The Life and Times of a Fat Girl (Rated R)

Oh mayun. Today was one of those days where you actually are proud of yourself for making it. I went on two bike rides today, one, in the morning after I woke up, and the second around 7 p.m.

But I am hitting something that is both annoying and frustrating. I cannot figure out why it so hard for me to bicycle. I can only make it a mile before I start to think that I just cant do it anymore. I was also sweating a lot more before and even that has stopped. So tonight I felt like my second bike ride was totally moot. I get in the house and do my normal walk around my kitchen dancing around but it was worthless. My heart rate was nothing. So I decided – what the hell – I am gonna go on a walk. My dogs grabbed their own leashes and away we went. I ended up walking them for a good portion of two miles. I feel it in my legs and my ass is sore. I am unsure if this is from being sexually assaulted by my bike seat when I go or just the reflex in my muscles.

When I first started going and working out – what I feared most is how the public preserved me. I have not had once instance yet where someone yelled at me out the car window until this evening. Friday night – go figure. Also, while I was walking my dog this group of teenagers I was walking past – one smart assed little hag decided to open her mouth.

Now, you see, I am possibly one of the most obnoxious people you have ever met and being in a job where I basically get to take on some of the most powerful people in the community, corrupt cops, politicians, and just general people who take a great deal of education and balls to debate. Going head to head with a 16-year-old girl calling me fat wasn’t going to be an issue. I verbally break danced on this girl and it made me feel like a million bucks.

After she had called me a string of nasty names, I removed my headphones, commanded my dogs to the ready position. I have a spaniel and a schnauzer and they are both hunting dogs that go on point at command. They are also highly trained in all manor of snuggling and attack. I turned around and looked at this ghastly harlot up and down and started to laugh.

She then issued a string of obscenities, another thing that I am very good at, asking me what my problem was. I walked closer and stared at her for a moment and the burst out laughing. She seems appalled and downright surprised. I then looked at her straight in the face and issued the following statement.

“I may be fat, but even to an amoeba like you, can see that I am working on that – But no matter how hard you work you can’t fix what is wrong with you.”

“What is that,” she inquired.

I mustered up the biggest smile I could gain and responded.

“Ugly.”

She had nothing left to say after that and I kept my walk up at a slow jog. I felt like I was the head Marshall in a tickertape parade.

I have dealt with assholes like this my whole life and to finally be able to be heckled as I bettered myself just reminded me how powerful I am as a woman and that no skinny skank in a Wal*mart t-shirt reading “Princess” is going to kill my feel-good buzz.

The shirt may have say princess but the face said… Troll.

The scale finally friggan moved. Thank Jebus.

So something occurred to me tonight… that my best friend is a registered Dietitian and I have begun leaning on her for portion support. I have been really trimming down what I eat and am thinking that WW may not be the best way to go for me. You see, I have no issues about what to eat – being my fruits and veggies and whole grains. The pointing system is literally driving me up a wall. It just seems so implausible. I don’t have the urges to mow food down. I don’t need 30 points a day to survive. Shopping with the counter embarrasses me.  I have re-learned to cook. I am changing my life.

I am so annoyed with the want to exercise more. I just can’t do it. I go for a two-mile bike ride in the evenings and I still feel like a total fat ass because my legs give out if I want to do any more.

So I have resorted to coming home at 7 p.m. after my bike ride and dancing as I make dinner. I can tell you that the crazy Portuguese old people across the driveway must think I am some kind of friggan lunatic dancing to Phil Collins as I am dicing up broccoli. I am also gonna be waking up earlier to go for two rides a day as opposed to just one. I am hoping that will strengthen my legs enough for make it workable for myself.

The minute you wake up that day when you decide enough is enough is possibly the easiest day you will have when losing weight. It haunts me and that is all I think about all day. Just the challenge and the justifications of what I need to do to become that person I always wanted to be.  The journey is just so tedious. I want to feel like I am changing.

I need to find 250. I need need to drop Jessica Biel off my frame to look like Jessica Biel. That people… is just screwed up.

I am frustrated. So frustrated that I am putting it behind a cut for my expected use of the f word. User take caution because you are one click away from watching me blow my cool.

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In the past few days, after discovering exercising, I realized that I had done so well that I was dying for this amazing curry from a local Thai house. Now, compared to eggrolls, fried shrimps and those delectable scallion pancakes from the local Chinese cuisine place, which is chock full of the MSG and deep fried, or what you could call my formal norm, – the boiled chicken, veggies and curry paste seemed pretty harmless.

But I still felt as if I should go and puke it up in a fit of disgust. No, I have never forced myself to vomit – unless you count that week after my 21st birthday and I had consumed that bottle of tequila and it was totally necessary. But the sheer thought of me trying to rationalize myself of how bad the idea of take out food is was pretty brutal.

To make it worse – My father comes over and is looking for seafood. I shake my head knowing damn well that there is some kind of theme happening this weekend that involves testing me to see the before and after of myself.  Before – Fried. After – Baked.

I end up getting a pretty lean piece of fish, seafood stuffing, mashed potatoes and raw broccoli. Of course it comes with the lobster sauce and the dinner roll. Not only am I not getting a pound of fried fish, French fries, coleslaw and enough tartar sauce to dice a mermaid up and cover her in it – but I eat half of everything and put the rest in the fridge for my father to eat tomorrow.

My rational side is telling me that I was okay. That I had changed. That my changes and mentality are permanent.

But why am I beating myself up. Why did I feel the need to go for three bike rides today just to get rid of some of the guilt?  A month into my diet and I am wondering if it ever ends.

Well, I succeeded today in humiliating myself.

My mom called at about 3 p.m. and said that she had bought me a bicycle. I was pretty surprised because usually she is a banshee who loves to rain on my parade and is just queen of killing any kind of good mood I am in. So I was all gung-ho about sucking down the fresh air and beginning my first day of intense activity.

So, off I went on my new bike, around the corner and felt so amazing until the incline started and kept going for the next hour. In five minutes I was starting to sweat. I began to get concerned about my butt swallowing the seat and the people driving by me wondering what I was doing and how terrible I looked. I was almost out of breath. Almost a mile uphill. My heart was pounding. I was getting dizzy. I see another small hill and I almost started to cry. I decide to get off my bike and pretend to adjust my seat as a truck filled with guys approached.

That is when my legs give out from under me and I hit the ground and the bike collapses on me.

I sat there for a minute and was bordering on screaming and I wondered what the hell I was thinking for those years and years as I ate and ate and ate and sat down and remained inactive. I wasn’t giving up… I was furious. I mean just plain and excruciating anger. If someone had stopped and asked me how I was I would have decked them in the face.

My heart was pounding and my hat was filled with sweat. As I decided to trek back to my house I could barely peddle.  I was spitting mad when I finally made my way into my house. My dogs jumped on me and I yelled at them. I stormed around my house kicking doors and piles of laundry. I drank water and then puked it up. Then I sat on my floor.

I didn’t cry until my dogs came and lay on my lap – they obviously knew I was upset and attempting to comfort me in true doggy fashion.

How the crap did I let this happen to me. How could I have been so complacent for all of these years?

I am still fully motivated because any kind of experience like the one I had today is either going to make you or break you… but the lengths of how guilt ridden and pissed off I am at myself is infinite.

I want the weight gone and I want it gone now. I swear to god if I can’t make it up that hill by the end of the month… I am going to have to take a cardio beat down class to lay out some kind of punching bag.

Ugh. I am so tired. I was really good today and figured out that if you dump some lemon juice on a sugar free popsicle that it begins to taste like a normal pop.

Its gonna be a long day tomorrow… please god, just smite me.

<edit : can anyone else tell me that the typos arent that bad lol… i am so exhausted>

So I am back to feeling a bit more peppy. So on the sister front, she went home and told my mother that she didnt want to eat what my mom sent her because of how unhealthy it was. I was laughing because she stood up for herself. She is already leaps and bounds ahead of me. I am so excited. However, does anyone else not think that these cooking shows are the Devil? I am referring to - of course - Anthony Bourdain traveling to Tokyo last night and eating face fulls of soba noodles, sushi, fried amazing things? What really burned my ass today was watching Top Chef - Bacon ice cream, pound cake, and what really sent me into pondering breaking strides… Uno’s Deep Dish. My mouth started watering and I could picture that floury, buttery crust. But then some kind of holy intervention happened. It came in the form of a Wendy’s Baconater commercial and I almost puked. I was reminded of how hard these fast food places come to ruin my mojo and it took the nauseating baconater to remind me of that. So instead of going and getting an entire pizza, again hiding in the closet and mowing it down, I made some tuna salad with fresh parsley, scallion, yellow pepper, low fat miracle whip and a dollop of cottage cheese; served on pita with some baby field greens. Below is my creative through process of the battle.

Jeez, you guys rock. I am getting a lot of feedback already on the blog… amazing. It’s two a.m. and I am feeling starving but the idea of eating anything right now is just absurd.  I keep drinking water and even as someone who loves water as much as I do… I find myself getting sick as hell of it. I know it’s a mind over matter scenario but it is really getting SO old.

I ended up cooking ALL day. By the end of the day my feet hurt so bad I wanted to chop them off and stir-fry them in with the Moo Shu I was cooking up.

So… I dropped NO weight this week and I am totally to blame. Not because I didn’t watch what I was eating but because I am dieting and am in a total vegetative state for the greater portion of the day. I have got to get active and get moving. I am going to demand my Bike this week. Everyone I know is like… well, just go for a walk and that just isn’t plausible. I friggan hate walking. I would rather be on wheels. I just feel it in my knees and I get all sweaty and the area I live in just makes me feel like a moving target for hecklers. Yeah, that was code word for “Fat Girl Fears Walking.” I gotta love the excuses I am coming up with like I am telling you guys anything new.

I need to get the scale out of the house. I find myself stepping on it almost every morning like it is some sort of validation as to how much I really weigh and how much coffee I had to drink in the morning screwing up my ounces. It is possibly the lamest thing I am doing to myself.

I got into a conversation on the forums tonight about some girl whose mother isn’t supportive of her and mocks her progress. God, this whole idea just triggered some of the deepest routed anger I could muster up. Because these people who are SO negative to their children to validate themselves just brings me back to my childhood with my big legs squeezing out of the shorts eating an ENTIRE bag of lays potato chips to myself in less than an hour. Mom sat there and watched me. Mom was the one who screwed up my confidence by mocking me endlessly because of my weight as a kid. Christ, the woman gave me the money to buy all the junk food.

I’m afraid for my kid sister. I’m 27, she’s nine. We look like we could be book ends we are so alike. The kid is in the 95th percentile for childhood obesity and that just scares me. I don’t want her to have to go through the same garbage I did. So much hurting and for what? Because my mother just wants to send her a can of Boyardee instead of a turkey sandwich and veggies? She loves all that stuff. So seeing that I have her during the day for the whole summer, that is two meals I can change for the better. I think my mother is dense because I have been sending her home with all of her food back in her bag. I just feed my sister what I am eating and it seems to be working. She is making better decisions. She is asking about how healthy something is. I really hope she and I can learn to live healthy because what kind of a shitty role model would I be if I allowed this to happen and keep happening?

I guess I am just practicing the \"Science of Selling Yourself Short.

So…. I guess I am updating this thing a lot. Good. I really enjoy doing it. There is nothing worse than having a boyfriend who would rather not talk about the fact that he sees you as the devil for making him eat better.

I am simply amazed at the amount of money I am spending a week in groceries since starting this. But when i get upset i keep thinking about the $80 I used to spend a week in take out food.  We have this amazing store here in Mass called Trucchis (True-keys is how it is pronounced) and the cost of their produce is just amazing. I found an easier way to handle shopping healthy by creating a 1/2 a page of the rest of the supermarket items like meats and grains and the other half is strictly vegetables. There was more than 15 items that were just vegetables. I also starting browsing the local seafood section. Tonight I ended up grabbing a pound of fresh shrimp and ended up making scampi. Later in the week I am going to be tossing together some kebobs and pineapple. Looking to be a yummy week as far as dieting goes. I can not wait to get my bike.

Tomorrow is my self-weigh in and I am hoping it will be great.

Last night I felt like I was going out of my mind with starvation… this could have been me.

 How many Weight Watchers Points do you think I am worth?

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