It's so easy to forget.

I've been doing some thinking lately.  I realized that my weight has fluctuated up and down within an 8 or 9 pound window since November, and it really started to piss me off.  I was beating myself up about it, and allowing my mind to slip back into the negative self talk I was so used to 20, 30, 40 pounds ago.

Then I remembered how I felt when I hit the 180 mark, and when I hit the 175 mark.  I felt so happy.  I had accomplished something amazing!  Why don't I still embrace that fact today?  It's amazing that I can look in the mirror, and see only the negative things in my mind.  I look at my arms or my stomach, or the water retention in my face, and feel fat.  I go back to long sleeved shirts and covering up, and hiding from the world.  Why?  When I first hit that 175, I put on some skinny jeans and a tight t-shirt, and flaunted my hot ass around!  ...And still today, I'm struggling with my body image.

I look at my dear friend Beth who has lost right around the same amount of weight as I have (A little more, I think,) and she's looking wonderful.  She doesn't whine about the extra 10 or 15 pounds she might want to lose.  Nope.  She's started a new healthy eating blog about her approach.  She treats her body with respect and balances her life with a positive outlook and feeding her family healthy foods.  She embraces life, and rejects negativity.  She's my fucking hero.

Then today I heard from my friend Danon (also known as the Insatiable Host.)  She's doing a pinup contest at her blog, and it's awesome.  Send in a picture of yourself all gussied up like a pinup, and you could win something very cool.  (Go check it out for yourself.)

"Now that's a thought," I thought.  Here in this dieting, working out, weight obsessed world we all live in, both of these women are taking an active role in making sure we focus on the positive.  Reminding me about agave nectar and green smoothies.  Giving me an excuse to wear a sexy dress, do my hair, and put on some freakin' red lipstick.  I can't wait.

I encourage all of you guys to examine how you're feeling about yourself.  I hope you're feeling good.  If not, take this next week with me, and really treat yourself to some fabulousness.  Take a hot bath and exfoliate.  Paint your nails.  Deep condition your hair.  Get a facial.  Ask your husband for a back rub, for goodness sake!  Have a margarita if you want one.  And look in the mirror.  Look, and love.  Eyeball those sexy eyes and give yourself a kiss, dammit.

You're worth love... especially from yourself.

~Jenn

A Pudgy Gut is the New Hot.

...Only if you're a guy, though. Sorry ladies. We got royally screwed on this deal.

The NY Times published an article a few weeks ago that I've been meaning to blog on. Well, today's the day.

“I sort of think the six-pack abs obsession got so prissy it stopped being masculine,” is how Aaron Hicklin, the editor of Out, explains the emergence of the Ralph Kramden. What once seemed young and hot, for gay and straight men alike, now seems passé. Like manscaping, spray-on tans and other metrosexual affectations, having a belly one can bounce quarters off suggests that you may have too much time on your hands.

“It’s not cool to be seen spending so much time fussing around about your body,” Mr. Hicklin said.

And so guys can happily and guiltlessly go to seed.

Okay, WHAT????

Guys now get a free pass to have a gut because it's "prissy" to be in shape all of a sudden? They can't be serious. I'm about to punch someone. My friends and I were talking about this at my birthday party, and I went off into a string of expletives, I was so annoyed. I kept saying, "I swear I'm blogging about this bullshit tomorrow!!!" ...And of course my guy friends all started sticking their bellies out and saying "I'm the hottest guy on earth." Buttholes.

Though there's a backbone of truth in this, I won't get into the male super stars who are fat, bald, unattractive (by conventional terms) etc,etc. I still think this article is just insane. They go on to say:

Women have almost never gotten a pass on the need to maintain their bodies, while men always have, said Robert Morea, a personal fitness trainer.

Oh, really?

Wow. That's news. Seriously, do you even need to say that? This article isn't titled, "Newsflash: Women, it's okay to have muffin tops. In fact, it's the new sexy thing!" or "Muffin tops are the new runway accessory!"

I think women are going to be forever held to impossible standards. Will there ever be an end in sight?

Kelly Clarkson is human.

Wait. What?

Yeah, Kelly Clarkson is a human, normal woman in a maddened, image-driven, body obsessed industry. It's a huge shock. So why is this ground breaking news???

Kelly Clarkson looks curiously thin on the cover of "Self Magazine"!



"We're shocked! It's a "positive body image" issue! She shouldn't be airbrushed on the cover!"

Self magazine admits it did airbrush the singer, but no more than they do every other cover model. The editor-in-chief argued, "Our picture shows her confidence and beauty."

Um, this happens every freaking day. Women's magazines are constantly telling us to be "empowered" and at the same time, "lose 10 pounds in two weeks!" and check out the "top ten ways to drive your man wild in bed!" and airbrushing the crap out of all the models so we all feel like crap about ourselves and want to buy all the products and magazines and other shit we're supposed to consume (except for food, unless it's diet food of course) to make ourselves into this impossible ideal of what we are SUPPOSED to look like, even though the CELEBRITIES don't even look like that.

Okay, three cheers for the longest run-on sentence EVER. I just had to get that out.

Oh, and also... the photo shows her "confidence and beauty"?? So, women are only confident and beautiful if they're thin as you photoshop them to be? Ass-hats!!!! She's confident and beautiful all the time, and you people are pieces of shit.

It reminds me of what they did to Kate Winslet. Remember this beauty of a photoshop botch job?



She was FURIOUS. Kate's always been one of those fabulous celebrities who has been proud of her curvier body and the fact that GQ shrunk her down to a size 2 was unacceptable. Why do photo editors think they have the right to change someone's entire body?? It's garbage, crap and totally ridiculous.

It pisses me off.

Carry on.

~J :)

More to Love.

Yeah, we all knew it was coming. I have to write about this a little bit.

I was really annoyed when I first started seeing the commercials for this reality show. If you don't know what it is, FOX is doing a show similar to "The Bachelor", but instead they're featuring "The Fatchelor" along with 20 overweight women. As far as I was concerned, they might as well have called the show "More Cushion for the Pushin'."

I didn't remember the show was starting last night, so I'll be honest and say I didn't watch the whole thing. I caught it about 2/3 the way through. From what I've read in various recaps of the show, I am not really sure this show is a good thing.

My first issue comes with the fact that they're advertising this show as: "Finally! A show with REAL women." Okay. ALL women are "real" women. Skinny, medium, fat, hairy, blonde, tall, whatever. They're all real.

The second issue I have is the fact that every time they show an interview segment with one of the women, they post their HEIGHT AND WEIGHT. What the fuck? Seriously. WHY? We already know these are "BIG girls." That's the point of the show, right? So why the hell do you need to put their heights and weights out there for the entire country to see? So the rest of us fatties can look and compare ourselves? 'Cause that's exactly what I did. Want to see the woman whose stats are closest to mine?

Christina, 23, retail, 5'6, 206 lbs


Mandy, 25, fitness trainer, 5'7, 180 lbs


Now, I'm 5'6.5 and I weigh roughly 202 pounds. So, Christina is me a few pounds ago. Mandy is what I "should" look like when I lose another 20 pounds.

Apparently, I don't only compare myself to teeny tiny skinny girls on the reality shows, I compare myself to the big girls too. And even in more excruciating detail. Body composition plays a huge part. Firstly, I don't know if these women actually had a weigh in or if they're just posting the weights and heights these ladies wrote down on some application they filled out for the show, but I have a hard time believing some of the stats.

Add to all of this the fact that the "Fatchelor" seems creepy, particularly after reading about his manipulation of the women ALREADY, and the fact that a lot of the women's interviews have been edited together to show a ton of crying and sadness... I don't know if I'm gonna be able to keep watching it. Or maybe I will. It's like a freaking train wreck, and I don't know if I have the power to turn away. Or turn it off. Or change the channel.

Nevertheless, I'd love to know what you guys think if you caught the show.

~J

Fat Acceptance?

Okay. I'm warning you that this is a long post. I checked. It's 1,389 words. But I bet you're gonna identify with one side or the other here, so just bear with me.

So, I've wandered into a few Fat Acceptance blogs over the past several months of doing my own very weight loss/weight issues/body thing blogging. It actually started with my hearing about the Anti-Gym, reading their blog, and subsequently reading the enraged comments from many Fat Acceptance individuals. It sparked my interest, of course, as I am a fat girl myself. And seriously, you can say it. I am fat. And I do appreciate the comments that I'm a "current hot girl"... but I say I'm fat... because I am. BMI of 33.9 means that I'm actually BEYOND fat. I'm OBESE. I have to lose 60 pounds in order to be considered "NORMAL." If I lose 53 pounds, I'm still considered overweight, y'all.

Okay, just to get that out of the way and cleared up for everyone.

So, I visited a few of these blogs and websites and it just didn't vibe with me. Now, I seriously don't care what people fight for or blog about. People can blog about how fat needs to be another thing that just "is," like skinny, blonde, brunette, whatever. They can say that fat people are not lazy or unhealthy. There is no obesity epidemic in this country. Americans, as a group, are not slobbish, disgusting, over-eating, pie grubbing, meat sucking, gravy swimming sloths... they're just normal folks and are beautiful, valuable, and should be thought of as normal human beings. That's fine and dandy.

But then they decide to talk about how ridiculous us fat girls who want to be skinny are.

I am ridiculous for wanting to fit into a size 8 jeans. Because I think about it, because I have pictures of my skinny self on my fridge to motivate me, because I keep the thoughts of people calling me a fat fuck in my brain when I want to order cheesy bread. I'm obviously weak and I don't have enough self love, and I've been brainwashed by the media and the entertainment industry.

What the hell? I mean, seriously. Shouldn't "Fat Acceptance" not be only about society accepting fat people as "normal," but also about Fat Love Folks accepting fellow fatties however they happen to be?

My friend Kate put this as her status on Facebook the other day and I asked if I could borrow it for my blog: "Self-loathing is not a fucking character-builder. It doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you better. It’s just an ever-deepening, creepy-ass trap; a trap that is a huge moneymaker for corporations that do not have and never will have good intentions. You’re not disgusting. You’re not freakish. You’re not ugly. And you’re never going to be perfect. And holy shit, that is so okay."


She told me that the true credit goes to the gal over at Casual Blasphemies. I immediately went over and checked her stuff out. You should go. She's a BRILLIANT writer, and she makes me laugh my ass off.

But I digress. Here's the thing. I like the quote, and I feel it and sorta get it and all that. But what qualifies as self loathing? And ... how can I really dig that quote and not agree with it at the same time? I mean, I don't know if I would say I'm "self loathing." I also wouldn't say that it's a "virtue." But I also think those people who act like they've got their shit together when they don't... are just FULL of shit. Isn't it a virtue to know you've got some work to do? And at what point does KNOWING you need to kick your ass into gear and being pissed, angry, sad or whatever you feel about it turn into self loathing? And wait. Why is that bad again?

I, for one, do not feel comfortable in my fatness. I hate my body most days. I cringe and yell at Dan when he touches my stomach, and I punch him when he tries to pick me up. (*note: After a recent comment, I suppose this could look bad. Take the words "yell" and "punch" and put them in a play wrestling scenario. Carry on.) I hate how full my face is. I refuse to wear a skirt above my knees. I can be feeling good about myself and my working out, and kinda sorta feeling thinner than usual... and then immediately be brought back to ground zero of desperation for losing weight if I hear ANY kind of comment about my being "heavy." I can eat veggie thin crust pizza with no cheese and immediately feel like a failure, and want to go work out for an hour. I can actually work out for two hours like I did today, and be mad at myself because I went home when I didn't fully feel exhausted. (I could have done more, pushed myself harder, CHEESE AND CRACKERS, I'm so lazy.) I wish to Zeus that I would wake up tomorrow weighing 150 pounds. If I could cut off a toe to be the right weight forever, I would probably do it. Actually, if I woke up underweight, that would even be okay with me. As long as it meant I didn't have to work my white dimply ass into another pair of size 16 jeans.

I LOVE how I feel when I'm at a healthier weight. Oops, sorry. I mean "lower" weight. I am not supposed to say "healthier" because fat does not equal unhealthy. Are they being serious when they say that? Umm, yes it usually does. I don't just have fat around my stomach and hips, thighs and chicken wing flab arms, but it's also around my heart and my liver. My body stresses carrying this much weight. Just because I've gotten used to it and I can run a little and do Zumba for an hour without falling over does NOT mean that I'm healthy.

SO, I'm sorry. I'm holding on to every bit of disgust I have for my body because it's my prerogative to. And if I don't, I won't find the motivation to get up every day and try to make the right choices for the body I want to have. If I fall into my own version of "Fat Acceptance," first of all, it'll be fake. (Didn't I have that three years ago when I got into this mess of chub?) Then, I'll sink slowly into the abyss of pizza, pasta, greasy takeout, donuts and an even greasier face, just because I "accept my fatness" or because I'm suddenly "big and beautiful."

I can't get mad at Subway for telling me to Eat Fresh instead of McFattify myself, or call Jenny Craig a bitch, or tell Weight Watchers to go watch something else because yes, it's STILL A DIET... because there are people who need these things to live healthier lives. People have achieved success with it. Yeah, maybe they paid money for it. But guess what? Some of us need help to achieve our goals. And some of us do have "weight loss" or "healthier body" or "no more diabetes" or "knees that don't fucking hurt every day" as a goal. Why are we not allowed to be pissed that we're fat? Why are we not allowed to do something about it?!


As far as I'm concerned... wait for it... it's OKAY to NOT LIKE BEING FAT.


I know that these bloggers talk a lot about how they drink Diet Soda, and they like salad too, and that they are active, and still fat. Okay, well... I'm sorry, but for 95% of fat folks out there, their fatness is not beyond their control, and that's just the way it is. It just does NOT make sense in my brain. And I'm willing to bet that if these fat folks woke up tomorrow and magically were size sixes, they would do the Sherman Klump / Buddy Love scream of "I'M THIN!!!!! I'M THIN!!!!!" and then would run to the store and ask for an array of ALL SPANDEX outfits to try on. Seriously.


/end rant

~Jenn

Disappointed.

I started the Lighten Up Wisconsin challenge at 218 lbs on January 15th.

Today I weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 205. And that's butt nekkid, so with clothes in late afternoon it'd be closer to 207 to 208.

There was a contest inside the challenge to lose 15 pounds or more. I joined that contest for $15, and everyone who accomplishes that weight loss gets to split the pot.

Tomorrow is the final weigh in deadline, and I'm not going. (You don't have to if you didn't make 15 lbs or more.)


It is BEYOND pathetic that I can't manage to lose 15 pounds in 3.5 months.

Seriously. I am at the point where I feel like doing something crazy to lose weight. I am SO sick of slow and steady. I'd swallow a tape worm if I had one.

Okay, maybe not a tape worm. But I'm really pissed off.

~J