Here Is What I Hate About Being Fat

Where to start.

1) In my head, I'm totally a blonde, blue eyed, 23 year old ingenue, and it always surprises me when I walk by a mirror, like, AAAAAACK! (That picture up there at the top of the blog where I look almost average sized? Outdated by about 25 pounds.) (It's been a stressful year, shut up.)

2) If you are me, which I am, you sometimes feel the need to make jokes about how fat you are, which is just a HORRIBLE thing to do to people. I mean, way to make everyone feel awkward. If they laugh, they're jerks, and if they don't laugh, then it's like they're acknowledging the truth of the statement. What are they supposed to say? "You're not fat?"

3) Yes. That is what you are supposed to say. Even if your friend is 350 pounds, if she says "I'm so fat," the correct response is a quick, automatic, "You're not fat," with a change of subject. Don't worry. You're not enabling her. The thing is - she already knows she's fat. CRAZY TALK, I know. And if you don't say anything, or if you say, "Here, let me give you the number for Jenny Craig," she will drive straight home and eat another gallon of Ben and Jerry's. And yes, I agree that true friends should be able to say anything to each other. Just - not that.

4) I don't appreciate it when my skinny friends give me dieting tips. If I bring the topic up, which I don't all that often, because HELLO, it's not like I need to call attention to it, they will sometimes (gingerly and in a loving way) try to give me weight loss advice. This is annoying because, HELLO again, I know how to lose weight. I've lost my entire body weight, twice (spread out over time, obviously - I'm not MAGIC). I've read every weight loss/healthy lifestyle book known to man. I know about lifestyle change. I know about exercise. I know about muscle mass. I know, I know, I know, I know. I KNOW! I just... ...really like to eat.

A Few of the Diets I've Been On: Weight Watchers, Body for Life, Atkins, the South Beach Diet, Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, the Rotation Diet, the Cabbage Soup diet, and the Diet Dr. Pepper-Fasting-Chewing Gum diet.

Once I talked to a doctor about it, and she actually said, "What you need to do is stop eating so much and exercise." And then on a little pad she wrote Eat less, exercise more.

I stared at her. "Holy mackerel. I have never heard this before. I think you may have just unlocked the door to weightloss for all mankind."

No, I didn't say that. Actually, I just muttered, "That's harder than it looks," which led to talking about my unhealthy obsession with food, which led to her prescribing me an ACTUAL diet drug - phentermine. It was AWESOME. I lost 40 pounds in eight weeks AND I barely ever had to sleep. I was so productive, I can't even tell you. My throat was hoarse from never shutting up, all day long. But eventually Dr. Jerkface made me go off of it, and I gradually gained it all back. (Big surprise.)

5) Highland doesn't have fat people, other than me. I'm SPECIAL. But I love all of my skinny friends, and I never judge them for being all fit and healthy and semi-obsessed with running triathalons. My heart is big. I do not discriminate against the fit. I love ALL sizes (even the 2s and 4s! See? I'm a giver!)

But it would be nice to have a fat friend. It's sometimes nice to have a friend who is fatter than you, so that you can feel like the skinny one. This is a politically incorrect but still true truth. I don't do this anymore (LIE), but when I was younger I cycled between normal and chubby on a regular basis, and if I was with a fat friend, I'd constantly assess our relative fatness, wondering "Do I look like that? Am I that fat? Is she fatter? Or am I fatter? Huh. I think she's fatter." And if my friend was fatter, I felt way more comfortable out in public, because, yeah, I might be fat, but at least I wasn't as fat as her. And then lightning would come down out of the sky and strike me dead, because MAN, that's awful.

But anyway. I feel gross. I've gotten to my gross set point, and I'm ready for a change. (Yes again.) (The folks over at the weight loss blog I started and promptly abandoned are all snickering at me, I know. But I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME.)

So - LIFESTYLE CHANGE, HERE I COME. WOOHOO. Yippee. I'm SO excited. or something.

And now I'm trying to figure out how to go about this, so what I'm wondering is - anyone ever eaten a tapeworm?

P.S. I'm KIDDING, don't send me gross pictures. BLECK.

P.P.S. Don't worry fat acceptance people, I'm not down on myself because of my weight. I know that I am STILL FABULOUS. I'm a basically happy person. My weight is not constantly on my mind (um, food however...). It only bothers me every third Tuesday, when my jeans refuse to zip up. I don't let my weight define me, blah blah blah. Whatever.