obesity - Ina Disguise

A boring post about health

March 17, 2018 No Comments

Having been down the road of extreme weight loss several times – when I say extreme, I mean losing half your bodyweight or more – it gets better and less stressful with practise.

I now know, for example, to go with the flow – sometimes you are on a roll and easily able to shift 50lb or more without a break, and sometimes you need to sort of ‘let it settle’ and let your skin and posture catch up for a while.

My back problems, which were partially caused by my urgent need to shift a lot of weight and use of corsetting to avoid the need for core exercises, as getting out was more important, have been greatly eased, but not completely removed, by the rehearsals. Messing with flags and walking a lot is very good exercise for a bad back.

If I was sensible I would go full-hippy and take up yoga again. I have done in the past but alas I am more motivated by competing with myself, so I am better suited to other things. I am just not cool enough for yoga for more than ten minutes before I would rather be doing something else, unfortunately.

So, having settled after shifting the first 70lb, it is now time to shift some more.

Interestingly, I have now found a healthy weight scale that actually takes my huge bone structure into account, and it turns out the weight I would bonk myself at is actually my healthiest weight, so I have habitually lost too much in the past, which is probably why being at an allegedly healthy weight is a painful and miserable experience.

At 98lb, which I have been for two periods in the past, I had to run at fairly high intensity for about four hours per day and eat every two days. I thought I looked good, but I used to be referred to as ‘three melons on a stick’ by surprisingly thin people, so I guess I was a bit of a freak. At one point, at the top end of the allegedly healthy weight for my height, a doctor who had never previously met me told me with some horror that I needed to eat more and to stop doing whatever I was doing. This was at 120lb or so, so it made no sense to me at the time. When will they stop criticizing and start saying I am doing something right, I thought?

It turns out from the new scale that I located that the correct weight is more like 160-170lb, which is way heavier than most women of my height, but is because I am supposed to be a sturdy little person that can throw other people around the room and have a very good quantity of lean body mass. This comes as something of a relief and makes actually being healthy a more approachable idea. I wonder how many other people out there, punishing themselves over not being good enough, have had their lives devastated by anxiety because nobody is using the right tools in the first place?

The NHS, in my early life when I was actually miserable about it, rejected obesity as being a problem and I was basically told that I was big and not to worry about it. After they decided that it was useful for getting funding and more surgeons and departments, it suddenly became an epidemic in the early 2000s. I have worked in several equally wasteful departments of the NHS. They aren’t even particularly helpful, because they choose to reject preventative medicine and use a low denomination approach which is helpful to very few people in reality.

So, it looks as if a six month deadline on reaching a reasonable weight, which is actually heavier than I was when my sisters were braying disgusting verbal abuse during my childhood, is workable, and this has cheered me up immensely. My current campaign of ignoring everybody and doing whatever I feel like doing regardless is most helpful. So much so, that I think it should be the first thing every person with a weight problem deals with.

As I have said before in previous posts on obesity: Start from the perspective that you are fine, then look at your relationships and see who is eroding your confidence to the point that hiding and putting something in your mouth to shut yourself up is the only option. Once you have got rid of them, life gets a lot easier and more pleasant. It is their problem. Don’t make it yours anymore. The likelihood is that you have been listening to somebody else’s hang ups and beating yourself up with it. Stop that.

health, motivation, politics

The Obesity Malnutrition Paradox

September 20, 2016 No Comments

Horrific trip to the nurse today, to get some long overdue blood tests because I was too embarrassed to go and get them done when I was eating normal food. When you know that you are doing something bad for you, you think about all the unnecessary advice and treatment you would get if you do what you are told.

When I eat normal food, I am tired, bloated, I look awful and I continuously gain weight, not just because I eat too much either. I remember first noticing this at 9 years old, when I once notably put on 7lb after one plate of macaroni cheese. It was dismissed as nonsense, of course, and many years later I think back on this and wonder why I was unable to simply throw a tantrum, like everybody else in my family. Perhaps it is because I sat and watched so many.

When I eat normal food, I am also severely anaemic, and I did wonder whether I was menopausal for some time, because of the heat fluctuations and the weeping over Wolfe. I am not, for those interested. I just cannot eat normal food, and for some reason had a lot of poison to dump when I came across Wolfe. One’s emotions very much dictate one’s health, especially in my case.

So, she asked me after I told her that I had just dropped 40lb in a month, what am I eating? (I dropped 70lb in ten weeks when I first went raw, and the doctor at that time nearly fell off his chair)

“Seaweed, grass, leaves and berries.”

She clearly assumed that I was a bit special and asked me to list them. I got down five or so, before sighing and telling her that there are over eighty ingredients in supermix. “I also shoot for ten vegetables a day and eat some fish” I supplied, just to ensure that she would not put me on the dangerous nutjob list.

I then requested that she take some blood tests, just to hammer the point home to them once they have tested my blood. She is now testing me for diabetes. I made enquiries about this numerous times, and was rubbished by my GPs every time. Now I have reached the age of type 2 diabetes, apparently, so they will decide when and how I become ill in addition to ignoring any actual symptoms, because I am evidently too stupid to simply communicate them.

So, having had many frustrating trips to the medical centre over the years, I patiently explained the paradox of obesity. You get fat because you are missing something, and you crave whatever you ate that you think contains that something. Supermix removes this problem, because it is crammed full of nutrition. Even a multivitamin and mineral supplement will help, but supermix has the added benefit of forcing you to drink a lot of water and eat some raw herbs before you start eating anything resembling normal food.

It is tedious, explaining to someone with a tickbox checklist that you are not in their routine loop and have no expectations of ever being in it. I once had a consultant sit and express great shock that I was obviously not always lazy, on the grounds of my weight. I had to explain to her that being fat does not mean that you are stationary and that people are not always the same build. I showed the six foot lovely my enormous hands. I am almost a foot smaller than her, and needless to say, her tiny little hands were miniscule in comparison.

Anyway, this is several tiresome years later, and I am feeling and looking a lot better than I did a month ago. Throughout the continuous binge that was spending time with my friend, I reverted to raw the minute he went home several times. Hence, I was eating socially and disregarding my health. Hell is other people.

So, my thought for today on the subject of obesity is – do what works for you – if people are in your way, get rid of them, and get your life back.

health

More on obesity

April 30, 2016 No Comments

More on obesity

Sorry to those who could not get to the website today. It was a bit of a pain being retweeted several times and then finding that the database was down and I had to wait for the hosting provider.
Continuing on my obesity series, since it is a topic I know rather a lot about, today I want to talk about the yo-yo mindset, for curious thin people and confused fat people alike. Here are some quotes and questions that I have been asked in the past, by personal trainer friends and people who have never had a weight problem, who cannot understand the mind of a person who apparently ‘does not care.’

“Why are you so fat? I would fancy you if you were not so fat.”
“Why is someone as pretty as you so fat?”
“How can people let themselves get like that?”
“How come you are faster/stronger/so active when you are so fat?”
“Aren’t you embarrassed to let anyone see you like that?”
“Why don’t you just eat less, then you can eat what you like?”
“Don’t you care about clothes?”
“Nobody will want you looking like that.”
“Eww look at how fat she is! She’s a gannet!”

These are genuine statements made to me at different points in my life. Let us take these one at a time before we go further.
“Why are you so fat? I would fancy you if you were not so fat.”
This was said by a very cute millionaire friend of mine, who I lost all respect for the minute he said this, and ended up dating his much richer friend before telling him to get stuffed. He was concerned that his posh boy friends would think less of him. You will be gratified to learn that he ended up with an enormous single parent of two kids.
My response to this one was. “Strangely enough, dating you was not at the forefront of my mind for the last 23 years, and it is not what concerns me when we converse. I work with food for twenty hours a day, and frankly my weight is an advantage given my line of work.”
“Why is someone as pretty as you so fat?”
I was not particularly fat at the time, and this lady was very concerned about her weight. She was very dull as a result. I remarked that I had other things to do than worry about social conformity.
“How can people let themselves get like that?”
This is a good one, and was said by a well known raw foodist personal trainer, who has never had a weight problem. I explained to him at the time, that one’s self perception is relative, and outlined a scene from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where I refused to go out until the last day of my holiday, and discovered that I was, in fact, the thinnest person on the beach, whereupon I enjoyed an impromptu run. This should speak for itself as a reason.
“How come you are faster/stronger/so active when you are so fat?”
This has come up several times, and has come from everyone from my PE teacher at school, to hospital consultants who cannot believe test results.
Fat does not actually prevent you from leading a busy or active life, in fact you will find many fat people are far busier than you are. Stress is a killer, in more ways than one.
“Aren’t you embarrassed to let anyone see you like that?”
This one really burns into your brain, doesn’t it? Every time you think about going out, this pops up as a reason not to. The person who says this to you really hates you. Get away from them right now.
“Why don’t you just eat less, then you can eat what you like?”
This comes from someone with a fundamental misunderstanding of what causes obesity. Just smile and move on.
“Don’t you care about clothes?”
Yes, yes, we do care about clothes. The first thing any fat person does on losing weight is buy inappropriate clothing they were never able to wear when they were big. We love clothes. On other people, so we can actually see them whilst we enjoy a good curry.
“Nobody will want you looking like that.”
I think you would be very surprised at the massive number of men, in particular, who really dig big chicks, so this one is absolutely laughable. They are usually much nicer than trophy hunters, too, so this one is a double edged sword.
“Eww look at how fat she is! She’s a gannet!”
This is the sort of thing stupid people say, in the same way as they point at unsuspecting cats and saw awwwwwwwww. Again, step away from the moron.
Having said all this, here is some insight into the mental process, starting with a fat person at their thinnest:

“I am actually starting to feel jealous of fat people. They look happier than I am, and they eat whatever they like.”
“I am fed up with random people who hit on me, even though they have no idea who I am. They talk so much rubbish”
“Life is no better when thin, and in many ways it is worse because I am now also under pressure to look good.”
“I am not very happy, and I would like to be invisible.”
“I have nothing in common with these new friends, they seem a bit superficial and self-obsessed.”
“I feel a bit depressed and do not want to go out anymore.”
“Who cares? I am invisible anyway.”
“What’s the point?”

Ok, so this covers more of an emotional eating problem, rather than someone who has simply put on weight over time without thinking about it, but I think it is helpful for overall perspective on why someone would allow the problem to get ‘out of control.’ People have differing priorities, and either size has its advantages.
There have been times when I have been conscious of putting on weight almost deliberately, particularly in long term family situations, because I no longer wish to speak. The healthy thing to do would be get as far away as possible and not avoid the rest of the world, but for various reasons this has not always been possible.
I have also noticed in the last decade or so, that I start buying the biggest size in the shop long before I start overeating. This last time was a case in point. One of the first things I did, when broken-hearted and trying to talk myself out of my irrational affection for Wolfe, was absent-mindedly buy the largest pair of trousers I could find, and I was about eight sizes smaller at the time. It is quite freaky when you catch yourself doing it. ‘My emotional state/libido must be suppressed, therefore I must eat more. I am obviously running wild, therefore I must stay in.’ What a puritanical glutton I am! Perhaps I should find an evil streak and find a more assertive outlet for angst.
So, to conclude, I hope that this is more useful to you than the average blame game scenario you are usually presented with on this particular topic. You are still better off without a weight problem if you can go about conquering your particular demons, but it is not the end of the world, and you are not a monster if you happen to have one. If you choose carefully, you can indulge your love of food and your love of vanity/good health. Vanity is a very positive sin, in fact, which you must indulge to keep yourself reasonably healthy. Apart from that, do not allow yourself to slip into the cushion of your not at all alarming appearance as a result of your weight problem, because the fear of living your life is the real killer.