So, yes, we are back on the food blog, and we are both resolved to watch our diets this year, although Vic only wants to get off/keep off about 5 pounds and yours truly could stand to lose. . . wait, how much do I weigh? I WEIGH WHAT?????? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN????
I am overweight. Seriously overweight. If I lose about 50 pounds, I'll probably be close to where dietary folks say I should be on those charts they like to trot out. However, if I lost 50 pounds, I would not know who I was and would think that I was a big sack o'bones, so I would settle for 20. That would be 2 dress sizes as well, and I think I might like shopping out of the Big Girl Section - I used to be able to make it into a 14/16, but about a year ago had to admit that I was a 16W (or, as BD called it, a "16 Wide") and now, sadly, I think I am edging into an 18. Oh, let's be honest - I am an 18. My jeans don't fit anymore, and you just try finding jeans for a size 18 petite short!!! I have a very long torso and a very short set of legs, and it's just too, too tricky finding those kind of pants for a fat chick. Actually, it's nearly impossible and about a year ago I quit buying clothes entirely, because I couldn't stand to look at myself in a mirror anymore.
(And you have to forgive the writing - I have had a surfeit of first person vampire novels over the last week, written in a decidedly cheeky and popcorny style, and I'm stuck in Sookie-speak. It will wear off.)
Anyway, being fat sucks but it is always what I have expected to be. I was raised to be fat. Thanks (thanks?) to my mom, who was a beauty queen in the 60's and then turned into a 1970's post-hysterectomy Woman of Size, I know clothing tricks that hide fatness. During my style-formative years, my mom was a size 22 or 24 and was also a nurse who lived in scrubs. I myself grew up thinking I was fat and ugly and that no boy would ever really like me. Result? I have not much fashion sense and very little idea of what looks good on me, but I know how to dress to camouflage my size. So if you see me, you know I'm big but you don't know quiiiiite how big. My husband is big, so he thinks me being big is not a big deal, and since we love each other it really doesn't affect things in the romance department. (Which is a blessing and a gift.)
If it weren't for Vic, I'd likely never have experimented with clothes at all. Makeup was another issue - I am fair skinned and I don't like to wear lots of makeup, but my mom is darker-skinned and believes in the power of makeup. End result? I spent my teen years being hollered at that I couldn't leave the house until I put on more makeup. Thank God Vic didn't mind slathering it on me.
So, you have me, growing up thinking I was fat and ugly, not realizing in the youthful, easy, beautiful, simple years of my younger life that I was slim to the point of being bony, and really kind of nice-looking, and I had a very nice body. I hid all that, and I never saw it. My body was just what I rode around in, essentially, and not something I ever thought about or considered taking care of. It wasn't until I had two children and got divorced that I realized I could be . . . well, I could be hot if I wanted. We can all be hot if we want - it is just a shame that I didn't realize this when it would have been easier. And I'd have been hotter.
So now, I am truly fat. I don't exercise, I eat what I like and as much as I can cram in, and while I think about it, I don't do anything about it. (I take care of my skin, though - you have to take care of your skin!) Both of my parents are in their sixties, and both have somewhat severe health problems related mostly to diet and exercise. Diabetes, heart disease, celiac disease, high blood pressure, mini-strokes, clogged arteries . . . this is what is waiting for me and for my children. (I say my children because watching all this happen and dealing with its effects on the strongest, smartest people I know has been painful and frustrating and all kinds of ugly.) And my children. . . some of it, I won't be able to change, but my son is slim and slender and small, with ADD, and my daughter is chunky and tall and thick, with no sense of when she is full. Both are sugar-holics. And my husband. . . my husband is more overweight than I, with triglycerides off the chart, and he lives on Cokes and Whoppers and already has been prescribed two different kinds of cholesterol-lowering medication, at age 44. And the men in his family have heart attacks in their 40's and 50's. Some days, I realize that my little family is perched precariously on a precipice, and I am not sure what has kept us balanced on that edge rather than tumbling down.
So, it seems both essential and timely to get healthier but. . . well, I've made this decision before. You can tell - Vic and I wouldn't have a food blog if we both hadn't decided years before that we needed to watch things. And we've fallen off the wagon, slipped and slided around and really skidded off the rails of healthy living. The question becomes, then, how to make changes and how to make them stick?
One of the things that I have been interested in for the last few years is the idea of "intentionality." I don't live with a lot of intention. I float, I go with the flow, I ride the waves in my life and see where they take me. I think it's how I fool myself into believing that I am in control of things, rather than things being in control of me. I rebel instinctively against any kind of control. I've already blogged about how deprivation or the idea of deprivation in the service of "your own good" makes me nuts - more control issues, eh? I hate routines and have-to's, but that's what life is - it's routines, even if they are in fact bad routines that cause you more harm than good and even if you hide from yourself that your routines are controlling you as surely as anything else you have encountered.
So, I can't do the concept of "self-control" or even "discipline." I'm doomed to failure if I try. My 40-year-old self just won't make it. But I can do "intention." The question becomes, then, what do I intend?
Now, that's food for thought.
9 comments:
Oh, sweetie! First of all, I want you to remember that I and others love and treasure you as a person of any size! It is really tough and demoralizing to decide that one's looks aren't the best they could be---and combine that with female aging--and the issue of genetics writ large in our families, well, you've got a recipe for depression and a feeling of helplessness.
I can also totally feel you on the idea of control and hatred of being scheduled and told what to do. I am completely convinced that my journey into eating disorder in my teen years was pretty much centered around being a control freak who was being controlled by a control freak and an enabler. Even now, if Himself says anything that sounds remotely patronizing or "turn off the damn lights-ish" I have a flash-back to my father and cut him off at the knees---even while being a really crazy-intense control freak who will often export my controlling ways toward him myself. I have long figured that people respond to being controlled by either becoming door-mats or becoming control freaks themselves. My mother is the former and my father is the latter, and I definitely chose to follow the "I will never be controlled or told what to do again," even while abhoring that very nature when it takes an ugly turn, and while also having no respect for the opposite. This is tough on personal relationships, and one of the reasons, I think, in my heart of hearts, I've resisted becoming a mother.
So anyway, I said all that to say this--it's tough on people who want to be in control of themselves to feel it slipping away in any part of life, and can lead to obsession, as well as a similarly destructive impulse to refuse boundaries--even if they are helpful ones that would actually be advantageous to oneself. So yeah, it's a really fine line to walk. But I think maybe the safest way to approach this issue--in any sense, but here we are specifically addressing weight and diet, is to look at it from a health and well-being approach. As something that we can use as a learning experience and to prove that yes, old dogs can learn new tricks, and that, dammit, everything in our lives isn't predetermined--we can have some agency, and yes, some intent.
MWAH!
So, should we call 2011 the Year of Agency and Intent? Which, really, is better than The Year of Procrastination and Recrimination, which might be what 2010 was. Then again, you and I had a very busy 2010, what with movings and jobs and family issues. So, yeah - I hereby declarr 2011 to be "The Year of Agency and Intent"!
Right after I get done with the True Blood Marathon. . . har!
This is the crazy part - you know they say that girls with eating disorders don't see themselves as they truly are? I think it's called a body dysmorphic disorder, or something like that. They look in the mirror, and instead of seeing bony, thin, emaciated bodies, they see nothing but fatness. Well, I think I have the opposite. I don't see the fatness when I look in the mirror. I see a reasonable waistline, after 2 kids, and moderately non-saggy boobs, and that's about it. Unless I turn to the side - then I see the gut, but some days it really doesn't look that bad. The only thing that stops me is if I hold up my pants before I put them on - then I see such an expanse of fabric that I am shocked to realize it takes that much to go around me, and I'm having to cram to make it all fit. Strange, huh? I believe that if I were to lose 50 pounds, I would be very upset because I'd think I was too skinny.
You might have to help me get onto the Agency and Intent wagon--I'm still getting run over by the Procrastination and Recrimination wagon...
Maybe you should aim for better health and nutrition rather than worrying about whether you are or will be too this or that? I mean, looking at a scale or your jeans or your bod in the mirror may provide one with a wake-up call or not, but it's true that your current habits and the resulting extra weight are not healthy for you in the long run. And maybe by practicing new skills now in this arena, you'll also have the advantage of teaching your kids better habits for themselves. So, two-pronged goal there.
Oh darlin'. When I saw the title of this come through my inbox I thought it was about Vic and getting Christmas taken down. Sorry! I meant to respond to that too, but if I had guessed this topic I probably would have responded sooner. I wrote sort of the same thing on Facebook this morning.
I need to looses 100 pounds to get where they want me to get, and I am only 5 foot 2. I would be happy with 50-60, my dr things 20 or 30 would make a huge difference. So far I am down 10 from November. I do not say that to say "I win the problem weight contest!" but rather to say you are not alone. I am already on cholesterol lowering meds and blood pressure meds. The dr thinks that if I loose weight I will be able to get off the blood pressure ones, but the cholesterol ones are here to stay. Too much genetic influence there. I have brothers of healthy normal weight, and our cholesterol, un-medicated, is within 10 points of 320 for all of us. I also take a pill to regulate my thyroid disease, a vitamin D supplement (although that is new and temporary) and a med for depression. Oh and birth control. That is also new, my dr (the new endocrinologist I have been seeing) insisted on it to help regulate periods. All in all I am a walking pharmacy at the age of 38.
Mike is very big too. I am glad that he can love me as I am. Not long ago I was crying that he couldn't love me because I was so big. He held me and told me he was offended that I would think his love for me would have a weight limit. Thank God for that.
Currently size 20 pants and skirts. I am so busty I usually end up in size 24 blouses. Size 7.5 shoes. It is a wonder I don’t tip over.
I can't believe I have just revealed all of that, even to my closest girlfriends. It is my shameful secret. It is deeply personal and humiliating. But, now it is out there. We can support each other on this very difficult journey.
Love you! MWAH!
Sorry about the post confusion there. I posted the first one and it said it was too long, so I assumed it hadn't posted. So, I split it into 2 and posted them, then realized it had posted originally so I went back and removed the last 2. Oy. Have patience with me, I can figure this out... ;-)
MWAH to Gen, and yup - we are somehow related, because you and I are in the same boat. Only the fact that I am 5 foot 7 has kept me from being out of trouble in the health department - so far, everything checks out ok when I go to the doctor - good cholesterol, wonderful triglycerides, A1C is normal as is sugar, although it is at the top of the normal range. The only thing my dr. wanted me to do is to take iron, because my hg was very low, and I haven't done it because I just can't face the resulting constipation. The Vitamin D, on the other hand, I love.
And don't feel bad about talking about your sizes and weight - why do we do that? This is not a contest to see who is the skinniest, dammit! But I admit to feeling hesitant about discussing my weight and pant size - almost as hesitant as I am to go ahead and admit that a 1X fits me better than a size 18 - I still cram myself into the 18.
And Mike gets eternal Husband Points for his reaction to your weight!
Hey Vic - I was re-reading what you wrote about the 'rents and the control issues, and you are totally right. I generally kneecap anybody who tries to restrict me from doing whatever I want to do, except BD - I have no idea why I take it from him on occasion, except that I know he respects me and I kind of get a kick out of being protected from myself. (It must be leftovers from Stoopid Doofus hanging me out to dry so often. Either that, or I am naturally a back-seat kind of wife? I dunno. He would not agree with either assessment, btw.) But I completely empathize with your flashbacks at patronizing/controlling issues. I have had them myself, and I find that it's not a constructive way to live, even as I am kind of at a loss for a way to not do it. And even as I realize that my control issues have controlled my whole life, in that I have never taken control, and the thought of self-direction frightens me to no end because I don't know if I can do it.
Yay! I'm glad we are blogging! Whoo-hooo!
Oh, and I'm still theoretically advocating using this one for dietary advice, food-diary-ing and perhaps recipes, and any personal issues to go along with that, while hoping to use the other one too for other type rants (like getting Christmas down), --although I have recipes over there, and personal issues to do with weight are so often wrapped up in other personal issues or stressors, so... Hmm. Do what ya'll think is best in that regard.
Mike definitely gets husband points...and good human being points! I was also going to say that people of normal weight can have high cholesterol genetically (German genes seem especially bad for that), but diet is key for those people as well, whether or not they also employ medication, and in theory it can reduce *some* of the need for medication, and also reduce side effects of the condition.
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