Day 11

The day ended up yesterday with me collapsing in bed at 10:30 pm and sleeping like the living dead immediately. It was a long day! I did seem to get some things accomplished I guess.

I never did get around to eating my apple, which isn't a good thing. You really need to eat the 500 calories or something darn close to it, but I didn't want it until about 9:30, and by then I figured it was too late to eat it because eating that late...even if it something small, usually shows up as a gain in the morning.

I'm down .7 lb. this morning.

I should address the 'skip day' thing too, for anyone who has been reading about it elsewhere.

Typically, people who are doing sub Q injections skip one day a week. They do six injections and take the 7th day off. I like to keep my 'skip day' on the same day every time, Sunday, just because it's easier for me to remember. I started hCG on a Thursday, so obviously I'm not going to skip 3 days later on that Sunday. The point of skipping is to avoid immunity (when the hypothalamus stops recognizing the hCG). I'm not worried about that after 3 days. I would have then skipped last Sunday except that's when I realized that the hCG I had been using couldn't be effective and started the new stuff. (Technically, I suppose, that would be day one now, but whatever.)

So, I'll skip this Sunday.

And instead of saying '2 weeks down, 4 to go' I'm actually at a '1 week down, 5 to go' place, which doesn't make me exactly happy, but I'll deal.

Again last night, would have loved a glass of Merlot.

I'm not missing anything else though. Last night, someone brought Rice Crispie Treats and I didn't even want one. (In fact, my only thought was how horrible those are for you, especially for pregnant women.)

Yesterday, someone brought cookies to work and they were on the table. Today, someone brought banana bread. That didn't bother me. However, once again I was reminded of how the 'rules' are so different for fat people.

When we were discussing the program before launch, healthy thin people were very upset that Dr. Simeons would tell people to eat anything they want, especially lots of fats, during the loading days. The consensus was that you should never eat like that anyway, and to give people trying to lose weight permission to do so was irresponsible.

Having been fat, I explained there were two kinds of fat people...people who ate like that all the time anyway, and people who have been depriving themselves for years. When I loaded, I ate the things like donuts...which I love but had not allowed my self for, seriously, years. I ate pizza, and muffins and grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato bisque soup, for while there is a physiological point to the load, there is also a psychological benefit..so I ate foods I would miss or foods I never got to eat.

It was finally decided that if we were going to tell people to load up on fats, it should be good fats like olive oil, grapeseed oil, avocados, nuts, fatty fish like salmon, cheeses, etc. It was a concession I was willing to make, considering how horrified everyone seemed to be about people eating anything they wanted for two or three days.

But what I noticed over the next several weeks was what I noticed every single day of my life...the rules are different for skinny people. Every day when I went in to work (which at that point wasn't every day, but several times per week) someone had brought in muffins, or cookies, or cake. Lunch was brought in and there were yummy pizzas and subs. They'd say 'we don't usually eat like this, but it's my birthday,' or there was some other special occasion. Fat people can't do that without judgment. And wasn't that what the loading day was? A special occasion? If you are telling people that for the next 3 months (or more if it's round 2 or 3 or 4) they cannot have these things, why is it a problem to tell them they can have the things thin people can eat every day with impunity?

At family gatherings when I've voiced a preference for a beverage, I've had people suggest, 'Are you sure you don't want a diet soda?' No, actually. If I had wanted that I would have asked for it. And I've ordered the same exact thing at dinners that the thin people have ordered and eaten at the same table, only to have people comment on my plate 'wow, that's a lot of food'.

These are folks that care. Sharing these observations is not to cast aspersions, but to point out that the Pygmalion Effect is at work here, and thin people can delude themselves about how great their diet is as much as fat people do...it just may not show up on their ass for people to comment on.

Fat people face these types of things every day. I went to a BBQ once, and at the time I was a vegetarian. The ONLY thing there that didn't have meat in it was what I brought, which was pasta. The only thing on my plate was about 1-1.5 cups of this pasta...in one of those divided plates it look up the largest section. Granted, it was a big serving. But it was the only thing on the plate.

Some idiot friend of my husband's commented, "Wow, looks like someone likes pasta. A lot.' Smirk.

Now, his wife, a thin woman, had an overflowing plate with a little of everything. Twice. Nothing was said to her about her appetite.

In the grocery store, I've had a cart full of produce along with a birthday cake, only to have people look at the cake, and look at my butt and give me a dirty look like I should be ashamed of myself. Never mind that the assumption was that I was going to eat the cake when it wasn't even for me.

Insurance companies, employers and airlines want to punish fat people for being fat because it costs everyone else more...even though it doesn't in-and-of itself AND sometimes people aren't fat because they are gluttonous or lazy.

But lets assume all fat IS a matter of choice and lifestyle. With that logic, lets punish others the same way. Moms who formula feed cost the country millions due to increased illnesses and lost work with 5 times more illnesses for their kids and increased cancer rates for themselves. Women who choose cesareans, or who end up with them because they chose routine and unnecessary interventions known to lead to surgery, increase our health care costs by billions. I don't want to pay for that! I only want to pay for the safest options as supported by evidence...homebirth with midwives. Everyone else should pay out of pocket instead of expecting me to subsidies their unhealthy choices.

Hm. Somehow it sounds less asinine when it's only applied to fat people...at least to thin people. It still just sounds asinine and judgmental to fat people. But then again, fat people know that they are the last bastion in an acceptable dumping grounds for fear and self-loathing.

And that's important for fat people to know: other people's opinions about your fat have NOTHING to do with you. Their opinions are a collection of beliefs, perceptions (often faulty), experiences and attitudes that are all about them.

This becomes increasingly clear the more weight you release. You know you are the same person you always were, yet people treat you differently. People who lose weight often have some heavy emotional stuff to deal with as their friends, family and strangers interact with them in a completely new way.

Your fat makes them uncomfortable. Someday I'll take some psychology and sociology classes that help me understand that, because having been both fat and thin, I still don't get it. People are people and there are very capable people who get passed over for jobs or promotions because they are fat. Of course, that can't be admitted, but it's true. Fat people are often invisible or dismissed no matter how valuable their contribution might be.

Even just the mention of your fat makes people uncomfortable. Several times over the past year, I've made mention of my most enormous picture that I have yet to have the courage to share, to have people blush and admonish me. They don't know what to do with that. They can't deny that it's an apt use of language, but it makes them uncomfortable.

I use the words 'enormous', 'fat', 'obese', 'morbidly obese' and 'huge'. They are honest. Let's not be silly and use euphemisms like 'big' or 'overweight'. They are simply PC ways to say the same exact thing....though I do like 'well-upholstered' and 'fluffy' quite a lot. :-)

As much as I'd like to think I was 'undertall' and not 'overweight' the fact remains I was round, which is awkward and inconvenient for a bipedal primate.