Baby Fat

I was always the fat kid. Wasn’t I? I thought I was. My whole life I thought I was the fat kid. Kids must have said things to me. Did an adult tell me I was fat? I must have believed I was fat. So I went and looked at some old photos of myself. I have to say I am shocked. Now I know I wasn’t an obese kid. Not like the kids today. In the 70’s most kids were SKINNY. I only knew one or two really fat kids. But now seeing the photos from my childhood I see, for the first time ever, something entirely different. I look really normal. Why I am seeing myself this way for the first time ever. I think I might cry. The little girl I see in my photos looks fine. No she isn’t rail thin…but she isn’t fat. I have looked at these photos hundreds of times and I have never seen them like this before.

This one is me and my cousin. I am wearing the rocking green jumper. We are the same age and the same height. She was the skinny one. I was the fat one. Or so I thought.


Here I am on Virginia beach. I am about 10 years old. I can see a thickness through my middle, my thighs are not skinny. My legs are still this shape. But that sweet little girl looks pretty average to me. Not a skinny minny but not the tub-o-lard I remember being.




Here I am in High School (in the yellow dress). I am standing next to my friend Lisa. I thought she was skinny (she was skinny). The dress did hide my lower body. I think my legs were bigger than hers-is that why I thought I was fat?


I’m not even sure how to handle this revelation. I hope it has something to do with really seeing myself for the first time in my life. I hope it is part of realizing that being fat isn’t who I am, it isn’t my destiny, it is under my control. Now I have to work on figuring out why for all these years I thought I was fat when I obviously wasn’t. Psychotherapy anyone.

Why can’t I dance my ass off?

Ok, I’m gonna make this short and sweet. My body is all sorts of weird. I can carry about 30 pounds of weight for each clothing size. And honestly it sorta ticks me off. I have been watching Dance Your Ass Off (and to think I always blamed my lack of dancing ability on my size). The women stand up on the massive TV-production-value scale each week and exclaim…I’ve lost 25 pounds and 5 sizes. WHAT! How is that possible? Not me. 22 pounds down and still in my size 20 pants. I have maybe gone from a 3X shirt to a 2X….but that’s hardly substantial. I keep trying on 18s (because you know I have a 30 gallon storage tub full) but I can’t get close to buttoning them. Dang it. Now in all honesty the pants that were tight on me when I started this journey are now loose-practically falling off….and when I started I was right on the verge of wearing a 22…and I think the larger the size the greater the likelihood of size variation….and it is nice to have my pants fit comfortably but I would like it so much more if I could lose a size. When I weighed 169 (my lowest ever adult weight) I wore a size 14. So logically I can assume that it could take me losing almost 100 pounds to lose 3 dress sizes. Time to refer back to The Beck Diet Solution….my situation may not be fair, so what, deal with it and move on.

The Cupcake

Today at Whole Foods my daughter chose two cupcakes to bring home, one for her and one for her brother. Neither of them liked the cupcakes and promptly returned them to me untouched except for a missing swipe of icing. Hmmmm….what to do now. The cupcakes were huge, made of pound cake with fluffy white icing. And to my brains dismay not filled with artificial ingredients. I decided to cut a sliver, a sliver that most likely delivered one to two hundred calories. It was fantastic. The pound cake was nearly identical to my grandmas…something I hadn’t tasted in 20 years. The icing was the piece de resistance the literal “icing on the cake”. Then the unthinkable happened. An hour later I ate another sliver. This was starting to look a lot like some old behaviors…the type of behaviors that got me to 263. I quickly froze the second cupcake. Then a few hours later I was tempted by yet another sliver. Quickly I fed the remaining cake to my dogs, knowing I was no match for this cupcake. Heretofore I had managed to resist the few baked goods I allowed in the house. Grocery store cakes and cupcakes no longer taste good to me. Even my old favorite Trader Joes bite sixed cupcakes didn’t appeal to me, but this masterpiece of flour and sugar was irresistible. At least it was until about an hour after my last bite when I realized how crappy I felt. My head hurt. I was sluggish. I was grumpy and short tempered with the kids. WOW! I realized I hadn’t had a sugary treat like this in almost two months. The more real food I eat the better I feel and now I felt awful. Quickly I put on my sweats and headed out for a walk. Ahhh that’s better. Lesson learned. Even a delectable treat isn’t worth it if you feel terrible after eating it.

So where have you been

I have heard that if you quit blogging on a weight loss blog it means you failed. In my case it means three things. 1. Your computer was fried in a thunderstorm. 2. You’ve been reading every weight loss memoir ever written. 3. You’ve become totally obsessed with whole, natural foods and you have watched and read everything you can get your hands on to support your case.

The weight loss is going well. I hit 20 pounds about a week ago. I thought I had this whole plateau thing figured out….no….not even close. My weight loss is nothing but a giant plateau. Still I keep trudging. I am giddy with the thought of getting into the 230’s. I haven’t seen a 230 on the scale in about 3 years-maybe four. Sadly I am still wearing the same size but more on that later. I think the best thing about deciding to make a permanent lifestyle change is that you have all the time in the world. As much as I want to be THIN NOW….it’s not like my eating will change, it’s not like I get to go back to 24/7 brownies and ice cream.