Fatter With A Vengence

I'm back bitches!

I've been gone for so long, that I fell off the wagon three times and got back on it twice. Actually, I'm currently off of it, but not because I fell. It was more like I hurled myself off of it into gluttony's sweet embrace. 

What had happened was...

 

Honestly, it's all so boring and predictable. Ok, so I started doing well with my diet and exercise and then I started to realize that I was doing well and decided that that needed to stop immediately. True to my nature, I sabotaged my diet by telling myself that I deserved to eat pizza every day and that since I was going to the United States in SIX MONTHS, I should celebrate by eating my weight in empanadas. 

And then I went to the United States, ate everything that didn't run away, and now I'm at my heaviest since before I moved to Korea! YAY!!!! The theme of this blog really isn't even weight loss anymore. It's failure. 

But, what can I say? I love torturing myself so I'm starting again tomorrow. Or maybe Monday. Seriously, it's difficult to start a diet on any other day. But, here are some things I learned while in the United States. 

Let's talk, 'Murica.

First, portion sizes are out of fucking control in the States. I eat enough to weigh 230 pounds at 5'5" and I was gasping at the amount of food I saw brought to the table almost every time I went out to eat. There were several moments where my husband just looked at the piles of food in front of us and lamented about how our meals could feed his village in North Sumatra. It's truly a sickening wake up call but I'm grateful for the reminder that the portion sizes I'm used to ARE NOT NORMAL! 

On the other hand, one thing that was nice was having options. When I want to cook something here, I have to first write down the list of ingredients I'm supposed to have and then, in an adjacent column, write down the ingredients I could probably replace them with. This is because Indonesia doesn't have things like turkey bacon or wheat flour. That healthier alternative shit is damn difficult to find, and when you do, you have to practically turn tricks to pay for it. (Case and point: a small bag of quinoa costs over twenty dollars). So, it was a breath of fresh air to not have to really search for anything or spend 30 minutes just trying to figure out how you could possibly make a recipe work before you even get to the market. 

So now...

 

I'm taking a Pilates class a few times a week, which isn't as bad as I thought it would be. It's not the most interesting exercise I've ever done, but I really need to work on building some core strength so it's a necessary evil. 

I'm going to go back to counting my calories even though I really hate doing that. I've realized that it is pertinent to losing weight and that I'm just going to have to understand that no matter how I do it, it is going to suck. Losing weight is not a fun process. This is not Extreme Weight Loss with Chris Powell. (Call me! 😘). Nor is the vastly underrated show, The Swan. It's real life, and it kind of blows. 

I'll keep you updated on my "progress."

Why I Do It

It's complicated.

The how and when of a weight loss journey (*cringe @ journey) are always relatively simple to figure out. 

Diet starts Monday! 

Starting next year, I'm going to do Atkins for 3 months and see what happens. 

Okay, after this pizza, I'm only drinking grapefruit juice for the next week. 

Hows and Whens fly out of our mouths more than we would probably care to admit, while we strangely ignore or are in flat out denial about the most important part of the odyssey (even worse than journey): the WHY. 

Because I respect those of you who read this, and myself, I'm going to be 100 percent honest. The whole diet expedition (getting better, still not there) isn't just about health for me. Yes, I want to be healthy. But I would be bullshitting you if I tried to pretend that's all of it. There's also a small part of me that really wants to be skinny.

I don't know if this is the overwhelming reason that I continue to try diets that I have a track record of failing at, but I do know that deep down in the core of my fat self, there is a part that just wants to look like a woman that people take seriously. I want to sit down with a group of women and not feel as though they might be grateful that there's someone in the group who is less attractive than they are. I want to not hear that slight condescension when women tell me how "cute" my marriage is. 

You see, fat is a burden, but not just one you see on a scale. Fat is an insecurity that you carry within yourself. It most likely is not the case that people think of me the way I just described. But you can't be fat and not consider that it is. 

So yes! I would like to be skinny woman, maybe even more than I would like to be "healthy," whatever the fuck that means. I wrote it. I don't take it back. But believe me when I say it is complicated. Before I explain why in more detail, please know something: I don't want you to contradict what I'm about to write. That's not what I'm looking for. Resist. 

It's complicated because although the appeal of the physical beauty is strong, ultimately, it's about the treatment women receive for having beauty that I would like the most. I am not a beautiful woman, but beauty is not an accomplishment. I AM an accomplished woman. However, one of these things holds far more weight (pun intended, bitches) in our society. It's an irreconcilable fact that more "conventionally attractive" women are treated better than those of us who aren't. The reason being skinny appeals to me is the thought of what more I might have been able to accomplish if I weren't unattractive. I'll give an example...

My senior year of undergrad, I was named the Outstanding Senior Theater Major. I worked extremely hard throughout my theater career in college. I took acting seriously, even though there was never a show on the main stage that someone who looked like me could ever star in. I took the shit roles and ate them up with such veracity that I sometimes even stood out more than the ingenue. I did my homework. I volunteered every minute of my time to improving myself and developing a skill that I deeply loved. At the end of every academic year, all of the Theater Department professors would hold an end of the year interview with each individual student. You'd walk into a conference room and sit at the end of a long table, with all of your professors and the department chair staring directly at you. The first couple years of these were simple, but as you got closer to graduating, the meeting became more important. The last one was meant to be a summation of your work. I knew I had done well. I was proud of myself, and was hoping to have a great conversation with the people who helped me to graduate--maybe some advice about where to go next.

Do you want to guess what they talked to me about? Because it wasn't how to progress my career. When I walked into the room, I could see their faces were drawn downwards, and it was cold. I sat down at the end of the long table and waited.

After a bit of small talk, the conversation they had with me went like this:

Professor: I think one of the problems here is that you seem to think talent is important. Don't get us wrong, you're very talented...but you're heavy. 

Me: Yes, I know what I look like.

Professor: You say that, but I don't think you really understand. You have a pretty face, but you're overweight.  I think directors will have a difficult time knowing what to do with you.

Basically, they were telling me the reality: I'm not beautiful enough to be the leading lady, but I'm also not ugly enough to be the best friend. It was a bit devastating because it felt like they were telling me, "You've been great for our purposes at college, but you don't really have any place in the industry because you're fat." 

So when I say I want to be a skinny woman, it isn't just because I want to be beautiful or sexy (although wearing knee high boots would be awesome) it's because the weight fat women carry isn't just physical. We carry the burden of knowing that how we look doesn't just affect how people see us, it affects how people treat us.

I'm a teacher now. Do my looks affect me as much as they did in college? Probably not. But I still get shit about my weight. My boss offering me diet advice, and female teachers telling me that I ought to lose weight because I would be so beautiful if I did, etc. 

It's not that I care what they think, it's that I care how what "they" think affects what I can or can't do. 

66 Days

I've heard it takes 66 days to really form a new habit. I'm officially on day 37 and it is definitely getting challenging to stick with this diet.

The cheat day is awesome, don't get me wrong. But now that I'm starting to get used to no sugar, and eating less portions during the week, I can't seem to put back what I used to anymore. During the week, and especially towards the end of the week (closer to my cheat day) I start having wild fantasies about the amount of food I'm gonna eat. I'll picture myself swimming in rivers of chocolate and dipping donuts into ranch dressing.

But when the day does come, I usually clock out around 2 pm. I've really lost my competitive edge when its come to binge eating. I know that's something that I should be glad about, but honestly, I wish I could get more of the foods I like in on Saturdays. It's like I always end up regretting not eating more on that day. It's pretty fucked up, but it gives you an idea of my mentality towards food. 



So, I usually end up in a food coma on Saturdays. This gives me some important insight though. It tells me that I still have a long way to go in changing how I mentally deal with my food issues. Instead of just enjoying a treat on my free day, I'm just doing exactly what I used to do before. I eat until I'm sick. Except now, I'm trying to shove a week's worth of shit down my throat in one day so it's even worse. I think I need to take it easy on the free days.

There's also another shitty issue.

Literally every single time I have lost weight, I have also hit a plateau. I honestly don't know what it is about the 15 pound marker, but it is always where I seem to hit an inescapable stretch of needing daily reminders of why I'm putting myself through this in the first place. I like to call it the "Fuck this shit!" period because that's usually how one feels during a plateau. Consequently, it's also where I tend to quit. I've read that this diet can sometimes lead you into a plateau, but that for the most part, you should continue losing weight--especially when you are as overweight as I am. So, the idea that I'm just heading right back into where I have with literally every other diet I've tried is pretty damn infuriating. It's also difficult to explain this frustration to someone who doesn't have to always be hyper aware of what they're eating. If you can eat chocolate, or desserts, or junk food every once in a while without having to really consider it, then you probably take doing that for granted more than you realize. Just try to imagine working extremely hard for something, doing everything you're supposed to do, and then still not getting what you wanted out of it. Now imagine that when you tell people you did everything you were supposed to do that they look at you with a side eye like you're full of shit even though you aren't. Now go though all of that again. And again. And again. That's pretty much what it's like to be a fat person plateauing on a diet.

And yet, I'm still cautiously optimistic and it's important for me to acknowledge what I've done right.  After all, I have managed to stick with this for a good amount of time. Thirty-seven days on a diet with no white carbs, no dairy, no fruit and no sugar is fucking difficult, even when you have one day of the week to indulge. I'm especially proud of myself for not giving into the tempting food at work. Dear god, the office I work in is full of shitty foods. Cookies, cakes, fried foods, pizza, chicken, chips...it's like there are constant triggers around me. There is literally a file cabinet in our office used solely to store junk food.

I can also give myself some credit in that I am starting to feel more comfortable with this. It was really difficult for the first week, but since then, it's gotten a bit easier for the earlier part of the week. Sunday through Wednesday is all fun and games but once Thursday comes around, I start become a sugar-deprived super cunt. Oh well. My next goal is to make it 66 days. I would write how many days I have left, but I'm honestly too damn full to do math.

Two Weeks

Things are going relatively well.

I've been on the slow-carb diet now for almost a full two weeks and things are going better than I had anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I understand fully that this could still be New Year's bravado rearing it's deceptive head, but I'm going to be cautiously optimistic and say that I have a chance of sticking with this for a while.

Anyway, the first few days actually weren't the worst. Everyone always says they will be, especially when you go from consuming a shit ton of sugar and carbs to practically none, but actually, I've found the first few days are always easy. Why? Well, like I mentioned, it's bravado. The first few days you start anything new, you always feel this rush of optimism, like "THIS time it's totally different, guys." This, of course, is usually crushed to oblivion by a reality sledge hammer, but I did manage to make it through the subsequent torture period. Meanwhile, I've been able to make some observations as I've been going along.

1. This diet takes flatulence to a whole new level.

I don't give a fuck if that's TMI. For those of you who don't know about the slow-carb diet, what it does is replaces all the white starchy carbs with beans, which are still carbs but for some scientific reason that involves chemicals and equations and shit, don't make you store fat the way white carbs do. So while you're still getting the carbs you need for energy and to stay full, you aren't putting on all the fat and spiking your insulin levels. So, you are literally eating beans at every single meal and when you're body isn't used to that, let's just say you better either spend the first few days hidden away in your house in a room with good ventilation, or start working those sphincter muscles to practice control. The crazy gas is only temporary (like 4 days) before your body starts to get used to it, but GOOD GOD DAMN it is awful for a while.

2. Cheat Day is the shit!

I'll readily admit that the diet gets more and more difficult the further along you are in your week. My cheat day is tomorrow and I can tell you right now that I want to devour an entire chocolate cake. Just thinking about how much I'm going to eat tomorrow makes me so hungry. But, the cheat day is a good incentive. Unlike most diets where you are constantly torn between having that small ass cookie and feeling guilty for a week, or sadly watching as your friends eat them in bliss, the slow-carb diet gives you one day of the week where you are literally encouraged to go buck fucking wild. Let me give you a rundown of what I ate last Saturday:

• McDonald's Sausage Egg McMuffin
• 3 McDonald's Hashbrowns
• McDonald's Ice Coffee Float
• 7 (YES, SEVEN) Krispy Kreme Donuts
• Carl's Jr. BBQ Western Bacon Burger
• Carl's Jr. Large French Fries
• 20 oz. Coca-Cola
• 16 oz. Mango Juice (Not fresh, all sugar)

And I still lost weight this week! It has something to do with "tricking" your metabolism, I think. Anyway, you just have to go right back to the slow-carb diet the day after, which is why my cheat day is on a Saturday, so I can recover on Sunday. 

3. HabitBull is legit.

I wasn't sure if it was really going to help, but having an app on your phone to remind you to stay with it is actually very beneficial. Just seeing that string of days where I have stayed on track gives me that much more encouragement to keep going.

4. Boredom can seriously fuck up your progress.

I've noticed (not just in the last couple of weeks, but over a while now) that I get bored extremely quick and it is fucking DETRIMENTAL to my progress. The second I don't have something that needs to be done, I either do one of three things:

1. Stress
2. Eat
3. Stress eat 

It's like fucking clockwork. It's crazy how fast I can get bored and then consequently shove mounds of food into my mouth. I've been trying to keep that in check more by promising myself that I will do something active if the boredom comes rather than just sit around and stress/eat.

5. My skin game is on point.

This diet does wonders for my complexion. I'm assuming that has something to do with how much less sugar I am consuming on a daily basis, but to be honest with you, I don't even care what it is. My skin has never been clearer. Although I've never had any major skin problems (never had bad acne or anything), there is a notable difference on this diet. This selfie I took has no filter and I'm not wearing any makeup. Just sitting on the couch in a t-shirt like the slob I am. So yeah, that is definitely another great incentive to sticking with it. 




Well, considering I'm only two weeks in, I'm still an infant when it comes to this diet. But I will keep you posted on any discoveries, as well as start writing some more blogs about general dieting and being fatty McPatty. Wish me luck!!

I Have Failed Miserably

It's important that I acknowledge my abysmal failure.

Why? Because being an idiot with food is much like being an idiot alcohol or money--you will never get better until you admit wholeheartedly your fuckups.

I started teetering off of my diet and exercise somewhere around mid-November. Yeah, I was finishing up my Master's degree and working, but it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that those were the only factors in me quitting. Truthfully, I just got fucking sick of it. For anyone that's ever had to diet, you can probably relate to this on some level. But if you are trying to lose weight and you also happen to be fat like me, I'm sure what I'm writing right now speaks to the depths of your fatty fat soul. It isn't just that the food sucks when you diet (because it does, anyone who says otherwise is a liar), it's that you get so fucking resentful of people who are a normal weight or thin and they NEVER have to watch what they eat. They can eat that slice of pizza, or have a drink (or 3), and they can indulge in the holiday food fuckery that the end of the year always brings, while playfully joking about the 10 extra pounds they gained, which will melt off of them in the coming two months. (Yes, I KNOW this isn't an accurate portrayal of EVERYONE. But this IS how many people in my situation feel and it can drive you to misery).

Anyway, I stopped tracking my food on Weight Watchers and then started to take a lot of days in a row off of the exercise and that just eventually snowballed into it being the holidays and having far too much temptation around me to resist. So I became sedentary again (with the exception of one or two days of jogging which I did because my husband could see how miserable I was getting and encouraged me to go on a jog with him) and stopped thinking consciously about what I ate all together. I devoured bagels and ate out (in restaurants, you perverts) every chance I could.

Now, I have gained back every ounce of weight I had initially taken off and am starting over again...again...again. I quit Weight Watchers because it recently reinvented itself as well, and now all of the food and recipes I've entered are all different point values. This probably doesn't sound like a big deal, but part of being able to commit to something like this is memorizing those point values so that you can quickly add them to daily allowances. It's much more convenient that way and when you have to start all over again, it is extremely tedious and ultimately discouraging.

I've decided to try the slow-carb diet, which I've done before with some success. Is has it's pros and cons.

Pros: 

• No counting anything as long you only eat the allowed foods.

• One day a week you get to pig-out/ satisfy your cravings.

• Relatively quick results.

 Cons: 

• Very little variety in food.

• No fruit (except on free days).

• No sugar (except on free days). 

The slow-carb diet is definitely challenging, but it is doable. It's also probably the most convenient diet I've ever tried because like I mentioned, you don't really have to count anything. The cheat day thing is a bit tricky, though. On one hand, it's a great incentive throughout the week. If I control myself, I can enjoy the pizza and chocolate on Saturday. On the other hand, it can sometimes backfire because the cheat day can get out of hand. Also, sometimes women can't even get away with a cheat day so we'll see how it goes. I don't really consider this to be an elimination diet though, because at least I'm allowed to have what I want ONE day a week. I KNOW I couldn't give up white carbs forever, but if I can get my fix once a week, I might be okay.
                                                                                                                                                                                 
I've also downloaded an app on my phone called "HabitBull" that helps me track the days I do the shit I'm supposed to do. It's free and very simple to use. Believe it or not, I'm the type of person who is very encouraged by seeing a string of dates on a calendar checked off, so I think having this will help somewhat. Also, having bad habits is pretty much what has gotten me into being overweight. I have a habit of eating too much shit.

Also, what I like about the slow-carb diet is that if you really follow it, you start to notice a change very quickly. I'm talking within a week's time. That's faster than anything else I've ever tried and results are ALWAYS the best incentive to keep doing something.

DIET STARTS MONDAY. 

So here we go again. No idea if this will work or not but I'm willing to try and get my weight down by changing my habits and then maybe eventually, I can start reintroducing some of the bad foods in moderation. I have little to no confidence in myself, because I'm me but I will continue to keep trying this shit until something works or I end up being lifted out of my house by a crane.

Why a Health Coach Didn't Work for Me

There once was a time...

About a year ago, I was extremely depressed about my problem with food. I had pretty much conceded that I would probably always be massively overweight and might never find something that worked for me. I hated taking pictures with my husband, because I am so much larger than him. I ate to the point of feeling like I might throw up, and then I ate some more. I told myself that as long as I threw some vegetables in each day, it was okay if I was eating almost 3 times the amount I should have been.

Then, right at the crux of my misery, I happened to stumble upon a blog by a woman who labeled herself as a health and wellness coach. At first glance, I was not impressed. I didn't like the idea of saying I had a health coach, because it sounds trivial and meaningless. Why would I  pay someone to tell me that I eat like shit? I already knew that.

So, why did I end up actually paying her?

Because she also came from a place of fat. I scrolled down through the blog and read that she had once weighed 300 pounds--a weight which I was on a fast track to becoming. It appealed to me that she might somehow understand how insidious a food addiction can be. How you can go so easily from being on point, focused and motivated, to being deeper in depression than before you had started. How every single time you fail at a diet or exercise plan, you dig yourself deeper into your own grave and that every time you eat it's like shoveling another round of dirt onto your coffin. I needed someone who understood that.

I paid the fees and signed the prerequisite forms, and we scheduled our first Skype session. She told me all about her own journey, a word I still despise since the connotation is something new and exciting and my diet and exercise regimen is anything but.

She seemed down-to-earth enough and so I thought, why not? Maybe I just needed someone who could hold me accountable.

I was very successful my first few weeks of dieting. I always am because the first few weeks come at the height of an eating binge and when you very suddenly switch from eating nothing but processed shit to eating whole foods in much smaller portions, then the weight seems to melt. Unfortunately, that never lasts as long as you think it will and the inevitable plateau comes.

Around the time that I started hitting a plateau, I was also working full time, in grad school full time, directing/writing the musical for my high school (a production with over 150 students), and trying to support my husband, who was unemployed. It was more than stressful, it was fucking killing me. After hours at work, and then an hour or two of rehearsal, and then an hour or two of classes, I was so fucking spent that chopping vegetables and counting calories seemed like an impossibility.

But here's what tipped me off...

As would be expected, I was slipping very quickly with the diet and exercise. I was able to keep myself within the calorie limit, but didn't have the time to always prepare a perfectly balanced meal. So, although I was technically doing what my health coach asked of me, she eventually started pointing out that my macronutrients weren't balanced enough. At one point, she actually told me that I needed to cut down on the half an apple I was eating each morning for breakfast! She said that because I ate it with half a cup of oatmeal, it was too many carbs. So then I switched to two eggs and she said it was too much fat. Eventually, I started getting fucking pissed. Why didn't she just tell me exactly what to fucking eat everyday?

She also began to become unnecessarily passive aggressive when talking about what I ate for the week. Perhaps that was also part of the problem. Each and every meeting, the first thing she did was run through a list of all the foods I had eaten and try very surreptitiously to shame me for eating them. I'm not sure if she expected me to never eat anything good again, but I made it very clear to her at the beginning that elimination diets never work for me.  I would be having ice cream and pizza every once in a while. One time, I entered into tracker that I had taken a bite of a brownie, and the next meeting she said, "I guess you had that because you wanted it, right?" Like there would be any other fucking reason I would eat a brownie.

Finally, after explaining to her how busy I was, and hearing her lecture me about how everyone has the time (which is complete bullshit), the moment that I truly knew I needed to get rid of her was when she outright told me that I needed to give all the other areas in my life the absolute bare minimum in order to succeed at the diet and exercise. Think about that...she wanted me to sacrifice my career, my studies, my students, and my husband, in order to make the diet work.

I didn't seek out a health coach to push me into not giving a shit about anything but health and fitness. I wanted someone who could help me figure out how to fit health and fitness into my life without compromising what I care about the most.

Now, I'm not conceding that ALL health coaches are like this, but it certainly has tainted me for good. I'm actually really fucking sick of the whole "What's your excuse?" mentality. Things like work, children, spouses, and school are not excuses, they are FUCKING REASONS! Reasons to live and yes, sometimes, reasons why you can't always buy the grass-fed beef or cook the gluten free stew.

This inevitably leads these "No excuses" types to argue that if we don't drop everything and make health our number one priority, then certainly we will die. This is an all or nothing argument. Not making health number 1 does not absolutely guarantee that my health won't be a priority at all. Like, you either run 5 miles a day and eat nothing but vegetables, or you devour 5000 calories and need a crane to lift you out of your house. There are a lot of other points along that scale.

Everyone's situation is different, and although I am not at a healthy weight, I am also not at a point where I feel like I will die from cardiac arrest if I ever have a slice of pizza again (and I will). I am now seeing an actual mental health professional, and my eating habits have not been out of control since. Health coaches may not be able to help you do that. At least mine didn't. And all slippery slopes aside, I would much rather find a way to make health work with all the other aspects of my life that are important to me. Because if I didn't have my husband, career, or friends I most certainly wouldn't give a shit about living longer. Live longer for what?

Bullet Point Update

UPDATE...

• I have not quit dieting and exercising, I just haven't written because my grad classes started up again and I'm fuckin' BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSYYYYYY.
• I've lost 21 pounds total.
• Kanye West is douche-prick.
• I didn't track any food on Saturday cause I went to a wedding and I like to enjoy myself every once in a while instead of spending half the night trying to count fucking calories.
• I didn't lose any weight this week. (See above bullet point).
• Keeping up with the cooking AND exercise is becoming more and more difficult but I am hopelessly optimistic that I will continue to do this shit. 
• If you type "incessant swamp ass" into the Weight Watchers activity calculator, nothing will come up. 
• Pizza Marzano has a delicious salad that is over 900 MOTHERFUCKIN' calories. It's called the Primavera salad and it can suck my dick. 
• I can't stop listening to "Take Me to Church" by Hozier. 
• I've made crock pot chili at least 10 thousand times since starting my diet.
• I'm extremely thankful for the pee hole that they put in spanks. Seriously, I can't imagine having to pull those up more than once in a night. 
• An English guy called me a "smiley cookie" and I still don't know if that was a compliment. But since cookies are generally fucking awesome, I'm just gonna say it is. 
• I do not look any different despite losing 21 pounds. Probably nobody believes me. 
• Because I have anxiety, I sometimes worry that I'm eating too much of this or that. 
• I ordered fancy exercise clothes that were very expensive. Disclaimer: They're just spandex clothes and I wasted a lot of money. 
• I'm genuinely curious how some women have time to diet, exercise, shave, wear presentable clothing, AND put on makeup. Seriously, how the fuck can you do that? Do just replace your meal times with these activities?
• I have an idea for my next post, but I need to record some video, so please be patient with me.
• A big thank you to Sean for giving me some valuable feedback on my blog. Also, I'm sorry I didn't know you were color blind.  

You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.