Fat Women I Love.

I apologize for not writing much lately. I’ve been really busy and stressed out from grad school and figuring out my financial aid situation and a whole plethora of other things that make me want to dive head first into a dozen chocolate frosted. And though I haven’t actually eaten 12 donuts I haven’t been doing perfect with my diet given my now disgustingly frantic schedule and complete lack of organization skills. Sometimes after a 9 hour work day and 2 hours in Boston traffic you have no other choice but to crush a coffee roll and Dunkachino; after all, America runs on Dunkin’. But, I digress…

The other day while I was driving to work and listening to talk radio, I was more than a little disturbed by something the talk radio man said. He was talking about what the “perfect” female body is and how the conventional ideal female body has changed over time. For example, in the 40’s and 50’s women seemed to be (and wanted to be) more curvy while in the 90’s the ideal women was anorexic looking (think Cait Moss). Anyway, the host said two things that made me want to vomit 1) that there should be no such thing as a plus size model and 2) that Marilyn Monroe was “overweight”. Really!? You’re going to call one of the sexiest women of all time overweight!? Apparently men like fat women though because every man I’ve ever known has thought Marilyn Monroe was a hot bitch! This got me thinking about other "fat", hot bitches; here’s a few:

Obviously Marilyn goes first since she's the one who started all this. One of the sexiest women of the 20th century.

Born into poverty in rural Mississippi, raised by a teenage single mother and molested at the age of nine, Oprah managed to overcome despondency to reinvent herself as the richest woman in the world with her O empire! Go Oprah!


Not only is Crystal Renn EXTREMELY sexy, she overcame a serious, life threatening case of anorexia to become one of the first high fashion plus sized models. She also wrote a book called Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves. Love, love, love this woman!

Ummm, Kirstie Alley is hysterical! Have you seen her show Kirstie Alley's Big Life? It's fantastic! The show presents the story of her losing the weight she gained back since her Jenny Craig campaign. Hmmm...Gaining back weight, I can relate to that!

Lizzie Miller was considered too fat to even be a plus-size model, now she's plastered all over the glossy pages of Glamour magazine giving confidence to millions of normal sized women everywhere.

Take these pictures of these women, print them off the computer and cut them out. Paste them on your walls, on your mirrors, stick 'em to your head; I don't care. Just remember, these are real women! Women like you and me! Curves, cellulite, tummy rolls and all! These are the ideal female bodies; they are perfect because they are realistic. You agree?

An Altercation with a Chocolate Cake

A few weeks ago Patrick and I got in a little tiff. I don’t even remember what it was about. I’m sure it was something stupid; maybe he ate the last fruit roll up or something, I don’t even know. Anyway, I said something regrettable and Patrick ended up storming out of the house, slamming the door behind him. He left me home alone with the dog and a chocolate cake.

I made my best attempts to distract my mind from the fight and how upset I felt about the whole situation. I sit on the couch. I lay down. I twist and turn and fumble with pillows. I watch TV. I pet the dog. And then I hear it; the chocolate cake beckoning to me.

“Gina,” it whispered. “Come over here and look at me. Look at my texture. Can you imagine how soothing I would feel melting in your mouth? I bet I taste good enough to make you forget about that man. That awful, terrible man. Come tell me all about your troubles. I’m here for you.”
“I’m not even going to look at you!” I retort back to the cake. “You’re not worth it!”
“Oh, but aren’t I?” Responds the cake. “I have three layers of ooey, gooey comfort in a neat frosting coated shell. I’m fresh and fluffy. I was made with love and kindness. I was created solely for situations like these. I’m just what you need. I will console you. I will numb those pesky, wretched feelings of yours even if just for the moment. I am so worth it.”
I get up and walk toward the cake.
“That’s it, love. Come closer and smell me, touch me, engulf me.” The cake is persistent.
I remove the plastic top covering the cake. It’s voice becomes louder and stronger. The cake continues to plead with more aggression now.
“Let’s run away together.” It suggests. “Let’s live somewhere together where no one will find us! Forget about Patrick, forget about work, the dog, school, just forget it all! Escape with me!” “I won’t judge you!” The cake shouts in a last ditch effort to suck me in, “I don’t think you’re fat!”
I grab a fork and dig it into the cake. I take a bite and then another. I close my eyes and swallow. The cake was right, it is soothing, it is comforting. The cake overwhelms me and for a moment I forget…

Then I remember! I remember my pants and how snug the have become. I remember my weight loss goals and my writing. I remember my promise to myself and to my readers. I realize that eating cake solves nothing-it doesn’t resolve my issues with Patrick!
“But I taste SO good!” The cake relentlessly grapples with me.
I block my ears, run to the kitchen trash and throw the cake away.

Actual photograph of the actual chocolate cake in the trash.

I sit back down alone on the couch and wait for Patrick to come home. No chocolate cake, no TV, no distractions; just myself and my thoughts to wrestle with.
I guess that’s what overcoming emotional addiction to food is all about: learning to put the fork down, throw out the cake and just deal.

You're Addicted To What Now!?

There’s a show on TLC called My Strange Addiction. It features people who have all kinds of weird addictions and obsessive behaviors, a lot of them involving eating things. For example this girl, Kesha is addicted to eating toilet paper! Watch:


There are other equally disturbing episodes other than Kesha’s about eating shit too. There’s a girl who compulsively eats chalk and one who drinks detergent! Seeing this show and listening to these women talk about their suffering due to serious addictions to inedible and, in some cases, poisonous substances makes me feel SO much better about my dependence on wholesome chocolate chip cookies and buttery croissants! In all seriousness though, addiction is, well, serious.

The definition of addiction is as follows:
1. Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance: a drug used in the treatment of heroin addiction.
2. An instance of this: a person with multiple chemical addictions
3. The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.

The last one is me! It's me! Number 3 is me! I really do have an addiction to food! I am habitually or compulsively occupied with food! Traditionally people don't think about food as an addiction, they think about heroin or cigarettes or alcohol, but I truly believe that food is an addiction and IT’S THE WORST ADDICTION EVER!
Think about it. Heroin, for example, is a severe and fatal addiction and it’s excruciatingly difficult to kick that habit, but you don’t need heroin to live. (Trust me I’m not trying to discredit heroin, most of my idols suffered and died from heroin addictions.) But again, you don’t NEED it. You don’t need cigarettes or alcohol either. But you do need food. You need food to live. You have to eat food every single day to simply survive. So, if you’re addicted to food you can’t exactly kick the habit cold turkey. Food addiction can’t really be followed by a “recovery” period, but rather a change in your addictive behavior. Don’t eat this, eat that, stay away from that, try this and on and on. One top of controlling what you’re eating everyday, all the time, constantly for the rest of your life, as a food addict you should probably spend some time discovering the causes of your emotional eating the causes of your unhealthy cravings. Food addiction is a never ending battle.

I Googled “How to control food addiction” and I came to a link where some dude was ranting about how you CAN control your compulsion to food. His argument was to avoid all the bad foods you’re addicted to and only eat the healthy foods. So basically, Elio's pizza and jelly donuts out, broccoli and cedar plank salmon in. OK, if it were that simple then why are more than 60 percent of Americans 20 years and older overweight? Because it’s not that simple! Our addiction, the food, is being shoved in out fat faces every two freakin’ seconds! TV commercials, billboards, grocery stores aisles, checkout counters, all attractively flaunting our delicious addictions. Allow me to use the heroin example again. A heroin addict doesn’t walk down the street and have an uncontrollable craving to use come over them because they openly see people shooting up in the streets because people don’t shoot up in public, but they do eat ice cream cones in public. A heroin addict doesn’t have to walk down the grocery aisle every day desperately trying to resist the urge to purchase syringes and black tar heroin because they don’t sell that shit there, but they do openly sell Snickers and caramel Rice Cakes. See my point!?

I’m sorry heroin addicts, but I stand by my original point: food addiction is the worst! So have some sympathy for fat people, OK! We are competing everyday with a serious addiction! get off your high horse skinny bitches! I'm strugglin' here! Talking about addiction and dependence and all the things I just can't control is exhausting and it's making me work up and appetite.

On a lighter note, (no pun) I weighed in on Saturday and my current weight is 199. Oh boy...

Day 1

I’m looking back on my blog, my “diet blog”, and I’m thinking, “Wow, I’ve been righting this for a month or more and I’ve yet to produce any real results for myself or any advice for my readers about weight loss.” Seriously, looking back on my posts I’m noticing that all I’ve done thus far is poke fun at myself for a chuckle or two and talk about how much I love food, how I suck at dieting and how I constantly give into my temptations like it’s my job. I’m not a genius on diet blogs, I just write one, but I’m pretty sure that I am SUPPOSED to be losing weight and tracking my weight loss success here for the world to see. But I’ve yet to lose any weight! In fact, up until now, I’ve yet to do anything fruitful except write about how I plan to lose the weight! Who wants to read a diet blog written by a woman who can’t diet!? I certainly wouldn’t!

So today I’m changing all of this. Today I’m getting back to the basics of why I wrote this blog. It wasn’t to make people laugh at my expense; it wasn’t to discuss delicious foods and how much I long to eat them (and usually do); it wasn’t about me fantasizing in detail about how I wish I were as skinny as Nicole Richie in her anorexic days! No, it was simply about blogging my journey of eating right and exercising to lose weight! It’s all about me losing weight! Today is day one of my journey; I’m starting fresh.
It’s time for me to blow the dust off my stove top and stock the fridge, I’m done F-ing around! From this point forward my world is going to be all about fish and chicken, veggies and rice cakes, nuts and tofu, protein shakes and herbals teas, intense cardio and colon cleanses! To show my dedication to this I am even going to post my current weight as grotesque as it is.

By July of this year I want to be 30 pounds lighter than I am now. By August, I want to be strutting on the beach in my bikini with confidence. By September I want to be completely comfortable in my new, lean body and understand that being fit requires a lifelong commitment. By this time next year I don’t even want to be thinking about weight. I want to free my mind from the anguish of persistently obsessing over what I look like everyday all the time. I. Need. This.

So, as promised...
Starting weight: 203

I will weight myself every Saturday and report back the expectantly declining numbers. I will never lie about my weight. Trust me, there's no point in hiding anything now. I'm as vulnerable as I'm ever going to be.

50 Ways to Leave Your Love Handles.

I have so many excuses, explanations and ridiculous reasons that I use as rationale to keep eating and stay fat. I say things like, “Oh, I’ll start tomorrow” or “I’m not that fat, I have some leeway!” and my favorite, “I could get hit by a bus tomorrow! Might as well enjoy this chocolate cake while I still can!” I’m not sure I have every actually sat down and thought of the reasons why I want to lose weight rather than gain weight! So here are my 50 reasons to lose weight and be thin! I will look back on these when I am in the midst of using one of my many excuses to eat crap! Feel free to use them too!

50 reasons I want to lose weight (or at least not get any bigger):

1. So I can walk around the beach in a bikini with confidence!
2. Better yet, so I can run on the beach like Pam Anderson in Baywatch!
3. So I won’t be jealous of Patrick looking at “hotter” women.
4. No more sarongs!
5. So I can brush my teeth without my stomach jiggling.
6. So I can be a threat. I want women to be threatened by me for once!
7. So I don’t think about killing every thin woman who passes by.
8. So I don’t have to be the funny, fat friend.
9. So I don’t have to be the Chloe Kardashian of my sisters. I want to be the Kim!
10. So that at 26, I can look better than women twice my age.
11. So I can run a 5K.
12. So I can be a beautiful, skinny bride someday. (Patrick, are you listening?)
13. So I can be carried over the threshold after my big dream wedding.
14. So I don’t die from complications related to being overweight.
15. So I don’t have to deal with reproductive complications due to obesity.
16. So when I get pregnant in the future people can tell that I’m pregnant and not just bloated!
17. So I don’t end up like one of those obese women who walk around Walmart in those over-sized Tweedy Bird T-shirts. (You know what I’m talking about.)
18. So I can sit down without putting something in front of my stomach to hide the rolls.
19. So I can be a size 10.
20. So I can wear shorts in the summer.
21. So no one will ever think I’m pregnant when I’m not! It’s happened!
22. So I can walk around with a latte and huge sunglasses and look hot rather than just stupid!

I wish.

23. So I don’t have to suck in my tummy anymore!
24. So I don’t have to be embarrassed about taking photos or spend so much time trying to look skinny in them. (I know all the tricks.)
25. So I can wear cute clothes!
26. No more chafing between the legs!
27. So I don’t have to look up to hide my double chin.
28. So I don’t have to hear, “But at least you’re pretty.” ever again.
29. So I can fit into all the clothing that I own rather than having to go out and buy larger sizes.
30. So I don’t freak out when I have to get dressed up to go somewhere fancy.
31. So I can be comfortable when I reach down to put on my socks.
32. So I can have more energy and stamina.
33. No more suck-me-suits!
34. So I can eat in front of others without feeling self-conscious.
35. So my doctor doesn’t have to tell me to “lose a few” every time I see him.
36. No more yoga pants!
37. So I never have to see XL again.
38. So I can be comfortable while wearing jeans.
39. So I can have that boudoir session with Kasia!
40. So I can wear skinny jeans without looking like a sausage.
41. So I can do jumping jacks without getting embarrassed.
42. So I can jump rope without getting embarrassed.
43. To be more flexible.
44. So If the house catches on fire I can escape through the window!
45. So no one can ever poke fun at my weight again.
46. So I can prolong my life.
47. So I can go confidently to my ten year high school reunion.
48. So I can outrun a killer if I ever have to. You never know…
49. So I don’t look like a colossal failure to all the readers of this blog.
50. And finally, so I can finally look in front of the mirror and like what I see. No more embarrassment. No more self-loathing.

These are MY reason, what are yours?

Happy Nude Year!

Today I made cupcakes for my sister's baby shower. Voila:


The cupcakes made me remember this time when I was watching Wanda Sykes stand-up and she went off on this tangent about dieting. She was talking about how through the years she's heard so many little tricks one can utilize in order to cut calories throughout the day and thus lose weight. One trick, for example, is to scrape the frosting off a cupcake before eating it. That's where the joke comes in. Wanda shouts, "A cupcake with no frosting?! That's like a puppy with no head!"

I totally get what Wanda is saying. Sometimes when it comes down to eating healthy/dieting it feels like I'm sacrificing the most delicious parts of my food! Yesterday I had an egg with no yolk, tuna with no mayo and a burger with no bun! It straight up sucks! It sucks watching every morsel I consume like that. Counting, cutting and condensing my food intake sucks! But is the alternative, eating whatever I damn well please, worth it? Is it worth having the yolk if it’s going to raise my cholesterol? Is it worth adding mayo if it adds to my ever-growing chin? Is it worth mowing a sesame seed bun if it makes my buns bigger? Of course it’s not worth it! I know that, so why is it SO hard to remember sometimes?

Nobody ever said dieting was going to be easy or fun. If it was we’d all be walking around looking like Megan Fox and clearly that’s not the case at all since obesity rates here in the United States are currently among the highest in the world! But I don’t want to be a statistic. I don’t want to be just another fat lard that dies of a massive heart attack from clogged arteries because she couldn’t put down the damn Boston Cream Donuts! I want to feel healthy and I want to look good naked!
So there it is, my new years resolution: to look good naked. By July I would like to be able to strut down Mayflower Beach in a real life bikini and look good in it. Anyone can slap on a bikini and call it a day, but to actually look good in it is a whole other thing. As of now, if I squeezed myself into a bikini I would look something like the ballerina hippo from Fantasia. Not pretty.

I have some work today and I want to get started right away! So here’s to 2011! Here’s to cupcakes with no frosting and puppies with no heads!

PS: Of course I had one of the cupcakes I made along with whatever other delicious noshes I could get my hands on at the baby shower. I'll start tomorrow...