This is a truly uninspiring blog about a weight loss journey and/or roller coaster (it depends on if I fail at this or not). If you are looking for cheerful anecdotes about hot yoga or praise for the paleo diet, please leave this page immediately. You are in the wrong place. If, however, you enjoy callous discourse and bitter irony, by all means enjoy this smorgasbord of haunting tales about a fat girl in a skinny world.
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.
The last week has been pretty exciting for fat people.
A woman named Nicole Arbour recently posted a video called "Dear Fat People" in which she basically does what she calls a stand up act about the subject of fat shaming. The video went viral, and now people all over the internet are freaking out because of the offensive nature of her comments. Here's a link to the video in case you haven't seen it:
It's important to note that Arbour has said that she was not to be taken seriously and that the video was meant to be satire. But it's also important to note that Arbour doesn't understand what satire is. We'll get to that a bit later.
For now, though, I want to make something clear about why this video is offensive to me. I am not offended by the fact that Arbour is mean spirited when talking about fat people. There are plenty of assholes in the world, and if I got offended about all of them, I would have barely any time at all to complain about dieting.
What is offensive, however, is how EXCEEDINGLY UNFUNNY this video is. I was expecting to hear at least a couple of things that would make me chuckle, but instead was just left staring blankly at my computer screen, listening to jokes my middle school students would think were stupid. This did not hurt my feelings in any way, it was just...disappointing. Watching it actually reminded me of bullies in school who would make fun of a fat person by yelling "Fatty!" or puffing out their arms to allude to having a larger physique when a fat person walks by. This is not funny, because humor should have at least some element of being clever, creative, or thought provoking. Something is not humor simply because it is mean or stupid. (Yes, there is more slapstick humor, but even that requires that you have timing.)
Arbour's video is just downright lazy. In it, she does nothing more than repeat the same tired tropes and overused insults of any slow, insecure high school jock. At one point, she actually compares fat people to Frankenstein. Because you know, Frankenstein couldn't run fast? (I'll give you a moment to recover from the side-splitting laughter).
What's worse is that she seems to think that this is satire. Satire doesn't mean telling bad jokes about something controversial in order to score extra followers or subscribers. Satire is intelligent humor used to point out the flaws and hypocrisies of people or societies. There is absolutely nothing intelligent about Arbour's jokes. They aren't creative. They aren't unique. They don't provoke thought. They're boring, bland, and painfully overused.
Can someone make jokes about fat people in a way that is funny?
Of course! Here are a few of my favorite examples:
Notice that Chris Rock is making a thought-provoking point through humor: We live in a world in which nobody really likes who they are and everybody is made to feel as though they should be ashamed of some part of their physical selves. Chris is praising fat black women because although this is the reality they live in, fat black women refuse to let that dictate whether or not they can have confidence in themselves.
This humor is intelligent and (as is a requirement for humor) actually funny. Please also note that Chris Rock is NOT a fat person. But because his humor is intelligent and truthful, he doesn't have to be in order to speak about fat people.
Now, here's the part where you think that I'm just mad because I'm a fat person and I just don't want her to hurt my big fat feelings.
Well, let's look at another example:
Ricky Gervais makes many of the same points that Arbour makes in her video, so it might be a bit perplexing to understand why his material is so funny while hers falls flat. That's because Gervais's observations are clever and creative. Do I agree that ALL obese people are that way because they have no will power? Of course not. Do I agree that obesity isn't a disease? Not really. But it doesn't matter, because Gervais is presenting important points of irony within that whole debate. I'm not on his side, but that doesn't mean it can't be funny.
As a more specific example, both Arbour and Gervais talk about having room on an airplane. But while Arbour makes a very obvious, uninspiring "joke" about a person's fat falling on to her, Gervais hilariously points out that we can't make all the seats accessible to obese people, because then there would only be 12 seats in the whole plane! I think this bit is hilarious, actually. And it doesn't offend me--even as someone who is obese. I can disagree and at the same time, still think something is funny. Gervais is highlighting the irony of an issue, Arbour is highlighting her own hatred.
And yet another example...
You'll have to jump to 2:45 in the video to get to the material about fat people. There are few comics in the world who I believe could hold a candle to the late George Carlin, so please understand that it pains me to have to make any sort of comparison to someone like Arbour.
BUT...my point here is that Carlin was a MASTER at creating humor around truthful and prevalent issues using brilliant rhetoric. He talks about the issue of America's overindulgence in everything, especially food. And yes, he points out that there are a LOT of enormously fat people in the United States. And know what? He was right. And even today, he still is.
The difference, though, is that Carlin is zeroing in on the issue of overindulgence itself, not proclaiming that fat people are X, Y, or Z. He's using observational comedy to pinpoint many different situations which are funny in regards to fat people. And it is brilliant comedy, unlike the material presented in Arbour's video.
And finally...
What is probably the biggest difference I can see between these examples and Arbour's work is that none of the comedians I mentioned before (Rock, Gervais, or Carlin) tried to claim some sort of stake in how their work affects fat people. They were saying their material because it's funny. Arbour, in her video, at some point says something to the effect of, "Well, if shaming fat people makes them lose weight, I'm ok with that." As if she were some type of innovative hero. Yes, Arbour, you've truly changed the world.
Seriously, though, if someone is going to talk about fat people under the guise of being a 'comedian,' then at the VERY, VERY least, you should be funny. I'm not offended because what you said was provocative. I'm offended because your comedy sucks dick.
This last week has been far better than the previous two. I've gotten into the groove of cooking my meals on the weekend, and it turns out that week I didn't lose any weight was well made up for the following week. I'm still very slowly, but steadily losing weight.
BUT...
There are still those little things that get on my nerves about the whole weight-loss-inspiring-transformation-life-chaging-healthy journey thing I'm doing. Here are some graphs and charts to represent all the annoyances in my humdrum life:
Yeah, let it be known that you cannot spot reduce people!
When you lose weight, you lose it wherever the fuck your body decides it wants to. Luckily for me, someone who is already grossly over-pear shaped, I'm losing it all on the top first. This is why I always hate the first few months of dieting, because it actually just starts to make my body look even more ridiculous than it already does. So while I'm down a bra size, I can still balance a glass of water on my ass.
Seriously, my ass is already freakishly big, and now that my waist is getting smaller, it looks like I could be in a side show. Benji is afraid to go into any store with me that has glass objects because he knows my ass will probably end up knocking them all off the shelves!
I'll never understand people who say that after dieting, they feel like they will never eat junk food again. That's good, then stay over there, high-and-mighty. I, for one, could still eat an entire tray of Oreos and though I'm not necessarily proud of it, I'm not about to deny it either. That's like forgetting who you are. So, most of my day is thinking about unhealthy food and how much I long for it.
There's no exaggeration here.
Seriously, who is in charge of where they put these things? It's almost like grocery stores are playing a sick game to see how many places they can put shitty/delicious food that's in your line of vision. "Oh look, some organic cauliflower! And right next to it...cotton candy flavored carrots?" What the fuck?
Shit starts gettin' real around Thursday.
For real though, the further into the week it is, the longer it's been since my cheat day and you should therefore not engage. On Monday, I have a new lease on life. I decide I'm gonna get my shit together. I consider taking a Pilates class. By Friday, I start scrounging through the community fridge at work, like an alcoholic looking for a quick fix in rehab. Just scrape that mold off the cheese, I'll take what I can get!
There's nothing much that has really changed about this one.
Overall, I'm doing okay. I seem to be doing well, actually. And I'm afraid to admit that almost because this is usually around the time I start fucking things up. But if I do, I'll be sure to let you know.
