2008 The Year From Hell.
It actually all started with the murder of a young girl I never met. Eve Carson was the student body President at UNC. Young, pretty, vivacious, by all accounts, Eve's future was as dazzling as her welcoming smile. Then one night, two low-life thugs kidnapped, robbed and gunned her down in the streets of Chapel Hill. In a town known for it's bucolic peacefulness, where high crime is usually the hi jinx of drunken frat boys, Eve's murdered shattered everything I thought about where I lived and who I was. As the mother of two teenage girls, it also scared me to my core. We were upper middle class, well educated Americans, living in a safe small town full of upper middle class well educated Americans. We weren't the people who got murdered!
And then two months later Ira was murdered.
And then two months after that, David was murdered. Three weeks later, his mother, who was one of the nicest people I ever met, died.
By September my youngest daughter had two close friends die. My mother's best friend's daughter, who was also a friend from high school, died. There were suicides, car wrecks, diseases and freak accidents. The bodies kept piling up until the death toll reached nine. Nine friends. Most of them children. Most of them senseless. The sadness was overwhelming.
In October, my husband lost his job.
Then, in December, my Father died.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The Back Story. Chapter 5
In an effort to stop blaming everyone else for my misery and as a part of the "you can't spend the rest of your life nailed to the sofa" campaign, I went back to school and became a real estate agent and I loved it. LOVED IT. Still do. It appealed both to my social side, (you meet lots of interesting people and most of the time that's a good thing), my competitive side, (negotiating my client's interests zealously makes me feel like a pit bull in a pretty pink collar) and its such a demanding job, I could focus all my time and attention on it while ignoring some of the more troubling questions in my life.
Unfortunately, Real Estate is an industry that is singularly focused on FOOD! Every builder, lender and insurance agent wants a piece of your business and because its illegal to offer you bribes or kick backs, the "I want your business" burnt offering" is food. Donuts, bagels, cookies, candy, pizza. You name it. Food was always in the office with some vendor's face smiling at you from the business card taped to the box of morsels. You've never seen a whinier bunch of people than an office of real estate agents standing around the breakroom, miserable, on the rare day where there wasn't something just to have a little "bite" of or from which to pinch off a piece just to see how it tastes. I developed a great philosophy about it too. God, surely, doesn't count donated food calories against you as it would be rude not to eat the gift. Clever, don't you think? I just love a good justification. There's also the luncheons, coffee's, wine and cheese previews that we put on for other Real Estate agents to get them to come see our listings. Let me just say, if all you're offering is a carrot and fat free dressing, not one agent will show up. Put out barbeque, fried chicken and multiple desserts? You'll have every agent in town show up, fork at the ready! I put these luncheons in my daytimer religiously and would have had to be on my death bed to miss one.
Fast food also became my devoted friend. I was always in my car on the fly. It was easy. It was fatty delish. It wasn't nutrition but it sure was abundant. McDonald's Happy Meals were my life's blood. Meal AND a toy, how much better can you get! Seriously? Diet soda was like crack and I was downing several 20 ounces cups a day. Forget water, that had no buzz factor. French Fries were a food group and grease became a vegetable. I mean after all, olive oil, corn oil, and vegetable oil come from vegetables, RIGHT?
I worked hard. I was successful. I didn't pay attention to anything else. By 2006, I weighed 157 pounds. I was fat. I was sassy. I had stopped giving a crap. Everyone gets old. Everyone gets fat. I was a mess but I wasn't about to take a look in the mirror, both the real one and the metaphorical one, for fear of having all my happy little justifications stripped away and finding myself, naked, and alone with reality. SCARY! So, I ignored it. There was nothing wrong with me. The end.
Except I was tired. All the time. No matter how much sleep I got, I just couldn't ever seem to cast off the fog that enveloped my energy. I worked long hours. That must be it! My job was stressful. That was the reason! I was 48. You slow down when you get old, right? Surely, that would explain it. Tired. Tired. Tired.
How is it that you can get so used to something that it becomes invisible? Not once did it ever dawn on me that my tiredness might be a function of my overall health. Not once. I never considered that hauling around fifty extra pounds and drinking three glasses of wine a night might, just MIGHT, have something to do with my lack of energy. It seems so idiotic now, but when I finally went to the doctor to see why I was so tired, I thought it was because I was probably anemic. I still find this amusing, by the way.
I hadn't been to the doctor in the years since Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I didn't go because i didn't want to know what they had to say, to be honest. I've already told you how pleasant my reaction to the word obese was and that was 15 pounds lighter. Besides, you're only sick if you go to the doctor. I was a fat miserable load who was just tired. I wasn't actually "sick" until I went to the doctor.
And I was sick. And I wasn't anemic. What I was. What I am, is diabetic. Actually, to be precise, my doctor explained that I have the full metabolic trifecta. Diabetes, High Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure. Well, aren't I just the Belle of the Ball. Not exactly what I was expecting to hear. I sat on the examination table, while my doctor delivered the happy news, crying like a baby. I remember saying I didn't want to be the woman in the numbers. My doctor mumbled a few lines of understanding, handed me booklets on managing my trifecta of fun and sent me on my way with another appointment scheduled in thirty days.
It was one of the worst days of my life. Where to start. I still had the eating plan from when I was gestationally diabetic, so I pulled that out and started following it. I ate a little better. I drank a little less. Small changes, really. I mean who wants to make big changes if you can sneak it past inspection without huge amounts of effort? And it worked. Well, sorta.
Thirty days later, my sugar was down. Blood pressure and cholesterol were still up but I ignored that. Come back in another thirty days.
The next check up was good too. I was on a roll, baby! All of my numbers were showing real improvement and I remember my doctor saying, "you're never going to have to worry about your diabetes". BINGO! Exactly what I wanted to hear! Just like obese, diabetes was just a simple medical term. I had my get-out-of-jail-free card! Wonder Woman was back!
The first sign I was going to come off the rails was the fourth month when I cancelled my follow up appointment. I didn't reschedule. Why should I? I had kicked diabetes' ass. I knew what to do! Five months. Six months. Seven months went by. My weight started to inch back up. I started making deals with myself. I'd be good for three months so I could trick my A1C, then I'd make an appointment so I only had to hear nice things about my progress. I just never managed to be good for three months. I never went back to the doctor. I didn't want to be scolded. I knew. I KNEW. I just didn't WANT to know
Unfortunately, Real Estate is an industry that is singularly focused on FOOD! Every builder, lender and insurance agent wants a piece of your business and because its illegal to offer you bribes or kick backs, the "I want your business" burnt offering" is food. Donuts, bagels, cookies, candy, pizza. You name it. Food was always in the office with some vendor's face smiling at you from the business card taped to the box of morsels. You've never seen a whinier bunch of people than an office of real estate agents standing around the breakroom, miserable, on the rare day where there wasn't something just to have a little "bite" of or from which to pinch off a piece just to see how it tastes. I developed a great philosophy about it too. God, surely, doesn't count donated food calories against you as it would be rude not to eat the gift. Clever, don't you think? I just love a good justification. There's also the luncheons, coffee's, wine and cheese previews that we put on for other Real Estate agents to get them to come see our listings. Let me just say, if all you're offering is a carrot and fat free dressing, not one agent will show up. Put out barbeque, fried chicken and multiple desserts? You'll have every agent in town show up, fork at the ready! I put these luncheons in my daytimer religiously and would have had to be on my death bed to miss one.
Fast food also became my devoted friend. I was always in my car on the fly. It was easy. It was fatty delish. It wasn't nutrition but it sure was abundant. McDonald's Happy Meals were my life's blood. Meal AND a toy, how much better can you get! Seriously? Diet soda was like crack and I was downing several 20 ounces cups a day. Forget water, that had no buzz factor. French Fries were a food group and grease became a vegetable. I mean after all, olive oil, corn oil, and vegetable oil come from vegetables, RIGHT?
I worked hard. I was successful. I didn't pay attention to anything else. By 2006, I weighed 157 pounds. I was fat. I was sassy. I had stopped giving a crap. Everyone gets old. Everyone gets fat. I was a mess but I wasn't about to take a look in the mirror, both the real one and the metaphorical one, for fear of having all my happy little justifications stripped away and finding myself, naked, and alone with reality. SCARY! So, I ignored it. There was nothing wrong with me. The end.
Except I was tired. All the time. No matter how much sleep I got, I just couldn't ever seem to cast off the fog that enveloped my energy. I worked long hours. That must be it! My job was stressful. That was the reason! I was 48. You slow down when you get old, right? Surely, that would explain it. Tired. Tired. Tired.
How is it that you can get so used to something that it becomes invisible? Not once did it ever dawn on me that my tiredness might be a function of my overall health. Not once. I never considered that hauling around fifty extra pounds and drinking three glasses of wine a night might, just MIGHT, have something to do with my lack of energy. It seems so idiotic now, but when I finally went to the doctor to see why I was so tired, I thought it was because I was probably anemic. I still find this amusing, by the way.
I hadn't been to the doctor in the years since Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I didn't go because i didn't want to know what they had to say, to be honest. I've already told you how pleasant my reaction to the word obese was and that was 15 pounds lighter. Besides, you're only sick if you go to the doctor. I was a fat miserable load who was just tired. I wasn't actually "sick" until I went to the doctor.
And I was sick. And I wasn't anemic. What I was. What I am, is diabetic. Actually, to be precise, my doctor explained that I have the full metabolic trifecta. Diabetes, High Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure. Well, aren't I just the Belle of the Ball. Not exactly what I was expecting to hear. I sat on the examination table, while my doctor delivered the happy news, crying like a baby. I remember saying I didn't want to be the woman in the numbers. My doctor mumbled a few lines of understanding, handed me booklets on managing my trifecta of fun and sent me on my way with another appointment scheduled in thirty days.
It was one of the worst days of my life. Where to start. I still had the eating plan from when I was gestationally diabetic, so I pulled that out and started following it. I ate a little better. I drank a little less. Small changes, really. I mean who wants to make big changes if you can sneak it past inspection without huge amounts of effort? And it worked. Well, sorta.
Thirty days later, my sugar was down. Blood pressure and cholesterol were still up but I ignored that. Come back in another thirty days.
The next check up was good too. I was on a roll, baby! All of my numbers were showing real improvement and I remember my doctor saying, "you're never going to have to worry about your diabetes". BINGO! Exactly what I wanted to hear! Just like obese, diabetes was just a simple medical term. I had my get-out-of-jail-free card! Wonder Woman was back!
The first sign I was going to come off the rails was the fourth month when I cancelled my follow up appointment. I didn't reschedule. Why should I? I had kicked diabetes' ass. I knew what to do! Five months. Six months. Seven months went by. My weight started to inch back up. I started making deals with myself. I'd be good for three months so I could trick my A1C, then I'd make an appointment so I only had to hear nice things about my progress. I just never managed to be good for three months. I never went back to the doctor. I didn't want to be scolded. I knew. I KNEW. I just didn't WANT to know
Friday, June 25, 2010
The Back Story. Chapter 4
Life has a way of messing with your best plans and taking you down a road you didn't even know existed. It'll hand you a pile of crap, then leave you to figure out how to dig yourself out of the pile without a shovel in sight. In 1998, my pile of crap arrived.
Blow Number One.
I had been training to run the Marine Corps Marathon to celebrate my 40th birthday. On one of the last long runs before the race, I hurt my left knee. Nothing permanent or requiring a surgical fix, but my ACL decided it had had enough and that running Marine Corps or running at all for that matter just wasn't going to happen. I hated it but I hung up my running shoes with the intent of letting my knee heal for a few months.
Blow Number Two.
Labor Day Weekend 1998. We had gone to Chapel Hill to see our best friends and watch the opening game of the UNC football season. GO HEELS! Friday night, we ate, made merry and drank a bunch of wine. Saturday morning, I woke up with what I thought was the hangover from hell. Hoping to sweat it out, my best friend, Lisa, and I went for a long walk. I re-hydrated, took a hot shower and felt somewhat better.
Off we went to the game, where the headache returned as if the drum line of the marching band was holding practice in my skull. By half time, I had to leave the game. By the next morning, I knew something was desperately wrong with me. The drive back to Charlotte was an excruciating eternity. Every inch of my body hurt. I felt like someone was slamming ice picks, over and over, into my head. I was running a fever of 103. It was agony writ large.
By-passing my regular doctor, we went straight to the Emergency Room. The diagnosis. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
For those of you who have never had it or who think its just like the flu, let me assure you, this is a killer disease. Literally and figuratively. I took to my bed September 5th and didn't leave again for three straight weeks. That I was dying was very clear to me and despite loving my husband and kids, it would have been okay with me to die, if it meant the bone crushing pain would subside. Fortunately, the tetracyclin (which was almost worse than the disease) kicked in and pushed the fatal component off the table but for me, the recovery would not be simple or quick. I was sick off and on, with a whole host of pains, for two years. When my symptoms finally retreated for good, the landscape of my life had shifted.
Chronic pain changes you in ways you can't imagine and at the end of the two years, I was manifestly a different person. I was exhausted and I was incredibly fearful that every little twitch or twinge was a harbinger of doom, that the pain would come back, that I was still sick. Wonder woman had turned into wounded woman. And wounded woman lived cautiously. The sofa seemed safe enough. Everywhere else looked too risky. So, to the sofa I retired.
In this time frame, we had moved to Chapel Hill and I had stopped being a vegetarian, because with my illness it seemed unfair to ask my husband to work full time, take care of the kids, the house, the yard etc AND pay attention to my dietary needs. I also never picked those running shoes up again. Its funny, even writing this now, ten years later, the sadness I felt over everything that I had lost still effects me. I can't explain it. You have to have lived it.
Blow number three.
I turned forty. For those of you who haven't passed that mile marker, you have no idea what fun tricks your body has in store for you! Any fat you take with you across the great divide decides it likes the neighborhood so much that it invites all of it's friends and relatives to come for a visit - a long visit. Exercising? All muscle memory of what that means is eradicated like you have workout Alzheimer's. If you try and start a new program? Its going to hurt and you're going to get hurt because while your brain still thinks you're twenty two, your muscles and skeleton think that's just the funniest thing ever. EVER!
The three blows added up to the perfect storm and my vow to never be fat again was gone with the wind. I had regained all the weight and what did I do? The obvious, duh. I ate even more and worked out even less. I was fat, depressed and miserable. I ate too much, drank too much, spent too much. I was restless and angry and I became a crusader in the cause of self destruction. It stopped feeling like something bad had happened to me and began feeling like something bad had been DONE to me. I spent a good deal of time passing the blame plate around and looking for the culprit at whom I could point the accusatory finger.
Somewhere inside, I'm sure I knew it was me "who done it" and fortunately, before I ditched my marriage or committed any moral faux pas, I realized that I needed to slam the breaks on, get happy with me again and stop expecting everyone to fix things they didn't even know were broken.
Blow Number One.
I had been training to run the Marine Corps Marathon to celebrate my 40th birthday. On one of the last long runs before the race, I hurt my left knee. Nothing permanent or requiring a surgical fix, but my ACL decided it had had enough and that running Marine Corps or running at all for that matter just wasn't going to happen. I hated it but I hung up my running shoes with the intent of letting my knee heal for a few months.
Blow Number Two.
Labor Day Weekend 1998. We had gone to Chapel Hill to see our best friends and watch the opening game of the UNC football season. GO HEELS! Friday night, we ate, made merry and drank a bunch of wine. Saturday morning, I woke up with what I thought was the hangover from hell. Hoping to sweat it out, my best friend, Lisa, and I went for a long walk. I re-hydrated, took a hot shower and felt somewhat better.
Off we went to the game, where the headache returned as if the drum line of the marching band was holding practice in my skull. By half time, I had to leave the game. By the next morning, I knew something was desperately wrong with me. The drive back to Charlotte was an excruciating eternity. Every inch of my body hurt. I felt like someone was slamming ice picks, over and over, into my head. I was running a fever of 103. It was agony writ large.
By-passing my regular doctor, we went straight to the Emergency Room. The diagnosis. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
For those of you who have never had it or who think its just like the flu, let me assure you, this is a killer disease. Literally and figuratively. I took to my bed September 5th and didn't leave again for three straight weeks. That I was dying was very clear to me and despite loving my husband and kids, it would have been okay with me to die, if it meant the bone crushing pain would subside. Fortunately, the tetracyclin (which was almost worse than the disease) kicked in and pushed the fatal component off the table but for me, the recovery would not be simple or quick. I was sick off and on, with a whole host of pains, for two years. When my symptoms finally retreated for good, the landscape of my life had shifted.
Chronic pain changes you in ways you can't imagine and at the end of the two years, I was manifestly a different person. I was exhausted and I was incredibly fearful that every little twitch or twinge was a harbinger of doom, that the pain would come back, that I was still sick. Wonder woman had turned into wounded woman. And wounded woman lived cautiously. The sofa seemed safe enough. Everywhere else looked too risky. So, to the sofa I retired.
In this time frame, we had moved to Chapel Hill and I had stopped being a vegetarian, because with my illness it seemed unfair to ask my husband to work full time, take care of the kids, the house, the yard etc AND pay attention to my dietary needs. I also never picked those running shoes up again. Its funny, even writing this now, ten years later, the sadness I felt over everything that I had lost still effects me. I can't explain it. You have to have lived it.
Blow number three.
I turned forty. For those of you who haven't passed that mile marker, you have no idea what fun tricks your body has in store for you! Any fat you take with you across the great divide decides it likes the neighborhood so much that it invites all of it's friends and relatives to come for a visit - a long visit. Exercising? All muscle memory of what that means is eradicated like you have workout Alzheimer's. If you try and start a new program? Its going to hurt and you're going to get hurt because while your brain still thinks you're twenty two, your muscles and skeleton think that's just the funniest thing ever. EVER!
The three blows added up to the perfect storm and my vow to never be fat again was gone with the wind. I had regained all the weight and what did I do? The obvious, duh. I ate even more and worked out even less. I was fat, depressed and miserable. I ate too much, drank too much, spent too much. I was restless and angry and I became a crusader in the cause of self destruction. It stopped feeling like something bad had happened to me and began feeling like something bad had been DONE to me. I spent a good deal of time passing the blame plate around and looking for the culprit at whom I could point the accusatory finger.
Somewhere inside, I'm sure I knew it was me "who done it" and fortunately, before I ditched my marriage or committed any moral faux pas, I realized that I needed to slam the breaks on, get happy with me again and stop expecting everyone to fix things they didn't even know were broken.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Back Story. Chapter 3
1994 -1998 were the golden years. After finding out about the reflux and setting out on my course of action, I went home and got rid of all the meat in my diet. Oh, I kept the cream, the butter, the cheese and eggs, but flesh of all varieties was banished to wander the desert, no longer welcome on my plate. I had never eaten that much meat to begin with so it wasn't a huge hardship. It was just enough commitment to make me feel cocky but I didn't really anticipate much happening from the change. But an amazing thing did happen. I lost weight. A lot of weight. So much weight that I found the energy to start exercising again for the first time since high school. I started running. I lost even more weight. I ran 10k's like they were strolls in the park. It was empowering and exciting. I really WAS in charge!
By 1995, I had kicked Fat's ass, again. I weighed 118 and it was a good 118. Everything on my body was back in its original place. My shadow no longer jiggled when I walked. I was in the gym three days a week and ran six. I was lean and mean. The reflux was history. My blood sugar was normal. I was fricking WONDER WOMAN! It was fantastic!
Like Scarlett O'Hara vowing to God that she would never be hungry again, I vowed never to be fat again! Perhaps, I should have paid more attention to the fact that when Scarlett made her life defining proclamation, she was holding a potato in her hand.
By 1995, I had kicked Fat's ass, again. I weighed 118 and it was a good 118. Everything on my body was back in its original place. My shadow no longer jiggled when I walked. I was in the gym three days a week and ran six. I was lean and mean. The reflux was history. My blood sugar was normal. I was fricking WONDER WOMAN! It was fantastic!
Like Scarlett O'Hara vowing to God that she would never be hungry again, I vowed never to be fat again! Perhaps, I should have paid more attention to the fact that when Scarlett made her life defining proclamation, she was holding a potato in her hand.
Monday, June 21, 2010
The Back Story. Chapter 2
I'm not eactly sure when I first started thinking of myself as a "fat chick" but by my mid 30's, it was a presence in my life. My friends and coworkers, most of whom were in that lardy little boat with me would joke, laugh and commiserate about how fat we were. How we needed to "do" something about it. We'd whine and moan about our weights over wine and cheese. There were lots of words, lots of thoughts, lots of plans, but no action. It was just one of those things. I was fat. The end.
And then I got a warning shot.
In 1994, weighing in at a rotund 142, I started having chest pains. Chest pains get your attention so, emotional sirens blaring, off I went to the doctor. The diagnosis was acid reflux. I was also borderline diabetic. No big news flash there, diabetes is the body's response to stress. Weighing 142 was putting stress on my body, but it was cool. I'd been gestationally diabetic with both pregnancies so I knew exactly what to do about that, Buster.
A funny thing happened at the doctor's office in the middle of all of this. He had stepped out of the exam room and being the super sleuth spy that I am, I spun my chart around to see what secrets it might contain and what it sad was "36 year old obese white female....."
OBESE!!! What the f**k? I was insulted. I was furious. Not about being fat mind you. No! I was furious with the doctor for stating that I was Obese on my PERMANENT RECORD! What kind of inhumane ass does such a thing? I was on a mission to find out!
The doctor came back and I pounced on him like a duck on a June Bug. I grilled him. I interrogated him. I gave him my death stare. What exactly did he mean by calling me obese, I demanded to know. Shamefaced and sheepish, he quibbled, "Oh, that's just a medical term. It doesn't really mean anything." I knew it! He back pedalled me right into a fabulous case of denial. I actually remember thinking, "Well thank God I'm not obese! Its just a medical term." HA! Self decption is such a beautiful thing. Seriously, cancer is just a medical term too. All those people who die from it? Well, that's just a coincidence. I wasn't obese. I was just medical term challenged.
With my doctor tightly corraled about the "O" word, we focused on my acid reflux as my only health issue. His advice, once he realized I just wasn't going to pop a purple pill and go away quietly, was to give up spicy food, fatty food, coffee, alcohol and meat. My response? "I can give up meat," I asserted, confident in my take charge flux-be-gone attitude. The Doctor smiled thinly. The smirk on his face when I strutted out of his office as a newly minted vegetarian should have sent off warning bells in my head. I know now what he was thinking. "I'll be seeing you again, you obese, jackass."
And then I got a warning shot.
In 1994, weighing in at a rotund 142, I started having chest pains. Chest pains get your attention so, emotional sirens blaring, off I went to the doctor. The diagnosis was acid reflux. I was also borderline diabetic. No big news flash there, diabetes is the body's response to stress. Weighing 142 was putting stress on my body, but it was cool. I'd been gestationally diabetic with both pregnancies so I knew exactly what to do about that, Buster.
A funny thing happened at the doctor's office in the middle of all of this. He had stepped out of the exam room and being the super sleuth spy that I am, I spun my chart around to see what secrets it might contain and what it sad was "36 year old obese white female....."
OBESE!!! What the f**k? I was insulted. I was furious. Not about being fat mind you. No! I was furious with the doctor for stating that I was Obese on my PERMANENT RECORD! What kind of inhumane ass does such a thing? I was on a mission to find out!
The doctor came back and I pounced on him like a duck on a June Bug. I grilled him. I interrogated him. I gave him my death stare. What exactly did he mean by calling me obese, I demanded to know. Shamefaced and sheepish, he quibbled, "Oh, that's just a medical term. It doesn't really mean anything." I knew it! He back pedalled me right into a fabulous case of denial. I actually remember thinking, "Well thank God I'm not obese! Its just a medical term." HA! Self decption is such a beautiful thing. Seriously, cancer is just a medical term too. All those people who die from it? Well, that's just a coincidence. I wasn't obese. I was just medical term challenged.
With my doctor tightly corraled about the "O" word, we focused on my acid reflux as my only health issue. His advice, once he realized I just wasn't going to pop a purple pill and go away quietly, was to give up spicy food, fatty food, coffee, alcohol and meat. My response? "I can give up meat," I asserted, confident in my take charge flux-be-gone attitude. The Doctor smiled thinly. The smirk on his face when I strutted out of his office as a newly minted vegetarian should have sent off warning bells in my head. I know now what he was thinking. "I'll be seeing you again, you obese, jackass."
Saturday, June 19, 2010
The Back Story
I wasn't always fat. Actually as a little girl I was on the small size and this is right and proper as I'm only 4'11 and 3/4 inches. I prefer to think of myself as a larger than life person but the reality is a I'm a pint sized height with a petite frame. As a kid though, I grew up in a neighborhood of boys and was a notorious tomboy. I was busy and busy meant small. In high school, I played tennis like it was a death match and was a cheerleader so again, busy and busy meant small. In college, I wasn't quite as busy but I lived off campus and walking to class kept the beer and grease pounds at bay and I graduated weighing a respectable 105 pounds.
At that point in my life, I never even thought about my weight, what I ate or the impact it might ultimately have on my health. What 22 year old does? Pizza, wine, beer, steak, whole boxes of macaroni and cheese (not the powdered stuff, the serious fat maker that involves squeezing cheese out of a little metallic bag), chips, dip, cookies, you name it. I ate it. I was still small by any standard, at least for a while, and as my weight climb to 118 and then finally hit 128 on the day I got married, I still made no real connection between what went into my mouth and how it was effecting my body. I'm not stupid. I just didn't want to consider that lack of discipline, poor choices and no exercise (all of that stopped after college) were packing the pounds on me at a ridiculously fast rate of speed. It was just simplier to pretend that the fat fairy had come in the middle of the night and left me a present.
What was I thinking? Twenty three pounds in six years? If my teeth had fallen out that fast I would have spent a bloody fortune with the dentist. If my eyesight had declined by the same percentage, you best believe I'd have been wearing glasses and looking around for a service pet to guide me down the chip aisle. But it wasn't any of these life impacting areas. It was just my weight. Insert, "but what can you do shrug" here.
By the time I got married, for the first time in my life, I was concious of my body; concious of the size I wore. I was newly uncomfortable in a bathing suit but there's a difference between being concious and being aware. Concious is some vague cloud of understanding much like Plato's forms where if you look at the thing directly it fades into the background. Its more of a sideways glance that is passing at best. A whisper in a crowded room. Maybe you hear it. Maybe not. You just have a vague sense of unease that you're missing something important. Awareness is a keener sense of understanding. It has a warning in it. A call to action. An undeniability that something has changed and changed in away that like Toyland, once you've past some unseen border, you can't go back to the way things were.
I became AWARE of my weight for the first time after the birth of my oldest daughter. With a topped out number of 152, it finally became abundantly clear that I was FAT. Not Chubby. Full on Fat. Something had to be done!
So, I joined Weight Watchers, took up dog walking and submitted to the occasional session on an ancient stationary bike. I measured and counted religiously and I lost weight. Not back down to my healthy youthful 105 or even my still okay, but not really 118. Nope, I dropped down to 128. Got smug. Decided I'd kicked Fat's ass. Stopped measuring, stopped counting and stopped paying attention. The weight came back and I turned my head to keep from seeing.
At that point in my life, I never even thought about my weight, what I ate or the impact it might ultimately have on my health. What 22 year old does? Pizza, wine, beer, steak, whole boxes of macaroni and cheese (not the powdered stuff, the serious fat maker that involves squeezing cheese out of a little metallic bag), chips, dip, cookies, you name it. I ate it. I was still small by any standard, at least for a while, and as my weight climb to 118 and then finally hit 128 on the day I got married, I still made no real connection between what went into my mouth and how it was effecting my body. I'm not stupid. I just didn't want to consider that lack of discipline, poor choices and no exercise (all of that stopped after college) were packing the pounds on me at a ridiculously fast rate of speed. It was just simplier to pretend that the fat fairy had come in the middle of the night and left me a present.
What was I thinking? Twenty three pounds in six years? If my teeth had fallen out that fast I would have spent a bloody fortune with the dentist. If my eyesight had declined by the same percentage, you best believe I'd have been wearing glasses and looking around for a service pet to guide me down the chip aisle. But it wasn't any of these life impacting areas. It was just my weight. Insert, "but what can you do shrug" here.
By the time I got married, for the first time in my life, I was concious of my body; concious of the size I wore. I was newly uncomfortable in a bathing suit but there's a difference between being concious and being aware. Concious is some vague cloud of understanding much like Plato's forms where if you look at the thing directly it fades into the background. Its more of a sideways glance that is passing at best. A whisper in a crowded room. Maybe you hear it. Maybe not. You just have a vague sense of unease that you're missing something important. Awareness is a keener sense of understanding. It has a warning in it. A call to action. An undeniability that something has changed and changed in away that like Toyland, once you've past some unseen border, you can't go back to the way things were.
I became AWARE of my weight for the first time after the birth of my oldest daughter. With a topped out number of 152, it finally became abundantly clear that I was FAT. Not Chubby. Full on Fat. Something had to be done!
So, I joined Weight Watchers, took up dog walking and submitted to the occasional session on an ancient stationary bike. I measured and counted religiously and I lost weight. Not back down to my healthy youthful 105 or even my still okay, but not really 118. Nope, I dropped down to 128. Got smug. Decided I'd kicked Fat's ass. Stopped measuring, stopped counting and stopped paying attention. The weight came back and I turned my head to keep from seeing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)