Whenever I plan to get together with people I haven’t seen in a long time, the first thing I stress out about is my weight. I gained fifty pounds with my first pregnancy. By the time I got pregnant again 17 months after Viva was born, I’d lost forty of it. I gained thirty-five pounds with my second pregnancy and lost nothing. This weekend I got together with people who haven’t seen me since I was wearing a wedding dress I’d spent five months starving my way into .
I worried obsessively that Odie’s friends were going to take one look at me and think, “Whoa, the years have not been kind to her!”
Lately, I am at home in my own skin. Not so much my loose, saggy neck skin that belongs on a 70 year-old version of me, but the rest of it. That is not to say I am happy being 40 pounds overweight. I’m just comfortable. I have things in perspective.
When I was 25, I took a steak knife to my right thigh and sliced seven parallel gashes into it because I hated my thighs. I still don’t like the way they look, but I dislike pain even more. And Gwyneth Paltrow even more than THAT. If she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, then I’m doing okay.
Every vacation I have ever taken was preceded by weeks of me planning to lose “x” number of pounds by “y” date. Unlike most people, I love algebra, but these equations never worked out. I was going to be a size 4 on my 1997 trip to Paris. Mais, non! I could barely snap my pants when I got on l’avion. In 2002, I accompanied a boyfriend to a wedding in Hawaii. Good thing I purchased a back-up dress, because my slimming plans went down in Flaming Hot Cheetos.
There are so many more trips, each one a collage of memories of self-denial, self-rebellion, and self-loathing. The only reason I actually got into my wedding dress is because when I brought it home from David’s Bridal (well aren’t I fancy?), I put it on and the zipper went up about 3/4 of the way. With one month remaining before my wedding, I had no choice. Unlike the Hawaii wedding, I couldn’t dash into a store at the last minute and buy a different dress.
We planned the camping trip six months ago, so I figured I could easily take off sixty pounds in that time. At the end of each month, when I saw how ineffective my Ben and Jerry’s Red Velvet Cake ice cream diet was, I shrugged and decided “next month.¨ You don’t need much algebra savvy to recognize that come March, a 60 pound weight loss by April 5 is incongruent with reality.
I only had one choice: Show up fat.
It turns out, no one was there to see me looking fantastic by the campfire. We shared meals, drank beers, chased kids, pretended we gave a shit about every single lady bug the girls caught, and had a fantastic time!
We’re going to do it again next year.
I have about 10 months to lose 50 pounds. Wish me luck.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
I started low-carbing in January to rectify a year or so of stress eating. I’ve lost about 10 pounds. It should be more, but I find I don’t have the willpower I did pre-child. And maybe I need to shrug & move on.
Wishing you luck. 10 months seems reasonable to lose a significant amount of weight!
I’ve lost 20 pounds since March 10th. Hurray for ME. I didn’t give up carbs, but I did cut out sugar and flour. Those are my Kryptonite. I can’t eat them in moderation and they keep weight on me. C’est la vie. I feel much better, and now I only have 40-50 to go, depending on whether I want to be “red carpet” ready or “red carpet adjacent.”
I hear you, and cheer you, and also say this: fuck this. Why not be excited now to do what you want to do now, and be excited about the trip, and have the fun then that you’ll have whether or not you lose the weight?
I mean to say… No one gives a shit but you. But no one else is living your today life, but you, either. So… why change the today life for anything or anyone but you?
I mean, I show up fat every day, right now. No one cares if I freak out and lose weight for some event. The people who care about me would definitely rather I be exactly two things: Happy, and healthy.
Good luck. Losing weight is the pits – I hate hate hate depriving myself! The only diet that has been successful for me has been the “Templeton” diet.
Right there with you. Kid number two really did a number on me, and I have neither the time nor the will power now to do anything about it. Those extra forty-ahem-fifty pounds may be here to stay for a while, just a shame I can’t bag the new wardrobe to go with it!
I wish you good luck! And lots of it.
I think everyone has to find their “happy” weight and live with it. There is too much unnecessary pressure and judgmental people. People obsesses very much with weight lose. Instead, let’s enjoy life.
Heya stranger. 😀 As I gaze at my prominent FUPA and well-nourished colony of cellulite, I must say I am proud of you for going for it. I gained a metric fuck ton (yes that’s an actual unit of measurement…I swear) when I got married, because my enginerd husband swears that ketchup is a vegetable and that nothing is worth eating if it’s not fried and/or breaded. Awesome.
I have tried over the years, and have found that weight seems to fall off of me when I’m NOT trying. When I actually try to lose, I just stay the same fatty fat fat ass weight I’ve always been, and end up screaming at the scale. When I say, “fuck it, I’m eating pop tarts for lunch, fat grams be damned,” my pants suddenly start falling off. What the hell, man? As always, God is not without a sense of irony.
Anyway, I’m about to fly off to Europe in the morning (pardon me while I heave and vomit with anxiety), and yes, I totally wanted to lose weight for the trip, for nothing else than to not be the stereotypical obese American when I went over there. My ass is still just as wide as it has always been, alas, so I’m just going to have to suck it up and deal when people give me the hairy eyeball for being “that fat American.” Fortunately I’m traveling with my senile, crazy parents, so hopefully their Grizwald-esque antics will distract people enough so that instead of me being the fat American, I’ll be “that poor nurse with those loud old people over there who are reading the map upside down.”
You’re still awesome. I’ll get back to blogging some day. I’m just being a lazy turd for right now. 😉
wonderful to hear your voice again. It is everything I remembered. Thank you for stopping by. Bon voyage!
Thank you for the Matrix paraphrase and the Griswald reference. You complete me.
Just found you when feeling bad about not being able to afford BlogHer. Read this post and have to comment. I had four kids. With each one I gained at least 50 pounds. It took at least three years to take it off each time. It’s fine, it happens. There is nothing wrong with being healthy. Do what you can to stay healthy and happy and forget the rest of the bullshit. –Lea