Color me surprised.

I had a feeling as soon as Blogger showed a massive spike in pageviews that Al had linked to me again. I'm not surprised that once again he's assuming things that aren't in the entry (never said a bad day of eating was 3500 calories, he added together example of different days; I don't believe I've even stated my height which is not five feet), assuming I'm lying (If I weren't "coming clean" about the treats etc I wouldn't have explicitly listed the junk I was eating), and using the old one-size-fits-all-calories are everything method came up with 7,500 calories a day for a week to gain five pounds (another figure he pulled out of thin air, when did I say anything about five pounds in a week).

Really, Al's response is an absolutely perfect example of the point of what I said in that entry: People assume if you're fat, you're eating massive amounts of food all the time. It doesn't matter what you say. As I've said repeatedly, I have absolutely had my binges. Plenty of them, in fact. I was not eating healthful things. No denying that. But the plain truth is that my average daily intake of strictly calories is nowhere near what people would assume by looking at me. I'm not "lying to myself and posting it for the world to see." I have no reason to lie to myself. I am fully aware of my size, my eating choices, and their consequences. I have no reason to lie to anyone reading this completely anonymous blog. But, again, I'm fat, and my statements don't tally up with the old calories-are-everything belief, so I must be lying. Or too stupid to realize what I'm putting in my own mouth, or too deluded, or whatever. It couldn't possibly be that there's more to weight and metabolism than strictly calories, nope. Couldn't be that I have blood sugar and insulin resistance issues, and the consistent intake of sugar was keeping my insulin chronically high which prevented any fat from leaving my cells (because, you know, that's one of the things that insulin does). I must be just a liar. Even though I'm stating that the choices I made caused that situation, I'm still not "owning up" to it somehow.

Now obviously a lot of people have lost weight, and even a lot of it, strictly by counting calories. I'm not saying it can't or doesn't work. I'm saying it's not the only factor for everybody. For somebody with insulin resistance, eating low-calorie and high-carb at the same time is going to make weight loss exceedingly difficult. Even if you need fuel, if there's a bunch of residual insulin in your bloodstream because of  massive sugar spike that's only very slowly coming down, it's going to block the mechanism that moves fat from the cells for use. Eventually the insulin level will come down, and fat from cells would begin to be released -- unless you eat a bunch of carbohydrate again, of course, which is likely to happen when you start feeling tired and cranky because you're running on empty because your body can't access your stored fat for energy. Now, if your metabolism is functioning normally and you don't have any issues with insulin resistance, that's a different situation.

In any event, it doesn't really bother me on a personal level. I've had worse things said about me by nicer people, as my father would say. What bothers me are the societal assumptions about overweight people, which is what I said in the first place.


I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday up to my eyeballs in wedding cake baking, which sort of turned into a disaster. Things were fine until the cake stand broke. And there was no air conditioning in the hall and the bride flatly refused to have fondant over the buttercream, even though it would have looked much nicer and withstood the heat better than smoothed buttercream (and been a hell of a lot easier on me). I wasn't happy with how the cake looked, but at least everyone told me it tasted great.

I haven't been paying a goddamn bit of attention to what I've been eating since .. er .... going on a week, I don't remember exactly. No excuse for it other than just not caring. I definitely feel shitty, though. My allergies are worse, my moods are unstable due to the see-sawing blood sugar (wheee, let's not eat anything for 24 hours and then gulp down a burger and fries!), and food doesn't taste as good. I'm going home tomorrow (wedding was 100 miles away), and will even have a little money for grocery shopping, so I'll be stocking up on meat, cheese, fruits, and vegetables again. I'm not expecting to have any weight loss this month, but I would like to undo any damage I've done this week and at least maintain the 12 pound loss from last month.

Laughing myself silly -- and also irritated.

Oh, the joys of blog-browsing. Apparently being fat is a sin. Not that I believe in God - but if there is a benevolent being, I really have a hard time believe he gives a damn about how fat my ass is. And I don't think it "sets a bad example for the children." I had a Mormon friend once who was about a size 14; she didn't have rolls, didn't have a sagging belly, she was just all-over sort of solid. I'd guess she was maybe 140, 160 tops at 5'4". She went on a crash diet and told me it was because "I don't want my daughter thinking it's okay to be fat."

I sat there and looked at her in shock as she kept talking about it, amazed that at a little under half my weight she would say that in front of me -- especially with the amount of time she and her daughter spent around me and our other friend who was bigger than me. She noticed my expression and quickly started trying to backpedal, saying it wasn't okay for her, she didn't feel good, she meant unhealthy not fat, she didn't mean anything against anyone else. Maybe she even thought she meant it, but I'd heard enough of her comments to know that although she loved us, "fat people" weren't okay. That sort of attitude pisses me the fuck off. One of the many reasons we aren't friends anymore.

I've seen several posts by people detailing what their "typical day" pre-diet was. Al's description of a typical day ingesting 13,000 calories stunned me.  I'll be honest, it makes me ill thinking about eating that much. (And before any of Al's followers jump my shit, he said he'd be sick eating that much too, and I'm not judging it at all, just saying I personally couldn't eat that much.) Nobody would ever believe it because after all, I am a fatty, but I highly doubt I've ever eaten that much in one day, let alone have that be a typical day. A more typical day for me, if I'm just sort of screwing around, is a big glass of milk, about 20 ounces, a few hours after getting up. Then maybe I'd go get my favorite chips and queso and a burrito from Qdoba some time in the evening ... and that would be it. That's about 2000 calories. When I was working at the restaurant, I'd usually only eat the end of my shift, and then I'd have some boneless wings (1500 calories if I had a LOT of ranch) or maybe a burger and fries (probably about 1500). Or sometimes I'd just have a dessert for dinner.

Healthy? Fucking hell, no. Do I binge sometimes and consume 3000 calories at one sitting? Hell yes - but again, not normally, not even often, and typically it was all I'd eaten that day. Some times I won't eat anything all day because I just don't feel like it. I'm in no way shape or form saying I was eating well, I'm not trying to say my weight isn't a result of what I was eating -- because carbs totally fuck me up, and of course that's what's quick and easy to make or buy. It's just that every once in a while I'll realize that people look at me and probably assume that I am eating thousands upon thousands of calories a day, that all I think about is food, and that at any moment I might have "sausage gravy" on my face as Al likes to say.

I don't really have a point, just rambling. I guess I just object to the cultural stereotype that all fat people are uncontrollably stuffing their faces all day long. I think it's ironic that we look at the skinny people we know who stuff themselves at every opportunity and say how they're lucky they can eat whatever they want -- but a fat person isn't conversely unlucky, they're just a gluttonous sow.

In other news, I'm back to being fucking jobless. The place I worked doesn't allow any absences during the training period, and I had the bad luck to get sick. I went despite gagging and vomiting constantly, threw up in the parking lot after barely avoiding puking in my car halfway to work (a trip which takes five minutes), and that was that. Motherfucker.

And then I forgot to post this yesterday, which btw was a spot-on day of eating.

The ice cream is calling me ....

(Huge rambling post ahead.)

I was moving things around in the freezer trying to make room for a bag of ice, and I found a flavor of ice cream that I actually looooove. Dammit. I'll admit, I grabbed a spoon and had one delicious bite of toffee cookie and fudge peace sign wrapped in creamy goodness before I stuffed it back in the freezer. But now I know it's there.

Not that I'm at all hungry, which means it would be even more pointless to eat it. I'm just depressed about the boy, and my period is about to start, and I'm sort of bored. None of those are good enough reason to eat it, of course. I brushed my teeth and started drinking diet Orange Crush soda to get the taste out of my mouth and try to forget about it.

I've also been doing my daily blog reading. It never ceases to amaze me how many different ideas there are out there about proper nutrition and proper "dieting." I hate that word. Anyway, it's just incredible how many plans are out there. And of course I'm not going to try to debate what's "wrong" or "right" or anything; to each his/her own. It's just funny to me that something that probably 50% of the western world is actively trying to do or thinking about doing (losing weight) has no hard and fast answers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, calories in/calories out, except the body isn't a closed and simple system and some people process different foods with different degrees of tolerance. It's just interesting, is all.

There are a lot of great inspirational blogs out there, and then some that I can't even stand to read because they're so whiny. Which probably sounds rich coming from me, with all my bitching about the boy, but I mean more "pity me because I'm so fat and it's so hard" whining. I have no sympathy for anybody fat -- because I don't think they fucking need it. If they let their size interfere with their lives, then that sucks for them, but unless they have an actual physical ailment that prevents them from walking or something, there's no reason for it. Yeah, society discriminates, it can be hard to find nice clothes, etc. But none of that should stop you from living!

One thing that's been bugging me lately when a blogger that berates another blogger for something and then goes and does the exact same thing. You can't be ragging on other people about how the idea of cheat days or carb cycling or taking a week off exercise or whatever is bullshit - and then post about doing the exact same thing! "You haven't lost enough weight by my standards to stop exercising for a week! By the way I'm taking a week off from my workout routine for reason X." or "I'm not a doctor and I don't know everything but what I'm doing is the only thing that works. Deal with it or you'll die a horrible disease-ridden death." Some people like that I do continue to read because they often have something funny or interesting to say, but that particular sort of thing gets under my skin.

None of any of that is important, of course. I'm just typing away to distract myself from ice cream. I'm also eating a peach. I dare.

I'm supposed to weigh myself on Sunday; it's That Day Of The Month. Unfortunately, it's also That Time Of The Month, so I may wait a couple of days to let the extra accumulated water weight go and let the intestinal issues settle. Sometimes that kind of stuff adds about five pounds to my weight, and at my first weigh-in I'd rather not see any higher of a number than I have to, thankyouverymuch. I'm pretty curious as to what the number will be, not that I'll be asking my scale-photo-keeping friend for it. I just want to know what the difference is. I'm not ready yet to know just how heavy a lardass I was/am, in numerical terms. It might not upset me, or it might completely unhinge me. So better to just let it slide for now, find out what the progress is, and at some point in the future I'll actually ask what my starting weight was.

Of course, I do like to fiddle with charts and graphs. I've already got a spreadsheet set up to track these things. At first I was going to just put in the number of pounds' worth of change every month, but then I decided that at the end it might be nice to have a chart that showed the actual values as they decreased. So I thought about putting in an estimate; I know I wasn't over 300, so at first I just plugged that in as a placeholder. But then I realized that means that every time I put in a weight change, I'm going to be associating it with a specific total weight which would be incorrect. So instead what I did was put in a ridiculous, huge number. I know I don't really weigh 1023435425 pounds. It's just a number to stick in for now, a number that means I won't be berating myself for being at a certain weight, and one that won't stick in my mind. Then, once I finally do ask my friend what my starting weight was, all I have to do is replace that number and the rest of the spreadsheet will adjust accordingly. I think it'll work well.

I'm trying to look at this week at my aunt's house as a sort of vacation. That would probably be easier if I hadn't been on "vacation" since the last day I worked, which was July 3rd. And it's not a vacation foodwise. But I'm trying to use the time away from my house to reset my moping, mourning, lovesick mind if possible. So far I haven't had much success and in fact spend a big chunk of today crying. Maybe if I'd been working I wouldn't have felt so terrible. Of course, I felt pretty awful when I was working, I was just too tired all the time to really feel it. An hour drive to work, eight hours on the phone dealing with jerkfaces, an hour lunch, an hour home (if I didn't have to stop anywhere) ... it was just too mentally fatiguing to process anything else.

And come Monday I'll be starting another hideous fucking call center job. I keep telling myself it's just for now, it won't be forever, it's just until I get my claws into something better. I was hoping that something better had been found, and I haven't gotten a yes or no yet on the job I want. But honestly, that's just not how my life works. There are people who breeze into great jobs, people who happen to meet their perfect person at the perfect time and fall in love, people who have things easy. And of course there are people who lose everything in house fires, their spouses leave them, their kids are in jail, all sorts of awful things. I'm neither; I'm in the middle. I do okay, but nothing ever falls in to my lap. I get the occasional break, but it seems on the occasions where the universe does throw me a bone everything gets fucked up in fairly short order. That's just life, I guess, and I'm not saying mine is horrible. I'm not saying anyone should feel sorry for me, or that I even feel sorry for myself (except about the boy). It's just the pattern of my life for the most part so I try to be realistic about it. Then again, I did once stumble and fall face-first into the most awesome and fun job I've ever had. And the company shut us down a year later. But it was a good year!

Assumptions.

I think everybody sees themselves in a certain way, and that way does not always match up to reality. I know a lot of the time I'll be bouncing around on errands, grinning and feeling like I'm exuding joy*, and then I'll catch a glimpse of myself in a window and realize what I'm actually radiating is "batshit insane."
*Before I got all mopey and depressed of course.

Similarly, I know my body is perfectly capable of some things, and I forget that other people look at me and think ... not. For example, people assume because I'm fat I'm not able to play sports. I had that proved to me last night when I casually commented, "I hope I get this other job so I'll have time and money to join a volleyball team."
My dad's head swiveled around and he stared at me. "What?"
"I wanted to join the rec center volleyball team before I moved, but I was always working evenings so I couldn't."
He continued to look at me, eyebrows as high as they would go. "Excuse me?"
"What?" I looked at him blankly. "I like to play volleyball!"
"Oooookay." he pursed his lips and turned back to the Olympics. Wise man. If he had said what he was clearly thinking, from his glance at my stomach, I would have had some choice words for him.

I am perfectly capable of slapping a ball around, and even diving after one. I wouldn't be by the net because I'm short and can't jump very high, so I can't spike. But I can serve like a mofo. And I'm kind of surprised that my dad would make the assumption I'm too fat for it, honestly. The man has seen me chase dogs around his house, run endless circles around restaurants, pick up my cousins who are taller than me and swing them around, heave around furniture he said was too heavy for me, etc. etc. And yet he's shocked I expressed interest in volleyball. What must people who don't know me at all think? They must see me walking around and assume I'll start sweating and collapse at any moment! Not that I care all that much; assumptions just bug me.

I'd rather be fat.

One of my friends just started this crazy "HCG diet." I say crazy for three reasons. First, I don't think taking such a potent hormone can really be safe -- assuming someone on the diet is taking actual HCG rather than a sham drug to the first place. Second, There are a whole bunch of strange restrictions -- like she can't have tomatoes, or strawberries, this, that, or the other thing. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. The third reason is it's severely, severely low-calorie: 500 calories a day. Holy. Jesus. For a few days, maybe. But whatever version of this she's latched on to, she's planning on eating 500 calories a day for 42 freaking days.

I can safely say I'd rather be a lardass than subject myself to that kind of idiotic regime. She's hungry all the time, tired and weak and cranky, spending a lot of money on the "hormone drops" .... it's ridiculous. It blows my mind that she finds low-carb too restrictive, but is still attempting this. She buys in to the idea that it will "permanently re-set" her metabolism and after that she can just go back to eating whatever she wants. Sigh.