My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

It’s been on my TeuxDeux list for months now, just rolling over to the next day and the next. Every time I open my laptop or check the app to make sure I’m on top of schoolwork and life admin, it’s staring at me: make appt with bariatric dr. When I can’t take it anymore I move it ahead a few days, manually, telling myself I’ll do it when things are calmer or the apartment is quieter or it stops raining… These excuses are bunk, of course – for one thing, a Pacific-Northwesterner* should never wait to do anything until the rain stops. But I’ve been putting it off, because I’m scared. I’m terrified that I’ll be weighed and measured and found…what’s the opposite of wanting? Overabundant? I’m afraid I’ll succumb to pressure and tacitly agree that the weight is the problem, not my attitude about it (or my hoped-for response, the whole reason I’m going to a bariatric doctor at all: that my post-GB body processes food and exercise differently and there’s some key element I’m missing...

When I told my brother I was counting calories, a vulnerable admission of defeat, he reacted just as I should have expected: he rolled his eyes, sighed as if he was exhausted by my weight struggles, and told me “don’t be mom!   Just be balanced.”   As if it were that easy.   I made the mistake, at first, of trying to explain that after years of balance and reasonably steady weight, I was no longer stable and I felt the need to do something drastic to try to reign in my body; I gave up pretty quickly, after multiple interruptions and dismissals. It’s not that my brother is insensitive – he’s actually more sensitive than most dudes and most of my family, not that that’s saying much – but he doesn’t have a lot of patience for any kind of struggle to which he doesn’t relate.   Worse are the struggles he thinks he relates to, like weight.   A few years ago he felt he was getting ‘tubby’ and so he cut out junk food and cut back on carbs and started doi...

So as I think I may have mentioned, I have to write a book for my MA in Creative Nonfiction, and I decided to write a memoir about this whole GB experience, including childhood stuff and family dynamics in addition to the process of surgery and the mental and physical results of the change.  I thought it would be so easy.  I mean, I spend 90% of my time thinking about my body anyway, how hard could it be to put those thoughts down in the form of an interesting, structured narrative? NOT, that's how easy.  I haven't written one single word of the book, and I'm having a really hard time starting.  And the longer I put it off, the more afraid I am of failing at my goal to write a funny, frank narrative; I'm terrified it'll end up as a 'poor me' memoir, and I'll have proven my dad right in saying that this project is self-indulgent and useless.  And that's not the only surprise stumbling block... When I tell people what I'm writing about, they al...

That old Upper East Side adage has been running through my mind all week. Ever since I got my visa to go back to London and started counting down the days I had left of fresh, delicious California cuisine. I recently got to within a couple pounds of my goal (well, not my goal weight, but my goal of getting below a certain hated number), and now I’m struggling with a very difficult decision: to eat or not to eat? I have an opportunity here. I could be below the dreaded number by the time I leave for London, if I’m willing to give up all badness and only eat healthy, low-calorie foods like vegetables sans olive oil and salads with no cheese or nuts. But then I would be sacrificing my last week of yumtastic treats like Trader Joes Mini Peanut Butter Cups and delicious grilled asparagus with olive oil and steak, glorious steak! Maybe the choice would be easier if I had a point of reference, but I’ve never been thin, so I have no idea how it feels. What I do know is that a lot of thing...