conversations

I said "Man, I've gained so much weight."

He said, "You look just the same to me."

I said, "My clothes aren't fitting right. Everything is uncomfortable. These pants are tight."

He said, "You look great."

I said, "God, I'm ugly."

He said, "You're beautiful."

I said, "Oh my god, I'm so ugly."

He said, "No you're not. You're beautiful."

"I'm fat," I said.

"You're not," he said.

"I'm going back on my diet," I said.

"If you really want to," he said, "if you really think you have to, I'll help you anyway I can." He said - "But you're beautiful now."

He is crazy, but he keeps me from being entirely crazy. If only I could believe him just a little bit more.

dinner bell

I've noticed for the past week or so, that I haven't been in the mood for eating lunch. I could drink a diet coke and be perfectly satisfied. Wow, I thought. Maybe I'm getting my appetite under control. Maybe I am learning to really understand the signs of hunger, and pay attention to my body's needs and wants, instead of my emotional cravings.

I was really proud of myself until I realized I wasn't hungry because I've been snacking on Halloween candy non-stop from nine to five. And I didn't even notice.

This is not particularly shocking - one of the things I hate about being on a diet kind of plan is being mindful of what is going in my mouth, and one of the other things I hate is the very first day of a the kind of a diet that includes all the requisite "food journaling" and busily doing my food journalling and realizing, as I think really hard about what I've eaten that whole day, and writing it all down and the list gets longer as I remember "three bites of cold pizza" and "two hershey's kisses" and "part of a pastry" and the mayonaisse on my sandwich not to mention the cheese, that it adds up. Every bit I put in my mouth, mindfully and not, adds up.

Did I mention how unfair that is?

That's always the biggest change I have to make, mentally and emotionally - remembering that it adds up, and trying to find ways to make it add up to something good for me and satisfying. It's what's been stopping me from actually committing to any kind of diet, this sense that I can't switch over from eat what I want mode to eat what I need with a soupcon of what I want mode. I sit around, waiting for the switch to be flicked, while I eat yet another chocolate eyeball and think about how unappetizing the pasta I brought from home sounds for lunch.

Mm, chocolate eyeballs. With stuff in.

perspective

I was getting breakfast the other morning, and was in line behind a ballerina. You could just tell she was a ballerina – the tights, the slippers, the loose sweater over the bodysuit, the bun. You could also tell by how long her legs were, and her neck, and how slender and muscular and tiny she was. Teeny-tiny. A scrap of a slip of a wee bit of a thing half my size.

And I hated her a little bit, and completely automatically, a knee jerk skinny little bitch, especially when I saw that she was buying just a cup of tea and a bowl of fruit, and I was standing there with a chocolate croissant and a non-fat latte loaded with sugar.

But I got all rational, and I was kind of proud of myself. Self, I thought, she is a ballerina. She works to look like that. You see the fruit? She eats to look like that. She takes care of herself. Self, you do not take care of you. If you were eating fruit and doing calisthenics, you would – well, you wouldn't look like that, but you wouldn't look like this either. And thus, it is unfair to judge her unfairly. And lo, sanity and perspective was restored.

And then her friend, who was also a ballerina, bounded up all perfect and slender, holding two giant egg, cheese and croissant sandwiches, one of which she thrust at the girl before me. Then she said, "I need a muffin, too!" And she sashayed her tiny, perky ass back over to the pastries as ballerina number one licked the grease off the bones of her wrist.

And my god, did I hate them both.

I learned a lesson that day. And the lesson was – I want an egg, cheese and croissant sandwich, please.

or not

Seriously, though - I have been overweight for forever and also another day past that. I have been struggling for just as long to not be. To not feel uncomfortable in my body, ugly in my skin and under it. It is deeply unpleasant to not be able to move the way you feel like you're supposed to move, to look the way you know you're supposed to look. You see your face in the mirror and yourself in your head and you are convinced that you are so very cute, and you are always astonished to see that it is not the case, it is not the truth, when the pictures from the wedding or the party come back, when you catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror, your reflection in a store window. And you hate it, and you hate yourself, and this dissonance - the way your outside lies about who you are. Because it's lying. You are not that fat person, because in that moment of shock, you know how everyone knows fat people are unpleasant people, sweaty people who dress ridiculously and have no self control, who are affronts to aesthetics. And you hate it.

And you'd think that would make it easier. You don't like it? Knock it the fuck off. Eat a grapefruit instead of chocolate - that is a brilliant plan and I have just lost thirteen pounds in my head, having simply accepted the way, the truth and the light.

Can I tell you that it's not that easy? That you can cut go to the cafeteria and walk past the taco stand and the sandwich stand and the pot of chili and the plates of cake and make yourself a salad on which you do not even put fucking cheese, for god's sake, because that is just how goddamn good you are (and can I tell you how much I hate how moral values are assigned to fat and thin, to food, to our foodchoices? Remind me to tell you some time) and you gnaw on your leaves and your beans and your goddamn dry chicken breast and you are overcome - overfucking come by how goddamn unfair it is.

How completely unfair it is that you are not eating a grilled cheese sandwich like every other person, you think, in the whole goddamn world, because everyone else is eating grilled cheese, they really are, and you are not and you never will again, if you ever want to be attractive, if you ever want to please god stop feeling like the first thing you say to someone, in that silent split second of first impression, is hello, I am fat.

I have gone on diets and off. I have lost the same thirty five pounds over and over - up to 250, down to 215, bounce, bounce, bounce. Through weight watchers, usually, but one really brilliant time, through this really cool anxiety disorder that made it impossible to eat because my stomach was so knotted. Bam, thirty five pounds gone like that. It was awful and unpleasant and I subsisted on cigarettes and caramel macchiatos from Starbucks and I was miserable, but when my pants started falling off and I was fitting into normal girl clothes at normal girl stores - that kind of ruled.

That's the kind of mentality I'm dealing with. I want magic. I want instant solution, I want to eat cake and watch DVDs and not be fat any more. I want to stop thinking like that.

I've been able to ignore the fact that I'm on an upswing, that I'm back up to the very top of the cycle until recently, when my cute clothes have finally all ceased to fit, my pants are tight to the point of unwearable and I cannot afford new clothes, I can not, and I came face to face with one of those terrible and shocking holy fuck kinds of pictures.

I need to do something. I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do. This blog will probably become a whatever it is diet I'm going on kind of blog, but right now it's a place for me to stay mindful, to think about what I'm eating and talk about body issues and rant and cry and feel sorry for myself. Because I need to start somewhere. And I need to get back into those goddamn pants.

yom

I just had a snickers bar. Bucket O' Chicken said "ME WANT SNICKERS!" and I said "hey! okay! me too!" That is the glory of going off a diet in a spectacular fashion. You dig around in the bottom of your purse in an ignominious fashion, scrambling for every last bit of change that has gone hiding in the corners of your bag like cookie crumbs or bits of biscuit from the McMuffin you stuffed in there for an after-work snack, and you take your pile of greasy change and you go downstairs to the breakroom and you punch in E5 and you barely manage to wait until you get back up to your desk to cram the whole thing, in three bites, into your face.

That's what going off a diet is like.

hello, i am fat

Hello! I am fat. And this is my weight-gain blog. I have tried very, very hard to lose weight, except I cannot because God hates me and also I like to eat cookies. This is the record of me eating cookies, and snickers and also ham and bacon and peanuts and probably more ham and some more cookies.

You can call me Hello. Please meet my ass, Bucket O' Chicken, My thighs, Ham and Hock, and my big tummy, who I call Pork. We are pleased to meet you.