What the hell is with all the anorexic people in this world?

I see them sometimes when I’m out and about. I watch their frail bodies stagger uncertainly through aisles, watch them strain while pushing shopping carts that probably weigh more than they do. I see their sharp elbows poking through the sleeves of their shirts, their size zero pants hanging off of emaciated pelvises, their withered cheeks hollow and gaunt. I watch them stand in front of the frozen food cases in the supermarket, see them obsessively checking the calorie content of one low calorie item against another and I can’t help but roll my eyes and think “Yeah, like you are really going to eat either one of those, you bony freak!”

I even see them on TV, crying to Oprah or Dr. Phil about how hard their lives are. Some of them even say they have a disease that makes them starve themselves, and I want to scream at the screen “Here, I’ve got a cure for your ‘disease’, it’s called a SANDWICH. Try one, you skeleton-headed witch!” They sit there and talk about how hard it is for them to eat, how they think they’re fat, when the truth is that they’re just stupid. Everyone knows if you actually EAT food, you don’t end up weighing 88 pounds and dying of malnutrition. I mean, they KNOW they should eat, and yet they don’t do it. It’s not that hard, moron. Open your mouth, insert food, chew, swallow. For Christ’s sake, babies and farm animals can do it without being taught. I, for one, have never had any problem eating food so I don’t see why they can’t do it like everyone else.

I think they should round up all the people with this so called “disease” and put them on an island where they’re all chained to a 24 hour buffet so then maybe they’d be forced to eat something for a change. Then we wouldn’t have to look at their disgusting wasted bodies or listen to how we should feel sorry for them because they can’t seem to get their shit together already. Why don’t you quit your whining, get your head out of your non-existent asses, and GAIN SOME WEIGHT, you skinny freaks!

(Cue the angry mob with the torches and pitchforks.)

Ridiculous, right?  Who in their right mind would ever say that and think it was appropriate?  Anorexia is a serious, debilitating, life altering eating disorder.  Rewrite it to rail against obesity, though, and that's A-OK.

(I know, I know. Understated, I’m not. But I’ve never claimed subtlety as a strong point.)

I was doing a bit of research early this morning for the blog entry I meant to write today, when I happened upon a web page that’s been burned into my retinas ever since. I hesitated at first to even post the link, but in the end I decided that when you have the choice between ignoring hate and looking it in the face, it’s always better to know your enemy than not. There are some very angry people out there, and I'm pretty sure they’re just the tip of the iceberg. These are just the folks who took the time to put fingers to their keyboards and post their deep thoughts for the world to see, and for every one of them there are thousands of others who are thinking exactly what these people said out loud. I bet that there are more sites out there (like, say, hundreds) that are full of exactly the same kind of sentiment.

At least I assume there are, but the truth is that I just couldn’t bring myself to actively search for them. I didn’t read every entry on that page. I didn’t even read a tenth of them, but I suspect I didn’t really need to. Despite my general stance that I am rubber and they are glue, the hate behind the words (atrocious grammar and spelling aside) clings to my skin with a sticky familiarity, and as hard as I’ve been trying to brush it off all day I just can’t.

I’ve been fat my whole life. I have also been smart my whole life, too. I am not ignorant of how the world sees obesity any more than I’m unaware of the conventional formula of “eat less + move more = smaller ass” for weight loss. But since fat is my reality, and one that I’ve been both fighting against and examining closely over the last few years, it’s hard for me to fathom how a world that has found so much compassion and understanding for nearly every other behavior-related affliction on earth can still muster up the kind of CAPS LOCK HATRED that sites like that one encourage.

Obesity threatens people in a way that few things in this world do. Our extra bulk reminds people of their darkest fear that self control is tenuous at best, and that we are what happens when weakness of character is allowed to run rampant. Believing that the fat is a simple foe that strong people can keep at bay helps to remind the people who hate us that, whatever else they might be, at least they’re not fat. It must be a comforting thought.

I believe that my obesity is complex in nature—and that for every logical and simple factor that contributes to it there is something that defies easy explanation at play as well. I also believe that, for the time being, they world at large doesn’t believe that…yet. So I won’t let those people be the only voices that break the silence surrounding obesity. Will you?

Interestingly, this is not quite as lame as it sounds. Sure, there have been (many) days when the quote seems a little trite, or peculiar, and once even totally inscrutable (it was in what I assume to be Mandarin, with no translation beneath it. I shit you not.), but every once in a while I find myself nodding after reading it, and maybe even right-click copy/pasting it into a file I keep on my desktop for just such material. So when the familiar address appeared in my inbox this morning, I double clicked and read this:

“Consider keeping a Victory Journal. Just like a photo album, your Victory Journal can become a great collection of snapshots of positive experiences and a living reminder of your power to achieve. And with such a clear record of all your daily wins, successes, triumphs, and achievements, you’ll slowly build a strong sense of self-worth and a foundation for expecting success.”     --Pat Croce

Naturally, my first thought was: LAME. Like I’m going to sit down and write all about my goals and what I’m doing to achieve them, or reflect on what’s gone well in my life, on the little “victories” that I’ve claimed, or what I’ve learned from my failures, or how I can apply those lessons to what comes next. Seriously, who comes up with this stuff? What are we supposed to do then, huh? Type it all up, post it on the internet, and let everyone we know (and everyone we DON’T know for that matter) read it and tell us what they think of it so we can go and read their war stories and…umm…wait a second…

Well color me lame.

I’m not saying that this blog is exactly a “victory journal” (mostly because I don’t know if that phrase is copyrighted and I don’t have the bank at present to fend off an infringement lawsuit, and partly because I think “victory” might be overstating the nature and quaility of the content most of the time) but I suppose it is a record of the wins I’ve earned in my battle with the fat. It’s also a record of the losses, and even of the draws. And writing about my journey has been an overwhelmingly positive experience, a way to break the deafening silence that surrounds obesity. Even when it isn’t pretty, writing it all down seems like a victory all it’s own.

So just for today, I’m letting my lame flag fly and declaring that for January 25, 2010, this blog is officially my Victory Journal, and I claim the following victories in that spirit:

Today, I didn’t lick out the inside of my yogurt cup to make sure I got every damn calorie I accounted for out of that container.

Today, I admitted that what I’d been telling myself was a teaspoon of powdered coffee creamer was more like 3 of them. Or 5, even. I logged the extra calories and got on with my life.

Today, I stopped being a wuss and didn’t reach for the slacks that are getting embarrassingly too large just so I wouldn’t have to find out for sure if the smaller slacks fit me yet (FYI, they do!).

Today, I remembered that celebrating even the smallest of victories leaves a better taste in my mouth than wallowing in my defeats ever has. Yum.

So how about it, folks? What victories are yours to claim for today?

This is totally like that.

I’ve been away for a while. I’ve got reasons (some of them really good ones and some of them like pages out of a “Mad Libs: The Excuses Edition!” activity book), but for the moment I won’t bore you with them (because hey, a girl’s gotta keep a little something back for future material, right?).

I will tell you, though, that I’ve tried going this fight alone. I’ve tried keeping my silence under the auspices of keeping my head, tried holding my thoughts and while I held my breath…and it doesn’t work for me.

I’ve started this entry about 30 times only to wuss out and walk away from the keyboard because at a time when I wasn’t really sure of anything what I DID know was this: If I was going to come back, then I was REALLY going to come back. I wasn’t going to say I was coming back only to crawl back under the covers and go back to sleep again. I wasn’t going to pull out my six-guns and aim them at the fat girl staring back at me from the mirror unless I was prepared to pull the trigger. I wasn’t going to do this all half-assed until I could be sure that I was ready to get off my whole ass and get back to work.

It took a long time, but I’m back.

OMG, Internet! I haven’t seen you in so long. How ARE you?

In a further attempt by the fates to convince me that my current web host was never meant to be a permanent home for my site, the great blog "white-out" of 2009 is officially over.  After several long and frustrating web chats with people named "Elizabeth" and "Katie" and "John" (read: Sushma, Irevina, and Sanjay) it was finally determined that the puzzling disappearance of my blog from view for the last 30+ days was due to a "server glitch".  You read that right.  Satisfying answer, no?  I thought so too.

Then, to add insult to injury, my laptop went on strike and refused to have it's battery charged.  A replacement cord was procured (Angry note to the personal computer industry: Please rethink your policy of not having a standard cord for laptops so that my only readily available option for a power cord replacement is to purchase a universal cord with a bazillion different terminal ends for $139 from a prepubescent sales"man" named Mark who uses the word "bummer" 8 times in three sentences while explaining that I could order my specific cord on-line for less than 20 bucks, but that since I don't want to wait a week to use my laptop there will be a $119 penalty for my impatience. You suck.) and I'm finally back and surfing the web.  And thank goodness, because I'm not nimble enough to type this much text on the teeny tiny touchscreen keyboard of my iPhone.  Yes, even my FINGERS are fat.

Anyhoo.  I'm back, and the concerned emails and message board posts about the issue were all appreciated.  I apologize for the white-out and hope you'll tune in later tonight as I catch up my entries both here and on my tandem blog (www.saragetsskinny.blogspot.com).

See you soon!

This past February, I turned thirty eight years old (in the Happiest Place on Earth© and with Tom Cruise by my side. No kidding, I swear!). People tell me that being in my late thirties hardly qualifies me as elderly, but I confess that I don’t really believe them. To me, the litmus test for “old” is simple: You are old as soon as you no longer understand the young people—and I don’t. I don’t particularly care for much their music, I don’t get their clothing choices (how do they even keep their pants up when the ‘waist’ falls below their butt cheeks? Is this the reason for the triangle stance they’re always lounging in?), I can’t STAND texting lingo, and I think most of them could use a haircut for God’s sake. If that doesn’t qualify me as old, nothing does.

But even if 38 doesn’t qualify me for the senior citizen coffee discount at the local Burger King (which my 63 year old parents take unholy advantage of, I might add. My mother has actually gotten up early and driven to BK to pick up coffee for herself and my Dad all the while ignoring the perfectly good coffee maker in her own kitchen. I suspect it’s because the local grocer doesn’t give her 25% off of her bag of coffee beans just because she happened to be born in 1946.), there are still some venues in which I’m definitely not a kid anymore. One of them is right here in the blogosphere.

I started my website (http://www.skinnysara.com/) in late 2006, and that means that as weight loss bloggers (or “floggers” as we’re sometimes known) go, I’m practically a geriatric. Do a web search for weight loss related blogs, and you’ll turn up approximately a kajillion sites. Start clicking on them, however, and you’ll soon realize that the vast majority of them fall into two categories:

1. Relatively new blogs by people who are in the first several weeks or months (or days, even) of their current weight loss effort, and

2. Pages long abandoned with their last entries a static reminder of better times.

Given that weight loss is generally impermanent in nature, it makes sense that the websites it inspires are equally so. If statistics say that only about 3% of us will ever achieve the holy grail of weight watchers everywhere by taking (and keeping) the weight off, then it’s probably safe to assume that some 97% of weight loss bloggers will disappear along with the success they had at the scale. I understand this, but it still makes me sad.

One of the most insidious side effects of obesity is often the loneliness that comes along with it. The internet broadened the definition of community to a global scale and helped to bring people with common interests together in a way that has never been possible at any other time in history. It’s been an especially welcome tool for the weight loss community, I think. Since the fat is off limits for discussion in nearly every venue of polite society, it can be really hard to feel like you’re not the only person on earth who is dying beneath the weight of that silence.

For me, the internet finally gave me a place that I could look out over the crowd and see my own face staring back at me. I have taken so much solace, inspiration, and solidarity from reading the blogs of other people battling obesity. I revel in their successes, I am angry for the injustices they face, and I am heartened by the fact that they’re out there writing down all the things that we’ve never really had a place to say out loud before. And when they fade away, it makes me sad.

Most blogs are started in the early stages of the journey, in those first heady days of success when it feels like we’ve finally got this whole weight loss thing figured out and we’re anxious to share our secrets of success with the world—to tell them that if WE can do it, so can they! In our weight loss childhood we’re full of the hubris of youth, the certainty that our goals are in sight. It’s a force to be reckoned with, one that is powerful simply by virtue of the fact that it hasn’t been tested by reality yet. But when the fall comes (and make no mistake it WILL come), it often catapults us right into the next phase—a little something I call the weight loss “adolescence”. Our bodies are changing, often faster than our minds can catch up to them, and of a sudden what was once so easy feels a little awkward. What we once knew for certain, suddenly doesn’t seem so simple anymore. It’s a rough period. One that, frankly, most of us never make it out of. And it’s been the death knell for many a weight loss blog. When we stumble, when the high we’ve been riding (and writing) out starts to wane, many of us just stop talking. Our blogs become ghost towns, our past successes frozen in time and our silence speaking volumes about the present.

I understand how it happens, how we’d rather say nothing than admit that all those things we were so very sure about turned out not to be as fool proof as we thought. I’ve taken a hiatus or two myself over the last three years because it’s hard to admit when we struggle, especially when we’ve been so sure that we never would again…and said as much, to the whole world. It’s sometimes easier to fade away than to admit that we just weren’t as infallible as we thought we were. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, though. I wish there was less shame tied up in stumbling and that our setbacks and spectacular wipeouts could feel less like failure and more like progress. I wish we could learn the lessons of adolescence and finally grow up and realize that there is truly no end to this journey, no final battle to be won.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a well written, if somewhat pointed, post on a newer weight loss blog filled with broad stroke assertions and the hubris of youth with a note that said “I’ll check back in a year and see how they feel then”. It made me smile. I regularly read some young blogs and all the hope and joy and certainty…and I don’t resent it. I do envy it sometimes, though. I try to soak it in. I use it to remind myself what power there is in new success, and how easily it can slip away.

When I started blogging, I promised myself that I wouldn’t do what so many of my heroes had done before me. I wouldn’t fade away when things got rough, and I’d do my best to try and accept that if I’ll be battling my obesity the rest of my life then it’s a pretty safe bet that the fight isn’t always going to be an easy one. So here I am, bruises and all, still fighting. Over the hill? Maybe. But I can see another one in the distance, and another after that—and I want to make my way up and over all of them.

(Read today's other Theme Thursday posts here)