I dunno, I always wrinkle my nose a bit at diet pill ads and propaganda. The diet pill industry is a multi-million dollar a year industry mainly because a lot of people are desperate to lose weight. But what is the cost?

Remember that one diet pill that caused “anal leakage”. I can’t remember the name off-hand but it was a fat inhibitor or at least stopped our body from absorbing as much fat from our food. Well, the fat had to go somewhere so people were complaining that their sweat was starting to turn orange and that orange shit was seeping out of their butts. Yanno, I just don’t want to be thin that bad as to put up with shit leaking out of my ass.

That particular side effect is funny but remember Phen-Fen? Yeah, not so funny. My step-mother was on that drug combo back in the 90s when it first came out and people were going crazy with “success” stories. It took about a year or two for people to start having issues and unfortunately, my step-mom was one of them. Permanent heart damage is no joke, y’all.

The moral of the story is that diet pills aren’t good. Stick to what we know works: diet and exercise. WOOT.

From what I understand, the Insanity Workout really consists of several “sets” of high-intensity cardio movements such as Burpees, jumping jacks, and football runs. I don’t know if you’ve ever done a burpee but they are HELLISH!

I am definitely not in any kind of shape to do a prolonged workout regimen at this level of intensity but I think I might try to modify this to fit my needs. I’ll let you know how it goes, dear reader!

Ok, sometimes you don’t have time or are too tired to grill!

I know, I know. It’s not always about Subway, but you have to admit that “Jarrod” guy looks pretty good and seems to be maintaining his Subway-inspired weight loss even years later.

I was lamenting the woes of terrible fast food in my last post and decided to follow up with a good homemade list of places to go when you’re exhausted or out of things at home. This list isn’t meant to be all-encompassing but you’ll get a good idea of what’s out there.

• Subway  - You really can eat fresh! Subway has several good choices for sandwiches and wraps and even offers baked chips and sometimes fruit in the store. Leave off the mayo and cheese and you’ll still have a yummy sandwich!
• Panera Bread – This is one of my very favorite places to eat. You can get a 1/2 sandwich deal at lunch that includes a soup and a piece of fruit (usually an apple) and all calorie contents are listed right there on the menu!
• Einstein Brothers Bagels – Super yummy and wonderful selection! Plus they have really good hummus!
• Jason’s Deli – Pretty much any kind of sandwich you can imagine and very good iced tea (unsweet, of course!).

I hit the gym for a hard workout last night and ended up doing 45 minutes on the treadmill and another 30 minutes of weight-lifting. Needless to say, I was exhausted when I got done because I had worked all day and still had to go to the grocery store. When I got done at the grocery store, I realized I was pretty ravenous and was probably going to be too tired to cook when I got home so I considered my fast food options. Settled for Subway sandwiches because the burger joints really don’t have very many good options.

I came across this article this morning about how lots of fast food chains are trying to pack 2 or even 3 items of food into the same “superfood”, think pizza with a ring of cheesy bread or Kentucky Fried Chicken’s “sandwich” where the bread is essentially two pieces of chicken: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-mct-from-cheeseburger-ringed-pizza-to-dorito-tacos-20120507,0,1423172.story

Most of this food is reallllly really bad for you. It’s processed as hell. It’s got enough sodium to choke a friggin’ horse. It’s deep fried and nine times out of ten is covered in cheese or gravy.

I decided to make a list of some really good fast food choices and alternatives and will be posting that in my next article. Right now, let’s just be aware of the lurking calories and salt in all of those monster creations.

On the surface a cheeseburger with two Krisy Kreme donuts might sound awesome but the fact is, it just isn’t.

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/fat-fly-passenger-sues-southwest-airlines-discriminatory-actions/story?id=16271932#.T6epW5jEg49

I’ve seen dozens of articles like this pop up over the last few years and have often tilted my head at how airlines handle this very delicate situation. Don’t get me wrong, Southwest Airlines isn’t the only airline to target passengers of size with their new policy but they certainly seem to be the one that pops up in the news most often.

I think that on some level it is reasonable to require a passenger to buy an extra seat if their body encroaches on another person’s seat but wonder how Southwest Airlines would handle the following situations:

* A person who is over 6’5″ whose shoulders cause the person sitting next to them to have to try to fold themselves in half.

* A person with extremely foul body odor.

* A person traveling with a small child who is disruptive for the entire flight.

My point is that we don’t generally have “sections” on flights that accommodate children or extra tall people so we have to make due with what we have. That means that passengers like myself who fit in the seat but who might need a seatbelt extender have to try to squeeze in as much as possible. Sometimes I am wedged between two men who are absurdly tall and I am left feeling like a sardine. Is my comfort not as important as theirs?

I am beginning to wonder if policies such as the above unfairly target women travelers.

I don’t really have a moral to the story for this article but think that we should all be aware when flying. Do your best to check the seat pitch and width of the seats for the airline on which you are traveling. You can visit a site like www.seatguru.com and see the width for just about every airline in the world!

http://moneyland.time.com/2012/05/02/why-being-overweight-could-earn-you-a-lower-salary/

I’ve read articles like this over and over that talk about how being fat gives people the perception that you are “lazy”, “sloppy”, or “stupid”. I mean, basically they are saying that other people are ignorant. Ok, I get that, but what happens when fat people perpetuate their own fatphobia?

Sometimes it means that fat people sit around judging other fat people. Have you ever walked into a room and looked around to see if you are the fattest person there? I have. That’s because nobody *wants* to be the “fattest person there” generally because it means you are the “laziest, stupidest, sloppiest”, etc. etc. That is fatphobia. It is also buying into a ridiculous hierarchy where people are valued based on their size. Smaller being “more” valuable and larger being less.

We have to get a grip on that from the inside. As a fat person, I really should never look at another fat person and pass judgment. I should also check myself when I start engaging in negative self-talk like “I’m fat so nobody will ever love me” or “I’m too fat to do x, y, z” or wear what I want. Those messages are ingrained from society and not “THE TRUTH”.

Basically, we have to find out what our truth is no matter our size. Notice I didn’t say “in spite of” our size because I might be one of those rare individuals who no longer views size as a detriment.

I’m fat. I might always be fat even though I’m working toward a healthier body. Even if I never lost another pound, I’d be happy being me. Why? Because I’m gorgeous, I’m intelligent, and I’m bad ass enough to think for myself.

That means I rock! And you do too!

I mean, I am a fat person who lives the active life of a person half my size. I wake up at the butt crack of dawn every morning and hit the ground running. I don’t have children but I make coffee, make my lunch, walk my dog, pick up the house, and am out the door by 8am on my way to my stressful-but-loved job in the Tech industry.

At work, I am super high energy and bounce from project to project, meeting to meeting with reckless abandon. I eat the lunch I bring for myself while click-clacking away at the keyboard and gabbing on the phone. I am a veritable OCTOPUS of a woman with 8 hands in every pile. At the end of the day, I either hit the gym or head home to work on one of my many “I Love It” projects like one of the 5 websites that I own or a hands-on project like re-organizing the office or closets.

I planted a garden recently. I dug up 3 huge bushes in the front yard. I am getting ready for a yard sale in 3 weeks by combing every drawer and closet for treasures.

I am on the go CONSTANTLY.

I move like a skinny person! RAWR!

The point of all of this is a self check-in where I tell myself “You move around a lot during the day but what about those 2 hours before you hit the sack?”

Because THAT, ladies and gents, is where the issue lay. Those 2 hours before bed when I either don’t have anything to do or am so exhausted that I can’t move are the time of day when the chocolate monster or chip fiend comes out.

This is about keeping it real. My binge time is 9pm. I’d like to see that time be put to better use so here is a list of things I am going to start trying to do instead:

* Read a book in bed with my dog

* Take a hot bath

* Groom myself by painting toenails or plucking eyebrows

* Chatting with friends on the phone or net

Etc. ETc.

All of these things would be infinitely more fufilling than eating hordes of grossness.

That is all.

I went on an expedition last month before I joined the gym and tried to find reasonably-priced clothing that would fit my 3x to 4x-sized body. Needless to say, it was ABYSMAL!  I did, however, discover that Walmart.com has a pretty reasonable selection of workout clothing!

This is an example of one of the great pairs of yoga pants that I found at Walmart.com for less than $14! They actually fit and are exactly the right material to let my ladybits breathe as they should. These are made by Danskin and come in tons of color options.

I did find a few other t-shirts and shorts on Walmart.com and also had luck on Target.com. There were several sites that supposedly cater to plus-size workout wear but I found them to be very expensive.

I also found that you can’t just walk into Walmart and actually try on any of these workout clothes because, newsflash, everything above a 2x can only be bought ONLINE. Someone should seriously tell these retailers that large women would buy their shit if they could #1: TRY IT ON and #2 BUY IT IN THE DAMN STORE.

I’ll be doing a separate post on sports bras because we all know what kind of special hell that is. Look for it and feel free to add your input!

Let’s get back to basics you and me! So, I recently joined a gym here in town. It’s a state-of-the-art health and fitness center that has a great gym area, a pool, raquetball courts, fitness rooms, and loads of classes. I have been going with some folks from work and finding that I really enjoy hitting the treadmill and bouncing around on the free weights.

I have lost a few pounds since joining but I am not following my food routine like I was mainly due to work stress and being lazy. I tend to get lazy about every 2 months and get “food fatigue” from eating the same things over and over. Creature of habit, I am!

I am still doing a loose version of Weight Watchers but am recommitting to tracking my food every day because I clearly need to get back into the downhill slide rather than losing 2 pounds a month. I am happy with that loss, don’t get me wrong, but I’d like to escalate the loss into 5 – 7 pounds a month. Still reasonable and doable, but more aggressive you see!

My work stuff is changing pretty soon so I will have more time to focus on health thanks to a reduced workload and some shifting around of my responsibilities. I will be going from 70-hour work weeks down to 45 and can’t WAIT to be a normal person again!

I did run out and get myself some new workout clothes and will be doing a blog on where to find appropriate gym gear for fatties next because seriously, it’s like retailers think that fat people don’t work out or something because finding yoga pants in a 4x is damn near impossible.

Hope you all are sticking to your plan!

Much Love!

Today I grabbed a piece of cheese and was going to eat it as a snack. Someone who was watching me grab the cheese said, “Yanno, cheese is  super fattening?”

My reaction was pretty immediate and intense.

They thought they were “helping”.

What they thought they were saying to me was, “What you are about to do isn’t good for you!”

What I heard was, “Even though you’ve lost 50 pounds on your own and stay committed to your health every single day, you must have no idea that piece of cheese is “super fattening”.

Now, I’m sure when our friends and lovers and coworkers watch us go through our process or hear us talk about our process they feel like they have some sense of responsibility to us as someone who cares about us to “help” us make our goal. Maybe that’s a good thing, right?

The truth for me is that this process is incredibly insular. Incredibly private. Incredibly personal. I protect that shit with aggressive vehemence.  Because at the end of the day, I’m not asking for your fucking help.

My bigger response is, “So fucking what if that cheese is fattening, maybe I want some fucking cheese!”

Because the way I am losing weight is to eat something when I want it rather than sitting around wishing I had eaten it for a week and resenting the fuck out of not having eaten it.

I eat the cheese in moderation, then I get satisfied and I move on. ‘Nuff said.

I think it’s hard for people to fathom sometimes that I really am in control of myself. I still weigh over 280 pounds so I am still technically “superfat” and I’m fine with that. If I never lost another pound, I wouldnt sit around and rock myself while crying. I’d be irritated that my knees hurt but lose my shit over being fat? No way. That would require me to hate my body and I just don’t.

I do not like to be headpatted. Do not treat me as if I don’t know as a grown adult woman what I want.

Because I do.

I want you to fuck off if you are going to headpat me.

Preferably quickly.