Let's Talk About Fat, Baby

ok, so it's Monday again, and I'm going to get back on track, here.  I said last week that I was going to talk about fat-shaming, and my personal journey with weight, so here we go ~

Tuesday...

Wednesday...wow, on a roll!

aww, chubby baby cheeks!

I guess I was a bit of a chubby baby, because I remember my mom talking about my 'pulkes' (Yiddish for chubby thighs), and there is a picture somewhere among the family archives that sends her into shrieking giggles and exclamations of "You were Delicious!!!" whenever she sees it.  it is a cute picture, because chub on a baby is adorable, and squishably sweet, but thankfully I developed into an average-sized child, if a bit on the short side...ok, not a bit, I'm short, plain and simple.  as a kid, I only remember there being one incident in elementary school where a couple of us less-athletic kids were running around the field during recess in an attempt to improve our chances at getting better times in some upcoming gym test, or race or something, and one girl, huffing and puffing with the exertion complained that we couldn't improve much due to us all being short and fat.  several of the girls immediately repeated the phrase 'short and fat?!' in incredulous tones, as none of us wanted to be labeled as such, including myself, as most of us weren't.  just then, my 'friend' Laura stepped to me, poked me in the stomach and said, "Stop sucking it in, you are so short and fat!"  even though I don't believe it to have been true at the time (seriously, 'pudgy' is about as far as I'm willing to go as far as the elementary school years were concerned, because I was a perfectly average-sized child), it still hurt, and obviously I still remember the slight to this day.

12 - does this piano make me look fat to you?

15 - friend edited to protect her innocence (lol, sorry dear!)

by the time I was in high school, at 15 years old, I had developed a mild eating disorder, which is sadly not out of the ordinary for teen-aged girls.  at some point during that year, a girl who was considered athletic approached me in class for who-knows-what reason, and asked me what size clothing I wore.  I responded that I wore anything from a size 0 to a size 3 - I'm 5'2", people, I might have been skinny, but I wasn't emaciated, either.  she glared at me and said, "You probably think you're fat, don't you?"  surprised by how she knew this, given the fact that I didn't quite know it myself until she mentioned it, I kind of smiled and chuckled nervously while replying, "Yeah, I do!"  she glared harder, stating, "I hate girls like you!" and stomped off back to her own desk leaving me standing in the middle of the room bewildered at what had just happened, and wondering why she had approached me in the first place.  to be honest, she might have done me a favor, because it may have given me my first clue to the facts that I not only wasn't fat, but that if other people noticed how skinny I was, then maybe I was too skinny.  not that I was doing anything too far out of the ordinary to achieve that size or weight - I just wasn't eating as much as I probably 'should have' been.

17 - not too fat, and not too thin, but feeling big as a whale, and seeing one in the mirror.

by the time I was a senior in high school, at 18, my mom took me shopping for a prom dress, and while the size 7 was a bit snug, the size 9 was too big, and I needed to make a decision about which one to buy.  Mom thought I should get the 9, because it was an expensive dress, and she cautioned that if she paid for the 7, and I didn't slim down, it would be a waste of money, and I'd have nothing to wear to prom.  I shook my head no, and insisted on the 7, assuring her that I would slim down, and also because I thought a size 9 was 'too big for me to be' - an indication that I was way too fat, and needed to get my weight in check.  we bought the 7, and I began to diet and exercise in earnest.  by 'diet', I mean I deprived myself of food, choosing to eat one tiny box of raisins during the day, and probably a small amount of whatever was for dinner each night.  by 'exercise', I mean putting on three sweatsuits, going into the bathroom and putting the shower on full blast as hot as it would go to steam up the room, and doing about 100 sit-ups, jumping jacks, and jogging in place until I was exhausted.  my sole focus was fitting into that the dress, and looking great at prom, which I did.

18 - at the prom in my size 7 dress.  lol, what a couple of dorks!

19 - at college, 15 pounds lighter than I was at prom (not that you could tell, under that coat)

in college, I was so nervous about gaining the 'freshman 15' everyone talked about that I actually lost 15 pounds, but I honestly think that's where my concern for my weight stopped.  I could say that I don't know why or how it happened, but I can also say that I started taking LSD, and that my concern for a lot of frivolous things stopped, so that may have had something to do with it, who knows.  I don't remember feeling concerned about my weight until several years later when a boyfriend said something like, "Even my mom has noticed that you've put on weight," like it was some sort of indication that I was no longer 'girlfriend material', which was fine, I guess, because that dude was a douchebag to me, anyway, though his mom was always nice.  there were plenty of other guys who seemed to think I looked just fine, so I dated them instead, and went right on not caring about my weight.  there was a time in my mid to late 20's that I was training regularly in the martial arts, and the guy I was dating was into macrobiotic cooking, so I was in the best shape I had been in for years.  But he graduated and moved away, and I had gotten so used to him doing all the cooking that I didn't eat very much for several weeks after he left, and I lost a bunch of weight again.  it was a few years after that when I playfully said to my next boyfriend (a Big fan of fast food and donuts) that he must not like how round my belly seemed to be getting, and he replied that it wasn't my belly so much as the fat under my chin he didn't like.  well, that stung a bit, but it was true that I had been gaining poundage and going up in sizes at an alarming rate, at that point, but it wasn't until we broke up that I experienced my next significant weight loss due to depression, and not having a partner who was into eating crap food all the time.  and who wants to cook for themselves, anyway?  I sure don't.

25 - feeling like a cow in leather.

26 - holding my jacket out so the camera won't show my fat stomach

30 - my chin gets too fat for my boyfriend

at 34, I got pregnant, and everything changed.  I ended up unemployed and homeless, so I was pretty food insecure, not really knowing when or how I would eat each day.  I took what meals I could get, when I could get them.  I drank a lot of smoothies, and ate at one particular friend's house pretty often, as I could get the welfare office to give her food vouchers for feeding me regularly.  I somehow managed to stay healthy enough to grow and deliver a similarly healthy baby, though he came a few weeks early, was rather small, and slightly jaundiced (I was still a smoker back then, and while I did manage to cut down significantly, I didn't succeed in quitting entirely until several years later).  when my water broke, and my midwife admitted me to the birthing center, they weighed me in at a whopping 198 pounds, and all I could think was, "Get this baby out of me before I hit 200!"  it made me think of that time back in high school when I was weighing myself constantly, and my brother said to me, "One of these days, you're gonna to break 100 pounds, and when you do, you're gonna freak out." I laughed at him and said I'd never weigh 100 pounds, and here I was at nearly 200!  I lost about 20 of those pounds in the delivery room, and through the magic of breastfeeding, quickly lost the rest of the pregnancy weight and more before my son turned 2.

34 - just 4 months into my pregnancy journey

35 - one week post birth (no, that's not the child's father, that's the Rabbi)

37/38 - getting my goddess on

but eventually, the breastfeeding ended, and I kept eating like I needed all those extra calories, and my weight went up and up and up.  I blogged about it back when I was just a baby blogger in 2009, when I was 15 pounds less than I am now.  the biggest I got was up to 255 last summer, but in trying to deal with a different medical concern, I ended up doing a 'detox' which had the lovely side effect of trimming me down 15 pounds in 3 weeks time, which I talked about (below the video) here.  so I'm still a great big fat ass, and I'm still unhappy about it, even though I (still) have all the tools I need to be able to deal with it properly.  my question to myself is - when?  what's it going to take for me to finally realize that we only get one go round on this planet, we only get one body to do it with, and I've pretty much reached my halfway point if I haven't missed it already (less than a year until I turn 50).  there's more to say on this subject, but I think that's enough for this week, so I'll do a part 2 next week.  I hope you choose to follow along!

40/41 - feeling pretty, until I saw the picture!

43/44 - the kid took this one.  I think the blurriness makes me look slender!

49 - last month, looking like a beached whale...how much bigger can I possibly get?!  ugh, I probably shouldn't even put that energy out there.