FatGirl vs World

I haven't been writing in any of my blogs lately (personal or public) and the result is that my head feels a bit out of sorts.  That being said, lots has been bouncing around in my skull.

So in list form:

1.  The thing I've been dying to talk about is a little... well... gross.  But I just wanted to say that one reason everyone should run is that the post-run bowel movement is just about the best thing on this world.  I mean, you can run and sweat and feel like you've done something good for yourself, but it's not until you've gone to the bathroom that you truly feel a weight lifted.  Just sayin.... Oh man, I've been dying to say that for a few weeks.  I know, I'm disgusting and uncouth, but I promised you all I'd be truthful in this space. And well... I know there's more than one person out there that will agree with me.

2.  I've been plateaued for the past few weeks and it's frustrating.  The one thing I need to keep in mind is that I might be gaining muscle and losing fat -- and that the weight difference can make it look like a plateau.  I know my body is changing.  More importantly, I know my mind is changing. 

3.  I also know that this past weekend was a gastric bomb that went off in my meal plan.  Nothing I ate was too bad, and (drumroll please...I didn't get drunk on my birthday; just had 2 beers post-kayaking, 3 drinks at my birthday dinner, and a glass of champagne at the bar.... with tons of water inbetween).  I just ate more than I normally ate, and boy was it nommy! 

4.  And I'm wondering if this will end up having a positive effect on the plateau.  I might've gained some weight with all the eating and my body is like "Whoa! We have calories to burn! Let's go Robby!"  And it'll help me make my way down the scale.  If not, I need to tweak what I'm doing (incuding do something drastic like learning Zumba (I dance like a epileptic newborn deer).

5.  Running on the elliptical has a tendency to be boring.  I wish my back wasn't so craptastic and I could run outside, especially as we move into beautiful fall weather.

6.  I've done something I didn't want to do.  I've had to create lists of "favorites" on Twitter (451 followers) gReader (140 blogs!) and Facebook (379 friends).   This is on top of my personal blog followers and person Facebook friends (colleagues, friends, family).  I feel bad because I think everyone deserves my attention, but at some point it just got to be overwhelming.  So please don't take offense if I'm not reponding to every post.  I'm happy when you lose X lbs.  I'm sorry when you gain Y lbs.  I'm elated when you're eating well.  I'm understanding if you've had a slip up.  I assure you that I'm reading them -- just not always commenting.  If you need to reach me personally, please do! I'm always available if you need support or information!

I'm sorry I've been absent in your lives...

I spent the weekend turning a year older, killing a phone, kayaking a river, eating LOTS of amazing food, and really just feeling loved and celebrated. 

I am sorry if I don't get caught up on blogs as fast as I hope, but do know that I am thinking of you all....

So Sunday was my birthday.  One of my BFFs, Emily (who called me called me "Skinny" when we first saw each other (we haven't seen each other in months) and totally made my weekend!!) came to visit me.

Myself, Emily, my brother, and two friends from college went kayaking around the Potomac River.  So much fun!!

After that we went to a bar and had some drinks and some food (I had turkey sliders and 2 Abita Purple Haze beers).  Then we went to my casa to get ready for dinner.  We (myself, emily, my brother, his girlfriend Gina, my friend Evan, my coworkers Blake and Jen) went to Cafe St. Ex.  Evan, Emily and I then finished off the night with wine at Cork.

All-in-all it was a perfect day (excepting ruining my cell phone and making it hard for people to figure out where in the itinerary we were, despite staying pretty much on target!).

Today, Emily and I went to get manicures/pedicures, get some fantastic food at Farmers & Fishers, do a little shopping at H&M, visit our friend's name on the National Law Enforcement Memorial, get some froyo, jump in the pool and then return Emily to the bus that would take her home.

I then went and had drinks/dinner with friends at a bar.

I spent a whole weekend not caring about calorie counts (but I kept my activity level up) knowing full well that tomorrow morning, I go nose to the grindstone.


[[EDIT:  How's this for the cutest birthday greeting EVER!?!?!]]

Sooo...

We all know it's important to plan a rest day once or twice a week into your gym schedule (you're going to one, right?) to allow your body to recover.

Ann Taylor Loft size medium shirt
Ann Taylor Loft size 12 skirt (and it was LOOSE!!)

First things first -- thank you to everyone who helped calm me down after the Great Cookie Meltdown of 2010.  After all of that, I went to the gym this morning as planned and ran 8k on the elliptical (on a 10/8, 4/1 crossramp/resistance interval program) in 58 minutes.  I came home and was down .4 lbs.  Who knows what that could be from but at least mentally I know I didn't gain 10 lbs, I didn't undo my progress.  I'm just absolutely mental about everything.  But I'm so incredibly thankful to have my friends who know what it's like.  You all know that it wasn't the cookies (it could have been anything) but it was the panic of undoing my progress, of being the fat girl once again and for ever more.

One person's comment inspired a post, actually.  Shakespeare famously wrote about the Seven Stages of Man.  I wondered what Shakespeare would have writen about all the stages of a woman's body.  If you think about it, our bodies go through radical changes (youth, adolescence, puberty, child-bearing age, maturity, menopause), sometimes so fast that our minds don't even notice the change.  And I think, to a point, we're not encouraged to honor and celibrate those changes.

I'm thinking about the comment, and the friend, and the radical change her body is going through right now.  She's jealous of my body, but for as much as I'm not sure as to whether I want to be a mother, I would love to be pregnant.  Her body is a beautiful factory for new life.  That's something I'm in absolute awe of ((not to mention her two sons are GORGEOUS little boys)).

Celebrities have personal trainers to help them get off the baby weight, but everyone else is left to their own devices.  New moms are told by magazines how to lose the baby weight quickly and get their figure back.  I find that to be a shame.  There's nothing more beautiful and poignant in the world than not just a pregnant woman but a mother and how her body gives her child life from conception to weaning.

I'm reminded of what my mom said about our bodies -- that our bodies were designed to be strong because of the necessities of pregnancy and motherhood.  So too our bodies (and minds) are strong to deal with everything else life has to throw at us.  We just need to open up our minds and hearts to the possibilities that we are stronger than we give ourselves credit for.

[[Addendum:  do I even need to tell you all how many times someone has thought I was pregnant -- asked me how far along I am, whether it's a boy or a girl, if it's my first....]]

I ate 750 calories worth of peanut butter cookies as a post-lunch snack.

That lunch? Two slices of Lestina pizza from Bertucci's ("An explosion of Mediterranean flavors - prime white mushrooms, Romano cheese, fresh rosemary and sage, sun-dried tomatoes, sweet roasted garlic and fresh mozzarella"). And yes, they were nommy.  I ate the hell out of the sweet roasted garlic.  Wanna kiss?

Once I figured out the caloric count a single cookie and then multiplied it by the 5 cookies I had, I went into a sheer panic. 




Fat Robby (cousin to Bad Wayne?) took the helm.  She hit me with every judgment and criticism possible about how Good Robby was failing, how Good Robby would never win, how Good Robby just didn't get it.  Fat Robby said "why not eat the whole box, might as well go all the way!" 

I ran this morning (burned 650 calories) and I had just undone all that work with mindless eating. 
A conveyor belt from the box (that I had begged my friend not to bring to me, that his wife baked) to my mouth.   I farmed the cookies off to my office crush just in time for him to tell me he was engaged. 

Luckily for me at a time when I most wanted to cram my mouth full of food (1) I had just given it away and (2) I was already disgusted with the feeding frenzy and (3) was a bit too busy feeling sorry for my single ass (while my coworker reminded me that he was allergic to cats and thus it would never work out).

So my dear readers, I keep on proving my humanity over and over again. 

I was going to go BACK to the gym to run some more... but as I was leaving my desk, I had an epiphany-- that if these cookies, and eating them, sent me into such a downward spiral, that exercising was just putting a Bandaid over the problem, not addressing it head on.  I came home and cleaned my apt a bit while waiting for my dad's call (helping him once again understand his BodyMedia Fit). 

So what was the problem?  There are certain foods that I just can't be trusted with right now as I can't be moderate or non-judgmental about it.  That will require some practice.  I'm still not out of the woods yet.  Trusting myself to be neutral towards food is something my dietitian and I have had the biggest challenge over.  But I'll understand it one day.


Luckily I have some great friends on Twitter who helped buoy me up: 

"YOU ARE OK. Breathe. Your cookies did NOT make you undo all your hard work. Realize that :) ...  Don't be defined by the cookies you ate on ONE day in ONE year. It isn't every day, for the rest of your life. Got it? GOOD."

(yah, i just had to do that in haiku)

Disclaimer:  the following rant does not apply to men who love women regardless of their body size, not in spite of or because of.  This is for men that love a woman's wit, personality, charm, intelligence, grace, and style in whatever vessel those traits come in.

Evolutionarily speaking, men should be attracted to women with fat on their bodies (breasts, hips especially), as it signals to them that the woman is healthy enough to carry a child and nurse that child.  However, because medicine, science, and economics play a stronger hand in the health and well-being of a child than ever before, those signals are not as important.

The result is that society often dictates to men (and women) what is attractive.  Instead of health and well-being being attractive, attractiveness is mainly judged by aesthetics now.  Media has been telling men what they should feel is sexy in various cycles that waiver between Flappers and burlesque, Twiggy and Tyra.  I'd even go so far as to say that media, society, and peer pressure are overriding what many men feel is attractive to them.  In other words, they might innately feel attracted to a curvier woman, but they don't want to be judged as unsuccessful because they can't attract a lithe model-like woman (I hope you're thinking about the movie American Psycho and the business cards...).  And as anecdotal evidence -- I know so many men that prefer to have sex with a woman with "a little something extra" versus a thin girl (and again, this is purely aesthetics, nothing about personality) but they won't date the girl with junk in the trunk.

Enter people like Kate Winselt and Christina Hendricks.  Christina Hendricks is a size 14.  Yep. Size 14. (Same size I am, different measurements-- she is 36-32-36).  And she is a bona fide sex symbol.  She didn't need to appear on the cover of New York to give men permission to lust for her, she gave it to them herself:

"All those times I had agents who were like, 'You have to lose some weight,' and all of a sudden, people are celebrating it," she told Health. "It's like: 'Oh, thank you! Thank you for letting me be me.'"

"I was having cappuccinos every day!" she told the magazine. "I would take my clothes off in front of the mirror and be like, 'Oh, I look like a woman.' And I felt beautiful, and I never tried to lose it, 'cause I loved it."

So this post is going to act as a few things:
1.  Kudos to the women who feel comfortable in the skin.  Your sexiness is undeniable.

2.  Kudos to those (friends, lovers, admirers, photographers, artists, etc.) who love women who are comfortable in their skin. 

3.  My empathy for any and all women (and men) who do not feel comfortable in their skin.  I hope you find the joy of your body soon.  You are beautiful just as you are.

4. And a huge FUCK YOU to anyone who tries to put me or anyone else down for loving the body they have.  No matter your size, you have the abilty to love your body.  Do yourself a favor and be generous to yourself.

Jess at Half of Jess wrote today about her highest weight and lowest point. She ends her post asking:

What was your lowest point?
What made you decide to change your life?

Oddly enough I don't remember too much about my highest weight, at least in terms of how it affected me emotionally.  I know I was unhappy, but it was never the depth of how far I could be depressed.  Losing my mom held that place solidly.

But I have two lowest points -- one was physical and the other was emotional.

Emotionally, it was realizing that a guy was okay with using me for sex (and I was okay with letting him) but was not okay to actually date me and have a relationship with me.  I was an embarrassment of sorts.  That realization made me quite sad for myself, and made me wonder if I was selling myself short.  This lead to the great celibacy pledge of 2006, which has continued in 2007, 2008, 2009 and into 2010.  It's not what lead me to want to change physically, but it was what gave me a backbone...

...which leads me to my lowest point physically, which was emotionally very trying and physically exhausting. 

Imagine being at work, in the bathroom, and unable to get up from the toilet.  Being able to sit was hard enough, but getting up...my back was not having any of it.  Now I know I've talked about my back injury before, but I haven't really explained it.  The long of the short of it is:

• 1997:  in high school gym a linebacker body checked me into a wall accidentally
• Feb 1999:  in college, I got up from a lab table, and couldn't stand up; orthopedist asked me if i had too much rough sex (was a virgin)
• 2006: (Aug.) started experiencing sciatica; doctor told me to lose weight and get stronger core muscles; (Sept.) did physical therapy; (Oct.) joined a gym, got a trainer
• March 2007:  Went to concert where I was pulled down in audience, landed awkwardly on someone’s foot and equipment, and had seven people fall on me; MRI shows annular tears, bulging discs in L3-L4, L4-L5, and L5-S1; no exercise allowed
• Turns out that not only did I have a traumatic injury (they could also see where my tailbone was fractured from a freak accident in 1993) but I also had the familial (my mom had a very bad back) genetic degenerative disc disease.  In other words, my spine was aging faster than I was. 

For the next three months, I wasn't able to stand up straight.

I developed plantar fasciitis in both feet. I needed Valium and Vicodin to sleep. I was hobbling home every day from work in pain, shoving ice packs down the back of my pants the minute I got through the door.  During this time I did two rounds of epidural steroids that left my body weak.  I put on some weight from (1) not being able to move and (2) the horrible depression that comes with feeling like a 60 y/o in a 26 y/o body.

I think worst of all was when my friends didn't quite grasp what I was going through.  I think most people thought it was like having sore muscles.  Few people realized that just about everything I did caused pain -- from sleeping, to sitting in a chair, to washing dishes at the sink, to carrying home groceries.  Fewer people offered to help, and I wasn't at the point where I knew how to ask.

I still go through periods of time where either my back hurts me or because of my back the mechanics of another body part are off (such as my knee). But it's because of this injury, I know just how tough I am.  I have the resolve of a Spartan.  My mom dealt with the pain of her bad back by drinking, but I knew I wouldn't go the same route.

But truly, the lowest point I had was wondering how the hell I was going to get out of that bathroom stall.  Would I need someone to come under the door, unlock the stall, and pull me up (along with my pants).  Would it be a friend or someone random?  Would I have to go through this every day?  I just sat there and cried -- out of pain, out of embarrassment, and out of feeling helpless.

Now, you don't really rebound from a low point like that in a normal way.  You take a deep breath and realize that (1) any day you're walking is a good one (2) that a spinal fusion could be lurking around any corner and (3) given both of those things, might as well take advantage of the good days you can walk and try to run.

It's cute and funny when a thin, pretty woman is injured and needs help getting out of the bathroom.
It's not as funny when it's the obese woman.

Who would ever want a broken woman?

I remember being at the Museum of Natural History, taking a class with Dr. Douglas Ubelaker when he was trying to illustrate a very important point -- we could use our formulas to determine what "race" a certain set of bones belonged to (I put "race" in quotes because it's archaic terminology that isn't accurate in describing ethnicity) but while our data might lead us to one set of conclusions, the reality of the situation might be different.  In other words, the amount of variation within any one "race" was greater than the variation between the "races":  we have more in common than meets the eye.

You might be thinking "what the heck does this have to do with weightloss/health gain."  Well, remember last month I posted a blog about jealousy and making assumptions?  Well a conversation I had today really drove this point home.  A coworker of mine is a beautiful woman, who wears probably a size 4, is french, and tall and lean.  We were at the gym together tonight and we got to talking about what we were trying to accomplish (she wants to lose the weight she added on in America, and I guess I could say the same).  She had gained 12lbs in the 4 months she's been here! I had no idea where she hid it!

I was surprised when she brought up the subject of emotional eating, or eating out of boredom.  I kinda did a double take.  This beautiful thin woman had the same issues I have.  She talked about her love and lust for ice cream and cookies.  She talked about her frustration of not being able to find fresh fruits and vegetables for lunch.  She talked about how food is omnipresent in our lives -- we can't escape the sights and smells of food.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  And I scolded myself a little bit for not thinking that she too could have the same weaknesses as I did.

But bless her heart.  We were trying to convert pounds to kilograms and I said that I weigh around 195lbs (I looked it up, I am actually 88 kg--so yay me for having a grasp on math!!) and she said in her cute french accent "Zat eez not pozzible!"  She thought I weighed 80kg or so, or 176 lbs.  So yeah, she's my new best friend.  Sorry Emily.  Sorry Nancy.

1. I did NOT reach my July goal of getting to 190.  I'm kinda hanging around 195.  I know this is, in part, due to gaining muscle, so I'm not too freaked out by it. 

2. But I am still getting my "reward" of a mini-vacation to NYC because I have to be up there for parties on Aug. 21 and Aug. 28, and my dad's birthday is Aug. 22,  so I'm just going to stay up there the week in-between.  I figure the "punishment" is having Emily kick my ass a bit.

3. My amazing friend, Tara, is doing the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team in Training.  Help her reach her $1800 fundraising goal!

4.  Every year I get an amazing gift for my birthday:  Shark Week!  In honor of Shark Week, remember to be fearless, graceful, and to chew your food really well.

5.  Yeah, I turn 29 in a week.  I weigh less now than I did at 19.  Ain't that a headscratcher?  As I get older there are fewer things I want for my birthday.  As simple as it seems, all I really want is a day where I don't have to worry about everyone else.  I don't want to have to coordinate anything, I don't want to worry about anyone else's dietary preferences/needs.  I just want to do my thing.  Part of this is because I get depressed every year around my birthday as well as bad things happening around my birthday.  If I could go a year where I don't get dumped, my leg isn't in a cast, it's actually remembered, no one shows signs of terminal illnesses, or there are no fights, I'll be happy.

6.  Please, if I'm not following your blog and should be, please let me know.  Between Blogger, Facebook, and Twitter, there are a lot of people to be keeping track of!

---

Isn't Phoenix handsome?? He's a really good guy that loves a thorough belly rub.  I mean, who doesn't? He's currently being fostered, but contact the Washington Animal Rescue League if you're interested in this lovebug, or if you want to make a donation (money donations or from their wish list).  I know we're also running low on slip leads.

Phoenix
Breed: Labrador Retriever Mix
Canine-ality^tm: Goofball
Age: Adult   Size: Large

Phoenix is an 8-year-old Lab Mix. Phoenix and his brother were surrendered to the League when their owner moved somewhere that did not allow pets. He is a very sweet boy, who loves to romp and play. Phoenix has always lived with another dog, so we'd like to send him home with a calm canine companion.