Category Archives: Freeform thoughts

The armchair dilemma

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now

chair

It’s interesting you know, when you’ve existed at both ends of the size spectrum. I’ve probably got deeper insight than most into things you never even think about as an average Joe, but which you become really preoccupied with when you’re the size of a moose. Let’s talk about chairs as one example – you’ll either completely get this, or you’ll think I’ve lost the plot depending on where you sit (pardon the pun) on the size continuum.

In our living room, we have the world’s best chair. It’s a big fat leather electric recliner, and the only effort required in terms of getting comfy is planting your butt and pressing the button. The footrest rises, the back lowers and your whole body is cradled in a cocoon of soft padded leather. It’s one of the favourite parts of my day, that moment when I can climb into my PJs and melt into that chair. Many happy hours have been spent in that very chair watching ‘The Biggest Loser’ whilst eating cheesy balls but let’s not go there, that’s all in the past now.

The thing I love most of all about that chair is that I don’t have to think about how I’m going to get comfy, it just happens.  When you’re effectively the size of two people, deciding where to sit can be a bit traumatic. If you pick a low chair, you’re going to struggle to get out of it – sort of like a turtle on its back trying to turn over. Legs will flail, your belly will almost certainly get in the way as you try and hoist yourself out of it and you might need to rock back and forth a couple of times before you make it to your feet. Usually a sound like “OOOF” escapes without you intending it to. Whatever method of extraction works for you, trust me it won’t be elegant. Pick a chair that’s too high, and you somehow feel…I don’t know, exposed? You feel too visible, like there’s too much of you on show.

Just out of interest, how do you sit in your chair? Legs crossed? I can’t do that. No fat person can…when you have so much padding on your thighs, the mechanics of crossing your legs just don’t work. If you manage to get one leg over the other in the first place it immediately sort of jumps off again of its own accord. It’s like folding a piece of paper in half and half again more than 8 times, it just can’t be done. Maybe you’re a ‘legs curled up underneath you’ kind of girl? I can’t do that either, or at least not for more than about 2 minutes. I get cramp, and it makes my feet tingle, I’m guessing because the pressure of everything being folded up is kind of like building a dam in my circulation.

Strange thing is, you get used to stuff like this being the norm. It becomes the wallpaper of your life but I tell you what, writing it down actually brings it into much sharper focus – how ridiculous that I would have to expend energy worrying about whether there’s going to be something I can sit on comfortably wherever it is I’m going.

It’s another light bulb moment to push me forward 🙂

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Quack advice

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now

advice

I’ve probably spent enough time over the last few days poking fun at some of the things that I personally don’t find that helpful when I’m having a crisis of confidence, or when I’m clinging onto the last vestige of willpower by my fingernails and feeling powerless to stop the sad demise of yet another attempt to lose weight. It helps to laugh at it all but you know what, I’m here to tell you that when you can’t see a way out of being anything but the size of a bouncy castle it’s kind of your default position to feel like nobody understands. And when there’s a list of jazz-hands solutions which appear to work for everyone in the world except you, it just serves to make you feel even more isolated.

I think I’m pre-programmed to feel irritated by a lot of it, especially when it’s written by an airbrushed skinny girl, glowing with health and looking for all the world like she just stepped off the cover of vogue, munching on celery sticks and drinking a tall glass of iced water as she poses in her yoga pants. I get it, of course I do…it’s just marketing. “Ta daa…do this, and you can look like me!!” Regardless, unless the photo is captioned with ‘Former sumo wrestler Fanny…’ it gets right on my last good nerve.

I’m far more likely to sit up and take notice of someone who looks like they’ve been around the block a bit, because with the best will in the world even my fairy godmother isn’t going to be able to make me look like that girl. Show me a girl of average proportions whose photo props suggest that she’s cracked it, but still knows her way around a doner kebab and I’d be all over that because she’s more likely to have the kind of advice I might be able to identify with.

So you already know I’m in a good place at the moment, right? I wouldn’t say I’m loving the diet –I’d rather be able to eat anything I wanted in man-sized portions, with seconds (and pudding) but I can’t if I don’t want to carry on looking like this. And I really don’t. I have to keep pinching myself at the fact that for now, I’m not finding it difficult. I’m not fighting with myself every day. I haven’t fallen off the wagon, and I haven’t really been tempted to, which is a minor miracle in itself.

I think it might be something to do with the power of words – I’m really enjoying the process of writing down my thoughts. Apologies to anyone who happens to be reading this if you feel that I’m cheating you out of drama! I’ve not had to wrestle yet with the asshole who sometimes lives inside my head (I’m sure you’ll make his acquaintance at some point) and I haven’t had to overcome any impressive obstacles. I’m fairly certain that all that will follow at some point but for now I really appreciate your company…you’re helping, so thank you.

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Motivation theory (Part 3)

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

bunnyI’m warming to the theme now – it’s a funny thing isn’t it, motivation – what works for some won’t work for others, and actually over the years I have found a few things which I will  arrange in my toolkit to be wheeled out when I need to turbo charge my willpower or find a bit of added oomph. And I will talk about them on here at some point, I promise. Just indulge me one more post though, in taking the piss out of the ideas which (in my humble opinion) have clearly been cobbled together by someone who has probably never even sported a muffin top.

So, the next nugget of wisdom was to join a gym class and pay for loads of sessions up front – that way, you’re bound to attend because otherwise you’ll have wasted your money. Kind of like a psychological contract. Genius idea that.  Let’s have a pop quiz. Do you think this suggestion came from

a) a gym bunny, or

b) an exercise dodger.

Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Come on, I’ve been there. On Monday, I start the diet, I’m brimming over with enthusiasm, this time it’s going to work. I know, I’ll even take an exercise class, in fact look, it works out cheaper to pay for six. Tuesday I go to the first class. Wednesday I can’t move. Thursday I can move a little bit and comfort-eat my way through the pain (because after all, even factoring in the 45 minutes I spent wheezing on the sidelines I must have burned off at least, ooh 3000 calories in the step class which almost killed me , so actually it cancels itself out) and then it’s Friday, which is the weekend and we all know that weekends are about pleasure not pain, so I’ll go back for my second class next week when I’m bound to feel a bit better.  The diet’s gone to shit anyway so I may as well have the weekend off and I’ll start again on Monday.

No, hang on, I can’t start my diet on Monday, I’ve got a works’ do a week on Saturday and that’ll ruin all my hard work, so I may as well start my diet two weeks on Monday so I can have a good run at it. In the meantime, pass me the cake  because when I start my diet I won’t be able to have any of that. And look, there’s no point in going back to the gym class until I’m dieting, that’d be a complete waste of money, everyone knows diet and exercise go together. Actually what I might do, is to diet for a few weeks and drop some weight, and then go back to the exercise class. It wouldn’t hurt as much if I was skinny. Yes that’s what I’ll do. I’ll definitely go back though.

And repeat. I think you get the picture. That’s the psyche of a fat girl – sorry, I shouldn’t generalise, that’s the psyche of this fat girl. I know it’s not logical on any level whatsoever, but then addicts will say and do anything to convince everyone – including themselves – that they’re in control, they’re on it, in fact they’re all over it.  Someone once told me that the definition of madness was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

This time, I’m trying something different…I have my blog 🙂

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Motivation theories (Part 2)

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now

Massage_room

So lets assume then that I’m going to bypass the first 3 suggestions that we mooted yesterday – I think it’s best. Last time I looked there wasn’t a long line of eligible blokes beating a path to my door and in all honesty, having dipped in and out of the dating scene once or twice as both a skinny girl and a fat girl, I can tell you that a number of blokes for whom body shape isn’t too much of an issue tend to be a bit slack where their own personal grooming is concerned. Just because I have a big bum and bingo wings does not mean that it’s ok for them to go native with the nose and ear hair. And whilst we’re on the subject,  just because some ladies are scared of the word ‘fat’ and describe themselves as ‘curvy’ does not entitle blokes to stand on a box for their profile photo and describe themselves as tall.  What?? *innocent face* 🙂 I’m just sayin.

Anyway, I digress – lets save the dating stories for another time and place. We were talking about ideas to keep us motivated on our respective diets. The next suggestion on the list was to get a massage.  How lovely…can’t beat a good massage. But could I really relax on the massage table, when I’m carrying the equivalent of an extra person inside my one body? There are just too many things to worry about.

Lets start with the towel. For average sized people, the towel they provide to cover yourself with when you’ve doffed off and climbed onto the massage table probably looks like a big fluffy bath sheet.  To me, it would feel more like a flannel. What am I meant to cover up with that, seriously?  Left cheek? Right cheek? And the masseuse, what about them?  I can feel the flush of shame creeping up my face as I think about what would be going through their mind when they peeled away the flannel and uncovered acres of dimpled flesh, artfully draped in the peaks and valleys of the morbidly obese.

Yes I realise they’ve probably seen it all before but I’d want the ground to open and swallow me up. (Which to be fair, it very well might if they’ve gone for the budget option massage table.) I imagine them mentally calculating how much extra massage oil they’re going to need to order this month and wondering whether they can get away with charging extra. When my imagination really runs wild, I imagine them yelling across the salon “HOLD MY FEET, I’M GOING IN” as they rope in a colleague to mitigate the risk of getting swallowed up by my wobbly bits. So with all that going on in my head, how could I possibly relax?

At the risk of being terribly picky, whilst I’m all for a good pamper session I think I’ll cross out ‘massage’ and go for ‘facial’ instead.  There’s not quite so much to worry about.

 

 

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Motivation theories (Part 1)

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now

motivation

So I’m in that sweet spot right now – call it the honeymoon period, or whatever else you like but that shield that protects a girl from cake is fully locked and loaded, seriously, nothing’s getting through this bad boy. But I can’t take it for granted, you know? I’ve been here before – so many times – and it terrifies me that tomorrow, or the next day or the day after that, it will disappear like it never existed in the first place and you’ll find me in a corner somewhere looking sheepish, high on sugar having had a break and vaporised three kit-kat chunkys and a packet of hobnobs.

As a back-up plan, I thought it might be interesting to Google what motivates other people to lose weight, or should I say what keeps them motivated when they’re losing weight. The two things are of course completely different. I’ve often been motivated to lose weight when I’ve seen a dodgy photo of myself for example which couldn’t be explained away by poor lighting or a bad angle. But as the fresh horror of the photo fades, and you’ve un-tagged yourself from it on Facebook (or better still you’ve blackmailed/bribed/threatened the friend who posted it and made them remove it altogether), often so does the resolve to lose a few pounds. Keeping the motivation going when you’re past that first flush of willpower and the weight loss has settled down to slow and steady, is a different thing altogether.

Not surprisingly, there are a number of people who profess to be experts on that very topic, who are practically falling over themselves on Google to show you the way. Very helpfully they’ve even compiled lists of things which are sure fire winners.  Let’s look at the first suggestions that I came across shall we, you know, to just kind of kick a few ideas around a bit. Apparently, one great way to maintain your motivation is to have lots of sex.

So…I’m a single girl. Which immediately throws something of a spanner in the works. Sadly I don’t think I can include that one in my toolkit. I don’t fall out with the theory per se, but exactly who am I meant to be having lots of sex with? I know that allegedly a lot of blokes admire the fuller female form, but lets be honest, a) where the fuck are they all and b) generally speaking have you seen the type?  Enough said.

The second suggestion is to weigh yourself every day. I’m clear on this point- the scales are not my friend. Just this week they put a massive crimp in my Sunday, and I cannot face the prospect of starting every day with a big fat tony bear tantrum if they deliver bad news, so they don’t make it into my contingency plan either.

Number three on the list was to look in the mirror regularly – apparently fat people avoid mirrors? No shit Sherlock.

I think I need to do more research.

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