Fatties in the public view

Let me start out by stating the obvious: in American culture, it's not okay to be fat.  It's considered gross, ugly, lazy, unhealthy and a burden on the public aesthetically and financially.  If I'm fat, I'm offending people around me. Fat people- particularly fat women- are second class citizens.  (Although fat men have their own set of social obstacles, especially the notion that fat is feminizing.  Ah, sexism!)

I've been very lucky when it comes to meeting this stigma head on.  Although my family disapproves of fat, my mom, when trying to get me to slim down, encouraged me to enjoy movement and food.  I really appreciate especially that she never mentioned my weight as a child, but only tried to step in when I was nearly an adult and when I gained 100 lb in a year, clearly because of depression.  She also explicitly told me that I was beautiful the way I was and I didn't need to try to meet others' expectations, some really healthy advice!

What's more, in my social circles, there's not a lot of negative body talk.  We celebrate our own and each other's bodies, we make food together and run races together and don't cotton to the self-hatred that seems so common in other groups.  That's a real gift.

I also have had less public comment on my body than some other fatties have had on theirs.  (I hesitate to think about the online discussion on Janie Martinez's gold bikini.  She is amazing!)  I don't know why, but I suspect that it's largely because I'm just lucky- I live in a pretty progressive city.  I wonder if it might also be due to my attitude, although that's dangerous speculation- I do tend to flaunt my fat, wearing bright colors, sleeveless or strapless tops and other clothing reserved for skinny women.  I guess it could go either way- I could be avoiding public comment because the people who would want to comment would give me up as a bad job, or I'm extra lucky because noncompliant fatties might draw more comment, to force them to comply.

The worst I've had is when I was living in downtown Richmond, out for a jog with Andy.  We were crossing Belvidere, and some dude from the backseat of a car yelled, "Run, fat bitch!"  I completely ignored him- it's my first instinct- but it hit me like a sledgehammer, how vicious and violent it was.  No one should be subject to that.  I was especially angry because fatties can't win for losing- if we're out in the world, not working out, we're lazy, and if we are working out, we're disgusting.

To get myself in the gym, I told myself that I may be the fattest, slowest person in there- but maybe I'm making it safe for someone else to come in.  Maybe someone else will see me there and think, "Well, if she feels safe in there, it must be okay for me too."  And to be fair, not one person has ever said a cruel or demeaning thing to me in the gym.  And I've spent a LOT of time in the gym!  (Unless you count the trainers(ALL the trainers) who assumed that my goal was to lose weight, not to build muscle.  But I'll give them a pass.)

Anyway, today I wanted to draw your attention to this post about concern trolling at the Great Fitness Experiment.  Charlotte has really helped reaffirm my faith in fitness, separate from weight loss- she struggled with an eating disorder, and her blog really reflects a commitment to mental health as well as physical.  I really appreciate her discussion about folks who comment on others' bodies with the excuse, "But I'm worried for your health!"  First of all, I think it is never appropriate to discuss someone else's body in public, not mine, not yours, not Hillary Clinton's, not Arnold Schwarzenegger's.  If you know someone well, someone who is losing or gaining weight fast, there might(MIGHT) be a case for pulling them aside and saying, "Is something going on?  Are you okay?"  But to make extrapolations from observations of body size is hateful in this culture.

In other news, the sweet potato fries were mushy but a hit!  Also, I've walked two miles since starting this post.  (With only a few detours to other sites!)

Dinner tonight!

So I'm walking on my treadmill as I plan dinner for tonight.  It'll just be the two of us, and I know she's not picky, so I'm keeping it simple.  I'm pulling out some of my industrial vat of chili and making sweet potato fries(baked with a little coconut oil, mmmm!), along with a Big Ass Salad(TM).  For dessert, if we're not too full, some plain whole yogurt with clementines- om nom nom!

I love salads, I find them really easy and delicious, although I like including things other people might consider unusual.  For example, I use a LOT of fresh herbs- check out the recipe:

(all ingredients fresh)
2 cups spinach
1 cup kale
1 cup basil
1 cup cilantro
1 cup oregano
1 avocado, sliced
1 tomato, diced
1 cucumber, diced

I like to tear my salads into little bits- I find it very frustrating when you have to attack your salad with a fork and knife.  It's just ripe for flinging dressing into your face!

For a dressing I just use 1 part apple cider vinegar to 2 or 3 parts olive oil, typically mixed in a mug.  I frequently add salt, pepper, dried oregano and thyme, or other dried herbs.  It all depends on my mood.  Tonight will be a salt-free dinner, however, since my friend doesn't do salt.

Hmmm, I might toast some fennel seeds and add them to the dressing.  I think it'll be a nice addition in the fall weather!  What do you think?

Listening to your body

Last night was pretty frustrating.  Although I made it to Silent Lunch and chatted with my friends there, by the  time we were done I had a roaring headache and tinnitus in my right ear that sounded like I was carrying around a boom box on my shoulder.  80s represent!

I spent the rest of the day in bed, too uncomfortable to read, surf the net, or do things around the house.  I most missed my daily walk, but even sitting up in bed was really taxing.  I decided to skip dinner, since I just wasn't hungry enough to make the effort worthwhile.  Usually I'd say skipping meals is a no-no, but in this case I feel like it was the right choice.

It's really frustrating for me to be this incapacitated.  Although I've had enough medical problems that some people have written me off as a hypochondriac, one of the best discoveries of my adult life was how much I enjoyed being able to work and move- to go for runs and clean the house and live my life.  As a teenager, I wasn't so appreciative of that, but being knocked down and having my chest sat on by depression, fibromyalgia and other problems really brought out how good it was to be healthy and to make the most of that.

Anyway, I'm calling my neurologist back and asking for medication- he emphasized weight loss, which is a solid treatment for me in this particular case, but there is no reason I should be experiencing this much pain while I'm losing weight.  I know he wouldn't treat a thin person in this way- Dances With Fat has a great take on this- and while I feel pretty sure that I can lose the weight and keep it off, I don't think it's unfair to ask for the medication that will help me now.

This is a terrible food blog- I only wrote to talk about not eating!  But soon we'll be back to our normal programming: I'm making dinner for a friend tonight.  More on that later!

The rules of nutrition

Michelle of The Fat Nutritionist is one of my favorite bloggers and I admire her so much!  Here's one of my favorite posts:  The Rules of Nutrition

I’m here to tell you that, as an adult person of the human persuasion, you’re inherently responsible, reasonable, and (basically) rational. If you’re alive, breathing, reading and processing this information, your body is (basically) functional.

You are not broken.

You are capable of this. You are capable of choosing what and how to eat.

That's right!

Why I love my treadmill desk

So one of the things that I blew a chunk of change on a couple years ago that was completely worth it was my treadmill desk setup.

I spent about $700 on the treadmill- I wanted one that could take the pounding all day- and $500 on a TrekDesk. Although I love the TrekDesk- the large surface is really awesome- if I had it to do over again I might have gone with making my own.

The way a treadmill desk works is that you set up your computer on the desk, and thus you can walk while you work(or procrastinate!). I thought it might be tough to manage typing or mousing or what have you while I walked, but other people gave great reviews, so I figured it couldn't hurt to try it.

I started out walking at 0.6 miles per hour, which was about as slow as my treadmill would go! But as I got used to it I increased the speed and eventually found my level between 1.6 and 2 miles a hour- that's while I'm typing or otherwise interacting. I do watch movies and TV shows too, and then I can go up to 3 miles per hour.

Obviously I'm not walking very fast. A lot of people have given me the crazy look, wondering why it's even worth it. The answer is that I tend to spend a LOT of my free time on the computer, and sitting so much makes me very fidgety and cranky. Of course, it's also terrible for my health. So I got the treadmill desk less to capital-E Exercise than to stave off the fidgetiness and to help burn some excess energy. Actually, I find that it helps me concentrate much better- I guess that's the ADD at work! But other people report the same thing, so who knows?

Although I didn't lose any weight(it wasn't a goal), I gained a lot of muscle. I remember wearing shorts for the first time in the spring and realized that I'd gotten muscles on my knees- I didn't even know knees HAD muscles! I gained this confidence, too, in my body- I knew that I could walk and just keep walking indefinitely. I knew that I could walk a marathon(albeit very slowly!). This was something I hadn't had in the past, a faith in my body's ability physically.

I also started sleeping a lot better and feeling more energetic. I just felt so much better when I walked!

This year I lost a lot of my conditioning, so walking two or three miles a day on the treadmill is my main form of exercise as I start building back up. I'm not going to lie, the first walk after 18 months of not walking was a toughie! But it really started to build back up fast- it is amazing feeling my body get back into shape.

This week I'm introducing some other forms of exercise back into my plan. Walking is a great foundation of health, but it won't take me all the places I want to go. I really dig Mark Sisson's fitness pyramid; I think that'll be my blueprint for now. My fitness goals- that's another story for another time!

There are a ton of great videos about treadmill desks on Youtube- I was especially pleased to find one by my favorite vloggers, the Vlog Brothers! Check it out!

Chili!

So yesterday I made an industrial-size vat of chili.  I designed this chili recipe when I was trying to cope with chronic gastritis- so the original version has no tomatoes or spice. (Hardly chili at all, amirite?!)  I've become very fond of this recipe over the years, though, and I thought I'd share the recipe today.  It's a great way to disguise organ meats(mmm nutrients!) and also veggie heavy, so it packs a nutritional punch.

2 lb ground beef
1 lb turkey
2 cans pinto beans(rinsed)
2 cans kidney beans(rinsed)
2 onions
2 sweet peppers
8 oz mushrooms
3 celery stalks
2 carrots
1 tsp bacon grease
Marrow from two beef bones

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Roast marrow bones for 20 minutes.

Sautee mushrooms in bacon grease.
Chop veggies and mushrooms and puree.
Brown meat.
Mix meat, bone marrow, beans and pureed veggies in crockpot and cook on high for 4 hours.


If you want to spice your chili, 1 Tbsp cumin and 1 Tbsp cayenne should be a good start.  I also ended up adding a can of tomato paste yesterday, for the heck of it, but this chili doesn't really need it.  I love chili because it is an awesome place to play with different proportions of meat, beans and veggies, as well as try new things- like liver, heart, or tongue.

How do you like your chili?

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Dieting; or, being fat in a skinny world.

So, I'm not sure I'm really dieting.  I'm not counting calories or carbs or grams of fat.  I cut out sugar and grains, but other than that, I don't restrict what I eat particularly.  I am trying to lose weight, but I can't say that I'm stressing about it the way I have with every other diet.  I feel a million times better on this eating plan than I did on literally every other diet.  And trust me, I have tried the diets!

The most "successful" diet was Atkins.  I lost 70 pounds in three months and kept it off for ten years.  (That puts me in the 5% of dieters that manage permanent weight loss, you'll note.  And 70 lbs took me from "morbidly obese" to just plain "obese".  It would take another 70 lbs to take me to "normal" BMI.)  The trouble with Atkins was that I was miserable the entire time, irritable, cranky, craving and sick.  I quit the diet because I started craving Twinkies.  I hate Twinkies.  I think they are foul.

Other diets I've tried, for various reasons: low fat, vegetarian, vegan, Weight Watchers, Atkins again and just plain calorie restriction.  Vegan made me sick- I started having major digestive problems.  Vegetarian didn't change anything health or weightwise.  Calorie restriction left me hungry ALL. THE. TIME.  I'm not saying hunger doesn't have a place in a healthy diet- but being hungry all the time is bad for the soul, because you start plotting to eat people!  None of these budged my weight, which after the successful Atkins ranged between 225 and 235 very consistently.

Other things that didn't change my weight: cooking at home.  eating out all the time.  running 5 and 10Ks.  weightlifting.  walking between four and eight hours a day. lying in bed all day, every day.

Recently I gained 60 lbs in three months.  I was very emotional about this weight gain, because I didn't understand it- I began gaining weight after stepping up my activity and starting to eat better.  It turned out it was due to a medication I was taking.

Potentially due to the weight gain, I also developed severe headaches due to increased intracranial hypertension- that is, the pressure from spinal fluid began building up in my skull.  That's why I'm trying to lose weight now- well, that and I'm pretty sure my body doesn't like being this weight.  I expect that if I lose weight, I will probably lose it pretty quickly, as I did before.  But who knows?  I was pretty content at that weight, and I could learn to be content at this weight as well.

In any case, I applied what I learned about my body and nutrition to create my own diet, focusing on meat, beans, whole fruits and veggies, fermented dairy and nuts and seeds.  It's pretty Paleoesque for the time being, although I do drink diet sodas and eat Splenda.  I'm not relying solely on those, though- I do drink a lot of water and avoid sweets for the most part.  I tried to cross losing weight and feeling healthy, and for now I'm pretty satisfied with the mix.  I feel much, much better eating whole foods, and that's more important than weight loss.  I'm also back to walking two or three miles a day, trying to build up the conditioning I lost earlier this year.  I'll add in weightlifting and other exercise in the near future.

It's been nine days since I began on Saturday September 22nd, 2012, and I'm aiming to keep to this lifestyle till New Year's- then I will re-evaluate.  But I'm feeling good!