Fat People
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I bet you came here thinking I am going to rant about fat people.... Nope! I am going to talk about my own fat experience.
Last June I had to go on this pill that sent my weight which had held at 132 pounds for almost 6 years soaring. Before that I was extremely thin, 107 pounds, and had had to fight to get my weight back up to at the very least my minimum weight requirement which is 134 pounds. I was not anorexic, but I was dirt poor, and so eating was not a high priority for me. Maybe some day I will go into more detail about that, but anyway getting my daily requirement of calories was just not possible.
So as I started working my way through the ranks of working life, from poor poor to working poor, working poor to middle class, and then finally middle class to upper middle class, I had the money in my budget to eat properly. Food had not been a very important or comforting thing to me, it was just one of those aggravating things you had to interrupt your routine for so that you wouldn't pass out later in the day. I think I came to be that way because as a child food was not readily available either. My mom was left to support 5 kids on a nursing assistant's salary and just over a hundred dollars a month in food stamps. My dad was one of those perverts that thought it was cool to date a child. She was 14 when he at 26, knocked her up, married her to keep my very Mormon grandmother from taking her very loaded shotgun to him, and then proceeded to knock her up a couple more times before he left her. She was 20 when she gave birth to me, and married this man that would have been such a great man. My step dad was Apache and according to my school friends, looked a lot like Elvis.
He stood 6'4 tall, had sharply chisled features, thick jet black hair, and eyes almost as dark as his hair. He never wore his shirt untucked, always had one daily pair of boots, and one pair of dress boots, and NEVER let anyone touch his Stetson. For those of you that really don't know what a cowboy is, that is basically what a cowboy is. He was in the Air Force, drew houses in his spare time, could catch any fish out of any body of water, could fix anything, and rode Broncos in local rodeos just for the hell of it. Sadly for my mom, love was not in the cards the second go round either. He started drinking like a fish out of water shortly after they were married. He started beating and raping her during their "honeymoon". He kept it hidden from people in the early days, and my mom being the perfect wife that she sought to be, protected him and his manliness. He gave her two more kids during their marriage. While the marriage lasted 21 years, they were together for less than half of it. His "drinking problem" became impossible to hide from the Air Force, and nothing they did was able to keep him sober for long. He was a great man before he took to needing Coors and then later Jack Daniel's.
Anway since mom had started building her brood as a child, she had no education to speak of, but being the stubborn woman that she is, she put herself and her pride out there and applied for every job that offered enough pay to allow her to support 5 kids. My dad I didn't even know until I was 10, and he never thought he should have to help my mom take care of me and my two older siblings. My stepdad drank whatever money he got his hands on, and couldn't stay sober long enough to be any good to my mom or his two kids. So, my mom worked 6 days a week, (never on Sunday), 16 hours a day when she could pick up extra shifts. She had grown up in on of the American West's earliest families, raising a cow for meat, a cow for milk, hunting to supplement the meat supply, and growing her own vegetables, and so that gave her the skill to make a couple hundred dollars worth of groceries last a month and keep 5 growing kids fed. But that wasn't always easy, and I was the one that tended to share that responsibility with my mom. So, if my brothers needed more to eat, and my mom who also needed to eat to make it through long work days needed more than there was to eat, I would make sure they all ate before I did.
I never thought anything of it. My mom did, but I got good at lieing to her about it. Anyway, so I got used to going hungry a lot. I was living on my own by the time I was 17, working a graveyard shift and going to college during the day. Hard work was something I knew how to do, and going without was easy. They say when you've got nothing you lose nothing, but when you go from having everything to having nothing, you lose everything. At the time I have to agree that that is true.
Alright so back to my fat experience. After being skinny for the better part of my life, I get put on this medication. All of a sudden I am putting on weight, not just a little weight gain, I was gaining 4 to 7 pounds a week, and I had to be on this medication for at least 6 months. So, I cut my calories back even more, damn near stopped eating, but still kept gaining the weight. By the time my doctor took me off the medication I was officially overweight having gone from 132 pounds to 182 pounds at 5'8, and my size 6s then 8s came no where near fitting over my blobs of fat.
As I aged and got knocked around in my own life for whatever reason people could find to look down on me, I never made it my business or place to tell someone they were fat, or to harp on them about that. In reality, it isn't my place or yours for that matter, to stick your nose in the air towards anyone. Thankfully those that do the nose in the air always find themselves humbled when they suffer the inevitable knockdown. So anyway, here I am in the upper middle class ranks for the very first time in my life, and with all the money, and a healthy diet that never involved anything fried (with the exception of cold fried chicken which just so happens to taste as good as they say it does), rarely involved anything sweet (once a month I needed a chocolate bar to stave off the desire to kill someone during that time of the month my body was wanting to breed) but other than that one Hershey bar, I really had no tolerance for sweet sugary anything.
I garden, and I mean garden, I love to make beautiful landscapes with my hands in the soil, even weeding feels so good to me. But I am no longer even remotely interested in "athletics", much rather walk and think than run and hurt, and while aerobics is actually fun once you figure out the "moves", its difficult to work it into my daily schedule. I tried the aerobics at home on the dvd but my dogs seem to think the minute I sit on the carpet its time to play.
So I do the weightwatchers thing, start working out on my newly acquired home gym, and using my stair master, and counting every single calorie. To reduce weight with weight watchers your calories are converted to this point system. It is ka ka! I got bored with it, and got really frustrated with this battle to get my body to leave its homeostaysis and drop the so-not needed weight.
Then when I just quit the dieting thing, and went back to just eating the way I was before the dieting thing, and now in the last couple of months my weight has dropped back into my normal range. I am still losing weight so I don't know how far my weight is going to drop before it finally stops. I am lucky to have found that just being off of that medication, and staying with my normal eating habits has made this fat burning thing easier. I am lucky that my better budget gives me the money to buy the bigger clothes, and I am eternally greatful that I am such a packrat that I refused to throw away my normal weight clothes.
My experience with being fat was not as bad as the other experiences I have had in my lifetime, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. I felt dumpy, lazy, and like when people looked at me they did not see a woman. Now I am back into a size 10 and the breasts that the weight gain gave me are still there, while all of that blob is fading away.
The reason I had to talk about this is because my best friend, and the only best friend I have had since childhood is obese. She changed her eating habits, and has really had to work to get rid of her weight. It helps that she is all done having her babies, because that was what got her fat to begin with.
Its really ironic. When your fat you will give anything to be skinny again, but when your skinny you want to be fat, not bad fat, just not a stick person with a flat chest and bird legs.
But when you become fat in a country where fat is becoming endemic, being fat is even worse. Its not just the personal pressure to lose the weight, its like this panic sets in that you are not fulfilling your social obligation to the rest of the country.
I think if you are comfortable with your weight, regardless of what other people say or think should be the standard, then maybe it is just okay to go on with living your life. If you are uncomfortable with your weight and want to lose it, then find your own comfortable way to change what you eat, and take on the activity that you enjoy, one that gives you satisfaction, not one that makes you feel like you would rather die than do again. Carb cutting does actually work to help lose the weight, and it increases heart health as well as reduces the need for diabetics to take insulin shots.
However, the reality as we know it thus far is that you only live once. No matter how much some want to believe there is something beyond this life, we know for certain that today you live. So just live your life as if this life were your last. Whether fat, skinny, smart, not so smart, beautiful, average, ugly, its still your life, its what you have got, its all you have got in the end. If others don't like as the saying goes, "fuck em'".
Last June I had to go on this pill that sent my weight which had held at 132 pounds for almost 6 years soaring. Before that I was extremely thin, 107 pounds, and had had to fight to get my weight back up to at the very least my minimum weight requirement which is 134 pounds. I was not anorexic, but I was dirt poor, and so eating was not a high priority for me. Maybe some day I will go into more detail about that, but anyway getting my daily requirement of calories was just not possible.
So as I started working my way through the ranks of working life, from poor poor to working poor, working poor to middle class, and then finally middle class to upper middle class, I had the money in my budget to eat properly. Food had not been a very important or comforting thing to me, it was just one of those aggravating things you had to interrupt your routine for so that you wouldn't pass out later in the day. I think I came to be that way because as a child food was not readily available either. My mom was left to support 5 kids on a nursing assistant's salary and just over a hundred dollars a month in food stamps. My dad was one of those perverts that thought it was cool to date a child. She was 14 when he at 26, knocked her up, married her to keep my very Mormon grandmother from taking her very loaded shotgun to him, and then proceeded to knock her up a couple more times before he left her. She was 20 when she gave birth to me, and married this man that would have been such a great man. My step dad was Apache and according to my school friends, looked a lot like Elvis.
He stood 6'4 tall, had sharply chisled features, thick jet black hair, and eyes almost as dark as his hair. He never wore his shirt untucked, always had one daily pair of boots, and one pair of dress boots, and NEVER let anyone touch his Stetson. For those of you that really don't know what a cowboy is, that is basically what a cowboy is. He was in the Air Force, drew houses in his spare time, could catch any fish out of any body of water, could fix anything, and rode Broncos in local rodeos just for the hell of it. Sadly for my mom, love was not in the cards the second go round either. He started drinking like a fish out of water shortly after they were married. He started beating and raping her during their "honeymoon". He kept it hidden from people in the early days, and my mom being the perfect wife that she sought to be, protected him and his manliness. He gave her two more kids during their marriage. While the marriage lasted 21 years, they were together for less than half of it. His "drinking problem" became impossible to hide from the Air Force, and nothing they did was able to keep him sober for long. He was a great man before he took to needing Coors and then later Jack Daniel's.
Anway since mom had started building her brood as a child, she had no education to speak of, but being the stubborn woman that she is, she put herself and her pride out there and applied for every job that offered enough pay to allow her to support 5 kids. My dad I didn't even know until I was 10, and he never thought he should have to help my mom take care of me and my two older siblings. My stepdad drank whatever money he got his hands on, and couldn't stay sober long enough to be any good to my mom or his two kids. So, my mom worked 6 days a week, (never on Sunday), 16 hours a day when she could pick up extra shifts. She had grown up in on of the American West's earliest families, raising a cow for meat, a cow for milk, hunting to supplement the meat supply, and growing her own vegetables, and so that gave her the skill to make a couple hundred dollars worth of groceries last a month and keep 5 growing kids fed. But that wasn't always easy, and I was the one that tended to share that responsibility with my mom. So, if my brothers needed more to eat, and my mom who also needed to eat to make it through long work days needed more than there was to eat, I would make sure they all ate before I did.
I never thought anything of it. My mom did, but I got good at lieing to her about it. Anyway, so I got used to going hungry a lot. I was living on my own by the time I was 17, working a graveyard shift and going to college during the day. Hard work was something I knew how to do, and going without was easy. They say when you've got nothing you lose nothing, but when you go from having everything to having nothing, you lose everything. At the time I have to agree that that is true.
Alright so back to my fat experience. After being skinny for the better part of my life, I get put on this medication. All of a sudden I am putting on weight, not just a little weight gain, I was gaining 4 to 7 pounds a week, and I had to be on this medication for at least 6 months. So, I cut my calories back even more, damn near stopped eating, but still kept gaining the weight. By the time my doctor took me off the medication I was officially overweight having gone from 132 pounds to 182 pounds at 5'8, and my size 6s then 8s came no where near fitting over my blobs of fat.
As I aged and got knocked around in my own life for whatever reason people could find to look down on me, I never made it my business or place to tell someone they were fat, or to harp on them about that. In reality, it isn't my place or yours for that matter, to stick your nose in the air towards anyone. Thankfully those that do the nose in the air always find themselves humbled when they suffer the inevitable knockdown. So anyway, here I am in the upper middle class ranks for the very first time in my life, and with all the money, and a healthy diet that never involved anything fried (with the exception of cold fried chicken which just so happens to taste as good as they say it does), rarely involved anything sweet (once a month I needed a chocolate bar to stave off the desire to kill someone during that time of the month my body was wanting to breed) but other than that one Hershey bar, I really had no tolerance for sweet sugary anything.
I garden, and I mean garden, I love to make beautiful landscapes with my hands in the soil, even weeding feels so good to me. But I am no longer even remotely interested in "athletics", much rather walk and think than run and hurt, and while aerobics is actually fun once you figure out the "moves", its difficult to work it into my daily schedule. I tried the aerobics at home on the dvd but my dogs seem to think the minute I sit on the carpet its time to play.
So I do the weightwatchers thing, start working out on my newly acquired home gym, and using my stair master, and counting every single calorie. To reduce weight with weight watchers your calories are converted to this point system. It is ka ka! I got bored with it, and got really frustrated with this battle to get my body to leave its homeostaysis and drop the so-not needed weight.
Then when I just quit the dieting thing, and went back to just eating the way I was before the dieting thing, and now in the last couple of months my weight has dropped back into my normal range. I am still losing weight so I don't know how far my weight is going to drop before it finally stops. I am lucky to have found that just being off of that medication, and staying with my normal eating habits has made this fat burning thing easier. I am lucky that my better budget gives me the money to buy the bigger clothes, and I am eternally greatful that I am such a packrat that I refused to throw away my normal weight clothes.
My experience with being fat was not as bad as the other experiences I have had in my lifetime, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. I felt dumpy, lazy, and like when people looked at me they did not see a woman. Now I am back into a size 10 and the breasts that the weight gain gave me are still there, while all of that blob is fading away.
The reason I had to talk about this is because my best friend, and the only best friend I have had since childhood is obese. She changed her eating habits, and has really had to work to get rid of her weight. It helps that she is all done having her babies, because that was what got her fat to begin with.
Its really ironic. When your fat you will give anything to be skinny again, but when your skinny you want to be fat, not bad fat, just not a stick person with a flat chest and bird legs.
But when you become fat in a country where fat is becoming endemic, being fat is even worse. Its not just the personal pressure to lose the weight, its like this panic sets in that you are not fulfilling your social obligation to the rest of the country.
I think if you are comfortable with your weight, regardless of what other people say or think should be the standard, then maybe it is just okay to go on with living your life. If you are uncomfortable with your weight and want to lose it, then find your own comfortable way to change what you eat, and take on the activity that you enjoy, one that gives you satisfaction, not one that makes you feel like you would rather die than do again. Carb cutting does actually work to help lose the weight, and it increases heart health as well as reduces the need for diabetics to take insulin shots.
However, the reality as we know it thus far is that you only live once. No matter how much some want to believe there is something beyond this life, we know for certain that today you live. So just live your life as if this life were your last. Whether fat, skinny, smart, not so smart, beautiful, average, ugly, its still your life, its what you have got, its all you have got in the end. If others don't like as the saying goes, "fuck em'".
