#YesAllWomen

So this #YesAllWomen thing has gotten me thinking about my changing body. Listen, as a Women's Studies major, a lesbian, a card-carrying feminist, I think a lot about how my body is perceived in public. As a lifelong fat person, I think about it even more. And now that I've dropped almost 100 pounds, well, that just compounds the issue and makes me even more acutely aware of any eyes the fall upon me. So here's a poem I started a few weeks ago in the middle of the night and just remembered as I started reading about #YesAllWomen:

There is a particular fear
That comes with being female
It's not constant--not for me
In the land of the free but maybe
For my silent sisters elsewhere--
But it strikes at inconvenient times

All the typical fears are there,
Like strangers in the shower
Or followers in a solitary wood,
But other fears bleed in

Like on a crowded subway car,
The fear of fingers slipping up your skirt
Or walking alone anywhere,
The fear of a car stopping or
Another walker slowing, intent
On some unspeakable harm

Passing a group of men working,
Pausing at a red light beside
A car of boys, finding ourselves
Alone with any stranger
Our pulse quickens, we become
Prey that's picked up
An alarming scent

We look brave, heads high,
backs straight, small smiles

On determined mouths

to show we're not scared

Eyes averted, never making contact

We clutch our keys, gauge

The distance, plan our escape, 

Prepare for a fight, and smile still

Despite that particular fear

Women share, the fear that

Creeps in and stays

Drinking the Kool-Aid

I'm starting to feel like I understand why people enjoy working out, and it's kinda freaking me out. I thought it was seriously so fucking stupid when people would talk about how they love running, or how they miss it if they skip their workouts. I would roll my eyes when people would gush about the adrenaline rush of a good sweat, and felt real pity at the thought of these poor schmucks wasting their time at the gym. It seemed like telling people you like working out is the equivalent of saying you just can't stop getting an A+ on every test even though you never study. Like, shut up, fuck you, no one wants to hear about how perfect you are, jackass.

But...like...god this sounds so lame but I am LOVING walking or hiking every day! I'm logging more Activity Points in a day now than I was in entire week a year ago! I feel awesome when I'm sweaty and sore and tired but still pushing myself up stairs or over a hill!

In other words, I totally drank the exercise Kool-Aid.

To be clear, I was doing just fine losing weight on Weight Watchers without working out. In fact, I lost pretty much all of the weight I've lost (around 85 of the 95 pounds total) without working out AT ALL...literally barely moving. Go read my old blog posts, I was seriously a sloth. I've only lost around 10 pounds in the past 6 months--the time since my heart surgery, which is consequently the only time I've had the ability to be physically active. But even though I've only lost 10 pounds, I feel completely incredible. I'm walking faster, harder, stronger, longer. I'm dragging my girlfriend on several mile long hikes almost every night. I'm finding new ways to be active. I'm starting to plan our hikes the day in advance so I have something to look forward to.

I mean, instead of ordering pizza and watching a movie on Friday night, we go hiking and then go wander around outdoor art installations. On normally boring weeknights, we decide to meet after work for a long walk through town to go eat, then walk back to burn off our meals. For Mother's Day, we had a super healthy picnic and then took my girlfriend's family on a 3 mile hike around the art center. I NEVER would have agreed to that before, and I certainly wouldn't have suggested it! Yesterday, I joined the Garden Club at work and spent 2 hours literally shoveling shit, and instead of being miserable I just kept thinking about what an awesome workout it was. Today I'm so stiff and sore but instead of being annoyed, I'm proud and happy about it.

Living an active life is still pretty weird. I feel restless when I go a day or two without walking, and I'm even starting to get impatient with how slowly everyone else walks. Every now and then I get a burst of energy and feel like making a mad dash down the trail. Sometimes I actually do it.

I didn't think this would ever happen to me, but the more in shape I get, the more I want to get in shape.

It's honestly pretty awesome. Plus, it's earning me extra Activity Points so I can eat more, which is extra awesome. I hope I can sustain this level of activity...but I don't think that will really be a problem. My biggest real concern right now is whether or not my girlfriend will be able to keep up with me :)

32 Years Old, 215 Pounds

Today is my birthday. So naturally, with my luck, I wrote a whole post and it disappeared. Woohoo, happy birthday to me.

I don't mean to sound bitter. I just really hate birthdays. Turning 32 feels like turning 92...I feel so fucking old.

But I actually feel better than I have since...well, for as long as I can remember. That's pretty awesome.

The thing about turning 32 is that it's supposed to be a woman's sexual peak. This is supposed to be my prime time. I should be raring to go.

But I'm not. I'm terrified that I'll spend 32 like I did 31, and 30, and 29...too self conscious and petrified of having my girlfriend see me naked that I've avoided intimacy like Lindsay Lohan avoids jail time.

I want my 32nd year to be full of great sex, like just awesome sex every night. I have an insanely hot girlfriend, I feel better and look better than I have in my entire life, and I'm evidently in my sexual prime.

Unfortunately, I have a long way to go before I can feel comfortable enough to actually enjoy sex. I mean, I love pleasuring my girlfriend, but I hate her touching me or looking at me. I wasn't always this self conscious, even when I weighed more than I do now, but I was usually wasted and besides, that was before I had a boyfriend stop in the middle of going down on me, saying, "You disgust me," and walking out. That shattered my soul, and it's the reason that my girlfriend doesn't get nearly enough sweet sweet loving. (Yeah, that guy was a total dick. I'll tell you about him sometime...)

From the beginning of Weight Watchers, one of the main reasons I have wanted to lose weight is to feel better naked (which is a pretty universal goal) and I'm hoping that this year I can make some progress. If I can't feel sexy at 32, my scientific sexual peak, I may never feel sexy again...and then, what's the fucking point of anything?

Mirror Mirror

I have a strange relationship with the reflection in the mirror. Sometimes it's full-on loathing, sometimes it's a love/hate type of thing, and sometimes I don't recognize the girl at all. Today I think I recognize her but I'm not sure I like what I see.

Even though I've lost 91 pounds now and at the lightest of my entire adult life, I do NOT feel sexy. I've been chasing that feeling I had in college, even though I don't want that life anymore. I felt awesome about myself. Looking back, it's clear that I was suffering from serious self esteem issues and a gripping alcohol and drug problem...but at least when I looked in the mirror, I felt totally fucking hot. Right now, I do NOT feel hot. It's like even though I'm much smaller than I was a year ago, my body still looks the exact same. Still lumpy and saggy, my stomach still hanging down and my thighs still rippling. Smaller, but the same.

When I was very young, I used to stare at myself in the mirror for hours and hours, in love with my reflection. I had a dainty brass and glass dressing table with a little padded chair, and I'd sit there and stare at myself, admiring my eyelashes and my perfect lips and my icy gray-blue eyes. I would kiss my reflection with my eyes open, leaving Bonnie Bell lipstick prints on the glass.

As I grew older, I started shying away from the mirror. I saw my pudgy stomach, my braces, my glasses, my ill-advised fe-mullet. And I stopped feeling cute and more like a monster. Things only got worse the bigger I got, until in high school I could hardly go clothes shopping because I hated seeing myself in the dressing room mirror.

Then in college, something changed. I gained some confidence, I came out as a lesbian (and then decided I liked guys a little too), I rocked my nose ring and dyed my hair crazy colors. I felt good about myself. I had friends, I had fun, I didn't notice my size so much when I was fall-down drunk. I could go to frat parties charged up with drugs and vodka and not feel like people were judging me by my fat rolls.

But now I'm sober, and I see everything. I see the fat ripples above my knees, and I see the saggy skin around my ass (who knew that could even happen?!). I see my heart surgery scars and my double chin. Nothing about my reflection is pretty.

I can still find some moments of prettiness. If my hair is just right, and my mascara is on perfectly, I can see myself as I did when I was a child. Pretty lips, pretty eyes, smooth skin. But then my vision zooms out and my body comes into focus and I turn away.

I wonder if I'll still feel the same once I've lost all the weight I feel like losing. Somehow I doubt it. Decades of being disgusted by your own body won't be whisked away by losing weight. Like I said, I may be smaller but I'm still me. More's the pity.

The Lovely Bones

Let me tell you, it is SO WEIRD to see my collarbone. I walked past the mirror this morning and stopped in my tracks for a double-take. The rising sun slanting through the blinds in the living room cast shadows in the hollows, and I was stunned to realize they actually were hollows.

I have a real collarbone. One that I can show off. Not just the idea of a clavicle...an actual bone that I can run my fingers along and choose necklaces to lay against.

See, I've been fat forever. My entire life. I remember being chubby in kindergarten and I just kept growing up and out. Then I stopped growing up and kept growing out. Layer after layer of fat softened my body and buried my bones.

When you weigh more than 300 pounds, it's easy to forget you have bones at all. I started to feel like a candle stub that was dipped again and again in melted wax, each dip leaving another layer of soft wax, rounding me out and filling me up. When I was desperate, which was pretty much all of the time before I finally took control and began losing weight, I would imagine myself taking a knife and carving all the fat off my body. In all the times I envisioned this, I never once saw my blade hitting bone. An organ sometimes, yes, but I figured that would be a small price to pay to get rid of the fat. Never bone, though. I felt like my fat was packed into my lumpy suit of skin without bones or anything else besides fat and maybe blood.

I'm fascinated by x-rays of myself--it's so strange to see my skeleton. It seems like a different person almost. It's hard to believe that it's there, packed beneath all of that fat. It feels impossible that I'm made up of such small, fragile things. My bones seemed as mysterious to me as the bottom of the ocean.

But now I can SEE my bones. I can see the bone jutting out at my wrist, and my knuckles moving as I type. I can see the light on my cheekbones and the slight depression beneath them. My jaw is an actual jaw and not just the slope from my face to my chest.

Like I said, it's weird. But good. Definitely good. I'm still 217 pounds so there are still lots of layers to fat to melt away, but I can see that happening. I'm going strong. And this way is definitely preferable to carving my body out of fat--it may take longer, but there will be significantly less blood lost in the process.

Gross Fat Girl Stuff

Time to talk about some gross stuff.

I've still been having serious bathroom issues...like, I haven't had a really good poop for a week. It's awful. I never thought I'd miss pooping so bad. My stomach is all cramped up. I even tried a fucking enema, for god's sake. It was the grossest thing that's ever happened to me. UGH. I'm still all blocked up. Which also means that I haven't lost any weight. I've stayed steady since last week (hovering right around 250-252) but I think if I could just go to the bathroom like a normal fucking person, I'd probably flush away five pounds or so. Yuuuuuuck.

Sadly, that's not the gross stuff I want to talk about.

I want to talk about...yeast. Specifically, yeast infections. More specifically...topical yeast infections.

I thought that losing weight would eliminate all of my infection problems, but obviously I'm still 250 pounds so my stomach fat still hangs down, so I STILL get nasty yeast infections. Not in my lady parts. Under my stomach. Raw, red, painful, burning, STINKING yeast infections.

I know when they're going to start because I can smell that smell. When I was in the hospital before my open heart surgery, I was really sick for a long time and I couldn't drag myself to the shower so I would just kind of wipe myself down (okay, aside from that one against-my-will sponge bath that scarred me for life). After a few weeks of not really bathing, I started smelling it. That gross, sickly sweet smell that's like no other smell on earth. The kind of smell that, once it enters your nose, doesn't leave for hours.

So I'm really self conscious about it. I'm a fanatical baby powder user. I pat every fold and roll with baby powder pretty much every day, and I never go outside and sweat without some baby powder dusted between my legs and under my boobs. But this morning I smelled that smell, and I knew I had an infection. I lifted my stomach and saw that angry red shiny skin. I wiped it with some tissue paper and it was wet with infection seeping out. I wiped again and the pain was so sharp and raw that I had to stop. I just coated myself with baby powder and then, when the powder immediately became wet over the wound, I rubbed triple antibiotic ointment into it and then patted on more baby powder.

While I'm sitting here I can feel it. It's gross and it hurts. It smells. It makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel nasty.

And more than anything, it makes me feel anxious for the day that I've lost enough weight that I don't have to lift my stomach to powder under my rolls.

Speaking of which, weigh-in tomorrow is not going to be fun tomorrow unless I manage to go to the bathroom. Fingers crossed.

So Close

Tomorrow is weigh-in. ::Insert dramatic music here::

I don't want to get my hopes up (too late!) but I think I actually lost a couple of pound this week. And a couple of pounds would put me at a 50 pound weight loss! I don't want to get too excited (again, too freakin late) but I MIGHT get my 50 pound token tomorrow to put on my Weight Watchers keyring!

When I checked my bathroom scale, I was at 252.8 pounds. I started at 304 pounds in August. It's been slow going, but I AM still going, which is better than I've ever done in the past.

I wore an off-the-shoulder top to work today and I couldn't stop staring at my clavicle in the mirror. I love being able to see my clavicle. It was buried under inches of fat for way too long. I have a damn fine clavicle if I do say so myself :)

(Oh yeah, and I love saying clavicle. And patella. And xiphoid process. Best-named bones in the body!)

I went overboard on Jell-o shots this weekend and thought I was going to end up gaining weight. From Sunday through today, though, I've been really good about making smart food choices. I even ditched the 100 Calorie Packs for some fat free pudding--one Point lower, and pudding takes me longer to eat than a couple pre-packaged cookies. I've been eating fruits and veggies, drinking plenty of water, and I even made my mashed potatoes with spray butter. I KNOW! I made my girlfriend's full of delicious fatty stick butter, and just used 1/2 tablespoon of real butter in mine. It was still pretty good. Not AS good, but pretty good.

I just want another loss tomorrow. Even if it's just 1/10 pound. I don't want to go back over 260 pounds. I'm so close to losing 50 pounds! I just want to get there. And then get under 250 pounds. And then...well, I'm focusing on tomorrow.