Keep Your Body Image Issues to Yourself, Maura Kelley

Open and hateful prejudice against fat people is one of the last "safe" bastions of "isms". People who would never feel comfortable airing their dirty prejudices about minority groups still feel really comfortable spouting off about how disgusting and lazy fat people are, all under the guise of health and the cost of insurance and how "they have to pay for it". I'm reminded of this everywhere on the internet, and the comments to this article were no exception.

I remember when Lesley, the blogger at Fatshionista was featured in the Boston Globe, discussing her fat-positive take on life. The comments were filled with people who were plainly just ANGRY that this fat woman DARED to be happy with herself. They insisted that she must deep down hate herself for being fat the way they hated her for being fat, that she was delusional, that she was a drain on the healthcare system (a perfectly healthy fat woman, so far). It was horrifying.

This culture (Western) is obsessed with thinness in an unhealthy way. This culture tries to use the issue of health as a thinly veiled excuse to hate on fat people-- I mean really, how many of us really believe that the hateful people are really concerned about our health and aren't just offended that we aren't conventionally attractive? I mean caring about a fat person's health would require some empathy, something that is clearly not happening with the hateful context in which health is mentioned.

The rebel in me reads stuff like this and wants to stay fat, just to give the fat-haters the middle finger. But you know what, I'm not doing this for them, I'm doing it for me.

Tough Week

My head has definitely not been in it this week, and the evidence is in the scale.

Everyone knows the drill-- super busy, stressful week at work, messy kitchen, not a lot of food in the house. . .

It all combines to make it easy to be careless with food and also to completely ignore exercise.

Let's see. This week I had pizza (twice!). I also had half a quesadilla with some chips and salsa on the side last night. About the only thing I've managed to do right this week is avoid the Halloween candy that is all over the place at work.

My portions are soooo much better. I think the band is working to help me feel full faster. But I just could not find it in me to care about *what* I was eating to get me to that full point, not to mention that the stress made me really hungry between meals so that doubled the difficulty of caring about what I was eating.

I have gained about 4 lbs this week. My guess is that most of it is from the salt, given my calorie count has still been no more than 1200 even with the questionable stuff. Still, it's discouraging.

I was going to go to Support Group today, but clearly they weren't looking at the city calendar when they planned it. There is a HUGE football game that backs up traffic like you wouldn't believe that runs right by the hospital. There is no way anyone is showing up to that group meeting.

So instead, I blog.

First Fill

Had my first fill this week-- 1.5 cc's.

I honestly wasn't sure if I needed one yet as I've been steadily losing without really feeling hunger without it, but Dr. really wanted to do it so I went for it.

He said 3 days clear liquids after fill. I have to admit that this is the first time I'm going to deliberately and willfully ignore those instructions. I've had a cup of sugar free jello and a sugar free popsicle (both clear liquid approved) in the past 48 hours and I am hungry. So I'll be moving onto full liquids (protein shakes, tomato soup) for the last 24 hour period as long as I can tolerate it. This is one instance where the internet is helpful (unhelpful), because I've seen the post-fill diet restrictions of other bandsters and 72 hours of clear liquids is on the extreme side.

Today and yesterday I weighed in at 234. That's 59 lbs lost since my high weight of 293. Yeah me!

Food-aholic to Shop-aholic

Man, losing weight is going to be hard on my bank account.

Yesterday I stopped at Belk to "look around" (yeah, right), and I found the clearance racks in the Misses section first. I picked out a few shirts in XL just to try on to see how far away from the size I was and to my absolute surprise and pleasure, I found several that fit.

Now, I'm not gonna lie-- they were all the "blousy" kind that are not intended to be form fitting and they were probably more form-fitting on me than the designer intended. But I bought 3 new shirts for a total of $40, knowing that I would be able to wear them for a good long while as I lose.

It felt amazing. At the same time, I felt really self-conscious as I was browsing the racks in the regular-size section. My mind kept telling me that the other shoppers were seeing me and wondering what I was doing in "their" part of the store. Totally paranoid on my part, and so what if that were true anyway-- but it was a strange psychological experience.

So when I got home, I tried on my birthday present to myself-- a leather jacket I bought two days before my surgery in a size 1x to use this winter. When I bought it, there was no way to zip it up-- I had an eight-inch gap at my breasts that I'd have to lose before even thinking of wearing it.

Well, that eight-inches is gone! I need to take my measurements again because that jacket zipped right up and fits now. It's amazingly exciting-- and just in time for the weather to be slowly cooling down (I live in the South and last week it was still in the mid-80's, but this week we're seeing 70's).

I have a feeling I'm going to become a shop-a-holic.

Progress Pics: 26 days Post-Op

In clothes, I'm down from a tight 3x to a tight 1x in shirts, and from a 24 in pants to an 18/20 (I can fit in 18, but 20 is comfortable).

The pedestal is so tall from the ground. . .

This ain't as easy as it looks, or as easy as I try to convince myself it is.

So I'm doing great with my daily calorie intake, and I'm losing weight (down 22 lbs in less than a month-- down 53 lbs total from my highest pre-op weight). BUT. The last two days I've been indulging in food that I shouldn't be eating at this stage.

Last night I had girl's night, and though we planned to have it at my house where I was going to serve fish and steamed vegetables, there was a last minute change and we met at my friend's house instead. Friend ordered pizza for dinner. There was no question that I had to eat something given that I hadn't eaten since about 11:30 AND I'd had a margarita at happy hour (though I did successfully avoid the chips and salsa). So I ate one small piece of artichoke and garlic pizza, very slowly. It tasted awesome, filled me up, and no one noticed I only had one piece. So ok-- pizza crust is definitely not on my approved post-op recovery list and it is DEFINITELY not on my low-carb list, but I went into this knowing that there was no way I was going to go my entire life without ever enjoying things like pizza or pasta again-- just that it had to be a treat rather than the weekly norm. For me, it's more that I feel guilty that it isn't on my approved week 4 list and I've been feeling so holier than thou about people who test their band being dumb.

Hello pot? It's me, kettle.

Still, I was under 1200 calories for the day yesterday, even counting the margarita, so I wasn't going to beat myself up over it.

Tonight, I had a small piece of coconut cream pie. Again, even with that I was at 1000 calories for the day, but argh! Toasted coconut is about as far away of an approved food right now as you could get.

What the hell, self?

Don't even get me started on my lack of exercise since Friday night.

Food Porn

Last night's dinner:



Baked tilapia with steamed zucchini and some lemon-baby dill sauce









Tonight's dinner:



Feta Tomato Stuffed Eggplant