had enough comfort level with a few of them to ask that fatal question: am I beautiful. However, she did get such a compliment from one of them while he was a bit tipsy. Does that count?

Those couple that she actually did ask for their assessment, she got varying answers. Most of them were confused about the question. One gushed about her beauty as a person, another gushed about her apparently desirable boobs, but mostly what she got was "you're cute". Judging herself against models and movie stars, I suppose 'cute' should suffice?

What Nellie isn't trying to get is some lame statement comparing her to the likes of Cleopatra, but an assessment of whether or not any man who supposedly 'loves' her also finds her beautiful, despite cultural conventions. Finding her 'beautiful', in her own way of thinking, equates 'true love'. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?? Well, if a man who supposedly 'loves' her deeply doesn't find her beautiful, what does that say about the quality of his love? These are thoughts that nag at the back of Nellie's subconscious.

Perhaps this is entirely neurotic, flawed thinking on Nellie's part. Personally, I've never been able to understand her fixation on the issue. But then again, as I grow, Nellie herself feels less beautiful all the time, thereby increasing her need to hear that, despite my heft, she is still beautiful to the people she loves.

As a way to obtain that assurance, she makes barbs at herself. Ned, being the somewhat tuned in man he can be (when Nellie has his full attention) poo-poo's her comments aside. When pressed he will even say "you're beautiful to me."

Well, okay Ned, that's closer. You've gotten closer than any other man in Nellie's life. But that isn't exactly what she wants to hear, you clod!! Just tell her she's beautiful, for mercy's sake!

Ahhh, sometimes I wish I had the ability to leave messages on Nellie's skin, like the demon in The Exorcist! hahaha! Do you think Ned would listen to me? Or would he just call in the priest and try to get rid of me that way? If only it were as easy as some holy water and prayer.

Ohhhh, but that's tomorrow's topic. Best not get ahead of myself here!

Nervous Nellie

It's me, Flo, here again. Since yesterday, I've been doing some thinking about my person. Since I gave myself a new name, I think I should also give her a name. You know, this could get really strange referring to her as "my person" all the time. So, after a night wherein she didn't sleep so hot, I've decided to call her Nellie. As in 'Nervous Nellie'.

Most of how Nellie lives life is just going along doing her thing day after day. She doesn't spend considerable amounts of time psycho-analyzing herself and asking 'why' she's doing this or that. Very few people do. But since I just lay around all day waiting to transform her next meal into pockets of stored *you-know-what*, I have time to think about 'why' she does what she does.

The answer to 'why' is not a simple one, believe me. After forty years with Nellie, I probably know her best. But where to begin? Today, let me just explain her new nickname.

Nellie has been nervous since the day she was born. Of course, nobody really noticed it until she was three or four years old, I suppose, but I always knew it was there. What started it? Well, I'm not medical doctor or psychologist, so I can't say with ultimate authority, but some obvious facts come to mind.

Even before Nellie's birth, her parents split up. Long story, full of he-said, she-said, but the bottom line is, Nellie's mom had a very unhappy, depressed, heart-breaking pregnancy. I believe that there is something to it, and even a few scientific studies have addressed this topic. Being very unhappy and depressed emotionally during pregnancy does have an effect on the fetus.

But go back even another generation, to Nellie's grandmother. Not that I ever knew her, mind you, but from what I've heard, now there was one nervous woman.

So right off the bat, Nellie had two strikes against her. Nervous genes and an unhappy gestation.
Nellie lived in relative bliss, unaware of her father's absence, during her infancy, but when by the age of five she'd been through two step-fathers and was on the verge of getting a third, you can just about imagine her insecurity and stress levels.

A stable childhood is the most important thing that parents can give their children. Nellie, to put it mildly, didn't have much of that.

Nellie's mom is someone who, both then and even now, still fights her own demons (we'll get to those another day), was also a rather strict disciplinarian with her children. I remember Nellie hiding in a corner of a room, dabbing a mosquito bite that she'd scratched till it bled. She was petrified that she'd be spanked for having scratched it. Hello? A mosquito bite?

But you get the idea. Nellie lived in a world of fear, uncertainty and confusion. And as a result of her genes, her environment and her history, she is by nature, a rather nervous individual. In her childhood, her mother always called her a "worry wart" because she worried incessantly about the smallest things. Will the storm blow our little trailer away? Will there be enough food? Will you come home tonight, Mommy?

As a teen, she turned to chewing her fingernails. Only sheer willpower allowed her to overcome that, but then she merely began chewing the insides of her lips (another surefire way to know if she's nervous even to this day). She worried herself into sickness on more than one occasion throughout her teens and for some years, survived on (then Rx) Tagamet and allergy shots.

An early, and failed, marriage set off every worry-wart tendency she had, leaving her overweight and stressed to the max again. Getting away from that situation helped immensely, but as anybody who's lived life knows, there's always another challenge right around the corner. Her peace was soon shattered by any number of challenges, and now is no exception.

So I think it should come as no surprise to you or me that she has taken to eating as a way to calm her nerves. What has she got to be 'nervous' about at this time in her life??

Well, things have been rough for Nellie. After leaving her first husband and being a single parent for many years, during which time she had to overcome quite a few emotional issues and grow as a person, she hooked up with her current husband.

Nice guy, he is. But in his own way, he contributes to Nellie's nervousness (more on that another day). And then they had children. Nellie only wanted one child more, so she could go back to work in 6 months. She hadn't been happy at home with her oldest child (now an adult) and wanted to avoid the emotional and creative slump she knew would come.

Unexpectedly, a second child followed almost immediately thereafter. Wow! Two babies in 2 years? Not only was that hard on her, physically, but it made it all the more difficult for her to work herself back out of the lovely layer of *you-know-what* that she gained during two pregnancies.

And here we are, more than five years later. Nellie, despite some attempts otherwise, is still home full-time with the children. She hasn't been without any creative outlets, having written two books that have been published, one of which was quite popular. She lives what many women wish they could live: the ideal life.

But still, she's nervous. Nervous about not being the main bread-winner any longer. This is a role she assumed for many years and was not comfortable giving up. She's nervous about money issues in the slumping economy. The children are about ready for school, but will she get a job? What if she doesn't?

And worst of all, her nervous eating has pretty much put her back, weight-wise, to where she was at the end of the last pregnancy.

NOW comes the revelation that I had in the middle of the night, when Nervous Nellie could not sleep. I, FLO, actually serve a very necessary purpose for Nellie. I help her stay *happy* to be home. Because she's self-conscious now about her weight, she's less inclined to avidly seek a job. And by not avidly pursuing job opportunities, she's resigning herself to staying home, which despite her revulsion of the idea (continuing to stay home indefinitely), it's comfortable and safe.

So you see, I am not the culprit here. She is purposely feeding me, making me store all those unnecessary calories.

The question is now... how to get her to change?

Well, that's no easy task, I'm sure. First thing to do is to keep identifying the reasons why Nellie does what she does. Nervousness, I suspect, is just one piece of the puzzle.

Stay tuned!

How do you begin?

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!