Thursday, March 11, 2010

It Sucks Being a Fat Kid

I had so many good intentions about this blog, but I really want it to be funny, and well life fell apart.  I didn't feel so funny anymore.  My dad has cancer, and it's been making me fatter.  Luckily - he needs a bone marrow transplant.  Luckily because I found out today that in order to donate bone marrow you have to have a BMI below 40.  I'm going to lose weight now to save my dad's life.  WATCH ME! 

I'll try to update more often.  

So back to the topic of this blog.  I've pretty much been fat since kindergarten - last year I finally got rid of my "skinny clothes" they were way too short.  Being a fat kid really isn't all that fun.  Gym class was a nightmare. 

Sure I'll climb that rope.... right after I sprout wings and fly a few laps around the gym. 

Now I work with a few kids who are fat.  I really really want to fix them.  I want to tell them to save themselves before its too late.  I want to say - for today's therapy session run down the street and back.  But then I remember the time I was in 3rd grade and my teacher put me on a diet.  She made me weigh in before school and my mom had to turn in a food journal for a grade.  Then to celebrate me losing weight she took me out to lunch to a greasy hamburger place.  That was confusing. 

When I was in 5th grade my grandma made me walk with her.  She walked so fast I just wanted to die the whole time, and I didnt understand why I was being punished.  I still think my granny is 3/4 evil for that.  If any of you parents out there have chubby kids - try this strategy - make them healthy food.  That means you have to eat healthy yourself.  Then, make physical activity fun.  Your grandma making you chase her down the street every afternoon is not fun.  Its boring and slightly painful.  I have a feeling if my granny had suggested playing tag or tackle football in the backyard, I might be skinny today

We all know fat kids get made fun of.  I'll be honest - fat grown ups get made fun of too, but its not quite as obvious.  More side glances, snickers, and whispers.  Unfortanetely I'm very observant. 

For fat kids there are a few strategies they can use when they get teased:

1.  Denial:  "I am not fat!"

This strategy is just plain stupid.  Once you say this, you just get made fun of for also being blind or delusional. 

2.  Tattle:  Miss Smith, Johnny called me fat! 

It feels good watching Johhny get blasted by the teacher.  You stand there watching, arms folded over your chest, and a smirk on your face.  Unfortunately, that afternoon on the bus, Miss Smith will be gone, and Johnny will just have a new audience. 

3.  Aggression:  *BEAT THEM*   Make the teaser sorry they ever messed with you. 

Unfortunately unless you can sit on them quick enough, you probably aren't athletic enough to do much damage, and if they run away - well you probably won't be able to catch them. 

4.  Tease back:  I can lose weight, but there's nothing you can do about being ugly.

This can be fun, but come on, you're better than that. 

5.  Humor: Oh my gosh!  Thank you!  I had been wondering about that, and since my mirror broke, I wasn't sure if I was fat or not.  Thank you so much for helping solve this mystery!  I LOVE YOU!!!

This is your best bet.  Nobody likes a fat bully, a fat whiner, or a fat tattler, but a fat funny person can still have lots of friends. 

When I was in 9th grade, Daniel Q used to start singing that song - "Big Girls Don't Cry" every time I walked into social studies class.  I ignored it for a while.  I acted like I didn't know what he was doing, but then finally one day, I started singing along.  Then I thanked him and let him know him serenading me every day had helped me stop being a cry baby.  He laughed.  We became friends after that.  He beat up someone for calling me fat.  He later went to prison and continued to defend fat convicts. 


So now I'm going to give some advice to the parents out there - and for you grown ups who are still mean to fat people... you know who you are  (Donnie).  You might think its ok to make fun of fat people, because well, they are fat.  They eat too much.  It's their problem.  They should just stop eating.  Well believe me - there hasn't been one second in my life that I enjoyed being fat.  If it were as easy as eating less I would have done it.  I want to do it.  I desperately do, but its oh so very hard.  I will overcome it, but it is a struggle you cannot really understand unless a Dr. has told you that you are morbidly obese. 

My advice is this - teach your kids that a person's value has nothing to do with their size, color, or economic status.  In order to teach your kids that, you're going to need to actually start believing it too.  It's going to be hard for you, but if I can lose weight you can stop being mean.  This was supposed to be funny.  I don't really know if you're mean or not. 

One final note - you might think this is all very sad.  Yes, I know it's sad. It's sad that boys used to moo at me when I got on the school bus every day, and it's sad that the neighborhood kids would laugh and call me an easy target when they pelted me with snowballs.  However, its ok to laugh.  We must laugh at sad things so we don't let the sadness win. Hallelujah.

I'll try and be skinnier next time I post, but I'm on vacation, so.....

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

It Sucks Being Fat on Megan's Birthday

First things first.  I thrive on attention.  Some of you may or may not know I write stories and post them in an online community.  When I do that I get hundreds of comments every time I write something telling me I'm cool.  I am finding this blog rather unfulfilling when you don't leave comments. 

I have now only eaten things that are grown, for 17 days.  Sometimes the idea of eating another bite of a carrot just seems like too much, but I keep going. One or two nights I dreamed about food.  Oh I did finally break down and have a Starbucks, but if you know me - 2 in 2.5 weeks is really pretty good.

So last Friday my friend Megan invited me to go out for her birthday.  Megan is 25 and skinny and pretty, and I pretty much hate her except for the fact that she's nice and good at her job.  At her party there were a bunch of other pretty younger skinny girls that its ok for me to go ahead and hate, because I don't know them.  Actually, I must really like Megan, because I went out to dinner with a bunch of skinny people who got eat cheese while I only ate things that grow.  I thought I could handle it.  I thought I was strong enough, but I was wrong.

So everyone was there eating cheese and having a glorious time in their skinny little dresses. They were ordering drinks.  I don't really like beer, but suddenly I was like - everything in beer is grown! So for no reason except that I could, I ordered a beer.  So I'm sitting there drinking beer and pretending not to gag with every sip, when the waiter takes our orders. 

Girl I hate #1:  Crabcakes
Girl I hate #2: Southwest Wrap
Girl I hate #3: Cheeseburger
Girl I hate #4: Salmon (this usually doesn't sound good to me, but after 2 weeks of black beans being the most delicious food I'd eaten...)
Other girls I hate: Yummy food that has meat or cheese or bread.
Stacey:  Greek Salad with no Feta.... blech

The Greek Salad had lentils on it.  Is it me or is that just weird?

Anyway dinner went on, and it was fun enough.  I pretended to be enjoying myself and like I liked the skinny girls, but under the table my leg was shaking and I was holding my napkin so tight that my fingernails dug into my palms and I started to bleed. 

As I felt my heart rate increase my senses became acutely aware.  I could smell the Monterrey Jack slightly melted on top of one girl's Angus beef patty with a whole wheat bun.  My taste buds came alive and a small trickle of drool slid out the corner of my mouth dripping onto my chest. 

Maybe I was drunk.  Maybe the beer interacted with the black beans in my stomach causing a chemical reaction, but before I knew what was happening, I launched myself toward the cheeseburger.  Plates, glasses, and crab cakes went flying in every direction as the skinny girls let out a synchronized screech.  As I slid to a halt, half on the table half off, and grabbed the cheeseburger out of her hand mid bite, stuffing it into my mouth.  I was chewing and swallowing and stuffing simultaneously, determined to get in all the cheese before anyone pulled it away from me. 

I reached over for Megan's chocolate martini washing the last bit of ketchup and pickle down and then let out a belch that would have made my daddy proud. 

"Stacey!  What are you doing?!?!"  Megan shrieked.

"I. LOVE. CHEESE," I moaned and slowly raised myself up on all fours still on top of the table.  I crawled down it stopping at the various plates to taste the delecasies I had been depriving myself of.  Chicken.  French fries.  Broccoli.  Ew broccoli.  I spit it out, and it landed right on the cheek of a skinny girl.  Good.  She deserved it.  I continued until I got to the end of the table, and there waiting for me was the culmination of the most glorious meal I'd ever eaten.  CHEESECAKE.  Just as I picked it up with my bare hands to chomp down, I heard...

"FREEZE IT'S THE POLICE.  PUT DOWN THE CHEESE."

I slowly lowered the dessert and stood.  The jig was up.  I looked at the skinny girls who I hated and said defiantly as the officer cuffed me, "If loving cheese is wrong, I don't want to be right."


Please note:  Parts of the story have been changed for dramatic effect.  

I've lost 12 pounds.

Monday, January 18, 2010

It Sucks Eating Vegetables

Drastic times call for drastic measures.  While I'm waiting for a neon sign to tell me what to do about trying to have that surgery, I'm trying something drastic.

WAIT!  I just had a brilliant idea!  I like to write.  I'm a comedic genius!  I've got over 20 people reading this blog!  A PUBLISHING COMPANY SHOULD SPONSOR MY SURGERY, and I can write a book about it and use any extra money it makes to go to Africa and help little babies!!!!   OK - which of you 20 or so people can make that happen!  Willy!!

Back to what I'm doing.  Last week my church announced a church wide fast.  They suggested doing a Daniel Fast - this is a fast based on the book of Daniel where Daniel and fiery furnace dudes were kidnapped cause they were so hot and smart.  They were put to work for the King and instead of eating steak and potatoes, they requested to only eat veggies. 

If you would like to know more about the Bible, don't hesitate to ask :) 

My interpretation of the Daniel Fast is to only eat grown things.  Now usually when I'm told I'm supposed to fast, I'm like HA!  If you told me a few months ago I had to give up Starbucks Americanos for more than a day, I would have fallen down and died on the spot.  But after all this stuff happening, when I heard about this I realized I needed something to help me get my life back on track. 

My relationship with food is an addiction that controls me.  I'm tired of it controlling me.  I'm tired of the chips and queso whispering, "Eat Me" every time I go out to eat.  I'm tired of shoving food into my mouth so fast that half of it falls on my shirt and my friends laugh at me.  I'm tired of spending so much money on food and being broke at the end of each pay period when I make plenty.  

So I'm hoping that a week of eating only things I don't really like or want that much will teach me that I can say no to the cheese and junk food and the breakfast sandwich that seems so much easier than eating something at home in the mornings.  

It's been a week now.  I have not eaten anything not grown - except for communion - I hope God gives me a pass on that one.  What a conundrum! 


It's been hard.  But not that hard.  I'm alive.  I did start twitching and had to hold myself down in the chair on the night my sister ordered pizza and ate it in front of me.  It was disappointing to turn down 2 invitations to go out, but I wasn't sure I could survive going out to eat and watching everyone else eat good stuff while I had broccoli.  Other than that though it has not drastically ruined my life not eat what ever I have the urge to stick in my mouth.  Let us remember this lesson in the coming months.  


Tasty Food  does not equal happiness.  









 

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Impulse Control

One thing I have always had a problem with is thinking caring about the future.  I don't mean when I grow up or retirement.  Well actually I never opened a 401K, so yes that too.  One time my mentorish person told me that she was more of a Buddhist and liked to live in the moment.  I'm sorry Jesus!  I never meant to be a Buddhist, but I find myself always living in the moment.

Some examples of how I've lived in the moment:
  • Oh I can put this on a credit card and worry about it later.  
  • Someday I will cancel the Chaz Dean hair products that are automatically shipped to me and debited from my account, but I don't even really like it.  I was in the moment when I ordered off an infomercial, and I'm too busy in every other moment to bother with canceling it. 
  • My desk at school is really messy, but I'll save that for another moment to clean it up. 
  • I can eat this now.  I'll eat better (lose weight, diet, pay for it for years to come) later.
Thankfully, this is not my fault.  I am a therapist, so I know that a symptom of PTSD is foreshortened sense of future.  Like you always think you're going to die, so you don't worry about tomorrow.  I'm pretty sure I still have PTSD from getting shot and from that time after Andrea got engaged.   Andrea is my best friend, on the night her then boyfriend was going to propose we planned a surprise celebration for her back in the dorms.  Well she came back, I opened the door and yelled surprise, looked down and saw there was no ring on her finger, slammed door, and screamed.  See that was obviously traumatic for me.  So, it's obviously Andrea's fault I'm fat.  She gave me PTSD and a foreshortened sense of the future which has led me to not think about the consequences when I am engaging in unhealthy behavior today.

(Andrea, I will accept your written apology.)

This brings me to the topic of impulse control.  I spend hours every week working on teaching little hellions clients to control their impulses.   I tell them to "stop and think" when they have the impulse to do something that will get them into trouble.  We talk about not letting your impulses control you.

I have a lot of impulses to eat cheese.

When I have the impulse to eat something bad for me, I need to stop and think.  How will this affect me in the future.  Then hard part is that I need to try really hard to care.  

I need to make changes in my life, and one thing I see (not like its a new revelation) is that food controls me.  I think about it all day long.  I'm happier when I'm eating or especially if I'm out to eat with friends.  Everything I do seems to center around food, and yet I'm not supposed to eat a lot of it or eat what tastes good.  Well I tell kids not to let their impulses control them, and I'm tired of food controlling me.  I want it not to matter so much to me.  How do I change the entire way my mind works though?

All I can do is try.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

It Sucks Being Fat and Having Bad Insurance

Earlier this year I decided to pursue having gastric banding surgery.  So far I have gone to an informational meeting, 2 regular doctor's appointments, a surgical consult, a cardiologist, and for a sleep study.  This was a lot of stuff. 

I just got the news that my insurance will only cover only about 1/4 of the cost of the surgery.  After crying and whining and telling Andrea I'm mad at myself and the whole world for making me be fat I am resigned. 

Wait - let me be mad a little bit more. 

1.  I'm mad at society for saying I'm not good enough.

2.  I'm mad at my parents for overfeeding me and not putting their fat kid in sports.

3.  I'm mad at my sister for ordering pizza all the time. 

4.  I'm mad at most of my friends for not coming over to make me work out. 

5.  I'm mad at Andrea for making me feel guilty before when I was losing weight faster than her. 

6.  I'm mad at American Airlines for making their seats too small and for making me ask for a seatbelt extension twice on one flight because the stewardess forgot.  It was bad enough the first time. 

7.  I'm mad at him.  Best not to elaborate here.

8.  I'm mad at God because he could fix me and he isn't and because he let me get like this in the first place. 

9.  I'm mad at my dog for pulling on the leash so much when I try to walk him. 

10.  I'm mad at McDonalds for being across the parkinglot from my work. 

11.  I'm mad at the barista at Starbucks who always used to give me skim milk even though I didn't order it. 

12.  I'm mad my mom cause she never finished cleaning my room when I earned it and because she took my sister to Disneyworld for being depressed and I've been depressed for years.

13.  I'm mad at every restaurant ive ever gone to for having high calorie foods that taste good.

14.  I'm mad at my Granny for buying me a tiny little trampoline to exercise with in my room and not a big cool one for the back yard. 

15.  I'm mad at Six Flags because I couldnt fit on some of the rides. 

16.  I'm mad at carrotts for tasting so blah.

17.  I'm mad at chicken for having to be thawed and cooked when it's much easier to run to Arbys. 

18.  I'm mad the pastors at my church that I went to when I was 19 because they wouldn't take me seriously because I was fat and they automatically liked Jamie Cook. 

19.  I'm mad at everyone who thinks I can just stop eating and start exercising.

20.  I'm mad at John Pugh who told me that it was good I was fat because being fat made me not die when I got shot. 

21.  I'm mad at bathtubs because it is not that fun to take a bath when you're fat but it sounds nice.

22.  I am mad at the seatbelt in my car because it is uncomfortable if I am wearing a coat because I am fat.

23.  I am mad at my arms for being so huge that I can't wear tank tops.

24.  I am mad at Daphne for saying that fat people can't save money because they have no impulse control.  I'm even madder at Daphne, because I can't save money and I'm fat. 

25.  I'm mad at every person who ever made fun of me for being fat and that is a lot of people. 

26.  I am mad at Old Navy because their plus size pants fit really weird. 

27.  I am mad at my eyelids.  I'm already fat.  Do you have to give me problems too?

28.  I'm mad at every person in the world that weighs less than 200 pounds.

29.  I'm mad at most people that weigh more than 200 pounds. 

30.  I'm mad at myslef.  I'm a hundred times more mad at myself then I am at anyone else. 


OK Now I'm resigned. 

Sorry for possibly offending every person I've ever met. 

Friday, January 1, 2010

It Really Sucks Being Fat

If you're skinny you have no idea what I'm talking about. If you're skinny but you think you're fat you might think you know what I'm talking about, but you have no idea. Here's a secret: fat people find it annoying when skinny people complain about being fat.

I want to make this funny so I won't depress you and tell you all the ways it sucks to be fat, but trust me it really really sucks. Every time I didn't get a job or felt like I wasn't taken seriously I had to wonder if it was because I'm fat. I was good enough to be great friends with lots of guys, but the ones that ask me out have mainly been bi polar, homeless, on welfare, or many years older than I. There was that one man who lived in the public housing project I worked in. He was friendly enough. Too bad he always answered his door naked, because he could have been a keeper. Basically I feel like I have had to work 10 times as hard as everyone else to prove that I'm an ok person. Do you believe me yet? Maybe I'm still trying to convince myself.

It sucks to be fat for a lot of reasons. Here are my top 10:


10. I work with little kids, and I'm really really tired of them asking me if I'm pregnant, or saying I have big muscles when I really just have really fat arms, or grabbing some part of me, making it jiggle, and laughing.

9.  It's really embarrassing when you go to a friend's house or your boss's house and the chair you are sitting in breaks. A weaker person might have run out the door crying. I took the high road and blamed the chair.

8. I can't wrap a towel all the way around my body. I think this has been a bigger problem for roommates, those who lived in my college dorm, and my family than it has been for me. I didn't have to see my big rear hanging out as long as I avoided the mirror.

7. You might not realize this, but fat floats. This is both good and bad. I can't really swim underwater, which is frustrating when swimming for fun. This could be a good thing though if I ever fall off a boat in the middle of the ocean. Treading water is pretty easy for me.

6. Teeter totters have always posed a problem.

5. I have rolls. Warm moist places breed rashes. I won't gross you out with the details.

4. I like to travel, but traveling becomes less enjoyable when you have to ask the stewardess for more seat belt. One time I stole a seat belt extension from delta so I wouldn't have to ask again on my connecting flight. Joke was on me. They had a different kind of seat belt on the new plane. I began a life of crime and still had to ask for one.

3. I get terrible gas mileage.

2. I almost always lose at hide and seek.

1. I can only buy poorly made clothes that cost a lot of money cause they are all that fit. I wear sweaters in the summer to hide my arm cleavage. Yes I have arm cleavage. One size might fit all but never me.


So there are a lot of reasons being fat sucks. It sucks so much that I think I'm going to have surgery to try and be thin. This makes me sad. I hate that it has come to this. I'm starting this blog as a way to help myself cope. To make it funner. Cause as much as being fat sucks, what if not being fat sucks just as much?