Fatties Run Around Outside and Have Fun

Getting in some exercise doesn’t have to be the torturous chore it so often is (for me anyway). We have had an inordinate amount of snow around these here parts so these two Fat Sisters went out this weekend and hit the local sledding hill.

When we were done sledding, we had a vigorous snowball fight. It was truly joyful movement and a good time was had by all. Anyone else out there having fun in the snow?

*the title of this post is a phrase that was uttered a few months ago on a Two Whole Cakes Fatcast by Lesley Kinzel as she described her idea of a perfect Fat Camp. Sounds pretty good to me too.

I have been trying to compose a cogent post about the whole MCI (Marie Claire Incident) and am unable to put into words how I feel except to say THIS IS WHY THE FAT ACCEPTANCE MOVEMENT EXISTS; because that kind of outright hatred needs an antithesis.

Dusting away some cobwebs.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

O HAI! I wrote this post more than a year ago, and for some reason never hit publish. I don’t know why. Anyway, I came by to brush some cobwebs away and figured I may as well post this thing. Enjoy!

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I belong to this great meet-up group for homeschooling families in my area and a couple of weeks ago I was at this event with a couple of other moms from the group. One of the moms (I’ll call her Kay) is a really fabulous lady who also happens to be very petite. Kay always wears her 3-month old baby in a sling wherever she goes. This baby is ginormo-baby. If this baby lived in Grand Junction, CO, he would totally be denied health insurance. Seriously he is un bébé énorme, so Kay appears even tinier by comparison. Anyway, we’re all standing around chatting, and this completely random woman comes up and, after commenting on her baby’s size, starts gushing about Kay’s figure. It was 5 minutes straight of “you’re so thin and beautiful and the kids must really keep you busy and you must work so hard to stay slender”. On and on and on, so much so that I was starting to feel uncomfortable. I can only imagine how Kay was feeling. Finally Kay says, “you know what? It’s just good genes.” As the gusher’s sails visibly deflated, Kay went on. “Yeah, you know my mother is thin, my grandmother was thin and I guess I just lucked out.” Then she shrugged and the woman sort of awkwardly drifted away.

I am still a n00b when it comes to this whole Fat Acceptance thing, but when Kay said, “it’s just good genes”, something clicked. If the prevailing culture preferred a more rubenesque figure, I’d be the one having to tell this woman that “I just lucked out.”

An Exercise in Frustration. With Flashbacks.

I realized this morning that my soon-to-be 5-year-old is gearing up for a growth spurt. Well, I’ve sort of been aware of it for about a week or so, given the difficulty I’ve had in keeping food in the house. His appetite has been voracious. This morning a pair of shorts which fit him just fine the last time he wore them (last week some time), did not fit him today. So while I was out today (grocery shopping of course!) I decided to pop into to Target to see what they had for him. I found a couple of super cute pairs of Shaun White shorts (on sale, w00t!) in the next size up, so I decided to poke around and see what they had in the long pants department.

Here’s the thing. My kid is not, by any standard of measure, FAT. He is built on the stocky side with short legs and wide hips, just like his mama and there is no getting around the fact that he needs a husky jean. Last year, I wasn’t able to find any long pants in his size at Target or Walmart or the second-hand store, and honestly, I just can’t justify $25+ per pair of pants from one of the higher-end stores for a 4-year-old. (I needed at least 3 pairs, too.) I ended up just making a few pairs of pants for him myself.

Today at Target, it was the same thing. They had maybe 3 pairs of husky sized jeans and not one of them was in his size. Not one. While I was vainly searching through the stacks of little boy jeans, I had a sudden crystal clear memory of pants shopping for me with my mom at Sears, and having the exact same problem: needing a Husky size and not finding it. [sigh]

To top it off, Target charges $2 extra for Husky sized Wranglers. A fat tax. For children. Who aren’t really fat. It’s ri-goddamned-diculous. Luckily he is 5 years old, and won’t care that his jeans are homemade (again). *grumble*

The More Things Change

The other day, I decided to go through some old photos and scan a few to put up on Facebook.

As I was choosing the photos I noticed a few things.

First, I didn’t have that “OMG, I was so fat/thin!” reaction. I just look like myself.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t notice if I was fatter in one picture than in another. I just didn’t have an emotional attachment to my apparent or perceived weight in the photos.

It was just me.

Secondly, I noticed that even though I went through times when I was smaller or bigger, my body shape stayed pretty much the same, even from the time I was very young.

I never realized that. I spent so much of my life feeling like a huge giant whale–that my body was the wrong body. But the reality is my body is nothing more than it is.

And that is actually pretty cool.

I am tired

1. My energy levels are all wonky, so that I am tired at strange times and I have short bursts of energy other times. This is not conducive to blogging.

2. I went shopping today because I needed some goddamned Capri pants.

3. I found some! But not at Lane Bryant. WTH LB?!

4. I did find a dress at Lane Bryant and was even sort of able to make a outfit! Yay LB!

5. This is exciting because I do not really have “outfits” so much as “clothes to cover my nakedness”. Perhaps an OoTD post is in order.

6. But not today. I’ve run out of spoons.

HALP!

Dear Fat-o-sphere,

I need your help with something. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t eat gluten. Or oats. Or dairy. And I’m trying hard to stick to this intuitive eating thing. So what do I feed myself when I’m having an intense, crazy, white hot craving for just a teeny tiny cube (or two) of cheddar cheese? Sure, I could cave in and have a little cheese, but it would make me miserable.

So what is it my body is asking me for? The fat? The savory creamyness? The calcium? Because I can’t figure it out, and at this point I’m going to end up dreaming about flying to the moon in a rocket made of cheese tonight.

Suggestions appreciated, thanks in advance.

Teachable Moments

This week I went to a party at the home of a friend whom I have known since my oldest kid was an infant, about 7 years now. We have several mutual friends, her and I, and I was, ahem, lucky enough to have a conversation with one woman, B, who I’d first met a couple of years ago while I was in WW. At that time, B had confided to me that she had struggled with her weight for many years and that her mother had her doing WW from the time she was 10 years old, but she was inspired enough by my WW effort to give it a try again. (For the record, it looks to me that B has a body which would be considered and embraced by our thin loving culture as “normal”. I am bad at guessing at weights or sizes, but I would be well and truly shocked if her pants were any larger than a size 8.) Anyhow, at that time, two years ago, B and I were able to slip into the culturally expected norm of bonding over the shared misery and challenges of dieting and hating our bodies.

Toward the end of the party this week, I had settled down in a nice quiet corner with my knitting and B found me while she waited for her husband to gather up their children. She struck up a conversation with me, which started with a compliment about my knitting. She went on to tell me that she hadn’t knitted in years, but was thinking she could take it up again as a weight loss tool. Internally I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Oh? Because you can’t eat and knit at the same time?” I asked with a laugh and then told her, “well, I knit all the time and it never really worked that way for me, LOL.” As she tried to steer the conversation back to how utterly miserable she is being such a huge giant fatass, I said to her, “to tell the truth, B, I just don’t diet any more. I gave it up and I feel so much happier now.”

The truth is, I do feel happier now. Freed from the constant obsession of meal plans and food lists and points calculations and good foods and bad foods and body hatred, I can actually get on with my life. Granted, FA for me is still a work in progress and will always be sort of unfolding within me, but I feel like I’ve come a long way in the last year. I no longer look at myself in the mirror and automatically think “YUCK!”. I can look at a photograph of myself and think, “Yep, that’s what I look like,” instead of “GAWD WHAT AN UGLY FATSO I AM!” Being able to do that is incredibly liberating.

I actually explained all that to B and suggested she have a look at Linda Bacon’s Health at Every Size. She seemed open to it, and I do hope she does come around to it eventually. Because, really, being someone’s WW (or weight loss) inspiration is a lot of pressure. Honestly? I just want to sit. And knit.

Size Acceptance and the Sleep Talkin’ Man

Have you seen the Sleep Talkin’ Man? Adam talks in his sleep and his wife blogs about it and it is hilarious, to say the least. And today’s little gem? Perfection.

In which I say “I’m sorry I haven’t blogged lately”.

I’m not the kind of blogger that does a lot of “I’m sorry I haven’t blogged lately” posts. Sometimes I blog regularly, and sometimes not. Blogging isn’t my job so I figure I’ll get around to it when I get around to it and that, for the most part, blog readers understand that. But lately, the lack of posts isn’t because I’ve been particularly busy, or for a lack of material, but because of something that has been taking up a lot of space in my head since the early part of May. I’d like to blog about what it is, because much of what happened is apropos to what I’m trying to accomplish here on Fat Sisters, but I also don’t want to be a passive aggressive twat about it, either. I’ve started and discarded about a dozen drafts of this post since The Incident, most of them sounding too ranty, or too combative, or too acrimonious, or too hurtful. Which is not at all what I aim to do. So please forgive the lack of posts around here while I work on processing and letting go of things.