So I should be asleep, but instead I'm still up, reading blogs and watching tv and enjoying having my windows open and my new "bella luna" scented candle lit.

On another blog I'm reading, the writer mentions a trip to her doctor. The doctor said she must work out, because, essentially, "no one that fat could have blood pressure that good" unless they exercise. This blogger's BMI is 36 (not that I place that much stock in BMIs, but anyway).

My BMI is 44. And my blood pressure is always perfect. Well, ONE time, when I was late and had literally run the half mile to the appointment, it was high.

Oh wait. I'm fat, I must be lying. I can't possibly have normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol, normal blood sugar, normal everything.

Stupid judgemental doctors.

Every five minutes, it seems, I see a commercial about HFCS. There are two different ones, two different scenarios where someone is horrified about HFCS but stammers stupidly and can't think of a reason why. The person they're talking to then informs them that it's made from corn, has the same calories as sugar, and is "fine in moderation". They also say it "has no artificial ingredients". No shit--IT IS an artificial ingredient. Just because it starts out as starch doesn't mean it's natural. The amount of processing that goes into that crap is astounding!

As far as the rest of it ... blech. That shit will basically caramelize your arteries by damaging a certain type of cholesterol in your blood. It raises insulin, although it can enter your cells on its own (doesn't have to go through the insulin transport mechanism like sucrose). I think plain fructose does that, like the kind in fruit, but the problem with HFCS is the amount of fructose it dumps into your system. There are some other problems with it, but I haven't read about it in a couple of years and can't put my hands on the book the info is in right now.

Does that mean I scrupulously avoid HFCS? No. When I'm not paying attention to what I eat, I'm sure I eat plenty of it. Especially since I do a little too much fast food at those times. And I work in a commercial restaurant. But even when I am paying attention, I don't scruitinize labels that closely.

So why do these HFCS commercials piss me off, if I'm not militant about it? Because in NO WAY is it natural or healthy. "Fine in moderation"? Yeah, okay, whatever. But calling it a "sweet surprise" and implying it's all sunshine and roses pisses me off. Portraying people with concerns as rude or idiotic pisses me off too.

I've been on my scale more in the last week than in a couple of months. Which is to say twice. :) This is the problem with any measure than affects my eating--I start over thinking. And I know that if I continue eating properly and see no change in weight, I might end up giving it up and chowing chocolate and crud daily again. Because unfortunately, it's easy to forget how shitty I feel when I eat those things. A few weeks or months of feeling better, and I forget it's so easy to disrupt that feeling. Feeling better starts to be the norm, and ceases to be incentive.

I wish I was one of those people who loves vegetables, who doesn't crave sugar and starch. Although I think those people are pretty rare. I'm realizing that a vast majority of the slender people I know struggle as much as I do--they just either are naturally thin, or deny themselves the things they want on a daily basis. I'm amazed how much I hear the "skinny girls" I work with complaining about how "fat" they are, and how they "shouldn't have eaten that!" There's one girl who looks like her bones are about to burst through the skin of her face, who has been trying to gain weight after an illness, and I heard HER saying it the other day! She's trying to gain weight, and yet she still "shouldn't" have eaten? Insane.

I don't want to end up obsessing, counting every gram of food I eat, obsessing over the things I want to eat and "can't". There has to be a middle ground between obsession and complete non-restriction, which is what I've been doing for the last year to try to heal my guilt and twisted feelings about food. I don't want to go back there. What to do?

I've given up on The Fantasy of Being Thin. I've written about it before, but I'm thinking about it again tonight because yesterday, I discovered that apparently my father hasn't given up on the it, for me.

Both of my parents are very social people. My father knows an enormous network of people who can help him get just about anything accomplished--you have to leave the state to avoid running in to someone he knows. And sometimes that doesn't even work. But I have just never been that way. I could point to a dozen different reasons for this in my upbringing, the point is, I am just not a social butterfly. I feel out of place at parties, out of my depth when expected to converse with strangers for any length of time. I enjoy time alone, reading and such. I always have.

A long time ago, it seems, I attributed this to my fat. When I got thin, I'd have millions of friends and a full social calendar. Except .... if all my extra fat disappeared tomorrow, I'd still not know what to say to strangers at parties, I'd still lack confidence in conversation. But the thing is, and I know this now ... it's just how I am. I'm not anti-social, I'm just not super-social. I'm quiet and a little shy. I suffer from depression and a horrible tendency toward procrastination. I'm not good at saving money. I'm a little scatter-brained. All of these personality "flaws" are just how I am, and losing weight would fix none of them.

My dad doesn't believe that. He thinks if I lose all my spare weight, I'll have more confidence and I'll interact with people more. He didn't come right out and say it, but basically he's afraid I'm going to end up a fat old crazy cat lady with no friends or husband. And he attributes this not to my shyness, or my fear of betrayal in relationships (although I haven't discussed that with him, it's too rooted in his behavior during my childhood and I don't have the stomach for it), or anything else .... but to my weight. To him, if I were thin, I'd stop worrying about money, I'd have lots of friends, and a husband (and no doubt kids), I wouldn't want my cats anymore (he hates cats), I wouldn't be 20 minutes late all the time and I wouldn't need my happy pills. He sees it as a cure-all, and I don't think I can possibly dissuade him.

I tried asking him, yesterday, what losing weight would solve. He said I'd interact with people more. Why, I said, I'd still be shy and generally think most people are idiots. He brushed it off. I know he just wants me to be happy, he just wants me to be healthy, he's feeling his own mortality and is afraid I won't be okay after he dies (he's all of 48 this year), and he is trying to help me with what he sees as the straightest path to my happiness. A perverse part of my wants to lose weight just so I can show him--"See! I'm skinny and I'm still bad with money and depressed and can count my friends on one hand! Pfffft!" :)

The worst part is that I've been struggling over a related issue for a couple of months now. I really want to start exercising, I want to feel strong again. I want to start eating properly (cut out junk food, etc.). But I know that those things will result in weight loss, at least to a degree, and I am afraid of what that will trigger. I can see myself ending up chase weight loss, obsessing over every bite of food, and allowing the scale to rule my moods. And I'm afraid of flirting with that, because there were times I could feel myself edging toward an eating disorder, and because even short of an eating disorder it's not a healthy way to live.

How does that fit into the conversation with my dad? Well, partially I'm afraid of falling back into the "when I'm thin ..." mindset. But mostly, I know that any weight loss will be widely, ridiculously commented on by every well-meaning member of my family. They've been watching/waiting/expecting me to lose weight my entire life, and any time they see a sign of slimming, they all pile on the wagon to compliment me, tell me how good I look, what am I doing, tell me I finally have a waist, blahblahblahblah. And that will send me headfirst down one slope or another: unhealthy binging to undo it because I don't want to deal with it, or further obsession about it. I've tried in the past asking not to discuss it, but then people just get butt hurt and tell me I'm being rude and I "hurt Grandma's feelings!" and to just take a compliment.

So what to do? I don't know. I continue to mull it over, rolling the concepts around in my head, trying to decide if I can deal with the consequences of eating well.

It's not like I want to have a gymnasts' body, or anything. It's just that watching all these people do all these different, cool things, has made me realize that I don't feel strong. I feel like my body can barely carry me around at work, I'm just too tired and have weird aches and pains.

I used to feel strong, long ago. I don't know when I lost it, or how to get it back, considering how exhausted I am all the time.

I had sinus surgery just under two weeks ago, and spent a week basically asleep and eating jello. I had a couple of decent meals, thanks to my dad. When I got home and stepped on my scale out of curiosity, I wasn't entirely surprised I was down about eight pounds. Mostly muscle, I'm sure, since my gut feels as big as ever. :) The plus to it is that I can wear bras that I couldn't before. It's so obnoxious how five pounds affects the fit of my bras.

Since coming home, I've been eating a couple full meals a day and snacking on whatever a couple times a day. It's not a great eating pattern at all; but at least I've cooked for myself a few times, which I hadn't done in a long time. I even made my favorite beef and broccoli. :) It's not a lack of time preventing me from cooking and eating more; it's that I'm not hungry often, and thanks to a combination of circumstances I have very little money so I can't go get all the things I need to make all the things I want.

Hopefully, after I start working again (but only at one job!), I'll still feel like cooking. Of course, then I'll be frantically packing and preparing to move. And after moving I'll be unpacking and organizing and re-adjusting and working, and a month after moving I'll start school. But that's life, right? Nothing's ever perfect. I'm trying to remind myself of that. I've finally quite saying "I'll do x, y, and z when I'm thin"; now I need to work on maintaining establishing and maintaining some sort of organization and schedule to my life, and not thinking "I'll get organized when x, y, and z are better."

I'm roughly three semesters away from a degree in "food science and human nutrition". There were a variety of reasons that I failed my last three semesters of school, none of them very good. To sum it up, Life Fucking Sucked because of things both in and out of my control, and I couldn't cope.

Now ... I'm thinking it's time to go back. I was always planning to--in fact I'd planned to go back last fall--and now I think it's time. And I realized something today while looking over courses I have left to do: I don't feel afraid.

See, when I was taking my classes before, I felt ridiculously out of place. I was always the fattest person in any of my classes. I always felt inferior to the skinny, "healthier" people around me. When I think about it, none of them ever discounted what I said or ignored me. They were all perfectly polite and friendly and willing to listen to my opinion, just like anyone else's. I was just so ready to be shot down that I expected it, and censured myself because of it.

Why? Why did I do this to myself?

Partially, I think, it was because my well-meaning father always asked me why I was pursuing that degree when "Nobody's going to listen to a fat dietician". But more, I think it was just a habit ingrained into me from middle school (mainly), when people DID discount and ignore me.

I'm not saying I failed my classes because of this perception, but I do think it was in there somewhere. There were a lot of things causing me to feel so defeated that I let myself fail, and I just realized today that might've been in there.

I was cleaning my bathroom today, and had to moved my scale to clean under and around it. The top was liberally covered in cat hair and dust because I hadn't stepped on it in months. It still has the typical prominent placement in my bathroom, mostly because I'm too lazy to find another home for it. :)

I stepped up on it for the hell of it today. 246. I had zero reaction to this. I don't remember the exact number the last time I stepped on, just that it was in that range; and I didn't have any "that's so huge" response. It was fabulous. That one device no longer has the power to ruin my day.

I love self-righteous skinny people who have no idea about the biochemical underpinnings of the human body, or how psychology factors into weight loss, and think that telling someone who struggles with craving to "JUST STOP EATING" is going to create some lightbulb moment. :) Thanks, I've never heard or thought that before in my entire life.

***

I've been chugging along; haven't gained or lost any ground, and haven't been trying. Some of which, yes, is laziness; some of it is exhaustion; some of it is being broke and unfortunately ramen noodles are much cheaper than broccoli; and a lot of it is I just don't care enough to put the effort into it. I'm not unhappy with/because of my size, and the health problems aren't related (unless my body is storing fat in my turbinate bones in my sinuses and that's why they're blocking my airways :) ), and so I just don't have a motivation to put the time and effort into planning meals and cooking, etc.

So, in short, I've had nothing of note to post here, because ... well ... I'm fat and happy, and working two jobs, so I don't usually have time to expound on the aforementioned fathappiness. :)

I was reading this article at Junk Food Science and the picture just made me so sad:



Poor rhino. :(

I'm just glad that I quit beating myself up, punishing myself for not being "perfect", and hating myself. For the most part, anyway. I feel like I'm very lucky to not have developed an eating disorder--there've been times I've been afraid that I've been right on the brink of bulimia. I've overeaten and hated myself for it, and I can't say the thought hasn't crossed my mind a few times. On the other hand there have also been a few times I've eaten to the point of feeling like throwing up and I wouldn't let myself even though I would've felt better physically, because it would've been too much like binging and purging.

Even setting aside the extremity of eating disorder, I don't understand people who go on crazy low calorie diets. What's the point of being thin if you're so exhausted from malnutrition that you can't enjoy anything? I was thinking about that while I was at the dog park yesterday. I was just following my dog around the park, occasionally running with her, and I felt light. So what if I weigh almost 240 pounds and wear a size 22? I was happy and enjoying my life. I couldn't do that if I was starving myself to be "thin". I feel good because I'm eating things that are good for me, I'm feeding my muscles and getting the nutrients I need. If I lose some weight, okay; I am, gradually, and I am tracking it, but it started out secondary to feeling better and is moving further down the list.