PSA: Fat

I’ve already gotten two messages about this, and was anticipating them, so:

I maintain two blogs - one here, and one on livejournal. Not everyone on tumblr follows my livejournal, but many a livejournal reader comes here to ask me anonymous questions re: things over there. Like the Weight Watchers thing.

It’s important to me to note a few things for tumblr peeps:

1. I love and am fine with the way I look. Really. I would do me right now. I had sex in the sunlight with no covers for half the weekend, and it rocked, and I got hit on at Starbucks just yesterday.

2. I often think people of all different sizes are attractive. I tend to favor curvier women as an aesthetic preference, for what it’s worth (very little, I know :p).

3. I completely believe people can be fat AND healthy. Note in my Weight Watchers Q&A that I’m actually eating more carcinogenic, cholesterol heavy, and/or “junk” food NOW that I’m counting points. I myself am not diabetic, have low blood pressure, etc, despite being over a hundred pounds ”overweight”.

4. I also believe in the concept of natural “Set points” that our bodies revert to without constant battling against them, and that allowing yourself to exist at your set point can be (scientifically proven) better than yo-yo dieting as well as hugely mentally freeing.

HOWEVER :/ I have a pretty massive intestinal hernia (caused by botched surgery and malpractice, not weight) that causes me a LOT of back pain. A sometimes debilitating amount of back pain. Like I pay teenagers in our homeschooling group to come wash our dishes sometimes because I end up crying at the sink from the pain of standing still for more than 20-30 minutes. It gets worse every year, and I really need to get it fixed, and it isn’t safe to have the surgery to get it fixed at my weight - and, the “intra-abdominal fat” behind the hernia puts pressure on it that make things like sleeping on my side REALLY uncomfortable (as well as complicating the repair). My spine is starting to curve over here.

Additionally, I do not stay at any kind of set point. I have continuously, slowly gained weight for the last 5 years running - I’m almost always at my new all time highest weight. And, I have a problem with emotional eating that is at eating disorder levels. I’m uncomfortable with both of these things because the side of my family I take after features a LOT of diabetes with major complications - my paternal grandmother was over 400 pounds all the time I knew her, and died in her early 60s, totally blind and with blackened feet, and it SCARES THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME that I can totally imagine getting there in like a decade by just…not making any changes. 

So, sexy though I realize I currently am, and none of my business as I see other peoples’ bodies…I really need to lose weight in order to get my own health and LIFE back in order. It’s a positive thing for me, that I’m doing with a therapist and an Overeaters Anonymous group and as one of the last items on a massive life-overhaul to-do list I’ve been tackling for the last past 2 years with great success following being knocked on my ass by medical emergencies and PTSD (I went back to school fulltime, and finished my book, and found a publisher, and pierced my nose, and got an IUD, and reconnected with friends, and and and…)

The point is that sometimes, I am gonna talk about my own weight loss…uh…I can’t come up with a better word than “journey,” even though that sounds ridiculous. It doesn’t mean you should be losing weight, or anyone ELSE should, or that I hate myself. I’m coming at this from a very aware place and it’s the right thing, for me.

Anonymous asked: How is weight watchers going?

Pretty good. It’s been interesting having to realize that I normally just go out of my way to eat “healthy” foods and assume that my nutrient dense, alpha-omega dosed, antioxidant laden, plant rich ass should be shrinking. When in reality TONS of the things I love and normally consume massive quantities of are basically the most fattening things in existence - nuts, olives, avocados, coconut and olive oils are kinda my favorite things in the whole world (along with fancy cheese and chocolate mousse based anything, of course, let’s not get crazy). It’s a weird paradigm shift to see granola as “bad” and bagged cheddar popcorn as “perfectly fine.” One example moment: seeing that getting a steak Meximelt from Taco Bell was significantly less points than getting the uber healthy oatmeal from Starbucks O_o

We also only do brown rice, whole wheat pasta, multigrain seeded crackers, etc, which I think of as this superior health food rather than, you know…carbs.

Anyway. It’s ah’ight. It’s very flexible and something about having to plan for and log everything that goes in my mouth helps to satisfy my weird food fixatedness without actually eating quite so much. I had a bad week last week, because I did some binging at the beginning (after that phone call with my mother… at least I’ve made that connection, I guess) and so then I didn’t have the weekly flex points to help me through the rest of the days, and I usually use a few of those per day. I also realized I wasn’t counting all kinds of little stupid things I should have been (like, really, an emergen-c packet dumped in my water or my little calcium chew supplements “count” - what’s next, point values on semen? …wait, was that too far?).

I lost 6 pounds in the first month, which is supposedly the sort of mind numbingly slow and gradual weight loss people are “supposed” to have. I’m aiming for 8 or more this month, now that I have a bit more of a handle on it (there was also a glitch in how I was recording recipes that I’ve figured out and am not accounting for). 

communismkillsitonthedancefloor:

Diet ideas: Eat whatever you want, and if anyone tries to lecture you about your weight, eat them too.

(via kylathegreat)