Does this make me look fat? Part II

I don’t intend for this blog to be a sounding board for my thoughts about my weight and dieting, but I feel the urge to say just a bit more about it.

I’m not as fixated on my weight as I may have sounded in my previous post.  True, my weight has been an issue for me for a looooong time, but as I’ve gotten older, I’m happy to say, it’s importance has diminished.  I’ll be honest though, I would like to lose weight, but it’s not the focus of my life.  It’s not just because I want to be “thin.”  For the most part, I’m happy with my looks.  I think I clean up pretty well.  

There are other reasons why I’d like to be less fat.

 I LOVE nice clothes.  I’d love to be able to walk into a store and just grab stuff of the racks of “regular” sized clothing.  Let’s face it, plus sized clothes can be a drag.  Oh, they have come a long way, but I still have to search long and hard to find stuff I like.  I hate being limited to Lane Bryant and Avenue when the urge strikes to buy clothes.  I hate that the plus size department in most major department stores is shoved into a corner next to the maternity department.  What the heck is THAT all about?  I don’t need to be a size 6, but I don’t like being a size 20 either.  I want to be able to go into any store, not a “specialty store” and find clothes that fit me AND I like.

And, then there’s shoes.  Oh, how I love shoes.  I love sleek, pointy toed, high heeled shoes.  I love strappy, sexy sandals.  I love chic, leather boots that go higher than my ankle.  Do you know how depressing it is when the zipper on knee high boots won’t go higher than the bottom of my calf?  Trust me, it’s depressing.   Oh sure, there are “wide calf” boots in some of the plus sized catalogs.  Plain and simple, I haven’t found one, single pair that I’d want to wear unless I want to look like a lumberjack.  And those sleek, pointy toed, high heeled shoes and strappy, sexy sandals?  Designers aren’t designing them for my overweight feet.  They’re designing for fairies; light, airy, weightless beings with tiny, delicate feet on the ends of their slim calfed legs.  They pinch and crush and squish and I wear them anyway.  If I have to stand for any lenght of time or walk any distance, the ball of my foot goes numb and my big toe hurts.  I guess I’m vain.  I refuse to wear a sensible, low heeled shoe that would support my weight more comfortably.  I know if I were lighter, my shoes would feel better.  I want to traipse around in those fairy shoes AND feel good.

Then there’s Summer.  Hot, humid, steamy, Summer.  Summer is a challenge for overweight women and I’m not even talking about finding a bathing suit.  I’m what you might call….voluptuous.  Big chest, big hips, big thighs.  There’s lots of potential for….friction.  I know, I know, those of you who know me, just lost that cool, calm, sophistcated, impression you have of me.  Sorry.  But, I want to be able to take a nice, long, walk on a Summer day, wearing a pair of cute shorts that don’t creep up between my thighs and and chafe me raw.  I hate that - or a skirt or some kicky, little sundress.  My thighs don’t like skirts and sundresses in the Summer.   There was a time when I wouldn’t wear a pair of shorts or a sleeveless top in the Summer.  I hid myself in jeans and T-shirts all summer long.  I’d swealter and be miserable.   Now I wear shorts and sleeveless shirts, and I won’t say I’m miserable, but I’m not….comfortable.  I really should buy stock in Gold Bond powder.  I want to be cool and dry - without the assistance of corn starch.  

We come now to health.  I want to be healthier.  I want to have low blood pressure without having to take a pill.  I want to have low cholesteral.  I want to wake up in the morning and not have my back ache or my knees hurt.  I realize aches and pains are natural at my age, but lightening the load on these bones could only help, right?  Here, we have a bit of a dilemma because all these things could be resolved if I exercised more….or at all.  But, and remember, I’m being honest here, I hate exercise.  I don’t mind a brisk walk, but you will probably never find me at the gym.  Ever.  So that leaves dieting, which, I know, is harder if I don’t exercise, but not impossible.  

Once, several years ago, when my kids were young, I was dressed to go to a function at one of their schools.  I thought I looked pretty good.  I did look pretty good.  I was running late, parked my car, and jaywalked across the street.  A pickup truck passed by me and the young man inside rolled down his window and shouted, “You’re not only fat, but you’re stupid too!”  He shouted this at me, in front of other parents who were also going into the school.  It was just like walking home from school all over again and having Robert Watkins taunt me the way I wrote about in my previous post.  I swear I went deaf and blind as I reached the sidewalk.  My head swam with humiliation and I couldn’t think straight.  I sat through that school assembly with a lump in my throat, hearing the guy in the truck over and over in my head.  For days afterward, I heard him.

Stuff like that hurts.  It hurt me then.  It’s like a slap in the face, when you think you’ve grown up and you’re doing fine. You think you’ve accepted the way you look, even though it’s not the ideal.  You think you’ve grown beyond worrying how other people see you.  I know now that that guy in the truck was just a jerk and I shouldn’t have let him throw me for a loop the way he did, but I wasn’t the woman then, that I am now.  I laugh about that guy now and if someone yelled at me from their truck tomorrow, tsk, whatEVER!  Hahaha

 I want to lose weight now because I want to feel better physically, not only mentally like before.  I think I’m secure.  I don’t need acceptance from strangers and I have acceptance from my family and friends.  I don’t really know why I ask, “Does this make me look fat?”  I do care how I look.  I do want to look nice, but I know that I can look nice even if I’m fat, so why do I ask?  Maybe it’s habit.  Maybe I care more than I like to admit, but I don’t care so much that I can’t be happy with myself.  I am happy.  And don’t worry, (I know you’re not really worrying) I’m not depriving myself.  I eat sensibly, healthily, during the week.  I don’t deprive myself – there’s plenty of stuff I can eat and not feel cheated.  And if I feel like blowing it once in a while and eating something cooked in butter or sauteed in oil, or called parmagianna or alfredo, I do. 

 Anyway, enough about weight, about fat and traumatic memories.  I’m good.  How are you?

Does this make me look fat?

How many times have I asked that question?  In my life?  Too many times to count. 

Heck, I asked it just this morning of my youngest son, before I left for work.

 I’ve always been overweight.  I had a few years in my late teens and twenties when I was, what I realize now, were “thin,” but I was an overweight child.  Not huge, but overweight enough for mean boys in school to make fun of me and forever imprint me with the knowlege that I had a weight problem.   I can remember my pediatrician telling my mother that I was overweight, but it never sank in until Robert Watkins taunted me while walking home from school, calling me “Maya the elephant,” in front of my friends.  In front of other kids that I didn’t know, who walked the same route.  In front of the world, in front of the universe, as far as I was concerned.

 I slimmed down a little when I hit puberty, but not enough, apparently, because I can remember the doctor at my first gynecologist appointment, telling my mother (once again), that I was “obese.”  Obese, being 10 pounds over the “ideal” weight on the chart on the wall.  It didn’t seem to matter that I was healthy, that I was active.  My mom didn’t drive so I walked nearly 4 miles to and from school or anyplace else that I wanted to go.  I rode my bike.  I ran the laps and did the squat thrusts in gym class.  But none of that mattered.  I was obese.  

 It didn’t help my self-esteem any, that my best friend, who’d always been fat like me, betrayed me, not only by getting her period before me, but along with it, becoming positively skinny without even trying.  Overnight.  She, whose mother made homemade pasta and chocolate cakes from scratch which she could now eat with abandon.  My daily food intake, on the other hand, was strictly overseen by my mother, who by now, didn’t want to take me to anymore doctors appointments and hear how she’d failed as a mother by having an obese daughter.  I had been left behind by the only person who understood how I felt.  We had always been fat together and now I was fat, alone.  She moved on to discover boys and have them discover her.  I discovered boys too, only they weren’t interested.  The biggest insult came when one of my other thin friends started “going out” with a boy she knew I had a mad crush on. 

I became, a “Weight Watcher.”  My mother, who had a weight problem of her own, and I, joined Weight Watchers.  Weight Watchers back then was far different than the Weight Watchers of today.  Weight Watchers today is all about what you can eat.  Weight Watchers of yesterday was all about limits and deprivation.  I learned to weigh and measure anything and everything that went into my mouth.  I learned to eat tuna fish salad with mustard (and pretend I liked it).  I learned to toast a piece of bread and shave it down through the middle of the slice, vertically, making two paper-thin slices of bread with which to make a sandwich, so that I didn’t go over my “starch” allowance for the day.  I learned to deprive myself of everything delicious, that I loved to eat and feel like I was starving – to lose 1/4 lb. a week.  That was about the size of my weekly weight loss at ”weigh in.” 

That was all just the beginning of my long, unsuccessful, attempts to be thin.  As I mentioned above, there were a few years where I achieved thinness.  The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I finally succeeded at Weight Watchers.  I left my junior year of high school a shy, chubby, self-conscious girl, and returned in the fall, a shy, thin, self-conscious girl.  It was like I’d had a mini-makeover.  I grew my hair, I wore make-up, I wore stylish clothes.  That first day of school in my senior year, was an education in itself.  People, kids and teachers, raved about how good I looked.  Some kids later told me that they thought I was a new kid.  Shoot, I hadn’t changed THAT much.  Imagine.  Being fat hadn’t made me stick out the way I thought it had, it made me INVISIBLE.  Suddenly, I was there.  Suddenly people noticed me.  Where the heck had I been before??  Hidden under fat, I guess. 

 I managed to keep the weight off for a few more years into my twenties.  I met my husband the summer I graduated.  I was 17 and we got married when I was 19.  But all the while, it was a battle.  I did Weight Watchers on and off, I did a version of the Atkins Diet.  I did diets from Glamour magazine and Good Housekeeping.  I can still remember waking up and eating one slice of American cheese and an orange for breakfast.  What the heck was that??  The thing is, inside, I was still fat.  I never enjoyed those years that I was thin because I was so worried about being fat again.  The other thing was, I convinced my husband that I was fat, even though I wasn’t.  I was thin when he met me, but I was so hung up on staying that way, that I made him aware.  He was aware of my dieting.  He was aware of what I ate.  He was aware of how my clothes fit.  I told him I was too fat and he believed me.  To his credit, he never said I was fat, but when I asked him that question, “Does this make me look fat?” I knew he was thinking that I could stand to lose a few pounds. 

When I got pregnant with my first baby it was all over.  I gained 49 pounds and I never lost them.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t have another baby until I lost the weight from the first, but it soon became apparent that he’d be an only child if I kept that promise.  I had two more babies and have never been thin again.

 It’s 27 years since I had my first baby and over the years, I’ve accepted that I’m a fat woman, but that doesn’t mean that I like it.  I went through a few years where I told myself, “You’re fat, that’s how you are.  As long as you don’t get fatter, it’s okay.  Accept it.”  I tried to embrace it and get along with it, but shoot, I realized that I was fooling myself.  I’ve accepted that I’m probably never going to be thin, but I don’t want to be as fat as I am.  I don’t so much want to be thin.  I want to be less fat. 

My kids, bless their mother-loving hearts, tell me I’m not fat.  They compliment me and tell me I look nice.  And, when I ask, “that question,” they always say no.  I raised me some smart boys.  I don’t really know what the heck my husband thinks.  The other day, I came downstairs dressed to go out.  I had on a new sweater and a pair of jeans.  He looked at me funny and in my insecurity I asked, “Do I look okay?”  He answered, “You’re fine.”  A little while later, he looked at me funny again.  I asked, “What?  Does this sweater look okay?”  Again, he said, “You look fine.”  A third time, I caught him eyeing me and I finally demanded, “WHAT?  WHAT’S WRONG?”  This time, he laughed and said, “Nothing, nothing is wrong, you just look really good, kind of sexy.”  Well, for crying out loud.  Why couldn’t he have just said that to begin with??  Here I am thinking I must look too darn fat to be seen with him out in public and he’s thinking I look sexy! 

The stupid thing about “that question,” is that since I am fat, I look fat in everything I put on.  So, logically, the real question should be, “Does this make me look fattER?”  Of course, those of us who ask that question, expect to hear, “Oh, no, it makes you look THIN!”  And here we have another, funny side of the coin.  Sometimes I’ll wear something and people will say, “That outfit makes you look so thin!”  Which really makes no sense at all.  What they really should say is, “That outfit makes you look so much less fat!”  Right?  It’s okay, I don’t mind being told I might look thin in an outfit.  It gives me hope.  Hope, that in my quest to be “less fat,”  I don’t have as far to go as it appears to me.

In the meantime, I’m trying Weight Watchers again.  I have been for the last two years. I’ve lost 16 pounds, six of which I gained back over Thanksgiving and Christmas, three of which I lost again.  I’m not discouraged.  Some of you might think that’s pathetic, it isn’t working.  But it is.  As long as I’m not gaining and there’s a chance I might lose, I’m happy.

So, yes, I’ll still ask, “Does this make me look fat?” Knowing all the while, that it probably does, but loving the fact that the people who love me will say, “no.”