My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

The minute I clicked ‘Enter’ I knew I’d done something incredibly stupid.   How could I have been taken in by an Instagram ad, for anything , let alone diet pills ?   I felt disgusted with myself, even as the disgust mingled with an unmistakable tinge of excitement and curiosity – surely after more than twenty-five years of experience with diet culture bullshit, and at least a decade of continuous counter-culture reprogramming, I must know better?   But, well...knowing better didn’t stop me.   I figured five bucks was a cheap price for a very unlikely potential payoff. I went to lie down on our hotel bed with my boyfriend, who was zoned out in front of his own phone, half-listening to an episode of The Simpsons and trying to digest all the rich food we’d been eating on our trip to New Orleans.   I didn’t want to admit what I’d done; I knew he would be disappointed in me, and frustrated with my continued negative body image.   We’ve discussed it a hundr...

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...

Between cheap dinners out with the new boo , a very stressful and time-consuming new job (and the thousands of Goldfish consumed weekly to keep me on my feet), and all the yoga-defying illnesses my little petri dishes have passed me on their homework assignments in the past nine months, I’ve noticed that my clothes have been getting tighter.   Like, a lot tighter.   As in, I find myself wincing as I take off particularly unforgiving dresses at the end of the day – dresses which, nine months ago, fit just fine, or were even a bit baggy at the waist.   And now I’m faced with a dilemma I haven’t faced in years: how to lose bulk, if not necessarily weight.   If you’ve been reading this blog (or known me personally) for the few years, you know that I am majorly anti-dieting.   And if you’ve known me for the past decade, you might recall that the last time I succumbed to societal pressure and tried to lose weight, through a strict-but-real...

Something weird has been happening… through the publicity process, through all the interview questions I’ve been answering and short-form pieces I’ve been writing and conversations I’ve been having with strangers who have read my book, I’ve come to understand myself a little better, and maybe cut myself some slack.   It’s been a long time since I’ve had a body meltdown – for the past six+ months my nerves have been too overloaded with book stuff and work to even consider making room for self-image – and I’ve even begun to realize that a lot of the things I talk about aiming for in the book are already beginning to happen, some in more pronounced ways than others.   Most notable: I think I’m starting to have a normal relationship with food. Now, of course, the first thing we have to do is define our terms, right?   By a ‘normal’ relationship with food, I mean that I’m not obsessed with it, and it doesn’t control me.   The GB has done its job ...

A friend of mine emailed me last night, suggesting I watch the latest episode of BBC 2's 'Horizon', because it dealt with the issue of Gastric Bypass.  But when I started watching it this evening, I realized that really, it deals mostly with obesity – how and why it exists, and what we should do about it – and Gastric Bypass plays a large part in the last third of the program. In all honesty, as I started watching, my immediate reaction was rage and righteous indignation.  Gabriel Weston, the thin, blond, female surgeon who hosts the show announces at the very beginning that for her entire life (including the ten years in which she's been practicing medicine) she has operated under the 'assumption [...] that I am the size I am because of my character'.  Now, not only is that a particularly smug way of putting it, there is a serious problem with the underlying message: that fat people are fat simply because they are lazy and eat too much.  They don't have ...

Okay, I don't really get the obsession with the dancing/skating/dogwalking with the stars franchise, but I do read gossip blogs and they like to talk about these reality/competition shows, so I've sort of been watching things unfold.  So I've been aware of Kirsty Alley's big comeback, and I've been secretly rooting for her– after the rags have been all over her for her weight these past few years, I figure she probably needs a confidence boost (although maybe I'm projecting).  At the same time, though, I've been sort of holding my breath, waiting for Youtube to explode with videos of her falling and her thighs jiggling in slo-mo and all that terrible stuff people love to make viral. But as my favorite snarkblogger, Michael K , has put it, Kirsty is dancing her Thetans off !  She's been shaking it way harder (and way better) than a lot of the skinny bitches out there, and in a weird, detached, uninterested-in-her-up-to-now kind of way, I'm so prou...

It’s not exactly the perfect end to a perfect meal at one of New York’s best restaurants, on my knees in a beautiful, dark wood paneled bathroom,* throwing up house-made raspberry truffles into a once pristine toilet, while cool lounge music plays softly in the background.  I’m just praying nobody can hear me, and also that the auto-flush won’t go off in my face. Sometimes I wish I could turn the GB off.  Not so I can binge on Ben & Jerry’s, or stuff my face with ballpark hotdogs, but for special meals like Per Se in New York or Ristorante Semplice in London.  It would be nice to be able to have a set menu at a Michelin-starred restaurant without spending the rest of the evening either curled on my side (best-case) or throwing up (worst-case).  But it would be worse to miss out on all the amazing food on offer! And drink.  Wine takes up a surprising amount of space in my stomach, especially rich reds like the delicious Barolos my bf likes to order (and I...

I stopped using the calorie counter when we left for our vacation in Italy (Bologna, Umbria , Arezzo , and Cinque Terre ), figuring I didn't want to ruin the delicious food I was planning on stuffing my face with, and relying on the fact that I always lose weight on vacation (my theory is that I'm too busy walking around to snack). And we were really active on vacay , especially when scrambling up and down mountains to nude beaches in Cinque Terre , so I really wasn't too worried about all the gelato and pasta I was consuming (YUM). But I was planning on getting back into the counting when I came back to London... That was the plan , anyway. But then we only had 2 days before we moved into the new flat, after which life was (still is) a blur of unpacking, buying secondhand furniture, and entertaining the friends who so wonderfully came to visit me but whom I so unwittingly told the first week of September would be fine ( gah ). So long story short, I'm still not c...

My friend Courtney sent me the link to this NY Times article this morning, and I found it really interesting and wanted to share. I can't decide how I feel about it. There's always been a part of me that agrees with the idea that fat is ok, and all of me agrees that you can be fat and fit, but I think in a country like this (or in human society in general) people like to hear absolutes ("diet" or "don't diet"), so I fear the caveats and in-betweens and ifs/ands/buts will fall on deaf ears and we'll still be divided into anorexics/judgmental bitches and obese mcdonalds-eaters. But maybe I'm being too cynical! Courtney seems optimistic. What about you guys? Any thoughts on the matter?

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...