My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

A lot has happened since my last post, and yet little has changed. My body still feels… alien to me in a way it hasn’t since my mid-twenties; I still haven’t seen a doctor (I actually did try, a lot, but it seems that post-GB follow-up is not something bariatric doctors are willing to do with people they haven’t sliced open personally); and I’m still struggling to find the balance between making healthy choices, like getting more cardio in, and making my peace with the changes in my body. One thing that has changed is my state of unemployment. Since we moved to Washington I’ve been in a kind of limbo where my career is concerned – you can read more about the writing side of that over on the author blog , but besides that I’ve been unsure what to do about a day job. The ultimate goal is teaching at the college level, but while I work on that I’ve been living off savings, and as I’m sure you can imagine that is unsustainable. So I picked up part-time w...

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...

“Tell me what that’s like,” my therapist says when I tell her I’ve been experiencing a lot of body image ‘stuff’ lately. “Well, I’ve just – you know, not only did I not lose the weight I put on while teaching last year, but I seem to have actually gained weight?   Even though I’m not doing anything differently, except actually exercising more – it’s infuriating how little control I have, and I just…” and here tears spring unexpectedly to my eyes.   I swallow them back and continue, “Mostly I can’t believe I’m still susceptible to this shit!” She nods, then asks me again to explain what I mean by ‘this shit.’ “Okay, here’s a great example: I was sitting in your waiting room just now and I started a new book, and the opening scene is this woman in a hospital – she’s got some kind of undiagnosable bacterial infection or something, and she’s been on IV fluids for weeks – she can’t keep anything down.   And I thought, there needs to be a place where you can go a...

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...

The news has been so full of body-image- and obesity- and weight-related articles lately, to the point that I just haven't been able to keep up!  So in the spirit of the new year, and because the media interest in bodies/weight/health doesn't seem to be waning (so I'm sure I'll have plenty more material in the future), I'm cleaning house: here are all the articles I saved up in my email account in 2012 to write individual posts on, which I'm going to share instead through one big link-filled post.  I hope you find these links as interesting as I did (and still do)! This astoundingly brave young woman is doing a similar thing with a photo series to what I'm trying to achieve with the book – I can only hope I've produced something half as affecting and powerful as what she has created. Months ago I stumbled across this website with images of real women's bodies, sometimes accompanied by a paragraph or two about how these women feel about their ...

I just watched an hour and a half long TV show on BBC called ' I Want to Change My Body ', which follows 30 young people who have different things about their bodies that they want to change, from their weight (obviously, since that's usually the #1 complaint), to their boobs or noses or skin or receding hairlines.  It basically validated what I've become more and more sure of in the past ten years: that nearly everyone has issues about something to do with his/her appearance, and a lot of us are tormented enough to take extreme measures (define extreme any way you like: surgery, juice fasts, obsessive makeup use) to try to 'fix' ourselves. The show was fascinating, of course (I'm convinced that learning about people's deepest insecurities is far more voyeuristically stimulating than watching them have sex), but it was also really sad to watch.  I feel like our society is getting more image-obsessive and more neurotic by the year – I'm certainly n...

Ever since the book got picked up, I've found myself having to explain 'what it's about' to people on a regular basis (and yet I still haven't come up with a good one-liner, and inevitably end up mumbling my way through mentions of weight loss, surgery, and mental health / neuroses).  Most women get the point of the book pretty quickly, and often begin telling me their own stories or the stories of people (mostly women) they know who've struggled with weight or body image, but the men often glaze over a bit and kind of nod and smile – if the men in question happen to work in publishing, they might make a comment about marketability, but generally they just nod and let me do the talking.  I very rarely get any sort of instant relating of personal stories. Based on this divide in reactions to my own experience, it would be easy to assume that men don't have body image issues, or at the very least they don't have bad enough issues for it to affect their l...

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 ...

Weight loss surgery is controversial.  This isn't news.  But what you may not realize is that it's not just controversial among thin or 'normal' people, but in the fat community as well. Whenever I visit any sort of 'fat acceptance' website, I'm always startled by the attitude toward GB and surgeries like it (WLS, in short form).  Today, I came across this interesting article on being a 'Smaller Fat' – the strange limbo that those of us who are BMI-defined as obese but who look 'normal' enough to pass – and I was all set to write a post about the main article.  But then I read the comments. One commenter talked about the strong support system she had at her workplace in the medical profession, where people understand that BMI isn't everything and fat people should be understood instead of tormented.  Lovely, right?  But then, in a parenthetical aside, she mentions that one of her supporters is a doctor who "had to autopsy a bunc...

I've always said that being fat is harder on women than it is on men.  Not only is there a lot more societal pressure to be stick thin rather than just healthy, which men don't seem to get, but it's a lot harder to be seen as physically attractive if you're even ten or fifteen pounds overweight. Anyway, it seems I'm not the only one thinking these things.  There's an article in the NYTimes today about overweight and obese women doing worse than men financially, an interesting angle on the effects of obesity, and in it they say: Why doesn’t body size affect men’s attainment as much as women’s? One explanation is that overweight girls are more stigmatized and isolated in high school compared with overweight boys. Other studies have shown that body size is one of the primary ways Americans judge female — but not male — attractiveness. We also know that the social stigma associated with obesity is strongest during adolescence. So perhaps teachers and pee...

Writing all these chapters about my life and my body is kind of intense.  Last week, I wrote about a panic attack I had over my body three years ago, and I could feel my pulse racing as I wrote it; re-living the experience actually made me have another mini-attack.  It's amazing how much I seem to have blocked from memory.  The smell of surgery recovery, the pain, both emotional and physical, that I've continuously put myself through in the fruitless pursuit of bodily normalcy... but I've forgotten good things as well. Today I was writing about my recovery from plastic surgery, specifically abdominoplasty and brachioplasty (arms).  And I was remembering the horrible, excruciating pulling at my stomach, and the fear that if I made one wrong move my belly would split open and all my insides would tumble out.  But I was also surprised to remember how happy I was after those surgeries, and how confident. The accompanying lipo made me retain so much water, I wa...

Well, in fairness, this one was a nurse.  And she was pretty cool.  But the numbers were still assholes. A little background: I'm still in London, and not going home as often / uninsured in the States, so I decided it was well past time to try to get my birth control on the NHS.  So I went into the clinic affiliated with my Uni.  And of course they had to weigh/measure me.  And of course my BMI says I'm obese. Fuck off, BMI.  Obese??  Ok, I could lose a few stone, but if you're seriously telling me I have to lose 50 pounds to be within the range of 'normal,' you're off your rocker.  I'm a size 12, for god's sake!  I know it's not slender, but it's certainly not obese either! I'm so sick of being controlled by numbers.  Even the nurse, when I told her I'd had weight-loss surgery and had been leveling out within 10 pounds of my current weight for the past 9 years, said she thought the numbers were a bit silly as they don't take b...

There have been very few fat (ie normal to overweight) people on television in my lifetime, and the ones who did grace my HD were usually the subject of a reality show.  If I saw someone above a size 4, s/he was either on a scary documentary about morbid obesity (I'm not making light of that, by the way, although the fear tactics rub me the wrong way), or part of a competition to lose weight faster than other heavy people (I know some of you really love The Biggest Loser, but I still think it's a bit cruel), or, once and never again (yet), a Bachelor-esque competition to win the heart of a meaty man who digs 'curvy women.' But regardless of how I feel about the portrayal of fat people on television, the shows that pack a bit more poundage must be doing pretty well, since they're multiplying every year.  I can think of at least 4 get-fit shows, where BL used to be the only one.  TLC has upped its number of weight-centric fear documentaries, too.  And now fictional...

My best friend is getting married on Sunday, and I've been having serious anxiety about being the fattest person at the wedding.  I guess I've been yammering about how I look a lot, because yesterday I was nattering on about how if my roots are dyed and my brows are waxed then maybe I won't mind being such a tub of lard, and my mom looked over at me with a raised eyebrow and went "Boy, you've still got issues, huh?" Is it rude to shout DUH in the face of one's elders?  Well, I just laughed and said "What was your first clue?"  Then told her I'd be entering therapy as soon as I can afford it (so basically never). Oh well, I guess it's good to know she's finally noticed...

I've been home in San Francisco for exactly 2.5 days.  I've been in Napa with my parents and my sister for less than a full day.  I'm already locking myself in my room and crying. Not because they're torturing me (at least not on purpose), but because being here with my mom and my sister, and sometimes even my dad, is just a constant reminder of how I'm too fat, and too disgusting, and worst of all too complacent. I spend much of my time, when I'm in London with my boyfriend, trying to come to terms with my body at the weight where it levels out.  I try to eat healthily and be active, but not diet or follow an exercise regime, and then accept the weight and size where my body seems comfortable.  It doesn't always work, but it feels like I'm at least trying to break out of my cage of fucked-up body issues. Then I come home.  And I'm surrounded by talk of 'points' and boxes of weight-watchers-approved snacks.  And my mom and sister spend ...

The other night, the bf and I were watching this show called “Inside Nature’s Giants,” which we didn’t realize at first involves dissecting the big-ass animals of land and sea.  We chose to watch the episode about whales, because they’re frickin fascinating and also because I love tigers too much to watch one get cut up.  But I wish we had chosen the tigers, because the whole time they were slicing through the whale, and the fatty, slippery flesh was sliding all over the beach, and the scientists were covered in grease, I kept thinking about my body.  How that was probably what I looked like when the doctors were slicing me up and pulling off hunks of my blubber.  How that's still what my body feels like in places: loose, slippery, uncontained . My classmates are always saying I have a very ‘descriptive’ touch when it comes to talking about my body, and my friend N pointed out that I frequently use food metaphors/similes, which is kind of interesting.  But ...

The lovely bf took me to Mexico a couple of months ago, and I started a blog post there.  Obviously, I never finished it, because I was distracted by the beautiful pool and our personal pastry class and the delectable food everywhere we turned, but I looked at it again today and realized that the subject I wanted to touch on is still worth discussing.  Basically, I started the post with a photo of the amazing resort where we were staying.  And I mean AMAZING.  I’ve never before in my life stayed at a hotel so beautiful and comfortable and just plain stunning that I didn’t want to leave the compound walls.  I’m all about real Mexico– the people, the culture, the food– but I had absolutely no desire to leave ever.  I could seriously live in this amazing place.  This is important for you to know, not so I can brag, but so you can understand how pissed off I was to still feel like such a fat cow.  I mean, here I was, with my own private villa w...

I woke up this morning and checked my twitter account (yes, I know), and one of the first things I saw was a link to this post by a writer named Amy Alkon (I'll let you read it instead of summarizing).  Amy writes with wild abandon about all the people who annoy her in life, and usually I appreciate her no-holds-barred approach.  But this time, I felt she went too far.  Not because she's being cruel to a fat person, but because she's being cruel unnecessarily.  And, more importantly, unfunnily.  And it's not just her; the commenters on the post have their fangs out too. And I don't get it.  I mean, I get it: this chick gained 40 lbs and her boyfriend doesn't sleep with her anymore, so obviously she needs to lose weight (or lose the guy, which nobody seemed to think was an option for this obviously morbidly obese woman).  What I don't get is the poison.  Why do people have so much hatred in their hearts for fat people?  What is it about f...

A couple of days ago (on Valentine’s day, in fact), Kevin Smith was kicked off a Southwest Airlines plane for being ‘too fat to fly.’  You can read the details on Kevin’s blog , if you haven’t already been following the debacle on Twitter (I say debacle in seriousness– Twitter crashed at least twice last night as a result of ‘too many tweets’). This isn’t a post about that occurrence specifically, mostly because it’s already been hashed out to death but also because Smith’s whole point is that he doesn’t actually qualify as too fat to fly; he fits in the seat with the armrests down and the seatbelt buckled, unextended.  What I want to talk about is the policy, held by multiple airlines, that those ‘customers of size’ (I think I threw up a little just now) who can’t fit in the seat with the armrests down must purchase two seats at full price. Look, I get it.  It sucks to have someone encroaching on your space, especially on an airplane, where space is already at such ...

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...