Trick Questions.
“Do you see how fat I am when you look at me?”
Most women and men would say this was a trick question. But it isn’t, because I know that my husband, whom I consider to be my best friend is usually and sometimes cruelly BLATANTLY honest with me. If I’ve learned anything it is to NOT ask the questions I want a truthful answer too, this reasoning took me 5+ years, but I certainly know it now.
He looks up at me and ponders the question, slightly shrugging as he holds his Five Guys Burger, and I nibble on the fries.
“Somedays.”
And that’s okay…. because some days I see it too. Some day I imagine myself a much more lithe person and am mortified by what I see in the mirror. Other days I look and go “you know, in this crazy world… you’re not that bad off compared to some.”
Almost as though he was reading my mind (which is pretty frequently) he comforts me by telling me he has the same problem when he looks into a mirror, that some days he sees that he’s looking like the hunka hunka burning man-geek he is. (The other day at McDonald’s the lady behind the counter got all flustered and called him eye candy.) Then other days he says to himself “wow… I could…. start working out.”
I smile because I didn’t have to say anything for him to try to placate me, again… This wasn’t a trick question. My biggest question is and always is the one I ask him next.
“What would you rather, me get fitter, thinner, and we eat fairly healthy or you accept this as it is, and continue to want to go to places like this?”
It’s a hard question to ask him, because he has a metabolism and I don’t. I have a bunch of weight from medications that he’s never had to work off. Hell, he works a 8-12 job daily and I now sit on my butt almost all day. The reality is if he is going to continue to want to go out for lunch on the fly or when we’re hungry I’m going to have to start having some will power and telling him subway is the better option, or ordering better myself. I just, like every other person, hate that I can’t have my cake and eat it too…. literally…. that cake is going to add 20 more lbs to my already fat butt….
True words.
I’m only a recent avid follower of Single Dad Laughing, however in going back through older posts I have found comfort and laughs galore. This post, along with many others that don’t always fit the theme of this particular blog, touched me and I thought I’d share it with you:
The Disease Called “Perfection”
I don’t have much to add to this post, as its words are true and honest and I don’t feel the need to ADD my 2 cents. I just press you to read it and if you find him an enjoyable writer, you can check out more recent posts here at his site:
http://www.danoah.com/
Randomness on the Interwebs
Just like the actual text box area on this blog, most people desire a skinny look. Although when I can afford to, I plan to buy the theme to play around with the size… because man, my rants look even longer in the confines of this theme.
Anyways, most people who don’t live under a internet rock know about Postsecret, and if you don’t well let me skip the intro’s and just click the linkage 
And So It Begins Part II
When I left you yesterday I was weaving you a tale I’m sure a lot can relate to. When I say life got from bad to worse I’m not just trying to draw you in with creative storytelling, but hoping to skip some of the messy details in the middle. Money not only got tight, but it became very clear that without me being able to find work accommodate my injury we were going to be in serious trouble. We were ALREADY IN serious trouble. So, in the end lets just say I use to live here:
A place to stay forever.... if you' got the money.
to here:
- This, with more snow… is how it looks 5-7 months of the year.
It’s been a rough transition. I went from living with my husband in our own 2 bedroom place, in a province that is full of forests and mountains. I lived a 5 minute walk away from the beach and went every day in the summer. I lived 2 minutes from my family. Now I’m living with my in-laws that I had met only 3 times in our 8.5 year relationship, in a bedroom in their house. I don’t get to leave the house during the day because I take care of my nieces and it’s usually too icy and cold. Penticton was a city of 37,000 with public transit, Wembley is a ‘town’ of 1600 with a senior’s bus that goes into the city twice a month, usually when I’m working. Also, we did this 1600km (almost 1000 miles) move ALL in a week. With no money to move, we pack the necessities and have been living out of suitcases waiting for our chance to go back and get our animals, and stop paying rent on a place we no longer live in.
But this is supposed to be a blog about obesity, and the trials and tribulations of a fatgirl!
I assume some are questioning what the purpose of this story is, and what this has to do with weight. Well, like many people out there, that week and the drive was full of fast food and stress eating. I had come from a positive eating place, with exercise included, to one of barely exercising (unless packing or doing yoga) and eating whatever we could afford at the time. No point in buying groceries, we weren’t going to be living there. Once settled out here I’ve still been striving to find some artistic purpose for myself, a way to communicate and fly my creative flag with pride and have fallen short of time, space, places to jewelcraft (which had been my biggest solace at home).
And then it happened, It was December 28th and my husband was working late, which is good when you hadn’t been working at all. My mother in-law said “WE NEED TO TALK.”
I was surprised. Was she breaking up with me? That’s usually girlspeak for break-ups. It was right after dinner and I was unbelievably full (as usual).
You see a little back story about MIL (Which now will be what I’ll be calling my mother-in-law) is that not only is she I would say very religious, she’s also very comfortable in her ways. Dinner requires 4-5 different items. 2 of them are vegetables that Bink and I both do not usually like. DIL (which is what I’ll call my father-in-law) doesn’t seem to like a lot of the stuff I make, and there usually is A LOT of food. Enough for 8 people, and there is 4 of us. Dessert is served immediately after supper. Puddings, Ice cream, Pies or cake all make the list. You’re constantly asked if you can eat more, and when you say no you’re fine you are asked “Are you sure?” MIL always wants to know if you’re sure, because if you are not bursting at the seams, you could shove more into your face.
On a side note, I LIED when I first came out here and told her I was a stress NON eater so that I could eat LESS and hope she’d understand. In the first two weeks here I lost 15 lbs. YAY! I was now down to 275 lbs. (To think in only a year or so I had gained 40 lbs actually made me feel better considering the lack of working out and dietary awesomeness that I had started out with, though I was pretty depressed to find out I was that close to 300 lbs.)
WE NEED TO TALK
I felt it coming, she had been saying slight things for days “BW (which is what I’ll name my husband for now) DOESN’T EAT PROPERLY” “HE NEEDS TO START WORKING OUT.” ‘WE ALL NEED TO WEIGH IN IN THE NEW YEAR.” “WE ALL NEED TO MAKE BETTER EATING CHOICES.”
It was never ending. I am the heaviest out of all of them by at least 60 lbs, so you can imagine how well I took these gems of advice.
the conversation went something like this:
MIL: “We need to talk… If we’re going to make these changes, I need to know what you’ll eat, what you won’t eat and how we can improve our eating habits.”
KIWIE: “Okay…. we could stop having dessert EVERYNIGHT…. I mean I’m usually full but I know how much effort it took you and I feel bad turning it down. Sometimes its just an instant reaction.”
MIL: “Well I guess we could do that… but I’d still like to have it on sunday night dinners. I’d still like to have big Sunday Family dinners” (Remember, Sunday is church and the missionaries come the last sunday of the month, so I understand this)
KIWIE: “BW and I hate the frozen green beans. If you want to make them for you and dad, then I understand but I doubt we’ll eat them. We like peppers, corn, onions, mushrooms, and carrots.”
MIL: ” Well dad hates carrots and can’t eat peppers.”
KIWIE: “Why don’t you just make salads and meat until we can get a better idea as to what you’d like to start cooking. Do you like fish?”
MIL: “It’s expensive.”
KIWIE: “… okay… “
We just don’t seem to line up our thoughts along the same wave length. She and DIL don’t seem to be fond of my cooking and BOY can we say the same about hers. She boils EVERYTHING to the point of limpness, fresh vegetables are rarely an option although I explained their benefits, and lastly if it’s not over boiled its over cooked and dry DRY DRRRRRYYYYY. I explained exercise is the most crucial element to my health. After all the guilt trips and massive hints dropped over Christmas about how no one ever wants to do anything with her, I suggested we tried her areobic dvd again as long as she’d watch the kids so I could shower afterwards. The rest of the conversation was me explaining to her I haven’t been under 200lbs since I was 12 because I was a severe asthmatic kid who has been on prednisone almost 1-2 a year since then. My doctor has now put a note in my file stating I’m “allergic” to it so no one else prescribes me it since I gain 10-20lbs every time I’m on it. First time, when I was hospitalized and on it, I gained 40 lbs in one month. It’s almost impossible to not have to take it, and the weight I gain from it is almost impossible to get off.
Woe and sadness, I know.
but to be fair with myself, at the end of the day I’m starting to not CARE how FAT I am but more about how much STAMINA I have. I want to be healthy so I can keep up with my nieces that I have usually 5 days of the week for 9 – 10 hours. I miss being able to be the preschool teacher who was go go go go!!!!! And well…. if I could have a picture taken of me without feeling like I look like a blob, that would help too.
I don’t probably have to explain myself to you though. I figure if you’re coming to this blog, you already understand that every person who has a weight problem has their own story. Or that you don’t hate on fattie’s the way that some people do. Basically it stopped MIL from pressuring me so much. She admitted she doesn’t see me eat ridiculously or even as much as the others in the house and that I try to include as much healthy food as possible.
The results so far? I’m back up about 5 lbs over christmas holidays. The healthy eating? maybe 4 times a week. If I know we’re not being health conscious at supper I try to eat really really well for breakfast and lunch. I’m drinking Water water water, which is not my usual choice and to drive her even more crazy, since she was so concerned over BW he lost 10 lbs over Christmas! which made him laugh at the situation since all he did was eat snacks and help me take care of the girls.
As for exercising… well for all the bemoaning in the beginning, she seems less into that I am as we’ve only done it together 5 times since Jan 1st, so I try to find time if she’s not going to do it to do some yoga. We’ve also been going swimming on Saturdays just to get out of the house and our one room.
And So It Begins…. Part I
I have been toiling over the idea of writing a blog for women who are obese for some time now. It started when I fell and completely severed my anterior cruciate ligament causing me to be immobilized until I could get into surgery.
“You must love all the time off!”
“This is a good opportunity for you to be creative!”
“You need to learn to relax!”
Yeah… sure. These were things I heard several times during that painful period of time. My husband, had been away at school in a different city and we lived on the second floor of a duplex. Even with a full leg brace on and several sweet sweet blissful drugs, there wasn’t much getting out of the house in those early days. As a preschool teacher, I was used to moving at a pace that seems completely foreign to me now. I was also working out 3-5 mornings a week. Oh, and did I mention that I was 250 lbs?
Being that as it may, I KNEW I was going to gain more weight, there wasn’t really a way around that. I had my mom basically doing meals on wheels and the few friends I had still living in town sometimes would grace me with something they’d grab along the way. On top of that, I sat there healing, learning to balance and distribute my weight, even walk again thinking “When a door closes a window opens…” I tried to remain positive in the situation, although I’m sure I did a horrible job of it. I’m a bit of a pessimist naturally. After 5 months of healing, and my knee still giving out willy nilly (though I had a pretty pimp cane swagger going down, as my brother liked to mention) The doctor decided that it was in my best interest to get reconstructive surgery. This was put off for another three or so months, being cancelled and rescheduled at least three times.
So I continued to ponder what I could do to utilize my fervor for accomplishing SOMETHING. Do I utilize my education and create a blog on preschoolers and education? Do I buy an expensive camera and do what so many others do, become a ‘amateur photographer’ because, hey I knew my way around Adobe Photoshop. To be honest, I’ve always felt like a Jack-of-all-Arts. I enjoy to paint, act, write, edit film, create music, take photographs, and even craft, craft CRAFT. I began to make jewelry, because 1) I still don’t know how to sew properly, and 2) most of the time when I buy jewelry it looks like I bought it from the children’s section and that my hampock fingers/thick neck, massive wrists make me look ridiculous. Now, do I think I do any of these artsy things well? I guess that’s a question for a later post. Had someone told me then that I should try blogging about my personal life, I would have laughed at them. Imperfection can be interesting and slightly comical, but no one would care about some fat girl with a broken knee sitting on her ass all day pondering life, would they?
