Monthly Archives: September 2015

Man Marking the Muffins

Freeform thoughts, , , , ,

bun

So it occurred to me that being a food hoover is far more complex when you’re a human being than it is when you belong to some other species. Bit of a random thought, but it popped into my head last night when I was cooking tea, having narrowly avoided tripping over the dog for about the tenth time.

Had anyone been observing the two of us as we moved about the kitchen, it must have looked a bit like a sort of clumsy ballet. Whenever there’s food, or the smell of food, or even the hope of food, my four legged fur baby welds himself to my side and develops eyes in the back of his head so he’s in exactly the right place at the right time to take advantage of anything which might come his way, either by accident or design. I take a step, he takes a step. I turn around, he turns around (unless the food is actually visible in which case he removes all risk of missing anything by walking backwards).

Even as a puppy he was solely motivated by food – within 3 days of coming home he’d pee on the puppy pad and then go wait expectantly by the fridge, and his love affair with chicken and sausage in particular continues to this day. Incidentally so does mine, but as a fat girl I’d die before being quite so obvious. As a skinny girl, you can get away with knocking people out of the way like skittles to get to the cake…people will smile and tease you about how you can love cake so much and stay so trim.  “You must have a worm inside you, ha ha ha”... As a fat girl, no chance. Those same people wouldn’t tease you at all, they’d probably just shake their heads sadly and think “No wonder…”

I’m convinced that’s why a lot of fat folk eat in secret, as though it’s something to be ashamed of. Or maybe it’s because we think people won’t notice that we’re fat if they never actually see us put anything in our mouths…that’s asshole logic if ever I saw it. But I for one have lived it! Eating publicly can be difficult when you’re bigger than the average bear – imagine two people walking away from a fast food counter with overloaded trays, one fat girl and one skinny girl…only one of them is going to feel self conscious, judged, ashamed that she’s not about to eat salad. Am I right?

So how come a slavish devotion to food is cute in a dog but shocking when you’re just a fat girl who can’t get it under control? Why does one provoke smiles where the other provokes scorn and judgement from the world in general? I’d hazard a guess that it’s because we’re supposed to be the ones with a fully formed thought process and a sense of reason – don’t get me wrong, dogs are bright but they’re not likely to think things through in a ‘better not have another bonio if I want to wear my favourite collar at the weekend’ kind of way. But we are, we’re supposed to have it all figured out.

But what if your thought process is broken? What if you have an asshole who lives inside your head and relentlessly kicks all reason into the long grass till you can’t get to it..? What then.

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Sunday Celebrations

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

balloonsI know that technically, the one month anniversary of Break Out the Skinny Girl isn’t until Tuesday, but today feels more like the right day to celebrate because my blog was born four weekends ago on a rainy day just like this one. And lets be honest, who ever has a party on a Tuesday. So, today’s the day – one whole month in and already I can’t remember what it was like not to log on every day and check in with you all.  We’re still a very small posse but small is beautiful, right?  Forgive me being indelicate but that’s the reason I’m here anyway 🙂

Shall I share some interesting facts? Do feel free to snooze through this paragraph if you’re not quite as fascinated by these facts as I am, to me they are the most beautiful facts in the world but lets not forget that this is a complete labour of love for me, and I’m incredibly honoured that people who don’t know me are taking time out of their busy lives to check out my blog.

I usually write from the kitchen of my little cottage in a small town in Yorkshire, England, mostly in pyjamas with the dog at my feet. It’s an awesome feeling to know that once I launch those words into cyberspace, people are reading them from thousands of miles away…we now have a small but perfectly formed posse of regular readers across the USA as well as here in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Slovenia and Ireland. I make it sound very grand – look at me, I’ve gone global! But if you’re one of them, MWAH, please accept that big sloppy virtual kiss on the chops, and thank you, you make me smile every single day.

I’m about as far from grand as it’s possible to be (although let’s imagine that someone was stupid enough to make luminous yellow pants in XXXXL, and I was brave enough to wear them I suspect you’d be able to see my arse from the international space station – that’s pretty grand) but I don’t think I’ll ever tire of clicking on the little pins on the analytics map which tells me where my visitors live.

Don’t freak out, I mean I’m not going to turn up at your house or anything, it’s not that accurate, but I get the biggest buzz ever when I see a new location pop up, or when I watch that line on the graph of visitor numbers curling slowly upwards. In the scheme of things, and in the context of the world wide web, it’s tiny – we are still only talking about a few hundred people – but to me, it’s huge. I have a voice.

I’m finding it really hard to put into words how much oomph your feedback and words of encouragement have given me over the last month – those of you who have followed my posts from the beginning (ish) will already know that I don’t go near the scales if I can help it, but despite the best efforts of the asshole, I haven’t come anywhere near to the danger zone, so I’m on track and enjoying the journey – your company is helping me big time. 

So thank you – if you love the blog, share the hell out of it, tell your friends, and get them to tell their friends…the bigger the posse, the faster my asshole will retreat. Eww, *screws face up* I didn’t quite mean that the way it sounded. But then you knew that 🙂

 

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Shall We Talk Shoes?

Freeform thoughts, Reflections on past times, , ,

LBs

I watched a documentary the other night about Christian Louboutin and it got me thinking. I do quite miss wearing heels although I’ve got to be honest I’ve never worn the kind of towering creations dreamed up by the likes of him…he doesn’t make shoes for fat girls. His perspective on shoes for those of you who didn’t see the documentary, is that the first thing a woman does when she puts on a pair of heels is to look in the mirror, and check out her own ass. The expectation being that the heels make your ass look spectacular.

Now forgive me being sceptical but it’s going to take more than a pair of heels to justify the use of the word ‘spectacular’ in association with my ass. They’re going to do what? Make it look more curvy..? Yeah cos that’s exactly what I need. Make me a pair of shoes that make it look like I dropped 5 dress sizes and I’ll squeeze my pasty feet into them all day long but till then, red soles or not you can just jog on thanks.

I did once order a gorgeous pair of boots from Jimmy Choo. I should explain, I’m all about the bags – shoes have never really been my thing – and I’d been on-line scouring the January sale to see if they had any nice bags up for grabs when these boots caught my eye. They were flatties, beautiful nude colour suede, lined with sheepskin and utterly gorgeous. Highly impractical, one rain shower or puddle would have ruined them but I talked myself through all the possible scenarios where carefully planned climate-controlled outings would allow me to show them off. I had a YOLO moment (you only live once!) and thought sod it, sod the expense, they’ve got my name all over them.

On the day they were delivered the whole experience was awesome…a box in a box in a box, wrapped with tissue paper and sprinkled with fairy dust (ok I’m lying about the fairy dust) and it was all going so well until I tried them on. Tried one of them on…it was at this point I realised that fancy designers didn’t make fancy shoes for fat feet. I thought I’d been really clever ordering one and a half sizes bigger than normal (*taps head*, up here for thinking, down there for dancing) but no sooner had my big toe passed the sheepskin tongue it became very clear that Houston had a problem. Like a bona fide ugly sister, no way was my foot going to fit into that boot. Not even close. With great sadness and not a small amount of attitude I stuffed them back into their perfect box and sent them back.

I can’t wear heels. There comes a point on the scale of fatness where it’s just not possible – if you’re in the fat club you’ll know what I mean – so for now I’m limited to flatties for fatties. I did manage to score a gorgeous pair of Chanel flip flops this summer, and I’d like to think that Coco Chanel in all her tiny perfection would have derived a certain amount of satisfaction from knowing that the shoe people at Chanel had succeeded where others had failed in making at least one pair of fat feet feel fabulous.

They didn’t do much for my ass though, in case you were wondering 🙂

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Stepping over the Gauntlet

Biggest struggles, In the here & now, , ,

Listen Vs. Ignore - Toggle Switch

So I might have mentioned that the asshole in my head has been biding his time just recently, hanging back a bit you know, to see how this writing malarkey was going to work out for me. Up until yesterday it must have been a clear week or so since he rattled his chains, but I knew it was too good to last…he jumped out and said BOO twice yesterday in a carefully thought out pincer movement. His first attempt was in the supermarket on my way home from work. He’s delivered a few killer blows there in the past when I’ve gone food shopping on an empty stomach – never a good idea.

I think he was just trying his luck to be honest and I didn’t cave, although to anyone who happened to be paying attention, it may have looked like I was actually having a row with a bag of cashew nuts in aisle four.  I’d like to think my lips don’t move when he goes into attack mode, although I’m generally too busy digging in for the fight to pay much attention to what my face is doing. Still, I’m teetering on the edge of the age where eccentricity is pretty much par for the course, so if anyone noticed they were too polite to stare.

The fun really started after tea when I logged into my blog, read and replied to a couple of messages and then settled down to write some words. I was basking in the glow of some lovely feedback from one of my close friends who knows I’m writing this – hardly anybody does – and I was feeling great, but for the very first time, no words came out.

Now, bear in mind I’m a fat girl who likes to write, not a writer who happens to be fat, so I was a bit stumped. I don’t have a strategy, or any kind of experience to draw on to overcome writer’s block. Someone told me when I started posting every day to prepare myself for times when every word would need to be pulled kicking and screaming from my head and to just accept that sometimes it would happen, but I was arrogant enough to believe it wouldn’t happen to me – I’m rarely stuck for words.

The longer I stared at my fingers, the emptier my head seemed to get. And then out of nowhere, BAM there he was, my very own asshole with his shiny new strategy – forget commenting on her appearance, that’s so yesterday…throw the gauntlet down, go in for the kill and just make her feel stupid.  Ruin her mood and she might go in search of cake…that’s what normally happens.

“Hahahahaha…the blog’s history, you’ve blown it!  It was rubbish anyway…don’t kid yourself anyone’s interested in it, those visitors you had, they probably just clicked on the wrong link. As IF anyone’s interested in what you have to say anyway – go and make a cup of tea and eat some cake, it’s all going to go wrong now so you might as well just get it over with – told you, you’re just not good enough…three weeks in and you’re washed up, how pathetic…on the skids before you’ve even got started. Empty head, empty head ha ha you suck at this”…and on, and on, and on.

Honestly?  I started to really doubt myself – I felt like crap. But all the lovely things my friend had said about the blog earlier in the evening somehow cut through all his bullshit, and I managed to ignore him. And I continued ignoring him until he got bored and crawled back into his corner. So the scores on yesterday’s doors, Me: 2 – Asshole: 0.

I still couldn’t find any words, and I’ve gotta be honest that did freak me out a bit…fortunately I’d got a couple of posts in reserve so I was able to use one of them, and I’m very relieved to report that today the words seem to have got un-stuck again.  As for the asshole…it feels like I’m really starting to get the upper hand.  One day at a time  🙂

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Feast or famine

In the here & now, Reflections on past times, , ,

yo-yo-dieting

Over the years I’ve probably tried every diet going. All the usual suspects – the ones where you rock up to fat class once a week, pay your subs and hop on the scales, then sit down for ‘the talk’ – some of them were quite good and the diets do work if you stick to them. The meal plans are flexible, it’s normal food, yadder yadder yadder…it’s just a bloody long slog when you have lots to lose.

And yes I know, I’m looking at it all wrong. The long game gets you into a healthy eating pattern, it’s habit forming, you learn about nutrition, get support…I get it. Only I never really did get it. I always got so far, then got stuck. Bored, impatient, call it whatever you like but sooner or later the asshole would get a lucky strike and BAM I’d come tumbling out of the naughty tree, hitting every branch on the way down. And that’d be it, goodnight Vienna, out of the game. Shackles off, bring on the buns.

Same thing with the other diets I’ve tried. I’ve existed on packs of space dust and hermetically sealed ping meals delivered to my door every week for weeks on end –  2 minutes in the microwave guaranteed to produce a tasty portion-controlled meal. Some of them were actually ok, but then considering I practically had to re-mortgage my house for portions that wouldn’t look out of place on the sodding yellow brick road, they ought to be.

Again with the boredom though…I rarely managed to see it through. The one thing I’ve never considered is weight loss surgery, because I recognise that the problem is 100% in my head. I’d be the one liquidising mars bars or finding new ways to drink fish and chips through a straw if my stomach was the size of a thimble.

Some of the diets I’ve tried have dipped into the psychology of weight loss – the liquid diet in particular came with a big element of homework and group therapy. I found it fascinating and it really did work. For a while. Mainly down to the speed of loss I think, I didn’t have time to be bored, in fact it was exhilarating. I wish I could do it again but I gag at the thought of that chalky soup now.

I guess where I’m going with this, is that despite understanding the concept of a balanced diet, the science of expending more energy than you take in if you want to lose weight and even the psychology behind identifying the triggers which set me off, I’ve spent practically my whole adult life either losing the weight, or putting it back on again. I’ve probably lost and gained around 1000lbs or more over the last 30 years. It seems knowledge isn’t power after all.

How many cycles of despair, followed by determination, hope, success, celebration, pride, self-destruct and back to despair can one girl go through in one lifetime? Lots – the answer is lots. When I hit that sweet spot, and I’m in the zone, life is good. When I’m not, I binge. For me, there’s never been a middle ground. I really want it to be different this time…to coin a phrase, I’m too old for this shit.

So anyway, just to manage your expectations…when I reach the end goal, if my victory dance is done with a donut in my left hand don’t be too surprised, and I hope you’re in this for the long haul because when I get to where I want to be, well that’s when I’m going to really going to need my support network to help me stay there 🙂

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