New House, Old Habits

Phrew! It's been a while. I've had my college graduation, followed closely by moving to a new city, and a lot of stuff has gone by the wayside a little bit.

But the move and my new home are actually going to be relevant for a new post, so there's that. 

I'm living with friends of mine, people who are older than me and more settled in their lives, so they have no worries about adding another person to their menu-planning. I'm paying a rent that includes all utilities and most of my food, and I'm super-lucky to have the situation. They know a little bit about my mom and my old situation, my love of baking and cooking, and the fact that I wasn't allowed free rein in my old home; I've been assured multiple times that anything I want to take out and play around with, I'm more than welcome. I broke in the kitchen this past weekend by baking the most awesome lemon bars ever, and I've been involved in helping my housemates pick out vegetables and herbs to grow in their garden. I've been assured that anything in the fridge besides someone else's lunchbag is free game, and just let them know if I'd like anything in particular and it'll go on the shopping list. So all in all, it's relaxed around here, I know I get even more freedom with my food than I did in my college dorm, and it's a wonderful place to be. 

And yet...

I'm finding myself slipping into a few old habits, and I’m not sure why. I’m finding myself getting self-conscious, if not secretive, about what and when I’m eating. It hasn’t been enough so far, really, to keep me from eating when I want, but it’s weighing on me somewhat. There’s no good reason for it - this isn’t my mother’s house, nobody cares what I’m eating. But I get self-conscious anyway.

My housemates have been eating on a different timetable from me, so a lot of the time I don’t want to wait as long as they do to have dinner. But I feel weird about eating apart from them; it doesn’t help that there isn’t a kitchen table or anything out-of-the-way where I could sit, I really have to be out in the open unless I squirrel my food away to my room - which I’m making a concentrated effort not to do, because THAT is certainly going to lead to bad places.

More concerning than that though, I’m starting to slip into not-quite-binging behaviors. This past weekend, I had the whole house to myself, and it was up to me to feed myself and to know that no one was around to watch or keep any kind of track. And alone in the house, I caught myself eating really fast. I caught myself dipping into containers in the fridge, stealing a few cold bites and hastily putting it back away - even knowing that nobody cares and in fact I’m expected to eat plenty of the food that’s in there, I found myself feeling like I had to be fast and stealthy like I used to. When my friends got home earlier than I anticipated after the weekend, I was stuck having to eat while they were busy unpacking from their trip and bustling around the house; not only was I the only one eating, but I felt like i would have been in the way. So I ate as fast as I could, standing in the kitchen, trying my best to still be friendly and chat with them and not let it actually stop me from having my dinner.

So far, it’s not something that’s stopping me, exactly. But it is something that’s weighing on me. I KNOW that this is not the same home I grew up in, I know that I’m safe and that no one is watching, that my friends will be happy that I’m enjoying the food they’ve made, that my schedule is just different and I need to take care of myself. I’m doing my best not to let it affect my behavior, especially now that I’ve noticed the attempts at stealth and secrecy. I can’t let that start happening again. 

(apologies for tiny font, cant' seem to figure out how to put it right) 

Okay so I'm fat. Now what?

(If you have trouble reading specific numbers of pounds, be aware that I mention them along with my own weight here)

So I'm having a lot of feelings that aren't really coming together into a coherent blog post, but I also kind of don't want to keep them to myself, especially in the time I have left in my parents' house. I don't want to find myself doing anything dangerous, like the time I basically refused to eat under my mom's watch after her comments about the potato thing, but I also don't want to be ignoring things that might need attention.

I knew I was getting bigger over the past year. I kept complaining about pants because they felt tighter than they used to, and I wasn't in such denial that I didn't know why. I don't think I was eating especially more than I ever did - at least, I wasn't eating much differently this last year of college than I think I did the previous three. And I was making a pretty good effort to exercise more, between yoga twice per week and walking 2-3 miles 3-4 other days out of the week.

I'm at home till Saturday after graduation, and finally had access to a scale, and decided it would at least be good to know. And somehow I gained 15 pounds.

I don't want to be that person who freaks out about relatively small amounts of weight. But. Maybe it's just that this is triggering a lot of hopeless memories. It's one thing to be 15 pounds overweight (at least according to the doctors who expect you to lose it) but it's quite another to be 50, or 80, or now near 100 over the 120 pounds that they told me I should be striving for my whole life. Even if I lost those new 15 again, there'd be more of them. Even if I lost 30 or 50 I'd still be considered overweight. I remember how hopeless I felt, especially as I continued to gain weight through puberty.

But maybe I've rationalized things the wrong way. I grew to accept cheerfully the idea that when I leveled my weight off in my late teens by not doing anything, it just meant I was done growing. I was 180-ish at that point. There was still a big part of me that said "well, at least you're not 200 pounds. Then you'd REALLY be fat!"

And then I got to college, and stopped being self-conscious about eating as much as I was. No one was commenting on my choices, and while I have worked to get more vegetables and fruit and new foods into my diet, I felt so freed by not thinking about it. I let myself have treats most nights. I let myself eat for comfort when I needed it. I started learning how big a difference it makes to use or drink whole milk than skim. I wonder now if I thought too little, instead of too much.

I don't know what the range of "normal" is, and I don't know whether it's a problem, or a normality or something to be aware of and watch out for if I went from ~180 to ~215 over the last four years. I look at myself, and I don't think I'm visibly that much bigger. In fact, a friend of mine complimented me the last time we saw each other that my arms were getting slimmer. Even as I had just gone out to buy bigger pants because I was tired of being squished into a size too small.

Should I be worrying? Should I not be having the daily desserts that I got used to? Should I just be keeping an eye to make sure something's not wrong with me? Is this just how big I am, is it normal to still be gaining at 21 years? Was the doctor right, and I really am going to just keep ballooning out for the rest of my life unless I actively lose weight? Is it possible I could go back to my size 16 and be comfortable in my old comfy jeans again?

I don't want to be freaked out, and I don't think I am. But I also am afraid of being in denial. I know that this is in no way, shape or form what Fat Acceptance is about, but I fear that the criticism is right - that this is an excuse not to think. That instead of exercising hard and eating right, I'm latching onto a movement that says I don't have to (even though FA and HAES strongly encourage healthful eating and regular movement). I'm afraid that I've been just plugging my ears and singing "la la la" instead of paying attention to my body, out of fear that it would do exactly this.

If anyone has any advice, I'd like it. Mostly, I just needed to get this out, so it can at least sit here on the blog and not be perched on my shoulder every time I try to have a meal in this house.

Chocolate Milk is Poison!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a serious problem.

Despite vigorous efforts to eliminate Childhood Obesity, despite stricter and stricter guidelines around what is allowed in a school lunch, how many calories are allowed to be eaten, what is and is not allowed to be brought from home, despite some of the most invasive attempts we've made,

There are still fat children!!!!

As such, we shouldn't try to think about why the programs aren't working. We shouldn't consider the possibility that not all bodies are meant to be exactly the same size, that having enough food to concentrate in school is worth the couple of pounds that it might- MIGHT - make a difference on, and we shouldn't try to see about overhauls in the school lunch system so that more nutritious, tastier, fresher food might be served.

We should just keep doing the same thing, only more.

Schools May Ban Chocolate Milk over Added Sugar

There's a lot of gems in here. There really are. I'm not sure I know enough to point out all of them but by all means, if anyone wants to add to it in the comments or blog yourself, please share. Let me see what I can pull out on my own, without an entire MST-ing of the entire article.

Well, first and all, this fricking demonization of chocolate milk. I've talked about this a little bit before but I really think it deserves its own post some day - this idea that there are Healthy and Unhealthy things to eat, and that you can entirely contradict the Healthiness of something by adding an Unhealthy thing to it. Milk is Healthy - no one is going to dispute this. Especially for young children, milk is a great way to get a whole host of essential vitamins and calcium and good growing nutrients. Sugar is Unhealthy - yes, fine, it doesn't do a whole lot on its own. It isn't POISON, but it's not the world's best source of either nutrients or energy.

Therefore, Milk plus Sugar is UNhealthy. Because it has Unhealthy sugar in it. Which cancels out the good part of being milk.

"When you're telling kids that drinking chocolate milk is a healthy choice, it's sending the wrong message." - Concerned Parent.

Oh look, a wild Jamie Oliver appears! Jamie Oliver used Invasive TV Program Credentials! Jamie Oliver used Stupid Oversimplification!

"If you have flavored milk, that's candy," he told The Associated Press.

It's not very effective.

People. Food tastes good. That's part of how our bodies recognize that it's healthful. Sugar and fat taste good because both fat and simple energy are vital to our survival. When well-prepared, thousands of other foods taste awesome. Broccoli, zuchinni, pasta, couscous, fruits of all shapes and sizes, sweet potato, white potato, corn, baby corn, carrots, mushrooms, celery, beans, rice....food OUGHT to taste amazing.

But this is what we're teaching these children: None of these foods are acceptably healthy if they become more palatable to a small child. Celery with peanut butter? Well, unless it's organic, peanut butter is all fatty and Unhealthy, so no go. Corn or potatoes with butter? of course not. Beans and rice with cheese on top? Fetch my smelling salts!

Milk with chocolate? Nope.

Here's one more thing that might actually make me angrier than the whole rest of the article though.

Concerned Parent used Ignore the Facts!

"But efforts by some other districts turned sour after children drank less milk. Milk consumption drops by 35 percent when flavored milks are removed, according to the Milk Processors Education Program.
Cabell County, W.Va., schools brought chocolate milk back at the recommendation of state officials, and Fairfax County, Va., did the same after its dairy provider came up with a version sweetened with beet sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup...
Cooper and others argued children will drink plain milk if that's what's offered.
"We've taught them to drink chocolate milk, so we can unteach them that," Cooper said. "Our kids line up for milk."

Except, you have proof there. You have studies. Lots of children DON'T drink non-flavored milk. They just don't drink milk at all.

Maybe if you still offered them WHOLE milk they wouldn't hate it so much, too. Skim or 1% is all that's talked about in the whole article. Skim Chocolate, or Skim White milk. As someone who grew up on skim, let me tell you that whole milk is DELICIOUS.

But there's fat in it.

That makes it Unhealthy.

Really this all just makes me so glad to have missed the hysteria when I was in elementary school.

I shouldn't have gone back

Ugh. Internet. Why do you do this to me.

Why do you let me attempt to engage people and not then block me from reading the follow-up comments.

The following happened on a post on Sociological Images about a series of Klondike commercials where people under go horrible endurance challenges to win an ice cream. In the one under discussion, two big burly biker men had to - gasp - HOLD HANDS for five seconds!

So I go and read the discussion, and see this.

"Also, regardless of my sexuality, I wouldn’t want to hold the hand of someone that is obese and that doesn’t abide by basic hygiene. I wouldn’t even do that for a klondike."

A challenger appears:


"Why wouldn’t you want to hold the hand of an obese person? Are you afraid you might catch fat cooties or something? Your comment is hateful and dehumanizing."

The reply:

"I don’t find fat people attractive. It’s fine they’re fat, whatever, don’t care. I just find them physically repulsive. Others may find them sexy or whatever, but not me. The men in the vid are not attractive to me, and therefore I would not want to hold either of their hands, even if I was one of them.
So, do you want to apologize or am I supposed to get aroused to only fat people now?"

I stared at this for a while, totally baffled at how that comment even begins to be a reply to the challenge. Holding hands equals sex now? It's "fine that they're fat" but they're physically repulsive, and that's totally not a contradiction in attitude?

I couldn't help myself. All I said was "there’s a massive chasm of spectrum between “find sexually attractive” and “find physically repulsive”." I really didn't intend to go back to the post. I just wanted to leave that there. I really couldn't believe that those were the only two categories that this person put people into - fuckable, or repulsive.

Of course, I went back. The discussion was interesting and there were a lot more comments, and this was their reply:

"And I find obese people both sexually unattractive and physically repulsive. Particularly the fellow on the left in the commercial.
I know some people have the same feelings toward non-obese people. That’s their right and I don’t see anything wrong with either opinion."

I just.....what do you even say?

The original challenger had also replied in the meanwhile:

"Please show me the sentence in my comment where I said that you have to only be aroused by fat people. Please show me the part in my comment where I said that you had to be aroused by anyone.
There is a big difference between being sexually attracted to someone and holding their hand for five seconds. You don’t have to be sexually attracted to someone to touch them. Try replacing the word “fat” with the word “gay” or “Jewish” in your sentence and see if you don’t sound bigoted."

And the final reply in the chain:

"non-fat LGBT and/or Jewish people aren’t disgusting to me, so long as they aren’t fat. A person’s sexuality or ethnicity has nothing to do with their obesity. The mere thought of touching a portly hand is sickening to me. Now, what does your comment have to do with the video?"

POINT






























HEAD

I had to archive this. I can't really process it. How do you even? How do you get into that mindset? How do you so completely miss the point? How do you put no possible middle ground between sexual hunger and complete revulsion? How do you not understand that it hurts to be told so casually that my body or others like mine are so sickening to you that five seconds of touching a hand would be too much to ask? And how do you not see a problem with finding other people PHYSICALLY REPULSIVE based on one characteristic just because you think there are people who would do the same refusal to touch a skinny person?

I just don't even know what to say. I'm not even angry. I really can't be. I hope it's a troll. But my goodness if it isn't worth writing down just to have a record of.

Learning

The other night, I ate way too much food, and I was also still hungry.

I'd been planning all day for a party some friends and I were having to watch the premier of the new Game of Thrones show (I've been a fan of the books for years, liked the show a lot), so I was intentionally not munching during the day. I had french toast for breakfast/lunch somewhere around 1pm, and then didn't eat again until around 7. By then, everyone had gathered, and I was hungry enough that, after waiting a little while out of fear of seeming rude somehow, I just got up and opened up the snacks (cheese/crackers/pepperoni and such). At the reminder that we hadn't eaten yet, we decided to place our order for real dinner, which wouldn't arrive for another 45 minutes or so. I fixed myself some cheese and crackers and said that it was starting to feel like I'd fall over if I didn't eat something now.

When real dinner did arrive, I was absolutely famished. Before I knew it, my cheesesteak was halfway gone. I looked at the second half and had a decision to make: knowing that I had some french fries still to eat, and there were crackers and veggies and dip and the like aplenty, was I going to eat the other half, or wrap it up and fill the rest of the way on snacks? I had eaten the first half so quickly, I didn't have a chance to really feel full, and I decided to start in on the other half. Then that was gone, and I was uncomfortably stuffed. I was still full another half hour later when dessert arrived. I was still full when veggies and dip went out on the tables. I was still full hours and hours later, when it was getting time to stretch out and go to bed and I couldn't lie on my stomach comfortably.

But all that time, I kept snacking. My mouth wanted very badly to move. Something in my mind was still saying it wanted food, even when I had to lie propped up on the pillow so I could avoid squishing my stomach. I nibbled on carrot and celery sticks and more crackers and finally a cup of tea seemed to help settle me down a bit.

I think what I'm learning is that I need to pay as much attention to how OFTEN I'm eating as I do to how MUCH.

If I'd had a snack sometime during the day, or if I'd asked to open up the cracker tray when it arrived at 6 instead of waiting, I probably wouldn't have been so famished at 7:40-whenever when dinner arrived. I probably would have chosen to wrap up the other half and fill the rest of the way up comfortably on snacks and veggies and dessert. I wouldn't have had such a long time recovering from the night.  And I have a suspicion that, although I ate too much in that one sitting, I might not have gotten enough from the day overall. If I had been eating smaller snacks more regularly, and thus less, slower dinner, I suspect I would have been hungry enough later at night to have the third meal I'm used to, instead of just the unrelenting feeling that i wanted to eat although there wasn't any room.

This learning curve is gonna take some work still. But I know that I'm in a far better place to tackle it than I used to be - not that long ago I would have felt a lot guiltier about being even a little hungry after filling up so fast, and I don't think I'd have been able to tease out what went wrong and use it as a learning experience this way.

Things Fat People Are Told

I'm not on twitter, and am only slowly getting the hang of how it works, but I felt it would be good to share this hashtag, found from Brian at Red No. 3. At #thingsfatpeoplearetold, a whole host of important things are happening.

Fat people can come together and give each other the support of knowing that they aren't alone. The number of similar and repeat tweets coming from different people is staggering, and the patterns among things people say to them is evident.

It's also evidence. It's a document of the existence of fat stigma and the sheer rudeness of some people. If anyone ever needs proof that random thin people can be downright nasty to fat people, there's nothing else that's needed.

It's useful inside and outside the FA community, I think. So I'm passing it along.

ETA: For those who don't want to slog through the twitter feed itself, Brian put together a sampling of posts from the first 24 hours. 

Walking

I've gotten a lot better since moving to New York City with counting walking as a form of exercise. I mentioned a little bit in my post about big-E Exercise vs. little-e exercise, but it feels worth mentioning again that it took a while for me to be comfortable with the fact that I can't run. It also came to mind when I was reading the Fat Nutritionist's post about gym class, and the plethora of people who, like me, hated running the mile.

Oh god, the mile.

See, I'm not fast. I can sprint decently well, maybe get through a hundred-yard dash. But I just don't keep up momentum very well. When I jog, I really don't go very much faster than I walk. I just tire out a thousand times faster. An actual flat-out run just doesn't last more than a minute or two. So, of course, gym class decided it had to grade me on how fast I could run a mile.

It took me about 15 minutes. The good news is, I don't remember anyone making fun of me for my lack of speed. In fact, I remember people cheering me on - as I was the last one on the track - and trying to encourage me toward the finish line. But I remember the pain. It hurt terribly, in my chest, in my throat. In that little spot under the hinge of the jaw where it dries out if you run too hard and you can't actually get any water into that spot when you're drinking. If they had let me walk the mile, it probably would have taken about the same amount of time - but I wouldn't have been in so much pain.

I remember collapsing when I finally hit the finish. I just fell down onto the track, grateful for not having to run any more. I remember my gym teacher trying to tell me to walk to cool down now, as if I could even stand up after all that running. I just stared at her.

I remember everyone else was in good enough shape to play floor hockey after the mile. I refused.

And yet, I've never been a bad walker. I remember a charity walk for diabetes that I did with my mother that was six miles long. I didn't even get all that tired until mile five. These days, I'm walking 20-30 minutes most days just to get from my dorm to my campus, and on days when I don't have class, I find myself taking the walk anyway to get it in. I can go around museums or theme parks or shopping malls for hours and hours on end, alternating walking and standing and doing just fine. It's only running that kills me so bad.

And I've had to get used to the thought that walking is still exercise. I'm still getting out there and moving around. It's just slower. It's not so very much less worthy than anything else that I could be doing.

Recently, I saw that a friend of mine is putting together a team for a walk-a-thon for the New Hampshire Association for the Blind. My first thought on seeing the plea for team members was a slight panic from not knowing how long it would be. When I found out that it was a two-mile walk, I relaxed. I joined. I'm actually looking forward to it. A nice long walk with several of my friends, a pace that I can keep up and also chat and hang out, or put music on if I so chose. It actually sounds really nice. I'm just still reflecting on the fact that I'm looking forward to an event that involves 2 miles of exercise.

(Those who are interested - with no pressure of course - I am trying to raise some funds with my team membership. Any little bit helps. The team as a whole is aiming for $5400 and reached $700 at the time of this writing. My personal donation page can be found here.)

Hairspray

I’ve been trying to start this post up for a while, but I just keep getting “I Can Hear the Bells” stuck in my head instead of actually writing it.

I had all but forgotten about the show Hairspray when I found it on my iPod on a bus ride a couple months back (like I said, I keep failing to actually write this post). I listened to it for the first time since getting into Fat Acceptance, and it gave me a few things to think about from that lens. I’ll clarify first that I can only talk about the Broadway version – I never saw the original movie, and while I like the movie musical, I just can’t adapt to changes in lyrics after memorizing the soundtrack that I own.

So obviously, there’s a whole lot of great Fat-Positivity in this show. For those who don’t know, we follow the life of high school student Tracey Turnblad, a fat dancer whose dreams are to dance on, and then to integrate, a popular TV show in 1960’s Baltimore. Tracey and her mother are both fat, as is Motormouth Maybelle, the black woman who leads the charge to integrate. Food, weight, love, diversity and acceptance all run through the show, and it ends with a bright future for all involved.

Tracey is a fantastic fat role model, to the point where I was stunned that I didn’t immediately think of her when I first started in on FA. Her size is a constant feature of the story, but she never lets anyone tell her that it will prevent her from anything that she wants to do, from becoming a TV star to getting the guy of her dreams. There’s a very relatable stock character in the unpopular girl who dreams of showing the whole world that she has a talent they never would have guessed, and Tracey being fat actually kind of helps to justify the trope; she isn’t just Hollywood homely, but has a body that would realistically be made fun of. All the same, she’s sunny and optimistic.

“Everybody warns that he won’t like what he’ll see,/ but I know that he’ll look inside of me.”

“Oh-oh-oh give me a chance,/ cause when I start to dance/ I’m a movie star.”

What struck me while I was listening this time, also, was the choice of talent for Tracey – dance. Hairspray is a very physical show with a whole lot of movement. To have not just a fat heroine, but a fat heroine who is physically talented and very active, and all of it without one iota of pressure from the show for her to use that talent to lose weight, is extraordinary. Tracey is never depicted as a sloth or a glutton.

Which does bring me to her mother, though. It doesn’t disturb the overall FA sense of the show, but it did bug me on this listen to hear the emphasis that IS given to Edna Turnblad’s eating habits. All of it can, I think, be read in a positive way – Edna just likes food and eats lots of it – but I think there’s also a sense that she at least is especially fat because she eats too much. There are jokes scattered about Edna’s lack of physical stamina, and I find it just a little bit of a shame to have them nestled in-between otherwise really surprisingly fat-positive messages.

“You can’t stop my happiness/ cause I like the way I am./ And you just can’t stop my knife and fork/ when I see a Christmas ham./ So if you don’t like the way I look well,/ I just don’t give a damn!”

BUT – overall, food is something overwhelmingly positive in the show. It’s love and health and strength, culminating in the whole song “Big, Blonde and Beautiful.” (I have NO idea why I am unable to find the Broadway version of the song on youtube; a search will bring up Queen Latifah in the movie version. Broadway lyrics are here.)

“Can’t you hear that rumbling? That’s our hunger to be free,/ It’s time to finally taste equality.”

Now, what I feel far, FAR less qualified to talk about is the intersectionality of the show.

The Civil Rights movement is the backdrop to the story, and act two is primarily about the struggle that Tracey faces as an ally to Maybelle and her son, Seaweed, as they lead the effort to integrate the Corny Collins show. There’s a strong sense during the show that discrimination is basically the same and always wrong, especially on something as silly as looks – whether it’s the color of your skin or the size of your body.

And while that’s a message I agree with…I think I just don’t know enough to comfortably conflate FA with older civil rights movements. It feels somehow like I’d be trivializing the struggle of people of color to claim that Fat Acceptance is equivalent to it. There are certainly similarities in my mind, but it just feels…lesser. Not that there aren’t serious social issues around fat stigma and bullying and the like, but that I don’t feel comfortable with the phrase ‘fat oppression’. I might get bullied for my size, but people don’t think of me as a potential criminal. The government has never told me that I couldn’t marry or that I had to stay away from thin people. It just doesn’t feel on the same level.

That’s really a tangent, though. If you haven’t seen the show, I recommend the movie musical version to get the full story, although there are a few songs missing there that were in the Broadway soundtrack, and some things are changed. I’m not sure why Hairspray flew under my FA radar for so long, given the absolute emphasis on being yourself and following your dreams no matter how big you are.

Unlikely Ally

When I saw Cracked.com's list of "6 Fitness Tips Everyone's Heard (That don't work at all)" this morning, I was curious, and a little apprehensive. But pleasantly surprised. Despite the site's overall propensity toward throwing out fat jokes as much as it does casual sexism and other things that make me understand why the site makes some people uncomfortable, they had this to say about BMI:


"If you've ever tried to get fit, you've probably been introduced to the concept of BMI, or Body Mass Index. The concept is over 100-years old, and is totally showing it. BMI is more or less weight divided by height. If it's above a certain number, you're obese.

You can probably already see what the problem with that is. By that extremely oversimplified metric, Reggie Bush (pictured here) ...

... is a big old fatty. You could be 200 pounds of muscle or 200 pounds of fat (give or take some bones and blood or something) and BMI wouldn't know the difference.

That would be bad enough if BMI was just like an astrological sign or penis measurement that you use to brag groundlessly to other people. But it's not just a frivolous vanity stat, it's something that's being used to judge pretty important things, like whether you can apply for a job as a cop or firefighter, certain military jobs, or whether you can undergo surgery.

It might not be exactly the same as evaluating job applicants by reading the length of their lifeline on their palm, but it's pretty close. And do you really want anything to do with a system that has no place for guys like this?"

It was a nice little surprise, and to think of BMI as something along the same level of scientific reliability as your star sign felt like a good way to frame it. The list also features myths about eating breakfast making you lose weight, and fitness tips unrelated to weight at all like running barefoot. (Swear, one day I'll get my rant up about the Wii Fit, and the way "fitness" seems NEVER to be defined as anything other than weight-loss exercise.)

I should be sure to mention that the article does still, for the most part, subscribe to Calories-In-Calories-Out, and those who are very sensitive to statements like "Of course working out and eating less will make you more fit" might still want to stay away. I don't use the word "ally" in the title here to mean that Cracked is magically a Fat Acceptance space. Just that, given the fact that the writer of the article does say things like that, I was surprised and pleased to see BMI given the dismissal that it deserves.

Weight Loss > Superheroics

This is a short memory, but one I've been meaning to share for a while. Sparked by Katja's post today about a new series of kids' books:

"Every family has it's secrets. It's just that Henrietta Sharp's family is in the business of saving the world. And now she is too. But when your ten-year-old body packs on some extra pounds, not even an uncommonly large vocabulary or the ability to travel between dimensional slices of the universe can make your hips look smaller."

WOW.

What do you even say to that? The commenters at Family Feeding Dynamics are doing a pretty good job ripping that description to shreds - my 'favorite' part is how apparently interdimensional space travel isn't anywhere near as important as looking thin. Not even being healthy, either, just having small hips.

Something that I've been wondering about and concerned about is the way that the Childhood Obesity Epidemic and the general public at large treats the idea of puberty weight gain. It seems like such a common-sense, natural, totally normal, inconceivable-to-object-to idea that in the years between being a Child and an Adult, one must gain quite a bit of weight. For one thing, you're going from your ten-year-old height to your adult one. For another, in girls-becoming-women especially, the whole shape of the body is changing. You get breasts, which can add a good deal of weight to some women. You get hips - poor Henrietta is being taught that her hips widening out to adult woman proportions just mean that she's "packing on the pounds", not that she's growing up. Both new men and new women are adjusting to new hormones and everything else that comes with transitioning into adulthood.

My understanding is that when teenage boys start to develop big appetites to fuel their growth and change, it's treated as a given. Of course they need more to eat, they're growing boys. When teenage girls show the same instinct, they're letting themselves get fat.

It's sort of a lazy segue but it brings me to my memory. My doctor started worrying about my weight when I was around ten or eleven. I remember the way I used to be so proud of myself for checking out my dieting books with their recipes. I specifically remember a little chicken salad in a pita bread. I'd never had pita bread before, hell, I never made my own food before. I would make my little sandwich and my lunch so I could be all prepped out for the next day at lunch.

I remember getting disheartened when I was still gaining weight.

I remember the day I reached 100 pounds. I can't remember anymore whether this was before or after the doctor actually put me on a diet, I don't remember how old I was. But I remember that 100 had sounded like such a big number. That was going to be the number I didn't want to go over. If I reached 100 pounds, that meant I was fat. And at that point I would have to diet myself back down. I remember how huge I felt looking at the scale that day.

(I later decided that 200 pounds was the weight I didn't want to be at - THAT would be Food Ogre weight, THAT would be the point where I had to diet. Right now I'm hovering between 185 and 200 depending on how much exercise and food i'm getting and I'm trying really hard to say 'fuck it, i'm big'.)

At some point, when I was 15 or 16, I stopped gaining. And what I remember most of all was how well-praised I was by the doctor when I finally got to "maintaining" rather than "gaining". By this point, I had long since given up actually trying to diet. I was having binge eating episodes. I tried to explain that I wasn't doing anything different than I always had been - well, maybe I'm choosing to eat turkey over fatty meats more often. Maybe. If you insist that there must be something. I was kind of proud of myself, too. It was a big weight that I was at, but I stopped gaining. Something must have happened.

A few years later, I looked back and thought, "DUH! I finished growing!"

It never seemed to occur to my pediatrician that the rate at which I was gaining weight during puberty wouldn't be the rate I would gain at for the rest of my life. That I would naturally level off when my body stopped growing and widening and turning itself into a woman's body. No, I was gaining weight so absurdly fast and much that if I didn't diet at age 12, I was going to be a million pounds! As long as I was eating the way I ate as a kid, I would never ever stop gaining. Let alone lose.

It sounds so absurd to me now that I can't even talk about it without being sarcastic. But it was so real to me then. It seemed so obvious that as long as I was eating the same way, I'd keep gaining the same amount. Forever. Until I was 200 pounds, 300, 500, half-ton - who knew where it would stop? I was scared, but it wasn't enough to keep me sticking to a diet. It was just enough to make me half-lie to the doctor when she asked what I was doing differently. I couldn't really admit that I hadn't changed. It didn't make any sense to me why I had stopped gaining.

I read about stuff like poor Henrietta and I feel bad. I truly feel awful - for the fictional girl, and for however many real-life girls are going to read her story, and start to worry when their hips widen and the number on the scale goes up. For the girls who are going to assume that 100 is such a nice big round number, it must be a good maximum weight cap - and who no one is going to tell any differently, because they're being told to lose weight. For the girls who will grow up afraid of eating as much as they're hungry for, because their parents, doctors and teachers have given them the impression that their natural weight gain is too much, and the result of sloth and overeating.

But also...I have to laugh. Maybe it's just so I don't really cry. But I truly wish I lived in a world where I really could just laugh at someone who thought to write a book where interdimensional superheroics are less important than gaining a little weight. I wish that everyone in the world could see how completely absurd that idea is.