Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

No one wants to talk about it, but I think that many people look at fat women differently when they have a boyfriend or husband than when they are single.

Maybe that’s unfair (gross generalization, anyone?) but since becoming involved with my first boyfriend 2 years ago, at the age of 31, I have noticed a dramatic difference in the way others seem to view me. It’s almost as though I have achieved the societal stamp of approval. “Well, she’s fat…” they reason, “but at least she’s not unloveable.” Men at work, at church, on the subway, and elsewhere still avert their eyes when I am too friendly with them. I admit: sometimes I flirt with repairmen or waiters in order to get the job done. What I have noticed, though, is that the squirming ends as soon as I casually utter those magical words: “my boyfriend.”

As though the conversation has let out a sigh of relief, I am suddenly back to the real world. I am not unclean or untouchable. I am a person just like they are and, hey. I am probably not looking to them for fulfillment of my fat-girl fantasies. That’s what my poor boyfriend is for, right? And so, I get to feel normal. That’s sort of nice.

I like to think that this hasn’t contributed too much to the dynamics between him and me. We have what is probably one of the most sweet and silly, most caring, most careful and gentle relationships of all that I’ve known. He is wonderful and sensitive and unerringly honest. He is a good person and he genuinely loves me and what really seems to floor people is that he is kind of a knock-out. He’s average-sized, cute, and fit. He’s never dated anyone who looks like me before, but that hasn’t stopped him from throwing himself whole-heartedly into love with me. And, I love him.

For reasons that are beyond our control, however, it’s becoming clear that we need to separate. It’s been clear, honestly, for the past year. But, how do you break up with someone that you are still utterly in love with? How do you just walk away from the kind of sweet, affectionate relationship that everyone seems to be looking for? How can you reason that the uncertainties of the future are enough basis to end the realities of today?

And, yet.

There were many tears this weekend. Our respective dreams for the future do not align and so, it seems, we may be holding each other back. There are other things, of course, that are not quite right. But, the relationship itself is so solid that the ending of it — the painful, pitiful wrenching apart — has never yet felt worth it. It may not feel worth it now, either, but we are trying to separate.

And so. I will be returning to my role as the single fat girl. I resume my place in the order of things — and today I guess that feels like insult to broken-hearted injury.

Because he’s my first boyfriend, I’ve never had a break-up before.

This is awful.

Help.

At his request, I’ll be bringing my boyfriend home to meet my family this Christmas. I was surprised when he brought it up; on TV, the boyfriends always dread meeting the family and do so grudgingly. Also, on TV, there is a canned laughter track when the boyfriend disagrees with pop on politics and mom on religion and offers to milk the cat.

The man set about memorizing my family tree on our third date — and that’s when I knew he would be staying for a while. But, no amount of explaining to him what it’s like to be in a house with my 6 siblings, their spouses and children, dogs, neighbors, and a dozen other refugees of every stripe can dissuade him. He’s giddy with excitement.

No, my boyfriend isn’t perfect, but he’s wonderful. We’re going on a year and a half together now, and if it’s true that opposites attract, we could be the poster children for Making It Work. He’s content and I’m ambitious. He takes things easy and I just go go go. He is black and white and I am shades of gray. He is Mr. Abstinence while I struggle to delay my gratification in even the smallest of ways.

So, he finds it impossible to understand why I can’t just stop eating cookies.

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Dad is the one with diabetes. He was diagnosed about 10 years ago, and has since been promoted from mild sensitizing drugs to multiple insulin shots daily. He’s maybe 30-40 pounds overweight on his worst days.

BUT.

In his natural environment, my Dad does okay with eating well. He really likes vegetables (!!!) and so generally he’ll steam up asparagus or broccoli even when my mom makes a pasta/meat/bread/sweets spread for dinner. But, in my family of 9, he was generally the only one who would eat them.

He has a natural hunger switch, eats less than the rest of us, and quits when he’s done.

Dad also doesn’t mind walking across campus to mail a letter, or go to a meeting, or whatever else, even though campus is nearly a mile long. For a while, actually, he was doing a lot of walking and lost some weight on accident. He looked and felt great. He used to play basketball and, for a while in my childhood, would play raquetball on Saturdays.

But, Dad loves my mom. He loves her so much that he enables her in her inactivity. They both work at the same university, but he has a parking sticker which allows him access to all of the roads and lots on campus. He routinely picks her up and offers her door-to-door services for her campus errands. He has crafted a life for her which is virtually without effort. She buys the groceries, but he hefts them out of the car and carts them up and down the stairs to put them away. He does the laundry, which involves another round of up-and-down-stairs runs. He even protects her from her greatest enemy: cooking.

Who can blame her? She hates cooking. After feeding 7 hungry babies, who wouldn’t? Apparently, she has always hated cooking, but now she especially hates the exertion of it — the standing and bending and lifting and chopping — so they routinely eat out. She doesn’t like exotic foods or anything with too much spice (and won’t even add salt to the foods she makes because “it tastes so strong”) so she’s stuck with places like Tony Roma’s, Outback, Applebee’s, and her favorite — Sizzler.

Believe me, she’s not eating from the salad bar at those places.

I was telling RecordStoreRomeo about it this weekend. I had made a delicious panini from scratch, using whole wheat artisan bread, fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomato slices, and pine nuts. I coupled it with a butter lettuce salad tossed with a homemade garlic/lemon dressing. It was superbly delicious, fresh, and whole. He asked, “Where did you learn to cook like this?”

Unfortunately, my answer was, “Mostly from cookbooks and tv shows.” My mother was a child of the 50’s, and her cooking reflects that. Her primary method of cooking involves various combinations of pre-packaged foods, relying heavily on Kraft products and other processed stuff. There’s nothing she loves more than a summer bar-b-que of chicken breasts, ribs, steak, and shrimp. She’ll fill up on those meats and not even leave room for mayo-drenched potato salad, let alone a leafy green. Costco provides a never-ending parade of frozen appetizers which were once fried — taquitos, chicken strips, egg rolls, and the like — on which she binges. And, she taught the rest of us well.

It’s going to be really interesting to see if she can survive Weight Watchers. I know it’s been hard for me.

You could have knocked me over with a feather last night when my dad announced that he and my mom have started on the Weight Watchers program. Mom talks a lot about needing to lose weight, but I have only known her to do something about it maybe 2 times in my entire life. She is easily 100+ pounds overweight.

I finally got my mom on the phone to own up, and exclaimed incredulously to her, “I mean, did you go to a meeting and everything?”

Well, no. They signed up for online services including e-tools, but hey. It’s a start and, shoot: that’s basically the plan I’m following at this point. But, I did my time with 2 years of meetings before I quit.

A few weeks ago, she called me to complain about insomnia, and blamed it largely on worries about her health. I’ll admit — I tuned out a little bit. How many hundreds of times have I heard her say, “I really need to lose weight. I should start walking. I should stop eating dessert. I should… I should… I should…?” She’s always trying to rope me in to be her diet buddy, which I think has contributed in some way to my whole diet aversion. I couldn’t bear the weight (forgive the pun) of her ill health along with mine.

Anyway, during the insomnia, she told me she was up all night crafting and concocting new diets. One of them was called the “100 Bite Diet.” I was almost afraid to ask what that was. “You know,” she chirped. “I’d just count my bites and only eat 100 a day.”

The magic of telecommunications allowed me to roll my eyes and still seem like a good daughter. “And how is that going so far?” I ventured.

“Great,” she said. “It only took me 10 bites to get through breakfast, and I just had 4 bites of candy bar, so that’s good.”

And that is when I heard myself dropping the bomb.

“You know, mom. You don’t actually need to stay up nights inventing diets when so many other people have done it for you. I mean, maybe you should just join Weight Watchers and see if their plan would work for you. It’s sensible and for some people it really works.”

After that little lecture, I felt guilty. For the past few months, I’ve thought I could craft my own plan by piecing together bits of knowledge from various sources. I should restrict somewhat, but not to the point of measuring. Gosh, no. I shouldn’t eat any sugar at all, but should rely on a sort of South Beach mentality with “only good carbs.” That’s it… and then I’ll count points but only eat Core foods, and then every 3rd Wednesday I’ll allow myself to have ice cream. Or a Free Day. Because that’s what I think I’d like best. And other diets let you have a Free Day. So, hey. It must be okay, right?

Well, sue me. I am my mother’s daughter. So, I sat myself down and gave myself the same lecture about not reinventing the wheel and have gotten back on the Weight Watchers wagon this week. I don’t really think it’s dramatically better than any other plan out there — but it’s a plan, and it was written by people who supposedly know more than I do, and so it’s a fine enough place to start [over].

There’s a part of me that’s a little bit excited about having a WW buddy in the family. Today she told me she felt guilty for the bagel she had at breakfast. “I only put 1 tablespoon of cream cheese on it, though, and it was whole wheat.”

“Mom,” I soothed. “There are no bad foods. All you do is write it down and then, at dinner time, decide what you can eat based on the points you have left.”

And then, I stopped. And blinked. And I realized I have never once heard of my mother having a whole wheat anything on purpose. And she was at least aware of how much cream cheese she was using, and holy crap. That’s progress.

I’m proud of both of us.

The unheralded arrival of my period this week, a full 8 days late, and the coinciding drop of 3+ pounds from my daily weight, have reminded me of some questions and thoughts that I’ve had for a long time regarding weight loss and gender.

I mean, I find it kind of amazing that, for 10 (or more, in this case) days of the month, my body is totally and utterly hijacked by a complex biological function. This function is beautiful, miraculous, ancient, mysterious, feminine, tidal, and blah blah blah… but the fact is that for a huge chunk of my life, it doesn’t matter what I eat. It doesn’t matter how much I do (or do not) exercise. No amount of drinking water, counting calories, or eschewing refined flours can budge the scale downward. Rather, I gain weight steadily. Sigh. Step off the scale. Keep on trucking.

Then, at the end of the jolt, the pounds drop off. Equally quickly. Sometimes (depending on how well I have fended off cravings), the scale dips slightly lower than it dipped before my period sent out its advance scouts. Sometimes not. Then, I get about 3 good weeks of eating right, exercising, and seeing some progress before the Hormones attack again.

What I’m trying to say is that the better I get to know my body and what happens to it from day to day, the more aggrivated I get by the traditional “eat less, move more” mythology. I don’t think it works that way for women — it certainly doesn’t seem to for me. I think it is a construct of the male-dominated collective, and the feminist in me snarls back from her dark corner.

As we know, the tradition of Western Medicine was largely founded and perpetuated by Old White Guys. These guys found a formula (and oh, how Old White Guys love formulas!) for weight loss: expend more energy than you consume. What a formula! It is as simple as it is obvious! It’s practically a couplet, and might as well rhyme for how it is memorized by school chlidren and housewives: Eat Less; Move More. For Old White Guys, it works perfectly. Almost every time.

The problem I keep coming back to is this: beyond the obvious accoutrements, men’s and women’s bodies are so different. We have different plumbing, chemicals, hormones, chromosomes. We have different functions, really. Purposes. Roles. People generally accept that, in general, even our brains are built differently, with complementary learning styles and strengths. The expectation that a simple weight loss equation could work so simply for both genders is really kind of ludicrous. To get depressed, disappointed, or to give up because our bodies aren’t responding like good little robots is natural, maybe, but unenlightened.

I’m thinking of examples from my real- and internet-lives that illustrate this well. How about Fred and Robin? I used to read both of their blogs religiously. I became discouraged, however, when it was clear that they were living similar lifestyles, yet Fred was losing weight and Robin wasn’t. Robin was exercising daily, taking 5-plus-mile walks, routinely recording what she ate, trying different programs, etc. They each indulged in one “free day” per week. And yet, Robin’s weight stalled. It soon became painful to read. She’d try new things. She’d increase her exercise. She’d decrease her intake. She’d give up the fight for a while and then she’d come back. She went to the doctor. She got sick, and got well. She tried thyroid meds and merrily bitched along. She continued to live her life, yes, but you couldn’t help but wonder — how hard was it to crawl in bed every night with someone who seemed to just eat less and move more?¹ Now, she is post-op and has lost half her body weight, but without the surgery, no amount of genuinely Eating Less and Moving More worked for her. It worked like a charm for her husband, though.

So, we hobble along. Some of us hobble along better than others, but even our big heroines (I mean, have you ever seen PastaQueen’s chart? Maintain, maintain, maintain, LOSE. Maintain, maintain, maintain, LOSE.) don’t seem to be falling into the “simple math” category. I’m thinking of certain other bloggers (Marla, Debbi, and others…) who are doing everything “right” and their bodies refuse to release weight. Maybe there are examples of men who have the same struggle, but I haven’t seen them.

For me, the math is somewhat more complicated. I have PCOS, and have for over 15 years. My body’s hormones, insulin, and other chemicals are all out of whack and I have to respect that, if I intend to live more healthily and build fitness. I see so many women experience a little hiccup in the system, set goals beyond their control and not reach them, and go through a period of maintenance or even gain. Often, women get frustrated, give up, and blame themselves for not being able to do the simple math. We eat less and move more, and we don’t always lose weight. Something must be fundamentally wrong with us, right?

Generally, we act as though our bodies should function as some sort of calorie bank — we want to make deposits and withdrawals and be able to balance the checkbook at the end of the month. All I’m saying is, maybe it doesn’t always work that way, in spite of what the Old White Guys say.

I, for my part, am going to give in to the wonderful, ancient, mysterious experience of living in a body made up of estrogen and ovaries and sugar and spice. I’m going to just keep nurturing myself and stop expecting my body to have read all of the textbooks. I’m going to fault the system, instead of myself, when my body doesn’t comply with Their rules. I’ve always been a bit of a rebel, why shouldn’t my body, too?

1. Note: I’m sure Robin would be the first to tell you, in her characteristically and wonderfully brash and honest way, that it was just fine and dandy thankyouverymuch… I’m mostly just talking about my own personal thoughts and reactions here. I’d have been pissed. [↩]

My parents are in Orlando this week. Dad is busy with business meetings and presentations, but Mom wanted to use up some vacation time, so she convinced my Aunt to tag along “for some fun.”

There’s a lot to do in Orlando, I hear. I’ve never been there, but without even calling on my higher mental functioning I could tell you that most of what there is to do in Orlando involves walking. Lots of walking.

Without getting into details, it’s easy to say that my family is not in any way health conscious. Certain siblings were blessed with higher metabolisms than others, but they do not seem to share those genes with my parents. Both are overweight, and my mother is quite obese.

I don’t have the energy to get into it tonight, but my father completely enables her: she never has to exert herself more than to climb the stairs to her room, hoist into bed, and watch Law and Order reruns from her cozy cushions. Sometimes she also lifts big boxes of cookies or cakes into a shopping cart, but dad and my brothers hoist them out and into storage when she gets home.

Mom suffers from major depression. Not that I’m an expert in mental health or anything¹, but a daily walk would really go far in alleviating her symptoms without taking so much medication. Still, she won’t do it. She’ll only think about it, talk about it, and give reasons why she can’t do it.

Mom has been blessed to see the world, thanks to my dad’s travel bug and an accommodating profession. The thing that amazes me is that, no matter where she is, my mom is surprised by the way her body protests against the rigors of travel. One day of walking lands her in bed for the next 2 days. She complains and exclaims of her feet, knees, hips, and other assorted body parts aching after sight-seeing. She does nothing to prepare herself, physically, for travel, and sometimes it’s easy for me to lose patience with it all.

Tonight she told me that she and my aunt had rented scooters to maneuver through the Magical Kingdom. I was hit with a wave of sadness. I want to escape my genetic heritage so badly.

1. I am. [↩]

I guess, truth be told, I had to get a boyfriend before I could lose weight. It wasn’t that I needed someone to look over my shoulder or police me. It wasn’t that I needed a portable cheerleader to say “Good job, honey” at every turn. I definitely didn’t need another excuse to lose weight, and much less an excuse which was based on what someone else thought of me or my relative attractiveness.

What I needed was verification. I wanted to be proven wrong in my lifelong belief that I wasn’t good enough because I was fat. I had to work the fat-girl chip off my shoulder a little bit, to stop blaming everything in my whole damn life on my weight, and to be — just once — seen for who I am on the inside just as much as for what I am on the outside.

I also feared that if I were to wait until I had lost a bunch of weight before I started dating, I’d be bitter against the men that would be attracted to a thinner me. After all, the list of things I’ve got going for and against me will¹ basically be the same.

I’ll still be an artist, a therapist, an intellectual, an NPR snob, a musician, a world-traveler, and a culture geek. I’ll always be a writer and a designer, a bit of a packrat, and a sucker for fluffy white puppies. I’ll always know too much trivia about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ll always know the words to every single Rogers and Hammerstein musical. I’ll always have to pluck that hair from my chin every 5 or 6 days. I’ll always be me.²

In spite of my good qualities, though, I had managed to go 30 years without a boyfriend. 30 years without being kissed. 30 years, for Pete’s³ sake, without even holding anyone’s hand. It wasn’t for lack of wanting or trying, believe me. It was the chip on my shoulder — the belief (not the fact, since I know lots and lots of overweight people in relationships) that no one would ever want me. That’s why, when the Record Store Romeo asked me out on a second date, my response was a startled, “Really!?”

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1. With the possible exception of increased self discipline and motivation, not to mention a little boost of esteem that comes from achieving goals but let’s face it. I don’t really need huge esteem boosts. [↩]
2. I realize that this may or may not be true… but it’s just my current line of thinking. What do I know? [↩]
3. Pete who? [↩]

Starting weight¹: 335.8
Last week: 335.8
This week: 324.2
Change this week: -11.6
Overall change: -11.6

Woah.

Okay, well, with just one week of watching, journaling, and counting what I ate I lost almost every single pound that I put on over the holidays. Most people would be jumping up and down in ecstatic joy at double-digit weight loss in a week. I, predictably, am a little freaked out.

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1. I changed my starting weight from the September number of 326.8 to the January number, just to make a clean start and to make this week’s numbers carry the same impact that they really carried. Besides. Although I was going to meetings from September through December, I wasn’t really following the plan for longer than 2 days in a row. Therefore, I’m officially restarting the count. [↩]