I’m fat. Not fat-fat, but if I go up one more pants-size, I’ll be shopping in specialty stores, a realization that led to my recent dalliance with Weight Watchers. People say I carry my weight well, to which I say, “go fuck yourself.” And, if pressed, I add “Go fuck yourself again.” But, yeah, I do carry my weight well. Except when wearing anything with a waist (I’m including bras in that category). My legs look good, though. Besides their translucence, I mean. They are ghostly white, as if I’ve lived underground for 10 years like that kid on that one episode of Fringe (which episode of Fringe, you ask? ANY episode of Fringe).
It’s not like I was molested (but that’s a good excuse for being fat). It’s that my dad’s crazy, and that drives me to eat (or not eat). His wedding toast for my sister Hattie perfectly encapsulates the tone of our childhood: after my mom’s advisement to not mention WWII during the toast, dad instead focused on his vivid recollection of the moment of Hattie’s conception (to which my mother hissed, “Bullshit!”). And despite Hattie’s solo-clapping from the bride-and-groom-dais and “thank you, dad. THANK YOU, DAD,” my father continued. Hattie’s conception (perhaps better referred to in italics?) more so than that of his other children, stood out to him because “Hattie has always been the prettiest.”
Let me pause here to say that this is in no way a reflection on Hattie (kissy-kissy!); she has her own cross to bear because of this OVER-appreciation of her. But, I’ll let her write her own story. Back to the wedding toast:
My sister Alice and I stared at him, jaws dropped in the most unattractive of ways (only further substantiating my father’s declaration), while the reception hall gasped in unison, and turned to stare at the two uglier sisters foolish enough to attend Hattie’s wedding.
I was THRILLED. Vindication! All those stories I told you? They are all true! The years of therapy? Warranted! Because, let me tell you, when you are told to worry about your weight at age five, you will undoubtedly still be worrying about your weight at age 40. That day-to-day self-loathing, which is 100% unwarranted, doesn’t just pick up and go. It is PARKED, right smack dab in the middle of everything you do, say, and think. It drives your self-esteem, which sky rockets with weight loss and plummets with weight gain. For example, oh let’s see, off the top of my head…. the weight gain associated with puberty. Now, THAT was a serious wrong that needed to be righted. I was ten, and already developing, and just like New Kids on the Block, there were NO MORE GAMES. “Disordered eating” became “Eating disorder.”
Of all the diet-plans I have dabbled with, anorexia is my favorite because it was the most successful (unless you want to talk about the debilitating depression that accompanied it). It was getting off that “diet plan” that was hard, and in the end resulted in a 100+ pound increase in my weight, no exaggeration. Although, maybe it would have all been worth it if I had just published what I think could have been a number-one-best-seller, The Anorexic’s Cookbook (Chapter one- “Hamburger Relish and Salsa: More Than Just Condiments”).
I’ve been so determined to not end up like that again (the depressed part, I mean) that I went so far as to almost accept myself, as-is. ALMOST. I mean, for a good ten years, I reluctantly traded chubbiness for mental stability and friendships. And so I went with it. Slowly, steadily, my weight dropped, until about eight years ago when it just pretty much got stuck. But here’s the thing about those eight years: I had been protecting that eating disorder. Exercise and food-reduction were always tempered with “be careful that the eating disorder not come back.” I tip-toed around it like an abused woman trying not to wake her husband. Instead, I should’ve dragged the anorexia into the front yard and smashed the shit out of it. But in retrospect, I know that I couldn’t have handled reducing my food intake until THIS MOMENT. Food propped me up during my first marriage and the subsequent divorce (I may have been crazy during the divorce-years, but I would have been a hot, hot mess if I were also denying myself the comfort of homemade cookies. Plus, they’re really good at absorbing tears). So here we are today, me and Weight Watchers.
This decision to join was, in part, thanks to the “Healthy Incentives” program at work. It’s an annual opportunity for employees to lower their medical deductible by taking steps towards a healthier lifestyle.
- Bronze: just try to stay alive for 6 weeks and you too can get medical care for an annual deductible of only $500.
- Silver: Create an action plan for change! Don’t bother to follow through. $300 deductible.
- The Gold Level of Excellence, Athleticism, and Exceptionalism (also known as just Gold): Create an action plan….and…wait for it… DO your plan! Reward? $100 annual deductible.
My go-to action plan for the past few years has been “Text for Health.” Three times a week for six weeks, I texted a number outlining the healthy activity I just did, or the food I didn’t binge on.
Took the stairs.
Ate a salad.
Congratulations! You are one step closer to earning gold.
Licked the bus seat.
Tried to make a phone call on a banana(realizing the number was unmonitored really opened up a new outlet for my creativity).
Congratulations!
Private message to fellow employees earning bronze: Gold is gravy if you do the “Text for Health.”
But in addition to Text for Health, Weight Watchers was also an option that HR made available for us, and it has tempted me each year, but I was not about to go to meetings with my coworkers and have them watch me fail. But this year, HR offered the option of “Weight Watchers–Online!” All you do is track food and weight for 6 weeks, and you get Gold. I CAN TOTALLY DO ANYTHING FOR SIX WEEKS!! And if I can’t, I CAN TOTALLY LIE ABOUT DOING SOMETHING FOR SIX WEEKS!!
I asked a few key coworkers if they wanted to join Weight Watchers with me. They did, but never signed up. They do, however, periodically (venomously) ask me how much weight I’ve lost. When I tell them, they curl their lip and spit out a “good for you.” And I know it’s because they decided not to do it and they are hating themselves. Not that I blame them. That was me last year, and every year before that. I loathe to even say this, because last year I would have been so annoyed by me saying this, but, you get out of it what you put into it; it being the Healthy Incentives program. I mean, if shame and disappointment and frustration were enough of a motivator to lose weight, I would a) be a lot skinnier; and b) have had about a third as many sexual experiences, given that the majority of those encounters were based entirely on my need for validation (btw, if you are thinking of trying this, it never really seemed to work). But the reality is that if you don’t want to do it (take steps to lose weight), you aren’t going to do it, and there are so many reasons to not do it, and they are all legitimate. Do you hear me? They are ALL legitimate, even the ones that are rooted in laziness, because even deeper down, that laziness is rooted in a very sad space where you remember being called fat on the school bus at age five, despite the fact that you look back at pictures now and think…WTF?? I look just like every other five year old!
And so here we are. Me on Weight Watchers. The first thing they ask of you is, what do you weigh? And, what do you want to weigh? Then they drop the hammer and tell you what you should weigh (me to the online form: “you don’t know me!”). Then, using these numbers, they calculate the number of ‘points’ you can eat each day. Except, see, it’s not calorie = point. Not all points are created equal. It’s the combination of fiber and protein and fat that determines the points. And hallelujah, fruits and veges are zero points. So those bastards at WW decide that if I want to lose weight, then I need to eat no more than 28 points a day, plus like an extra 40 points to float throughout the week. This seemed easy enough, but I needed a points-baseline to really know if this was doable.
Here is how that first day started out:
Breakfast. Now, keep in mind I started WW around Valentine’s Day. My then-boyfriend/ now-husband bought me a bag of penis-shaped-Runts (swoon!) and a solid milk chocolate boxing glove (because I’m “a knockout”). So, no, I don’t normally start the day with a hunk of solid chocolate. Let’s just move on to the coffee creamer. This is painful evidence of my denial. I can honestly say that I was not aware of what a tablespoon actually was. Because, until WW and my daily measuring out of tablespoons of (now sugar-free) creamer, a cup of coffee translated into two-thirds cup of drip, one-third cup of creamer. When my niece was little, she would fetch my coffee for me. I taught her to “add cream until it’s the color of your skin”. This is not an exaggeration. I’d fill my mug a little more than halfway with coffee, and then add sweet delicious cream to the top (or, in the case of The Sheep Mug, which has a sheep’s face inside the mug, cream up to the sheep’s lips. So that he looks like he’s drinking it and also so that it doesn’t look like he’s drowning). Other than that small discrepancy, this sounds about right for a breakfast: a handful of penis-Runts with my cup of cream.
Morning Snack. Two cookies. Well, yes. I mean, I bake them, and I’m good at baking, and there they are in the house within reach, and so naturally I put them into my mouth. Again and again. OBVIOUS.
Lunch. Handful of tortilla chips. I remember those chips, actually. They were Juanita’s brand. Have you had these? They are crisp and light but still manage to maintain a healthy, oily glow. OH.MY.GOD. Tell me that you’ve tried these (caution: there is a racist vibe with the Juanita’s packaging, reminiscent of Speedy Gonzalez’s lazy mouse friend on Looney Tunes (and Uncle Ben’s, and Aunt Jemima’s, and Land o Lake native woman…)).
Afternoon coffee. Tall iced latte. Coffee was the secret to my success as an anorexic. Even on day one of WW, I was counting on that coffee to help dull the hunger pains. Sadly, this no longer works if you add milk or creamer.
Distillery visit. Vodka. One ounce. First, see the tablespoon-comment above– an ounce does not look like what I think an ounce should look like. And second, why is the distillery limiting me to one ounce? I mean, one ounce isn’t even one SHOT. Anyway, the point here is that I only recorded one shot of vodka in my WW app.
So, back to my day. I hadn’t seen Kathy in a while, since she moved south of Seattle and since I moved north of Seattle. So I venture my way down to her place. There’s a little village around the riverfront in her neighborhood (harbor front?): one road, two stop signs, lots of Subaru Foresters, and a ton of crowded shops. These shops were jam-packed with trinkets that appeal to kinda- sorta- middle- aged females; places like the coffee shop where you also paint ceramics. Or the jewelry/ scarf/ funny- greeting- cards- with- quotes- from- funny- women kind of shops. I bought this for myself (and was so excited about it that I took a picture while driving to post to Facebook):
And then. Then there is the distillery. Who the fuck knew?? Kathy knew. I don’t think it guided her decision to live in Gig Harbor, but it certainly didn’t hurt. So, this place, Heritage Distilling Co., has like a bajillion flavored vodkas. And, if you buy a bottle, you get 3 or 6 free samples (shots. Or maybe half shots. It’s kind of blurry now). So, when I recorded in WW that I had a shot of vodka, what I meant was that I bought a bottle or two of vodka and thus the consumed the accompanying three to six shots, per bottle. Which, had I reported correctly, would have totaled an additional 18 to 36 points to my day. As it was, I was ass-deep into the points and feeling simultaneously shitty and enlightened (OOOOH! THAT’S why I weigh so much!), so it’s probably for the best that my calculations were a bit off because I think I would have otherwise bagged the whole WW thing.
Of course, the better I got at recording my food properly, the more desperate I became for food. Don’t get me wrong, I like fruits and veges, but if given a choice, I’ll take a cookie or a small, refreshing PBJ sandwich over either of those. In the beginning of WW, I spent a sad amount of time scanning every single barcode in our pantry (OMG, the WW app scans barcodes and tells you the points!), willing the app to tell me that something carb-y was within my point allotment for the day. Alas, if I wanted dinner, I had to snack on broccoli.
I’m actually pretty amazed that I’ve lost any weight at all, let alone 15 pounds (did I mention I’ve lost 15 pounds?). Of course, those 15 pounds just bring me back down to my dating-weight, which was only 2 years ago. It’s taken me four months to lose that weight! Which is just slow enough that I can’t see the weight loss so I feel a little bummed, even though my husband assures me there is a difference. It’s also slow enough that I don’t flip the fuck out over a dramatic weight loss, which in the past only inspired me to eat less, and then of course ultimately spiraled into a deep, dark, cookie-dough-fueled depression. The only downside to losing weight is that my neck now looks like labia, two gentle pouches poking outward.
In general, I’ve shied away from the WW reader boards, but after a panicky search of “what do I eat when going out for Thai?” I did stumble onto a lengthy thread that deteriorated from “rice versus rice noodles” into a tragic discussion of failed attempts to maintain weight loss. “This is my sixth time doing it.” “This is my third time.” I pointed out this (anecdotal) high-failure rate to my husband. He said, “it’s not that Weight Watchers doesn’t work, it’s that they stop doing Weight Watchers.”
So basically, to make this ‘stick,’ I need to be aware of what I am eating, and how much I’m eating, for the rest of my life? WHAT KIND OF HORSESHIT IS THAT? I mean, when do I get to have just a normal relationship with food? I would never befriend someone who required this much attention. What did you eat today? How much? Did you exercise? For how long?
But, maybe I’m looking at this wrong, me and food. Maybe it’s less like a friendship and more like a familial obligation. Like a Wally Lamb book. There’s no choice in the matter; I’m just stuck with this needy presence and that is so unfair, but I also couldn’t imagine who I would be without it. Maybe it’s just a matter of setting better boundaries. Did that happen in any of the Wally Lamb books? I’m thinking specifically of the one about the twin brothers, one of whom is schizophrenic. That story was probably the most like the story of me and food. Shoot, I hope there was a happy ending. Well, whatever. Next time I text my dad “Happy Father’s Day!” and he responds that my other sister is prettier than me, I think I’ll just be like, “Food is complicated. So shut up and point me towards the distillery.”