Golden Sponge Cake with Creamy Filling

Contrary to popular belief, I (as a fat person) do not stuff Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho-Hos or other snack cakes into my mouth 24-7. I do not eat all of my meals inside of a car (I don't even have one).  I eat McDonalds once every few months (what is it with their fries?).  I used to be a vegetarian (on a bet) and still don't eat much meat.  I do not wrap everything I eat in bacon, cover everything in sugar, or deep fry normally healthy things in oil just to get a crispy outside.

And yet, here I am.  Obese (30.98 BMI -- not too far from just being "overweight"). My cholesterol, insulin, and blood pressure are at all normal levels.

I resent the assumption or stereotype that fat people eat badly. Sure, some do.  But my eating badly only accounts for maybe about 10-20% of my calories. What does me in is usually alcohol (and the subsequent barfood) and portion size.  I'd like to address the latter here.

My brother would agree that I'm being very fair when I say that my parents were not the healthiest people when it came to food.  My mom ate to little and my father ate too much.  As a baby I was a very picky eater and they often struggled to get me to eat.   As I aged, I complied with my parents'  "clean your plate" thinking.  My parents were never the kind of parents that wanted to play with their kids and/or exercise with them. 

But I think the biggest problem I had, and the thing I've had to struggle with most is that after my mother died, I was living with two men, and often eating the same portion sizes as them.  If my brother (who was 17 months older than I was) ate 2 slices of pizza, so did I.  If my father ate 4 Oreos, so did I. Et cetera and so on. You can see the problem, right?  A teenage girl does not have the same metabolism as a teenage boy, or a 40 y/o male.

Even now, I find that I can eat just as much as the boys, and I shouldn't.  I just have no idea where one goes at almost 30 to learn how to eat like a woman that wants to be thin (other than magazines that often offer up contradictory and/or fad advice).  I know this is something I'm going to have to figure out for myself (armed with information like my Basal Metabolic Rate/Harris Benedict Equation Rate), but there is a part of me that wants to go off to some fat camp and/or etiquette school to learn how to act like a woman around food rather than some caveman.

4 comments

I'm learning it now with Weight Watchers. You can even eat chocolate, but in small portions. Even the kids were amazed the other day, when they saw the small portion of spaghetti I was eating, and yet I had enough. I could easily eat double that portion, but it did the trick for me. Have you tried WW yet? Healthy, very varied, and it's teaching me to look differently at food. Though it's hard sometimes.

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I don't think weight watchers is for me -- but I am going to be counting calories -- that will be for a future post to discuss.

I think these Portion Distortion Quizzes are quite interesting.

My plan is thus:

1. to switch over my diet -- and get cooking for 1 again ("getting in the mood for food" stage), with an attention to quality over quantity

2. Meal planning stage -- where start getting creative about ingredients and keeping my interest up, attention goes to quantity (with volumetrics in mind) and quality

3. Meal planning with calories in mind -- where I figure out the correct portion sizes for meals based on caloric intake (as well as caloric expenditures), attention goes to quality and quantity (moving away from volumetrics and going more towards Michael Pollan's view of Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.

4. And hopefully after all of this, I will have reprogrammed my brain to be able to recognize correct portion sizes and the right foods for me so that I won't have to plan as much, but be able to create meals and/or go out for meals without the fear of ruining my diet.

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I am in the same boat. Volume wise, I can out eat my husband who is a boy and a foot taller than I am ... not good. I think I have said this before, because I love it, and if that is the case ignore this.. but to really learn how to eat, and what is good and do it in a completely healthy way, I use Sparkpeople.com. It's been an amazing journey so far. 11lbs down!

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Well I have something in the works right now -- and I don't want to have competing Web sites. I'll tell all in a little bit.

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<3 Robby