Support

Some of my closest friends have not offered their opinions (either support or dissention) about my surgical decision.

I wonder if they fear my dropping them like a stone if they disagree with what I want to do. There is precedent for that, so I guess I understand it.

Still, it would be nice to know that they care one way or another.

You know, maybe this is why I have never been able to lose weight and keep it off in the past. My support network is just so small as to be non-existent. Online-only friends, anonymous forum posters/commenters, and friends I've met but who live so far away they are basically online friends now... always supportive, positive, caring. What is it about real life that negates my ability to rally support like that?

I haven't got much else to say... just that I'm still completely uncertain as to which surgerical option I would choose (although the band, as opposed to the bypass, is looking like the better option), and I can't wait for my first pre-op "class."

The Surgical Option

There hasn't been a bigger flip-flop in the history of flip-flops since Janet's boobie flopped out of her malfunctioning wardrobe and the entire country flipped over it.

I am considering the surgical option.

Not only am I considering it, I am favoring it.

That's probably not even truthful.

I'm stalking it. Courting it. Being nice to it in the hopes that it will eventually marry me.

Yes, Angela of the no-surgery-ever-no-way-no-how-I-will-not-die-to-be-thin... has flip-flopped.

Apparently, all it takes to persuade me into an option with which I vocally, loudly, adamantly did not support... is a man in a white coat with a Russian accent telling me that it was the only option for weight loss that would offer me a 70-75% chance of success.

The problem came when we started discussing calories and I started throwing out all of my tips, tricks, tweaks, secrets, and cheats for meeting my daily calorie goal (of which I'm well-aware). If he'd given me a quiz from the hospital's nutrtional weight loss program, I probably would have scored a hundred percent AND gotten extra credit points for excessive elaboration on certain subjects.

He looked at me and said, basically, that I obviously know what to do and how to do it. My problem is continuity and maintenance (aggravated by current and recurring depression). Gaining and losing 50-pounds at least half a dozen times in the past decade is proof enough for him that the non-surgical option is probably not going to be my saving grace - especially since there doesn't seem to be anything more I need to learn on the nutrition/exercise side of things aside from implementation, follow-through, and a pile of therapy that's yet to be scheduled.

In discussing the options, we decided that it would be prudent for me to start the motions of the pre-op classes, if only to educate myself more fully about what is involved with the surgery and to make a more informed decision as to whether or not I want to have it. But, I can tell you, now that I have allowed the possibility to exist, it's all I can think about. I want it done and I want it done now.

I feel like I've done my time as a fattie. I've put the work in, time and time again, only to watch others (who know less and don't try nearly as hard) succeed where I fail.

And I am sick of it.

I turn 30 in two weeks. If I would get the surgery as soon as possible after completing the required classes (September or October, most likely), I would probably be down 60-pounds (plus the 10% I have to lose pre-op for insurance purposes, so make that almost 100-pounds total) by the time I turn 31.

I deserve this.

I deserve not to have my 30s suck.

Confessions?

I have an appointment on February 9th with the Danville clinic for fatties. They have both a weight loss program and a bariatric surgery program. They asked me twice in the process of making the appointment which I wanted. I have chosen the weight loss program, because I know I can lose weight. I have in the past. I also know that I cannot do it in these conditions, so I think I'll be wasting both time and money by going through these motions.

Once I get there, I may start talking to them about surgical options.

I say I don't want it. I want nothing to do with surgery. Even a 1% chance of DEATH just because I'm so fucking desperate to be thin sounds like ridiculous odds. 99% I'll be able to shop in the 'normal' sizes. 1% I'll just be dead. How is that even an OPTION? Fat or thin or dead? Two-thirds of those are undesirable.

I don't NEED the weight loss program. I know nutrition. I know exercise. I know muscle memory and that my body will eventually get used to workouts if I don't change up the activity/frequency/intensity. I know that finding some way to deal with emotion other than shoving food down my throat is a necessary evil skill. I know WHY whole wheat pasta is better than processed.

I KNOW IT ALL.

I don't need an education about weight loss.

I need an intervention. And a therapist.

I need a prescription for independence and my own apartment.

The surgery wouldn't fix my head. I can see myself being one of those people who just eats and eats and eats after going under the knife. I would stretch my stomach back out to its current mammoth proportions and regain anything I had lost.

As long as I am here, under the thumb of parental control, I will be fat.

I have decided that, unless the bank ponies up with promotions and/or raises fairly quickly, my savings account is being built up for the sole purpose of moving back to Japan. Interac would hire me. I want to make sure I have enough money to buy my ticket, pay my key money, and live for two months before that first blasted paycheck, without having to ask anyone for anything in the process.

Barring astronomical advances in my banking career, look for me in Japan, March 2012.

60

I went to a dietician when I was in high school. I think I've told this tale before. I hated her. But, I do remember that she told me in her reviews of my charts, I'd steadily gained an average of 10-pounds/year for several years to hit my 300-ish weight when I was 15 or 16. She said, "That doesn't sound so bad, does it?" I shook my head no, and was a little proud because, hey, at least it wasn't 20, right? "Well," she added, "If this trend continues, you'll weigh 400-pounds by the time you're 25."

Oh, well, fuck you, too, lady.

Fortunately, it did not continue (no thanks to my dietician, though). I actually did gain about 30 more pounds in high school. I graduated somewhere in the 330s. Girls from my high school graduate in white gowns. I looked like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Grad. Seriously, you should see the photos.

At any rate, in college I hovered between 290-300-pounds, depending on the day/year/finals schedule. I moved back home and was well into the 300s again before I left for Japan. In six years abroad, I managed to dip as low as 283-pounds when I was 28, a number I hadn't seen in more than a decade. I called that a 40-pound loss and was so motivated to continue, nothing could go wrong.

And then I lost my job and moved home again. The scale this morning? Around 343-pounds. I have gained approximately 60-pounds in eight months in this country.

I have been bored, depressed, angry, grieving, exhausted, and any number of emotional messes that can totally screw over an emotional eater trying desperately not to shove fistfuls of Tastycakes down her throat.

I chose not to articulate any particular resolutions for 2011. Why bother? The rest have always failed. In fact, I chose not to be awake when 2011 showed its (thus far ugly) face.

However, the fact remains that I will turn 30 in less than two months. I weigh more now than I ever have in my recorded weight history. I want to get better, but being healthy in my house is as effective as nailing Jell-O to a tree.

Still, I'll keep trying. Never mind the bloomin' onion from Outback last night, the sundaes from the night before, or the impending doom of a Domino's delivery tonight. Yeah, never mind that.

Outside Looking In

I think you are worrying too much about your weight and thats maybe why you dont lose much weight :)
chubby girls can be beautiful also...just as thin girls
relax about it and eat normal, whenever you are hungry...

That's a comment made on another journal I keep. More private, friends only. The girl is young, German... thin. The comment is in response to a meme where one question was "One word to describe you" and I answered "Fat." I didn't necessarily answer that question on that day because I was feeling down and out about my butt. I would answer that question that way (on the internet) most days, simply because it's true. It's what people would remember. It's what they would say if I went missing and they had to describe me to the police. It is, for better or worse, one of my most defining features.

However, the comment got me to thinking (as comments usually do). Is that what skinny people think? That to "relax" and "eat normal, whenever you are hungry" is the cure for obesity?

For some, perhaps. Not for me.

There's a whole lot more to this mess than someone who doesn't have to deal with it could ever know.

How's this for you?

I have an eating disorder. If the first step is admitting you have a problem, there, I've just done it. *crickets* What? Oh, I get it. Girls with eating disorders are thin. Right. I see the problem here.

Your average person knows about anorexia, bulimia... in fact, your average person probably knows someone who has or had one of those disorders. The thing is, I would wager that more people know someone with Binge Eating Disorder. It's quite likely that you do. Hey, many of you know me.

I am self-diagnosed with this disorder. As mentioned in the article, most doctors don't or won't ask about the related symptoms. Not to mention, "Because it is not a recognized psychiatric disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it is difficult to obtain insurance reimbursement for treatments." Super, yes?

Since coming back to the states, I've recognized all ten of the example symptoms listed on that site.

From the outside looking in, you see a fat chick... who doesn't seem to eat that much more than your average 'normal' person. You can't see her dropping $5 into the office snack box and eating a few packs of cookies on her break after everyone else has cleared out of the lounge. You can't see her ordering delivery on a day she packed her lunch... and then eating both. As with most things, you can't see what goes into making something - merely the result.

What's one word that describes you? Fat.

Losing the battles, losing the war

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more discouraging than being at a dinner table with people 1/2 or 1/3 your size who insist on turning down every piece of bread or chocolate offered to them. People who order salad and "couldn't possibly" finish it all. People who refuse dessert in the name of that chocolate chip they accidentally ate thinking that it was a poppy seed three weeks ago.

People who are better at being thin than I will EVER be, even in my wildest eating disordered dreams.

For much of my life, I was blissfully unaware that what I was eating was wildly bad for me. I was a fat kid, but generally, I was a happy kid. I was a fat teenager, and all fat teenagers are miserable. It's a universal truth. But, I was unhappy mostly because 99% of my peers were assholes who didn't have a drop of the milk of human kindness in their veins - as most fat teens' peers are.

I knew a little bit about diets and weight loss. I knew that when I went on the "Three Day Diet" with my parents when I was in high school, I lost weight. People lose weight when they only eat 500-900 calories a day 50% of the time (or more if you cheated and made it a Six Day Diet because you were that desperate). I also knew that I started passing out at the drop of a hat on that eating plan (I've passed out three times in my life - all three when I was eating an apple and some cheese for breakfast or a hot dog and some broccoli for dinner and not much else).

I knew that my friend who was born with diabetes was thin as a rail and always had been, and I envied her the disease. If I knew that M&Ms or Skittles or mini Snickers bars by the handful would probably kill me, I'd probably be thin, too. Can you imagine? I spent days as early as elementary school wishing that I had a genetic disease to help keep me thin, whether it could kill me or not. And I scoff at the reports of surveys of people saying that they'd rather lose a limb than be 20-pounds overweight. They'd rather be dead than full-on obese. "How ridiculously shallow can people be?!" I cry! I was one of them. When I was 10.

I knew that almost every boy I'd ever had a crush on had laughed at me. To my face. The ones who hadn't chose simply to ignore my existence, whether we'd been great friends before or not.

In college, I drank Slim Fast. I drank it religiously, until one morning my "breakfast" came gushing out into the sink when I brushed my teeth a little too vigorously. You never want to re-visit cappuccino-flavored protein shake from a can. Never ever.

In college, I gained confidence. I had a large circle of friends, most of whom were very trustworthy and awesome people. I had a boyfriend for a while (the first and only). I cut off my disgustingly long hair, which had been in a perpetual ponytail since elementary school. I started wearing t-shirts that let a little of my arm flab show. Hell, I started to wear tank tops.

In college, I went on Atkins. I was militant about keeping my life virtually carb-free. Until I stalled out on weight loss and then I wasn't. The idea of bacon and eggs everyday loses its luster when the scale mocks your efforts. Where's my damn Cap'n Crunch? Give me a @#$*ing BAGEL. And the weight came pouring back.

But the confidence never really left. I worked in an office for a year, brazenly confident in my work clothes (some of which I look at now and wonder what the hell I was thinking).

I went to Japan and was assaulted, daily, by swizzle sticks with nervous systems. Pixie sticks with false eyelashes. Twigs with strappy shoes and matchstick calves. Once I could understand enough of the language, I realized what many of them were saying about me and my confidence was shattered. No one could withstand six years of emotional and verbal abuse, could they? That kind of direct, unceasing onslaught would be enough for a wave to wear down a cliff to a mere rocky outcropping. I spent summers sweating to death in 3/4-sleeve black shirts that I could pretend hid the sweat and the fat and minimized the visual damage done by rolls in places no person in Japan is supposed to have rolls outside of a sumo ring.

I went to Japan and missed the United States' foodie movement in progress. I tried to keep up with it via books - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, The Ominvore's Dilemma, Food Matters, Harvest for Hope, Good Calories, Bad Calories... I devoured them as if they were the literary equivalent of the neverending pasta bowl at Olive Garden. OM NOM NOM KNOWLEDGE.

I watched PETA's infamous slaughterhouse hidden camera videos. I watched Supersize Me, Food, Inc., King Corn.

Basically, I found out that pretty much everything I'd ever eaten was bad for me. I had dreams of being the wife of a farmer like the Polyface Farms dude.

I seriously flirted with vegetarianism in Japan, but never committed because it's simply too much of a chore there. People don't understand it (and they don't want to), and they are not accommodating of alternative lifestyles.

I had high hopes of returning to the states, being able to read ingredient and nutrition labels with ease (in English!), having access to gyms and yoga classes and aerobics instructors because I had a car, totally rearranging (and improving!) my parents' lives through the auspices of perfect nutrition, the complete absence of HFCS and artificial sweeteners, and organic produce...

And then I actually got here and realized that my pipe dream rusted away the moment I set foot in this house again. I am dealing with two very stubborn and unadventurous eaters, one of whom mocks my food (and therefore my [praised by everyone else I know] cooking abilities) every chance he gets. In public. To our friends and relatives. Ain't that a confidence booster?

However, when I leave this house, I can do so fairly secure in the fact that a) I will not be the fattest person someone encounters over the course of their day (which was a given when I was in Japan) and b) I carry my weight well and look better than most who are my size (one small genetic blessing). It gives me a false sense of comfort. Complacency. It gives me permission to have a Tastycake (or a whole box) when I feel like shit about myself or my life, because, hey, it ain't as bad as that chick who has to ride the Hoveround at Wal-Mart because she's wider than she is tall. And then I feel a little better.

But then, a handful of times, I have gone out to eat with a group and there's that one person - that one skinny person - who is completely capable of making me feel like shit again.

It's irrational to hate that person. Just like it's irrational to hate the person that the usurping company placed at my former job in Japan. It isn't her fault, it's her company's fault. But I still hate her. Maybe it isn't the skinny person's fault that they're skinny.

Maybe it's genetics or maybe she really did have to work very hard at being thin for a long time. Maybe she actually deserves to be skinny. Maybe she threw in the towel a year ago, had half of her intestine removed and her innards sewn up into a tablespoon-sized pouch formerly called stomach and can't eat more than the molecules she can manage inhale while boiling salt water (in which case I DO hate her; cheater). Regardless of how she got thin, it seems as though she is shoving the issue in my fat face when she can't even stoop to putting one hand into the bread basket in the name of dinnertime fellowship and camaraderie.

Was I the only person who felt that way at dinner? (There were six of us, and five of us were fat.) Probably. I find that I am acutely aware of other people's stares, whispered words, muffled laughs, and the flick of disapproving eyes glancing at what's on my plate. Much more than most. But there it is.

This post meanders... but it covers a lot of things that have been floating around in my brain for a while. So far as the title goes... well, it's how things are going right now. I had a pretty good day today... until it wasn't. And that's how most of my days have been going. A new development (a full time job, YAY!!) should help to get things back on track for me, though.

I've realized that I've been wasting a lot of my time caring about people who don't care about themselves, and I simply don't have enough of myself to give to them AND still have some for me (which is why I know I will never have children. EVER.), and this has been screwing me over. So, I need to be done with that. I need to stop trying to satisfy other people and live to satisfy myself. That is how I succeeded before, and that's the only way it will happen again.

It's a hard lesson to learn, but harder on them than on me, I think.

HUGE

Ok, yes, I feel huge, but that's not really what I'm getting at.

It's been 2.5-months since I last posted. With a post titled "Day 1." That would make today Day 75... or somewhere thereabouts.

It's not. If anything, it's some negative number. Day -20... or something. Because I've been moving decidedly backwards. I've hovered in very familiar territory over the past 75 days... Let's call it the Triple Crown (Triple Crown... ha... where's my jockey?), because it's composed of three 100s. Yes, dear readers, I've made nice with the 300-club again. I've been volleying between 300-320 for 10-weeks. No joke. I wouldn't joke about that. I remember certain optimism from early 2010, absolutely certain that I would never hit 300 again. My bad.

I am still unemployed. The number of resumes/applications I have sent off into the void for consideration is hovering nearer and nearer a triple digit. Flat-out rejections number in the teens, I suppose. I've been on three interviews, two of which rejected me and one never sent out anything even resembling a response (a Catholic school... way to be responsible, folks).

A lack of purpose and/or direction in my professional life makes it intensely difficult to maintain purpose and/or direction in my personal life. I imagine it's the same for many folks. The "why bother?" attitude permeates everything. I've stopped applying to positions that I see as a 'reach' for my skills and experiences, because writing cover letters is time-consuming and I'd rather spend that 10-minutes stuffing as many granola bars down my throat as humanly possible. And, frankly, it's the more rewarding activity of the two. The granola bars make me feel like a million bucks for the two minutes the chocolate lingers on my taste buds. The cover letters are 8.5x11 sheets of endlessly repetitive despair that lead to infinite depression in the case of the non-response, and a moment of acute pain (followed by bingeing) when a rejection letter actually comes.

I've been thinking about coming back to this blog for a while, now. I hate being that fat blogger who disappears for a while, then comes back with her tail between her legs, a hang-dog look, and 20 more pounds on her ass than when she last visited. It's like I fear that the Internet is going to smack my nose with a rolled up newspaper.

So, even though I hate being that blogger, here I am. I actually started this post with the intention of writing about TV. Television was my only respite from the place where I live when I was a kid/teen/young adult... and it is very much becoming so again. Of course, I am a fan of The Biggest Loser and Losing It With Jillian and the like... I've even given Dance Your Ass Off more than a passing glance (I'm not proud). But, the recent influx of fat-people-are-people-too! shows like Drop Dead Diva and HUGE are quite high on my list of escapist love.

HUGE is especially fantastic. Things I like:

- The fat kids at fat camp are ACTUALLY fat. Not like those 195-pound 8th-graders who used to go on the Oprah show bawling about how awful it was being SO FAT as a teenager. Then, Oprah would feel so bad for them that they got free tickets from the richest woman in the country to go to fat camp and get un-fat. I used to scream at the TV, "SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU AREN'T FAT!!!!" The HUGE kids... they really are. I wanted to go to fat camp, but we didn't even have enough money for me to get a basketball hoop; I tried to raise the most money in some charity event to win one and wound up coming in second. To a chiropractor. Who could've afforded to buy his own damn hoop. Asshole.

- Nicky Blonsky (the lead, the chick from Hairspray) is fat like me, which you almost never, EVER see on TV. Everyone else is that apple with toothpicks kind of fat that I've always envied (arms and legs skinny enough not to be ashamed of them... just a big belly and/or butt). No one realizes the benefits of skinny wrists and ankles, unless you don't have them.

- The skinny preppy kids at the neighboring tennis camp are ACTUALLY assholes. They didn't run into the fat kids frolicking around the borders of the two camps and suddenly have epiphanies that, hey, they may be fat, but look how awesome and funny they are! Let's be friends! Hell, no. They were cruel and vile and awful and I suspect they will continue to be. As they should.

- The portrayal of the ups and downs of being a fat teen, even one who is in a 'safe' environment surrounded by nothing but other fat teens, is spot on. The writers deserve major props for that. It's not easy to put that much truth and honesty and real-life-ness into a show and have it still be valid as entertainment.

All that being said, I highly recommend HUGE to those of you who get the ABC Family channel.

Meanwhile, I'll be over here, arguing with myself about the merits of going to Zumba on a day when I've eaten crap which will only cause side stitches and cramps.