A Glorious 2nd

Last night was Rockville's fireworks. Rockville is the next town, and towns, here in New England, are the basic unit of --well, anything. The county, for instance, is subsidiary to the town, even though Rockville is the county seat. There are no such things as townships. So the next town probably doesn't even have a clear border.

Rockville, however, is considered "the ghetto". It's a fading mill town, one working mill left, out of at last a half a dozen. (They sometimes burn down rather spectacularly. The states all have programs in place to use the existing buildings for something useful. They are, after all, a part of the history and the landscape of New England). However, for a fading mill town, they have a fairly wonderful fireworks display. They fundraise for it all year long. Not only do they have fireworks, they have live music, and not any old live music, either, they have our little corner of the world's answer to the Boston Pops. The Rockville Community Orchestra, and the Windham Concert Band joined forces last night for a free concert. I was extremely hormonal in any case, plus the good kind of patriotism makes me cry, so I spent a large part of last night sort of dripping. (Kind of like when the boxers cry when they play the National Anthem at the Olympics. Big tough guys, sobbing away to "...and the rockets' red glare....").

The first thing that struck me was that here were all these people, giving their time and their talent, all for a love of music. They weren't good enough to make a living at it, they probably didn't major in it, but somewhere along the line, someone instilled a love of music in them that took root enough that here, years, later, they were sitting on folding chairs, on a blocked-off Main Street, playing Sousa marches. For the love of music, for the sheer love of music.

And they are talented musicians! They play a wide range of music, from patriotic standards, to just plain standards, to Motown (!) to classical. The patriotic medley was stirring and touching. The Motown medley was not only not embarrassing, it was downright good. And their performance of the "1812 Overture" was as stirring as any I have ever heard.

While the music was playing, I watched people. (When I wasn't enjoying the sheer novelty of sitting in my folding chair where I had been jockeying for a lane position not five hours ago). To make this fit in this blog at least a little bit, I will say that I looked particularly at the women.

The women of Rockville are, to be honest, a not an especially edifying sight. They have the body type of the lower middle class, for want of a better term. I saw an awful lot of them go by. I'm not sure what conspires to get them that way--but their posture is poor, they are mostly overweight, and their entire presence more or less telegraphs a lacking sense of self-esteem. My daughters commented on the depressing number of young girls with babies. My guess is that were looking at different parts of the same cycle. Lacking self-esteem, coupled with America's curious attitudes toward birth control, got them pregnant at an early age. Lower socio-economic status didn't entitle them to the niceties an older, better-educated mother might have had. You can be sure these girls are not going to Mommy and Me exercise classes. Low-paying jobs, all they can get, with little education and saddled with one or more children, are not conducive to stellar nutrition; see also the lacking education on that point. So there they are: bodies sprung by having too many children too young, unable, really to improve on the situation, whether because of lack of money, lack of time, or lack of inclination. (Fried dough tastes good. Dunkin Donuts donuts are relatively inexpensive, as is McDonalds).

However, having said that, other parts of my people-watching made me happy. I think it's partly because people like to hear things go bang, but I love the number of people who turn out for fireworks displays, and the variety. You get a real cross-section. Old people, young people, every shade of skin that exists on the earth, and just about every ethnicity and national origin. I got a particular bang out of the lady in a sari, nose ring and nine pounds of high-karat gold jewelry, happily tapping her foot to the Marine Hymn. Or, the tall young man (a father far too soon, too, but one who was involved and participating) carrying the little girl, who could only have been his--just as tall and lanky as Daddy, fitting together like a hand in a glove. The young Sikh boy, about 14, wearing a full turban, ushering along his two little brothers, little round pre-turban knots on their heads, with his clearly Hispanic friend for company.

It was one of those nights where I love America. I love the national holidays the best, really, because as nice as Christmas and Easter are, they leave someone out. Fourth of July? Watch fireworks. Eat the summer food of your choice. Include everyone. Thank the people who fight for freedom, even if they are fighting a misguided war--they didn't start it. Think about freedom. Think about the idealists who went to Philadelphia in July to write a document about freedom and the rights of mankind. Be glad that even if things aren't perfect, we're allowed (in spite of the Patriot Act--it profanes the name of patriot, and those men who were in Philly all those years ago are whirling in their graves) to talk about it. Eat ice cream!

I thought about all the places I've watched fireworks. My first ones were in the Washington DC area, and I'm willing to bet we saw the ones from the National Mall, from some other vantage point. Fireworks in north Germany, on an Army base. Fireworks at a golf course. Fireworks seen against the backdrop of the World Trade Center (you could see the Twin Towers from the front windows of my apartment in Brooklyn). Fireworks in Hartford, in Springfield, Mass (viewed from a bridge over the Connecticut River). Fireworks in Charleston, WV. On a flatbed truck, watching them being set off over a Louisiana bayou. The 4th of July in Munich, at a friends' apartment--four sparklers, and three of us sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and were happy to do it. In Vermont, in the field behind my husband's aunt's house, against the Green Mountains. I've also been to a Guy Fawke's celebration, stood in a damp English field on November 5, and thought how the Americans definitely chose the right time of the year for standing around at night shooting off fireworks!

Well, anyway, that's my take on the Fourth. Not a lot to do with losing weight, or body image, or anything like that, but really, the biggest thing on my mind at the moment.

Finally Down

I got on the scale this morning, and I have finally dropped two pounds. I now have lost 35 pounds since January 15. I weigh 215 pounds, and I have 70 more to go. That sounds daunting, until I remember that I once had 105 pounds to lose.

I have dropped three dress sizes. Bones are appearing where no bones have been seen for years. As I keep saying, I am far from thin, but I am thinner than I was. I'm calmer about it than I was in the beginning, but at the same time, I'm wondering what life will be like further on the weight loss path.

I was convinced that I was overweight because I like food, I like the taste, the texture, all of it, of food. And I do, but is that all there is? I know that I eat emotionally to some degree. I know that I like the mindlessness of stuffing food into my mouth, I like that feeling. I like sitting down with a bag of chips, I like eating a large quantity of something. I like the repetitive nature of it, to be honest. I like that you can experience that taste over and over and over again. Go back for more and have it reliably be there...unlike people, for instance, who so often have their own things going on.

Last night as I lay in bed, I could feel, for the first time, my ribs against the mattress. It was a very unaccustomed feeling. I still have quite a lot of padding, but I'm starting to feel a little unprotected. I found myself wondering how women who are much smaller and thinner than I am can stand it. How can you face the world with so little between you and it? So maybe, to a certain degree, I was eating, or I became overweight, because I felt I needed a buffer. A little something to provide me with privacy...because, to a certain point, being overweight does provide you with privacy. You are left alone, by men, by salespeople, by lots and lots of the world. You become the invisible woman, part of the backdrop for the birds of paradise of this world. There have to be dowdy, middle-aged, overweight women around, so that the slender young ones can be noticed, right?

Well, that's exaggerating, of course, but it is sort of the truth. But then there's another reason, more deep-seated, I think, that I may have been hiding behind my weight because of.

Let me see how I can put this, without sounding like the part of my anatomy that most needs to shrink is my head, or my ego. I have a big personality. I like to flirt. I like to make men notice me. When I have it going on, I have it going on, even if I'm not Kate Moss, Gwyneth, or the bean-pole of your choice. Even at 250 pounds, I could get it going on, at least to some extent. I concentrated on boobs and legs and figured everything in between could just, literally, fade to black. Well, as I get smaller, or more closely fit society's stereotype, I can have it more and more going on. (No, I'm not Stacy's mom, either). I have a particular style, so I don't really attract every single guy out there, and I'm 51, let's face facts, so my days of being a bombshell are probably long behind me, if they ever were--but I can still rock a pair of high heels, and I still have some pretty impressive cleavage, and for the first time in ages, I'm approaching the ratio. So what does that mean? Who does that make me? Will I go out of control? And was I afraid of that all these years? I had my wild days, do I think that I'll go back to them in a size 8? Maybe, maybe. I'm not sure.

I just know that it's a little alarming to be out there in the world without my personal wall. Maybe that's why I'm growing my hair...I still need something to hide behind.

Real Live Woman

REAL LIVE WOMAN (Trisha Yearwood)

I don't buy the lines in magazines
That tell me what I've gotta be
I don't base my life on a movie screen
I don't fit the mold society has planned

I don't need to be nineteen years old
Or starve myself for some weight I'm told
Will turn men's heads--been down that road
And I thank God I finally know just who I am

I ain't a movie star
May never see the view from where they are
And this old town might be as far as I'm goin'
But what he'll hold tonight in his hands
He swears is so much better than
Anything that this ol' world can show him

(Chorus:)
I'm a real live woman
In love with this man I see lying here next to me
Lost in the way that he's holdin'
This real live woman
In the arms of a man where I'll fall asleep knowing
There's nothing on Earth he loves more than
This real live woman

I work nine to five, and I can't relate
To millionaires who, somehow, fate
Has smiled upon and fortune made
Their common lives a better place to be

And I no longer justify
Reasons for the way that I behave
I offer no apologies
For the things that I believe and say
And I like it that way

Time passes

It's been a while since I last wrote here. That's probably for the best, since I might have spent all my time beating dead horses. As it is, I might beat a few anyway, but at least time will have passed since the last flogging.

When last seen, I was wearing a size 18 skirt from Talbots. Well, I can still wear that skirt, but I have since bought three size 16 skirts. They fit. I got a size 14 that I ordered today, which doesn't fit, quite, but which I now believe will. That makes two that I have in advance. Gives me a goal.

Most of the people I know are afraid to open their mouths about my weight loss, for whatever reasons, and I suspect those reasons are as various as the people themselves. But two weeks ago I went to a graduation party for my nephew and was nearly overwhelmed with compliments. A number of the people there hadn't seen me out of a coat since December, and in December I was not the woman I am now.

I have now lost 33 pounds. Yes, I slowed down substantially, but that's fine with me, really. I have time to get used to myself. Time to adjust. Time to shop!

Tonight after work, I decided to go to Starbucks for a treat. I had 12 points left for the day, and I've been wanting the orange mocha frappucino. So I got that, also the orange coffee cake that goes with it, and I'm figuring that was my 12 points. Good enough. So I went through the parking lots, up the hill to Main Street. There was a time when that walk nearly demolished me. When I was panting at the top of the (not very steep) hill. When my feet were aching, and I was limping because of my hip. Well, I might have been a tad bit winded tonight, but by the time I hit the counter, it was over. After I got my stuff and sat down and ate and drank, I headed back to my car. I worked all day in high heels, and I still had them on, and I noticed, as I clicked down the sidewalk, that I was going much faster than I normally would have. I worked on my feet, partly, all day, then taught a lesson, which was sitting, then closed the store, and I was still able to do that. It wasn't a hike up Mount Tom, but it was more than I could have comfortably done this time last year. So I feel good.

However--I know of someone who is NOT feeling so good about herself and her weight, and who is engaging in that most fruitless of activities, comparing herself to someone else.

Long ago, again, back in the Stone Age, when Seventeen had actual articles and not sound bites, someone wrote about breasts. Specifically, how everyone's were different, and how they all had their good points. I wish I had a copy of that essay, it was pure genius. I remember something about low-slung breasts, ideal for displaying a string of pearls...small ones, that fit nicely into bikini tops, lush ones that did something I forget. ( I can't think of anything that lush breasts do that was suitable for a body acceptance pep talk in Seventeen in 1973, but there must have been something). The point was, of course, that they're all good, every last set of breasts. That goes for body types, too. There are the women who are meant to be lush, cushiony, curvy. They will always have hips, they will always have breasts, they may not always have washboard abs (but then, your grandmother was damned happy to graduate from a washboard to a wringer washer) but they will be GORGEOUS. Just as they are. A few pounds one way or the other can of course make a difference in well-being, but not necessarily attractiveness. Then, there are women who are naturally rangy. They are certainly more streamlined, like greyhounds, maybe, and they may fit fashion's dictates of the moment, and they have their own sets of virtues, but there is no point in comparison. I often looked at my elongated, attentuated (toned!) trainer at the gym and thought how we could easily be from different species--but Kris was Kris, and I was myself. With great calves, and nice muscle control. You are who you are. You can't make yourself inot someone else.

Now for my addition to my collection of enchanting plus-sized women.

Her name is Wendy, and that's as much as I know of her personal business, other than the fact that she's divorced. I have seen her twice at the garage I use. I noticed her the first time, on a summer afternoon. She was wearing a raw silk (or at least it looked like raw silk) capri pant and sleeveless top set. She had her shoes kicked off and one foot tucked up underneath herself. By no standard can this woman be called slender; in no way does she fit society's standard. But I sat and looked at her and wondered how any man with a pulse could look at her and not want to pull her off into the nearest dark corner. Or, even better, the nearest pile of harem-style cushions, there to spend an afternoon enjoying the delights of the flesh, literally and figuratively. She was not conventionally pretty, Wendy wasn't, but she had the kind of face you want to keep looking at. Alive, perceptive, interested eyes. A strong nose, a mouth that, while not exactly lush, tempted. All this without any design--she exuded confidence as natural to her as her breath. I thought I had made her up, until I saw her again a few weeks ago. T-shirt and capris this time, and sneakers, I think. No less tempting. Just as unconciously emanating sex appeal, and something even more primal than sex appeal. Sensuality, that was it. Say it slow, savor the syllables. And all unknowingly. As we sat there, two not-small women, I was happy she was there. I thought I might get grandfathered in under her aura, and some of her natural glamour would rub off on me.

Untitled

Or untilted, which is what I almost wrote.

Today I decided to wear the size 18 black skirt from Talbots that I bought two weeks ago. It's a little big. I'm not sure why, but I thought it was going to take me through the summer. Hmm. Last night I tried on a black dress I've had for a long time, but only worn a few times. It's sleeveless (a touchy issue for me) and very plain, just buttons straight down the front. It falls into the Sicilian Widow category (I have lots of those; I like the Sicilian Widow look) and I was hoping to get some use out of it this summer. It's too big. It looks like a tent. It makes me, in turn, look like a house, or an installation by Christo, which is not really the look I'm going for.

Which brings me to my real point, I think. Wear clothes that fit. I remember reading Scruples for the first time (a great book, that hinges on weight loss and a woman's perception of herself) and the lines "She became one of the few women who really understood fit" lodged in my head. I probably don't understand fit on a profound level, but sewing helps. Having a critical eye helps. Wearing clothes that are the right size are always going to make you look better. I could wear that dress, indeed I could. It's not indecent, or gapping at the buttons, or anything else, but it's not flattering. My skirts that hang off me are not flattering. My really cool leather jacket, that I got so many compliments on, is no longer flattering, being at least two, possibly three, sizes too big.

It is still very strange, losing weight, even though I've slowed down somewhat. I'm not quite as dislocated as I was, not quite as thrown for a loop, but still, things like trying on that dress, are odd. I can honestly say, at this moment in time, I feel thin. I know that I am not by any estimation, thin, but I FEEL thin. The peculiar things are these, though: I will soon be thinner. So, if I'm thin now, what will I be then? Also, I've been thinner than this. I've been thinner than this and felt fat, in fact, as I was passing through this weight, this stage, on the way up. And what happens when I am truly thin? Or at least slender? Or some word that I will find at that point that will adequately describe how I feel? I assume, actually, that the same thing that happens now will happen then. I will have some clothes that make me look amazing. I will have some clothes that will not actively make people want to throw rocks at me. I will have some "what was I thinking?" clothes--though hopefully fewer, since I hope that I'm getting smarter. I will have fat days and thin days, hungry days and days where I don't care as much. I will be me, in other words, just on a smaller scale? Yes? Can I hope for that?

You know, I'm not looking for a miracle cure here, or a miracle of any kind. I'm not even really looking for a lot of compliments (though I wouldn't mind a few, here and there). I suppose it will be nicer to fit better in an airline seat. The seat in the car is not exactly problematic, but sometimes I feel as though I don't quite fit in it right--not that I don't fit, just that I can't find the right spot. Smaller clothes...I will like having more choice, that much is true.

I like that I can walk longer. I like that I can walk from the basement to the upstairs and not want to die. I like that I fit through smaller spaces. I like all of those things. So I guess those are good things to like, because those are the things that really endure.

Elle magazine this month has a lot of stuff about body image. Two articles resonated with me. One was by a young woman who lost 80 pounds, and got gorgeous, but had surgery for breast implants (to fill what was left after the weight left) and to remove loose skin. I am thinking, already, about the loose skin issue. Not too sure it's going to be an utterly enormous problem--I seem to be shrinking okay, or as well as can be expected at 51. I wouldn't mind a tummy tuck when I'm done, and Al seems to think it's in the realm of reason, so that's okay. But the article, written by the young woman herself, raised a lot of questions about what is the body, how do we feel, what does it feel like to lose weight, etc, etc, etc, all things I'm writing about here--but seemingly less cogently and trenchantly. Oh well. The other article was by a man, and it dealt with how mercilessly women despise their own bodies, and how they drag men into it with them. This is the thing that I have tried studiously to avoid. I will never ask a man if something makes me look fat. Ever. If I have to ask, it probably does, and, further, don't I own a mirror? I don't indulge in beating myself up. The furthest I will go is to say that I have no waist, or maybe no hips, depending on your point of view, that I have a flat ass, when I'm thinner, and that I wish my stomach were flatter. Does this put a blight on my life? No. I will also cheerfully tell you that i think I have very pretty eyes, pretty great hair, good skin (because I had the sense to stay out of the sun) and dynamite legs, hence all the high heels. I will also tell you that although I get my share of men who talk to my chest, I feel I have quantity, not quality. These are all statements of fact. I don't think that any of those things make me less worthy as a person, I think that they influence my choices of clothing and shoes. Period. And, besides, to quote Scarlet Johansson (as I think I already have), some fellows like me.

Reading that article makes me understand, though, why, despite the fact that I am essentially melting before his eyes, M has made next to no comment on this fact. I think the poor man is afraid of his life if he opens his mouth. I thought that before, to be honest, but I really think it now. I think that he has no experience at all with a woman who genuinely likes herself, at whatever weight, or is at least trying to like herself at whatever weight.

It's my little contribution, liking myself. Someone has to lead the way, and I'm only half tongue-in-cheek about that. I don't let my daughters beat up on themselves, at least not in my hearing. They may do that on their own time, but I don't think so, really.

So. Let's see. I don't think I came up with any really new themes here, just rehashes of old ones, but they bear repeating: wear clothes that fit. Love your body, because you reside in it; without your body, there is no you. And love YOURSELF, because you are you.

I remember reading once (and this was roughly 9,000 years ago, in Seventeen, back when it had actual articles, not just sound bites) that if you wished for something that some other girl had, you had to take her whole life with it. So, if you wanted long blonde hair, like Allison Barnett (who is showing up here with some regularity, I might have to deal with what she meant to me) you had to have everything else. Except Allison had one of those charmed lives, so she might not be a very good example. But you understand what I mean. So, if you want to be that woman next to you at whatever function you're at, if you want her perfect size 6 body, or her toned legs, or whatever thing it is that you're coveting at the moment, you have to take it all. You have to take her mother that wasn't/isn't very nice to her, you have to take the fact that she has no imagination or can't sing, you have to take her massive credit card debt and the fact that her husband tells all and sundry that he hates her. Suddenly that makes you, whoever you are, with all your lumps, bumps and sterling qualities, look like someone worth being.

And while you're at it

Check out this blog. Very, very interesting viewpoint.

http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/truefa.html

And follow the Hot Chicks link.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

I've noticed myself, as I've been losing weight, being more judgemental about the overweight. That's very not nice of me, and unfortunately, very true. I suppose that you can't devote four months (so far) of your life to something and expect to stay exactly the same in your viewpoints, but still, I try not to be judgemental.

So anyway, I have a lot of chances to look at overweight women in the bead store. Beading attracts middle-aged women, who are often overweight anyway, and, beading being a fairly sedentary hobby or activity, may even foster being overweight all by itself.

Our shop is in a basement, so you have to go down steps to get into it. The way the place is set up, as I sit at the counter, often the very first thing I see coming down the stairs is a belly, or at the very least, a spare tire. Not attractive. It was, in fact, one of the things that inspired me to do this--I didn't want to be one of the women coming down the stairs belly first.

I still believe, for the record, that you don't have to be a string bean, or a pin, or even the bean pole itself, to look good. You have to have a sense of style, a knowledge of what looks good on you, and a lot of chutzpah, but you don't have to be skinny! Having said that, you also don't automatically have to become a slob when you gain weight, which is what so many women seem to do. Sigh.

I was starting to think that I was in the process of turning into the weight Nazi, anyway, when a woman came in yesterday. She was emphatically not small, but she was emphatically not a fat blob, or slob, either. She probably took a 2x. She had a shape, she was not extravagently dressed, in fact she was wearing a sleeveless, low-cut top--but it FIT HER, so she didn't look skanky, either. She had a tattoo on her chest, about where the pendant of a necklace would hit, and that drew the eye. She was cheerful, outgoing, self-possessed, and very attractive. She gave me hope about myself. I could embrace her being able to embrace herself. So I was relieved. I'm not a bad person, or at the very least a crank, after all.

I spend a lot of time looking at women in Northampton. It's known for women, after all, since it's the home of Smith College, which, in turn, is sometimes known as the home of the Four Year Queer--women who try other women for their time there, then go back to the regularly scheduled program. You see an awful lot of women with different takes on femininity, sexuality, body shapes, body pride, and style. There are the lesbians who have decided to be ersatz, or not so ersatz men--they have men's haircuts, carry their wallets in their back pockets, and bind their breasts. (There are also women who are transgendered--on both sides--in general, the male to females are enjoying being girls, the female to male have receded into a work-clothes garbed sameness). There are lesbians who are clearly happy to be women, but have their own take on it--a woman yesterday with what was, by any standard, a crewcut, shopping for pearls to make herself a choker. She was far from thin, but she was composed, self-possessed, and even in her t-shirt and shorts, carried herself well...as I say over and over and over--attitude is all. Anyway, there are women who have decided to embrace their inner Venus of Willendorf. I find Venus of Willendorf just a tad off-putting, to be honest. She reminds me of my downstairs neighbor, after my daughter was born, who looked at me and said, "A motherly body...that's nice...." I thought, yeah, well, if you think it's so nice, you have one, but I kept my mouth shut.

Women, to go on, who've had mastectomies and decided not to wear prostheses. (This bothers me because I'm a Libra--the imbalance distresses me on a basic level). Women who remain chic into their 70's. Women who are crunchy-granola, with long frizzy gray hair.

Oh, and while I'm on this rant that only peripherally has to do with weight and weight loss--my message to every single woman in America--

GET A GOOD BRA!!!! And if you can't get out to get a good one right away, pull up the straps on the one you've got!

Anyway. The young girls. Some are anorexic, painfully thin, waxen. I look at them and wonder how they can think long enough to choose beads. And then the young girl today, quite obese, panting with the effort of having walked down our stairs. She made me as sad as the anorexics. And the little Japanese and Chinese girls, tiny and exquisite. And the African and African-American girls, often a bit fuller-bodied than the others, in a way that makes you know they're supposed to be that way, not just that they fell into a bag of Doritos and never came out.

You can tell who's at ease and who's not. Who likes her body for what it can do, and who despises it. Sometimes I can tell so clearly, I just want to say, you know, you're fine the way you are, just let up on yourself a little.

Women and their bodies...we all need to make peace with ourselves, every morning when we get up, with the women that we are that particular day.

End of rant.

Today's a biggie

Or a smallie, depending on your outlook. I have, as of today, lost 30 pounds. It was a long stretch there where not much was going on, but I seem to have gone through that. Now that I've seen some progress again, I'm motivated to go on.

I cleaned my closet on Monday. To say that it was a mess insults messes. I threw out unbelievable amounts of stuff. I managed to part with clothes that I bought in 1992. I must have thrown out 10 black t-shirts, and I still have 11. (I like black t-shirts, what can I say? My daughter was going to wear a black t-shirt and a denim skirt and go as me on Halloween last year). I now have my clothes organized. This is aided by the fact that there's no point in storing sweaters, since they're not going to fit. I am living entirely in the present moment.

I have a wardrobe again, too. It's a size 18 now, not a size 20, and I like it. But, as I go down, and clothes start to not fit, I can start to cycle them out, because as I've already said, all size whatevers are not created equal. I will probably institute the one in, one out rule. I never thought I'd be in a situation to do that, I'm far too untidy, but I think this time I could.

It's quite a novel feeling to go stand in my closet and figure out what I want to wear, rather than going through all the clothes that were piled around. I have skirts hung, shirts, I have t-shirts folded. I know how many pairs of shoes--well, sort of--I have. (I lost track at 40....that's where the, oh, yeah, and those, set in). I still have a lot of work to do in my room, but I've made a start.

I read somewhere that when you start taking better care of yourself you're less tolerant of mess in other parts of your life. That may very well be true. I can feel it beginning already.

So...I've reached a milestone. I still have 75 pounds to lose, but that's not the 105 I started with. I can look back and see how far I've come.

I'm inspired to go on.

This just in!

For everyone who wants a little bit of tasteful sleaze in her life...I found this site while googling polka dots for the last post. Well, this site goes to polka dots and beyond, and in quite large sizes, as well. I seriously crave either the dagger or panther skirt! Go look for yourselves!

http://www.modemerr.com/index.html

Breakthrough

A very small one, indeed, but a breakthrough. I've been stuck at 222 for a while now....I've finally lost a pound, down to 221, making it 29 pounds lost. Just one more till 30. I'd like to lose 35 by May 19, a date with personal significance, and I might. And if I don't, that will be fine, too. As long as I keep going down.

Even while I was stubbornly not losing weight, however, things were happening. The size 20's (with the exception of a maroon pinstripe skirt that was hiding in my closet, and which was very clearly cut small) I'm out of size 20. I did another shopping trip on Tuesday, and while most of what I bought was 18, there was one 16 that snuck in. (Women's sizes, still, of course. But still smaller than I was taking).

That trip was remarkable for a few reasons. For one thing, it was the first time in recent memory that I shopped for a few hours straight, in high-heeled sandals, and didn't need to sit down for a rest because of my aching back. My back doesn't ache now. I have other aches, but I'm also 51. The excruciating lower back pain is gone, gone, gone, though. Thank God. (I can also stand longer to cook, which is a good thing, because WW foods take an awful lot of chopping and slicing). I also tried clothes on. I was still not in a hurry to look at myself in the merciless lights of a dressing room (and I always remember my friend Judy saying that you wouldn't buy the clothes you walked in wearing, if you looked at them under those lights...which of course begged the fact that, well, you did actually try those clothes on, too, at one point, but I do know what she means) but I was in there trying the clothes on. When something didn't fit, or wasn't flattering, I didn't take it so personally this time, either. It's the way it is. I'm a work in progress right now, that's all. Truthfully, one of my main problems was that everything is polka dots right now, and I LOVE polka dots. If I fully indulged my love for polka dots, though, I'd look like a Dalmatian.

So I was happy. I shopped the bargain racks, because there's no point in buying clothes that aren't going to fit soon anyway. I had a real get thee behind me, Satan, moment at the Ralph Lauren sale rack. A white linen skirt with ribbon trim--adorable--and a silk tweed jacket, that fit in 18!--also adorable. Together, however, about $300. I have no real place to wear them, no ritzy weddings or graduations to attend, and they're not going to fit in 6 weeks to 2 months, and that's just not something I can do. I contented myself with a skirt that is a tiny bit on the snug side, but with elastic inserts, so that it will fit for a while, that was $38 down from $109. (I love the racks that say, take 50% off lowest ticketed price. Yes! I have some amazing bargains from those racks). Then I betook myself to Talbots and made my very first Talbots purchase, a skirt for $30 from $98. Not very interesting, only a straight black skirt, saved from utter tedium only by the matte bronze sequins on the bottom, but it fits, flatters, and will last me for a while. I need a workhorse black skirt.

I was talking to my cousin yesterday, who has weight issues of her own, which, because she reads here, I will not address. They are hers, and not mine to spread to the world. Suffice it to say that she's thrilled for me that I'm losing weight, and when I somewhat self-depracatingly said that I bought a smaller size, but that the smaller size was an 18, she said, "Any number that has a 'teen' after it is good!" I hadn't looked at it that way, so that was illuminating. She's right. The next thrill will be going from women's to misses, and after that, hopefully, I'll be able to buy something, once in a while, that's a single digit. I don't think I've ever been in the single digits in my entire life.

Phat Girlz

I watched that movie last night, or a good part of it. It was sort of formulaic, and sort of creaked, but sort of not.

The plot, for those who don't know, is that Mo'nique plays a, well, fat girl. She is not happy about being fat, she has a skinny cousin and a medium-sized friend, she works in a department store and is an aspiring fashion designer. For larger women, needless to say.

Through a plot machination that I was out of the room for, she and her friends end up at a resort, where the two larger girls meet and entice visiting Nigerians. Being Nigerians, they are enchanted by the larger women. The friend, whose name escapes me, has a lot of sex with her Nigerian, and loses her librarian look. Mo'nique's Nigerian is a more fleshed-out character, and he falls hard for her, but she is unable to accept the fact that he can possibly love her just as she is. Gee, that sounds almost exactly like someone I know.

She manages to drive him off. She has a crise de avoirdupois, but decides to accept herself as she is. (They start forthwith to dress her more flatteringly after that point, interestingly). A very large Deus ex Machina gets her designs seen by someone who can help her, and she founds her clothing line, called "Thick Madame". There is a truly amazing scene of her mythical fashion show, with exclusively plus-sized models and attended almost exclusively by plus-sized women, of every hue. It ends with her going to Nigeria--well, she's got all that money now--with her friends, and looking up the impossibly good-looking Nigerian, who has been waiting for her all this time. The final scene is everyone sitting down for a meal, with the blessing including thanking God for the return of the American children, and the skinny cousin eating everything she can get her hands on so she can have a rich Nigerian, too.

Okay. This is a movie that was released and fell into obscurity, probably for two reasons. For one thing, it falls squarely into the category of a black movie, with most of the characters being black. I find it interesting in and of itself that very few white people will watch a black movie, one in their own language and set, at least mostly, in their own country, even though they'll go in droves to watch a movie in Chinese, say, with subtitles. For another thing, it deals with another marginalized segment of society, fat women.

It made a lot of interesting points. It commented on the penchant of successful young black men for skinny white blondes. It hinged a lot on the dearth of fashionable clothes for plus-sized women. It addressed American ideals of beauty, vs the ideals of beauty elsewhere in the world. And it dealt with the self-image problems that face larger women, including an inability to accept love, because they've persistantly been told that they're not deserving of it.

This movie isn't going to make me go off Weight Watchers. And I looked at Monique and I kept thinking, you'd be so much more comfortable, if you just lost a little weight--not a whole lot, just some. Just a little. You'd be able to move better. You'd be able to breathe better. On your long walk with your gorgeous Nigerian, you wouldn't be as out of breath. (These are all things I know from experience). But it is a point of view that needs to be addressed. And I admired Mo'nique for being willing to play scenes where she splayed her hands on her hips and belly and said, "This is not going away! Neither is this! I'm not going to change, so you should leave now, and stop playing me!" I also admired her for being willing to play the scene with her total breakdown about herself. She wasn't playing pretty, and I can promise you that a lot of that emotion was absolutely real.

No real conclusions from all of this, just that the movie was certainly, well, food for thought.

And here is an article I found about the movie, which I am copying since I can't figure out how to get the link in here....

With Mo'Nique as her muse, 'Phat Girlz' writer hits it big

John McMurtrie, Chronicle Staff Writer

Nnegest Likké was in the shower, rushing to get ready for a meeting, when the phone rang.

"Monique's on the line," her roommate called out.

"Monique? I don't know a Monique."

Likké got out of the shower and took the call: "Hey, sis, this is Mo!" said the voice on the other end.

Likké was still at a loss: "Mo who?"

Likké may have written a screenplay with Mo'Nique, the stand-up comic and actress, in mind, but she had no idea that her muse -- whom she had never met -- had somehow gotten a hold of her script.

Her identity finally established, Mo'Nique let Likké know why she was calling: "Girl, I got the script, and I got in the bathtub with it. I said, 'Oh, I'll read a few pages, then get out of the tub.' My bathwater went cold reading it -- I read it from beginning to end."

Then Mo'Nique spoke the words Likké had been dying to hear: "I'm down. Let's do it."

What had been a dream project of Likké's thus became reality. Not only did the Bay Area native sell her script for "Phat Girlz," but she also got to direct the movie -- something she had never done before.

"It's unbelievable, I'm overwhelmed," Likké, on the phone from Los Angeles, said about seeing her movie open in theaters nationwide last week. Made for only $2.5 million, "Phat Girlz" reached the coveted top 10 list at the box office, taking in $3.1 million over the weekend.

A bawdy comedy with melodramatic moments, "Phat Girlz" is a movie with a big heart and an unmistakable message: Jazmin (played by Mo'Nique) is a combative (though often funny) plus-size woman who comes into her own -- and finds love -- when she begins to take pride in who she is. A T-shirt she wears sums up her attitude: "Aint fat I'm sexy succulent."

Jazmin's emotional journey has similarities to the one Likké experienced.

"I always kind of felt like an underdog growing up," said Likké, who describes herself as being in her mid-30s. "One, for being kind of plus size, but also because I'm half Ethiopian. And growing up half African -- now it's a little better, but then it was tough. I got teased.

"From sixth grade to 11th grade," Likké added, "I went by the name of Kelly because I hated my name. I was trying to fit in."

Likké's parents met at UC Berkeley in the 1960s through their involvement in the civil rights movement. Her father, Senay Likké, who earned a doctorate at Cal in math and chemical engineering, became a revolutionary in his native Ethiopia; he was killed in the revolution in 1977.

Likké was raised in San Francisco until she was about 9 -- part of that time in a housing project -- then moved to East Oakland with her mother, Rosalind.

"People react differently to having self-esteem issues," Likké said, discussing her youth. "Mine was, 'I'm tough.' I thought it was cool to be tough and rebellious. And thank God I had my mom. ... My strong family support is what saved me."

After graduating from Oakland's Skyline High School and Georgia's historically black college Clark Atlanta University, Likké moved to Los Angeles in 1993 to pursue her love of screenwriting. To make money, she taught English and drama to high school students for a few years. Then she and a friend began a dating-advice show on public-access TV, which led to a job as a writer and producer for the reality TV show "Blind Date."

Likké has her mother to thank for suggesting Mo'Nique as her movie's lead. It was on one of her frequent visits to see her mother -- "definitely Oakland's my home still," Likké said -- that her mother sat her down to watch "The Queens of Comedy," a stand-up show featuring Mo'Nique.

" 'Oh, you have to watch this,' " Likké laughingly recalled her mother saying. "My mom, who's really prudish -- I was shocked because 'Queens of Comedy' is not for the faint of heart."

"Phat Girlz" centers on Mo'Nique, as Jazmin, meeting a man who loves her without reservation. That man, Tunde, is from Nigeria. (He's played by the devastatingly handsome and charming Jimmy Jean-Louis, a native of Haiti who has worked as a model.) Likké wanted this character to come from Africa because as a kid, she traveled to Ethiopia and Nigeria several times to see relatives, and "over there," she recalls, "they were always like, 'Oh, look at your body, you're so strong, you're so beautiful,' because I was bigger.

"It's not just a fantasy, it's a reality," Likké said. "They even have fattening rooms over in Nigeria where people are trying to get fat. And we're over here putting our fingers down our throats to throw up!"

Likké quickly added that she doesn't mean to promote being obese: "Fattening rooms are insane, but I think they're as insane as trying to be a size 5 when your natural size is a size 14. I think they're equally extreme.

"So what does it all mean?" she asked of these differences. "The bottom line is, love yourself -- fat, skinny, short, tall, whatever. Love yourself."

E-mail John McMurtrie at jmcmurtrie@sfchronicle.com.

You are Maryiln Monroe

A classic tortured beauty You're the dream girl of many men Yet they never seem to treat you right

What Famous Pinup Are You?

It's just a number

Women, me among them, spend an uncommon amount of time torturing themselves over numbers. Not the ones in their bank accounts or their checkbooks, either. They torture themselves over two particular numbers: dress size, and weight.

Let's address dress size first. It is a designation that enables you to pick out a piece of mass-produced clothing that will more or less fit you, on the first try. Note the more or less part. Dress sizes are not absolutes. They vary from maker to maker, from store to store, from design to design. We have to have sizes because not every one of us has her own personal dressmaker, who has a set of slopers made just for us, as well as a little notebook, where she notes our changing measurements, as well as any little physical abnormalities that affect fit, like maybe one hip is a little higher than the other, or you have a truly magnificent ass, but it lifts the hems of your skirts in the back. We have to be able to make a rough guess, so as not to try on every item in the store. Note the rough guess part.

Women put such importance on these numbers. They either bandy them about with pride ("I'm a 6, not an 8. No matter what, I'm just not an 8") or hide them guiltily, like scarlet letters. (Men don't get branded as a 42 long, by the way, their clothing has no size designations that are visible every time they take off their jackets).

But they're just numbers. A more expensive piece of clothing will allow you to take a smaller size, for two reasons. One is something called vanity sizing, which means that Ralph Lauren twigged on to the fact that more ladies will buy his somehwhat overpriced clothing if they can take a smaller number. So, he cuts them bigger, a woman says, oh, I'm a 2 in Lauren, I'm buying that, and presto, he's sold another piece of clothes. Also, a manufacturer whose name is still Lipschitz (the name Mr. Lauren was born with) might be wanting to get a few more pieces out of his bolt of fabric, so he'll instruct his cutters to crumple up the pattern pieces before they cut. They take up less room, he can get more garments out of a bolt, and you take an 8 instead of a 6. (Oh, I forgot, you're just not an 8. I'll try to keep that in mind).

Then there's whatever the hell manufacturers did to sizes over the course of my lifetime. Back somewhere in this blog, I said that I weighed 135 pounds when I graduated from high school. I was pretty cute, if I say so myself. I had this pair of jeans that I embroidered all over, as was the fashion of the day. (Class of '73, what can I say?) I saved them, probably because of all the embroidery, which was pretty hard work. I pulled them out a couple of months ago, to show my daughters. They looked tiny. I was dying to know what size I had taken, back then, at 135 pounds. They are size 11. They aren't even in the single digits. My daughters have taken every size jeans from 14 to 2, so I've seen all the sizes, and these didn't look like anything I recognized as an 11, not now. I held them up. "What size do you think these would be now?" I asked. The consensus was a 7, maybe a 5. So...three full sizes (possibly) smaller than the tag inside of them. How can we know what size we really are, when they keep changing them on us? Back when those jeans were made, there WAS no size 0. Allison Barnett, the skinniest, cheerleaderiest girl I knew, probably only took a 5 in those days. Or a 7, more likely. So size means nothing. NOTHING. It just aims you in the right direction.

Now, on to weight. Weight, although it can be high, or low, is also relative. I weigh a lot. I don't just weigh a lot right now, I always weigh a lot for how I look. Remember the doctor, who couldn't believe what the scale was telling him? It's always been that way. I have a sister-in-law who is, frankly, a mess. (Those who know me know I so seldom say that, but she is, truly). She's at a point where she claims she can't find a bra to fit her, and I would be willing to bet that she weighs less than I do right now. For me, it's that I'm a good solid peasant girl--like a Mullingar heifer, beef to the heels, to quote "Circle of Friends". So I weigh a lot. It's humbling; it teaches you not to get hung up on the number on the scale. It's all relative, as I said above. There is no point in beating ourselves up for who we are, what we weigh, saying we should weigh this, we should weigh that. The only should I seriously believe in is that we should embrace ourselves as we are. That's the only way we can get through our days, first of all, loving ourselves now, today, not next week, or in ten pounds or three sizes.

Look. In January I weighed 250 pounds and if I had been honest, I would have been taking a size 22. BUT: I got my hair done. I wore clothes that showed the good stuff off. I didn't really try to hide the not-so-good stuff, I just tried to distract from it. Self-assuredness is the best possible accessory. Today I weigh 222 pounds and take a size 18. Honestly, I'm pretty happy right now. I look good, and I'm getting compliments. I know that this is not where I should be stopping and I have no intention of doing that--but I'm embracing myself now. I'm trying to be the best 222 and size 18 Silke that there can be. That's all.

If all else fails, there are the old saws to fall back on. Look at what the body that you so malign can do, or has done. I've produced two daughters. I hiked in the New Mexico desert in what my friend refers to as high heels. (Not quite, but I was wearing stockings and a skirt, lol!) I can carry wood and shovel the driveway. I once dragged the better part of a tree that was blocking the road out of the way. I can carry my husband's tool box, which may not sound like much, but you've never lifted it. I may not be a waif or a willow, but I'm pretty good as I am. I might get better, you never know. But if I died tonight (God forbid) I would go out being fairly pleased with who I am.

And there would be good-looking clothes that fit to bury me in!

Weigh in day

That would be Mondays. It follows the weekend, you know, when one traditionally cuts loose.

Well, today I didn't lose any weight. I didn't gain any either, which was a miracle, considering that I spent the last week, on reflection, eating like a stevedore. A Weight Watchers stevedore, but a stevedore nonetheless.

So today I'm back on the wagon. Today I counted points punctiliously, and made the 0 point soup. (It's full of cabbage. We're all full of something else tonight...me more than most, since I was ravenous in the afternoon and had two cups of it). I made a cobbled-together faux crabmeat pizza for dinner, inspired by the shrimp and garlic pizza that was once ordered for me in the Canary Islands. It was pretty good--I mean the one tonight. The one in the Canary Islands was obviously pretty good, if I'm trying to duplicate it 15 years later. I managed to end with enough points to have a Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream cone, which I ate without a trace of guilt, since I had more than my 8 servings of vegetables, and even drank all my water today. It probably helped me get in my milk, in fact. So that was good.

This will sound like a rationalization, and may be, in part, but a week without a weight loss, when you have as much to lose as I have, isn't all that bad, or, put another way, isn't that much of a bad thing. It gives you a chance to catch up with yourself. It makes it possible to say, okay, this is who I am right now, this is where I'm at, instead of feeling like Alice, running as fast as you can, just to stay in the same place. I don't know, but it might be relaxing for those around me, having a chance to adjust to me this way, before I start on the next leg of the journey.

I talked to someone about my weight loss, who pointed out that I'm a quarter of the way there. I hadn't looked at it that way before, and that made me feel pretty good.

I'm feeling pretty good about myself today, to be absolutely revolting. I have clothes that fit me again, my hair looked pretty good, and the temperature went through the roof, and from last week's nor'easter, we almost got to 90 today, and it was bare legs weather. So that was fun. I pulled out sandals to wear, ones with crystal decorations, and I enjoyed being a girl.

Furthermore, I'm ready to be good again, ready to lose weight again, ready to go on again.

Kohl's

Strange to say, I think it just became my new favorite store. I went there yesterday hoping for not much (and actually, looking for a half-slip, which is a whole other story) and found that was where all the affordably priced clothes had gone.

Around here, Filene's turned into Macy's. Actually, G. Fox turned into Filene's, turned into Macy's. The switch from G. Fox (an old Hartford tradition) was not much; the switch from Filene's to Macy's was more. They changed all the brands. They decimated the women's department. They have more upscale stuff in Misses, I'll give you that, but unfortunately, I'm not in Misses, yet, and I liked having a choice in women's. Also, I liked having a choice of price points. And womens' sizes are tricky things. All brands are not created equal. You can get clothes that are really cute, and there are lines (Bandolino being one of them, and Bandolino being one of the brands that vanished) that carry the same items from petites to womens, but there are womens sizes that just look awful. So anyway, I went to Kohl's, poked around in the womens department and came home with two skirts. (This is another issue for me. I wear skirts. I look better in skirts, I feel better in skirts, my legs are definitely one of my strong points, and my stomach and butt are not--so remind me again, why would I be wearing something that accentuates my "problem areas" and covers up my strong points?) I actually came home with two skirts and two half-slips for less then $75, which also made me very happy. The skirts will do me nicely for the next six weeks or so, and I feel confident that I will be able to find more clothes that won't break the bank, if I just want something new once in a while.

Today is sort of a nothing day as far as weight loss goes--no spectacular successes, no spectacular failures. Though, on reflection, I may be selling myself short, because for one thing, I went to a funeral today, and managed to hold back at the buffet afterwards. Not that it was much of a buffet (I'm not being mean, but it wasn't) but when did that ever stop me before? I managed to eat a little, have a small dessert, and be done. Also, I learned a lesson I really didn't need about clothes, which is, if they fit, they're better. My black skirt may have had its last outing, and I was going to wear a black top with a square neck that was quite flattering, but a little on the va-va-voom side, so I decided against the Sicilian hootchie mama look and went for the black top that fits like a sack. Bad idea. Really bad idea. However, no one was looking at me, I was not even a sidelight at this funeral, so it really didn't matter.

It finally got to be spring here, so in the afternoon, I went shopping for ingredients for one of our favorite pasta meal salads. I like to eat normal stuff whenever I can, just tweaked a little bit, and this was a spectacular tweaking. This recipe originally came from "In Style" magazine, and it was served as a side at some chi-chi Los Angeles thing, but I've fiddled with it, and over time, it has become a household favorite. Here goes:

Orzo Salad
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 (give or take) balsamic vinegar
chopped fresh tarragon to taste
salt and pepper to taste
2 oz. pine nuts (also known as pignoli, or, just to show off, snoba, in Arabic)
3 or 4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 lb tri-color orzo, or plain if you can't find tri-color
8 oz. chicken breast
6 oz. non-fat feta
1 package each frozen peas and frozen snow peas
1 large-ish cucumber
1 yellow or red pepper
3 or 4 scallions

Mix the oil, vinegar, tarragon, salt and pepper and set aside. If you're feeling particularly ambitious and are able to plan ahead (I'm not) you can mix this the night before and add two or three crushed garlic cloves, which you can discard later
Boil the orzo
Cook the chicken however you want--like the chicken salad recipe, all that counts is that it's not raw
brown the pine nuts and minced garlic in a dry, non-stick pan, stirring frequently
Mix the pine nuts, garlic, veggies, feta, and chicken, then add the oil and vinegar mixture
Add the orzo

This comes out to three points per cup, which is a LOT of orzo salad. Two cups makes a perfectly fine dinner. I sometimes add shrimp, which I won't tonight, because my father is still allergic, as he has been for the last 45 years or so. I don't think the shrimp would change the point value much, really...volume would offset added calories, if you get what I mean.

I told my daughter we were having this--it's one of her huge favorites--and she said, loudly, "Are you serious!!!!!" She was very happy.

Problem?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe. Mostly it's that I'm not being as rigid with myself as I have been, though this program doesn't require great rigidity. Last night was nibble, nibble, nibble, and tonight wasn't far off. Dipped into my flex points both days. Not far in, but far-ish. Not sure how I feel, other than full.

However, I had my ever-popular trigger around, my old friend meat. I remember now, this was an issue the last time I went to Weight Watchers. I am an unabashed carnivore. I love meat. This is very unfashionable to admit, and very nearly politically incorrect, but I do. I can have a house full of chocolate, and I have a piece or two. I can have a freezer full of ice cream, and I have no problem staying within my limits. Meat, though...I could crank through a pound of deli ham in no time, just me, the deli ham and a jar of mustard. I made a chicken curry salad last night (recipe to follow) because I wanted to have shrimp with the vodka sauce, my father can't eat shrimp, if I'm cooking a chicken breast, I might as well do a package, and so I had the chicken. I couldn't keep my fingers out of the salad. I made spaghetti with meat sauce for tonight (93% lean beef is like chicken, pointswise) and that was awfully good, too. I remember sitting at meetings, wanting to bring up my issue and feeling too ashamed to do it. Wanting to eat chocolate is cute, girly; wondering how you can manage to fit a 12 0z. sirloin makes you feel like you should be punching a time clock at the docks.

I am usually a good girl. I've made friends (well, nodding acquaintanceship) with soy. I can manage to not eat meat on Fridays in Lent, and this year I got through with only one lapse to macaroni and cheese. This week, though, is a killer. And I can't even blame it on my period, since that's getting more and more sporadic.

I just like meat. Beef best of all, chicken, pork not so much, and I love venison when I can get it, probably because I was more or less raised on it. Rare roast beef....yum.

So that seems to be this week's theme. I might make the famous 0-point soup again, though it looks as though we're finally getting out of soup weather.

Well, maybe this will be a week when I just spread the flex points out. I try to let each week on this program have its own character. Some weeks I stick very close to the program, and have a splurge at the end. Easter weekend I just tried to be careful, but more or less cut loose, though cutting loose looks a lot different these days, too. So this week will have its own character, and that will be all right, too.

Oh, and the chicken salad!

8 oz cooked chicken ( for this I just microwaved a couple of halved breasts, no need to brown them or anything fancy at all. Not raw is the main thing)
1/4 shredded coconut
1 oz. cashew pieces
1/4 cup raisins
capers to taste
2 Tbsp. light mayonaise
1/2 cup no-fat yogurt
scallions to taste, or onion, finely chopped

Shred or chop the chicken. Mix with the other ingredients, then add salt, coarse-ground pepper and curry powder to taste. The whole bowl, with those ingredients, is 16 points, so you can figure from there how much your serving is.

May I say: YUM

Up Until Now

Really, for about the last five years, I tried an experiment. I guess you could dignify it with the term of experiment. I decided to stop obsessing about my weight. I just decided to do it. I decided to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, and not when I didn't, and see what happened. I honestly believed that I would infinitely expand, like the blueberry girl in Willy Wonka. (I'm not trying to be mean here, but some people must infinitely expand, how would we get the really, really fat people otherwise? All I'm trying to say is that infinite expansion must be possible. Sort of.....)

What happened was that I topped out. I probably topped out at about 245, again, a guess, hampered by not weighing myself. I took a 20. (That woman up there, though is what I got when I googled "size 20" and she was in a Gaultier runway show). Those are really, really high numbers, but they at least stopped. I didn't go on to weigh even more, or take even bigger sizes. Once I topped out, I set to work at accepting myself. I bought nice clothes. I got my hair done. I wore high heels and sheer stockings, and even got a tattoo on my ankle. I was okay with myself. I realized (and realize even more now) that being out of breath climbing the stairs or walking around the town I work in was not a good thing, but it didn't bother me enough to do anything about it.

Topping out was a good thing, it really was. It made me accept myself, my weight, what I am and how I look. I truly think it was good for me. I had fat days and thin days, just like everyone else. I didn't wear certain things because they didn't flatter me, but I also didn't wear muumuus. In all honesty, I'm aided in that by the fact that I have a shape, even if it happens to be a big one. I'm a solid girl, not amorphous. (Though I had moments of that, notably during PMS. I was at a mall once with my younger daughter, and we were about to go to the women's department. "I feel perfectly amorphous," I complained. "What does that mean?" she asked. "Shapeless," I answered. She immediately looked very worried. "Do you think this is really the best time to be trying on clothes?") So I was okay with it.

And then, I guess, I got not okay with it. To be honest, I was creeping up. A loose-ish 20 looks okay on me, well, okay by certain standards. A tight 22, not so much. All the solidity, which I depend on a lot, in the world can't bail you out of size 22.

However, I joined Weight Watchers this time more to keep my older daughter company than anything else. She wanted to do it, and didn't think she could afford it, so I thought we could do a fiddle and do two for the price of one. We couldn't, so I joined too. For the first few weeks, my attitude was mostly, oh, well, we'll see what happens here. As the weight came off, I got more into it. So did she. We have Sunday afternoon grocery shopping trips, where we hit the supermarket with our points calculator, and search for low-point food. We have fun. We're bonding. She's lost 21 pounds, I think, of the 30 she wanted to lose (she's built a lot like me, but shorter, and so she certainly didn't look obese, but she looks amazing now. Delectable in fact. She's 22. Of course she looks delectable!) and wants to submit her story as a success story to Weight Watchers and get a makeover. I think she has a shot at it. I also said that her number 1 tip would be to have your mother do all your cooking for you!

I like the online version of this for a couple of reasons. I hated hauling myself off to a meeting. After a while I had internalized everything they had to say, and honestly, unless you've got a special group for people losing 100+, when someone stands up and says, I went from 145 to 130 and everyone applauds, you just want to throw up in the corner. Truthfully. The other thing I like is that I'm not tied to the tyranny of the scale on weigh-in day. I can have a salt-shakers worth of sodium the night before and know that I didn't really gain (or not lose) three pounds in a day. I weigh myself every day now, which, far from making me crazy, gives me the long view. My weigh-in day is Monday, but I lose my weight in the middle of the week. So, if I've been consistent about following the program (which I have so far), I can cut myself some slack and enter the weight from the day before, if I know that it was honestly that far down.

Well, I got off the topic of controlled vs. uncontrolled eating, which was what this was supposed to be about, and I need to go make my dinner (whole wheat penne with vodka sauce and shrimp, undressed asparagus on the side) but I would like to say this: I think that controlled eating makes us crazy. We give away our power as women. We devote far too much time to worrying about what we're putting in our mouths, and not enough time to whatever else is going on--the things that give us joy. I have always (even when I was actively doing it) found diets to be acts of negation, not suffiiciently proactive for me.

More later....but for now: go eat something that makes you happy. Just don't eat all of it.

Great Diets I Have Known

Strangely enough, for someone who's been occupied with her weight (I'm not going to say struggled, because I don't always struggle with it) almost all of her life, I haven't been on that many diets. I think that may be because for the most part, I think they're nonsense.

I started gaining weight, or not looking like society's norm, in about 2nd grade. Not a clue why, really, I was as active as the other kids, rode my bike, lived with my skate key around my neck, all of it. My daughter began to gain at about the same time, so I'm going with genetic predisposition. Whatever, that's when it started.

My mother was slender. Not skinny, but slender. I don't look like her, not one little bit. I'm my father all over. This drove her crazy, and either because of her own inner demons, or society's pressures or something I don't know about, she equated slenderness of body with purity of character. This isn't true, of course, but she thought so, and so that made it so. So I heard quite a bit about it over the years. Some nice, some not so...let's just say that a lot of the time my self-esteem took a beating, but I didn't lose any weight because of it.

I began to lose weight the last two marking periods of my senior year. I think the gym teacher was getting bored with us--she had been our gym teacher since we were in 7th grade, and we had done just about everything possible to do in a gym. (This was in the days when you had gym--I want to say every single day, unfailingly). So, for the last part of our senior year, she let us do gym projects. They could be nearly anything, as I recall, and losing weight was one of them. For whatever reason, I chose that one. I weighted 150 pounds, and I lost 15 pounds, to weigh 135. I looked good. My classmates said things like "No one could call you chubby any more." I didn't lose it very healthily--I skipped lunch, and other things teenage girls do. I didn't go to the prom, in spite of it, but I enjoyed short skirts and platform shoes, and all that stuff. It was good. I kept the weight off through the summer, too, but fall arrived and with it college, and maybe the freshman 15, maybe more--I have never been very big on weighing myself, so I didn't.

The next time I lost weight was in the spring of my junior year, as I was in the second semester of my junior year abroad. I had a schedule of classes that dragged me all over the city I studied in. The layout of the town made bus service nearly impossible, so I walked. I figured out at one point, that I was walking nearly 5 miles a day, what with one thing and another, and this is a town with big steep hills (imagine a steep hill. Now imagine one twice as steep as that, and you've probably got it. I lived at the top of one, so every trip out ended with a trudge up the hill. I do know how to conserve my energy when climbing steep hills, though--!) so the workouts were twice what they would have been. I didn't have a scale there, but I dropped about a clothing size. I bought a white denim skirt in size 42, (German) which is about a 12. Not bad for me. Various things happened to me when I came home, including a pregnancy....I gained weight. The pregnancy never came to fruition, but the weight stayed.

The next time was when I moved to New York. This was absolutely not a diet, but I think New York is the world's greatest free gym. I walked everywhere in Manhattan, being way too cheap to pay $0.50 to go 10 blocks, and then the subways themselves...no elevators, no escalators, long, long platforms--I lost weight. I don't know how much. I had a bunch of size 13 skirts, I remember, and I looked pretty delectable. I was 22. Of course I looked delectable. My weight bounced around during my time in New York, but another great diet arrived in the spring (do we sense a trend here?) of 1980.

I decided to lose weight. I didn't own a scale, and didn't buy one. I went exclusively on how my clothes fit me. I probably dropped twenty pounds, at a guess, because I went down two sizes. It helped that the New York City Transit Authority went on strike, and I began walking to and from work--two hours each way. It was quite nice, actually; my route took me over the Brooklyn Bridge. That ended when I got a separated tendon in my foot from all that walking, but the strike ended not long after that. I know what I weighed at the end, though, because I went to the doctor for my foot. He weighed me and the result was 165. He couldn't believe it--I didn't look like whatever his conception of 165 was. He told me I needed to lose 30 pounds. I shrugged. I was pretty damned happy with my home-made diet and my undefined weight loss.

Two more things came out of that diet. I saw my friend Susan, after a long absence, and she looked at me and said, "You're so thin!" (Susan has struggled herself, over the years). And, a while after the diet ended, and I was settling in to being the weight I was, I was out with a girlfriend one night, drinking. We were in Maxwell's Plum, which, for those who don't know, was a pick-up joint extraordinaire. The decor was hyper-Victorian, and the clientele was on the prowl. Not much was going on for us that night, but it was crowded, and so we were sharing a barstool. The guy next to me got up and left, and since at that place there was no way of knowing who was with whom, I looked at the woman who had been next to him, mentally shrugged and sat down. She never opened her mouth. He came back, then, having apparently only been to the men's room. He looked at me, and said to her, "I guess you have to be fast around here." Pause. "It's okay, though, she has enough to put on the seat." Oh, I thought, not with me you don't. I probably wouldn't have been so pissed if I hadn't just lost a bunch of weight, but really, this was for nothing, it was to make himself look good in front of her. So....I thought that anything I said would just sound stupid and defensive, so I looked around for something else. Well, this guy had a fresh, unopened pack of cigarettes on the bar, and a fresh mug of beer. So...I picked up the pack of cigarettes, opened them, shook out half of them, and stuffed them in his beer. Then I shook out the other half and stuffed them in his beer, too. No one said a word. The bartender just got him a fresh beer. I told my girlfriend we should go and we left. I'm willing to bet he at least thought twice before he put down another woman.

I lost weight after my first daughter was born. I was nursing; it was fairly easy. Also, I walked every night. Huh, funny how that works.

I gained and lost, gained and lost, but not a lot. Then we moved to Germany, where the tyranny of thinness is truly alarming. It's different than here. Men openly say that they won't date a woman who weighs more than 50 kilos. (110 pounds). Men follow their women into dressing rooms and tell them what to buy. Fat people are sometimes openly mocked on the street. One of the biggest women's magazines has a diet that they run every January--they give you a total of four weeks of menus, shopping lists, before and after stories, the whole nine yards. I did the Brigitte Diet one year. I lost weight, quite a bit of it--I want to say about 16 kilos--better than 35 pounds. It was a restrictive diet, though, and very much, "If this is a chicory salad, it must be Tuesday." To this day, there are some vegetables I only know the names of in German, because I only bought them for the diet. The best thing was that someone else had made up the menus, so there were no leftovers. The worst things were the boredom, the brownness of the food (LOTS of whole grains) and the gas. The diet ended one Saturday morning, in town, when I ate an apricot Danish. I had followed it to the letter for more than two months, but there was no margin for error--and with the Danish, it was done. I held on to that weight loss for a while, I forget how long.

Then, nearly 10 years ago, I guess, I went to Weight Watchers. It was pretty good. I lost a bunch of weight, but due to the fact that, honest, I don't obsess over my weight, I don't remember where I started, where I ended, or how much I lost. I think just shy of 40 pounds, though, because I remember buying a 40 pound bag of grass seed and thinking I used to weigh that much more. I'm not sure why I stopped, other than that I hit a plateau, got bored and very tired of counting points.

That more or less brings us up the present. After 3o pounds is sort of unknown territory. I'm a different woman, though, this time, and my life is different. Also, I'm writing this blog, so I'm dealing with issues, and not just blindly losing weight. So, it may work better. Also, the Weight Watchers program is very good, and better than it was ten years ago. There's a lot of room for indulgence in this plan, which is good. I will not stick to a plan that makes me give up Quarterpounders and chocolate cake, and this one doesn't.

So, we'll see.

Clothes

Or, clothe, as Dr. Koppel used to call them. But I digress.

This is not about what size I take, or will take, or want to take. This is also not about complaining about the lack of nice clothes for women of size, which is what one of the threads on the WW board was about. I don't know where those women live, where they shop, or what their budgets are, but I never owned a flowered muumuu in my life and have no intention of starting. The closest I ever came to that was a black flowered dress, and that came from April Cornell, was not by any stretch of the imagination a muumuu, and I might even wear it again, you can never tell.

No, this is about the fact that while I'm losing weight, I have no clothes, or more or less none, and no hope of building a wardrobe until I'm done.

One of the great pleasures of my life is dressing up. I love making up outfits. I love looking nice. I love finding bargains--my Jones New York polka dot skirt, for example, that should have cost more than $100 that I got for $20 at the end of the season and that I've probably worn nearly once a week since then. My tuxedo coat...that I tracked and tracked, as it got cheaper and cheaper, and that makes M's eyes light up when I wear it. Other things. I never, or almost never buy anything full price. I save things forever. I have no problem wearing something from five years ago with something new. I had a wardrobe. It looked good on me. I got compliments. I have good taste, I dress well, and I never kow-towed to being a plus size. My sense of style never changed, and frankly, while we don't have as much choice as our smaller sisters, plus-size women have never had it so good.

So now...my clothes don't fit. My tuxedo jacket has had its last outing. It's sliding off me. (So is my nightgown, but that's in bed, and a little bit of bare shoulder there isn't necessarily the worst thing, even if the nightgown has Scotty dogs on it). My skirts are all falling off. The only thing that keeps half of them up is my Caesarean pooch. They make me look fatter than I am, though, by being too big and sort of amorphous. Since this is an on-going process, there's no point in buying a lot of new clothes. (And I'd like to meet these women who lose weight and say that they loved buying a new wardrobe once a month).

I've decided I'm going to try to do this: buy a black skirt, a denim skirt and a pair of jeans for each size. Tops, especially knit ones, can go longer. (I am damned if I'm taking the WW website's advice and buying cargo pants, tight, and wearing them till they're loose. Not me. Someone else might want to do that, but not me). This makes for an exceedingly boring wardrobe, but one that will keep me covered, literally and figuratively, and not cost too much money.

My bedroom is a sea of clothes, but they're gradually migrating from the active piles to the give-away piles. My sister-in-law can go through the give-away piles--she's engaged in losing weight, too--and the rest can go to the Salvation army.

I have some things that I put away, that I couldn't bear to part with. So, my yellow double-breasted jacket with the shawl collar will get quite a bit of action, if it ever decides to be spring. My olive and red blouse, again with a shawl collar (do I sense a trend?) is waiting for me and will fit me before too much longer. However, by then the red skirt won't fit, but the skirt I made to wear with it might. This is so confusing. Everything made of cloth is in a state of perpetual flux for me.

I have one favorite that I actually bought in two sizes. I can get into the smaller one now, so that's fun, and gives me an option. I ordered a skirt that will hopefully go for a couple of months. My jeans jackets (I have three, one red, one white, one denim) will fit for quite a while, and if I get desperate, there are always outlets.

But I hate this. I hate not knowning what to wear when I get up in the morning. It's complicated by not remembering where I was when I left off losing weight the last time, so I can't predict when this or that will fit.

Also what I have ahead of me, though I have no idea when, is the great womens/misses issue. There is a point where you make the transition from womens sizes to misses, which is lovely, but it involves a period of time where absolutely nothing fits. The smallest womens, usually 14, is too big, or looks funny. The largest misses, usually 16, is too small, or looks funny. It has to do with distribution, of course. And while you're losing, you're not redistributing. There will be a period of time where I will be able to have no new clothes.

I'm not interested in size as a value judgement. All I want is to have clothes that make me happy and flatter me. I had them, probably after I lost 10 pounds. I don't really have them any more. And, it could be as long as a year till I can work on building a new wardrobe. Of coures, the consolation prize will be that I will be able to choose from a much larger selection. For some reason, I'm really, really looking forward to shopping at Anthropoligie, even though I think it's insanely overpriced and pretentious. That's a goal, at the moment. I want to hit the sales racks. And... I have to be honest...Adrienne Vitadinni, but that's for an entirely different reason, and one that can be dealt with in another blog. The reason is not all that good, and to indulge it might be a little crazy, but I've long since given up pretending to be governed solely by logic.

Shoes, usually my refuge, are not, at least not right now. Your feet change size, too. I seem to be between an 8 and an 8 1/2, with, you guessed it, nothing fitting. I'm sliding out of some shoes, don't fit in others.

Pantyhose is more or less the only good thing, really! I can take unalloyed pleasure in being able to pull them right the way up, and having them not slide down. Somehow, that seems like something very unimportant to be taking pleasure in.

Today Katharine saw me and told me how much thinner I look. She's the first one. It took 27 pounds, lol.

I don't know. Today I'm ending up with points left, I had trouble consuming them all, though I'm sure a little ice cream will do the trick. Also on Monday I'm going to lose a point, which, honestly, isn't going to bother me at all.

I had a discussion about how profoundly odd I feel with Katharine, who could relate from her other side of the story place, being a former anorexic. It is VERY odd, indeed, and even though I enjoy the feeling of being thinner, it's still weird. So maybe I really am wrapping myself in fat to keep myself safe. Maybe I am buffering myself from the world. Or maybe I just really like Quarterpounders with cheese, or maybe a little bit of both. But as I said today, "Come on! I'm SHRINKING!! Tell me that's not strange." It creeps me out, and always has, that extreme thinness is rewarded in our society. So did I gain weight out of contrariness?

Although, to be honest, food is a drug, but the weight gain is a side effect of the drug, not the goal. And my treat last night was to eat the rest of my enchilada while standing over the sink reading...one of my favorites. It felt good to be "out of control" again, even if it was a controlled out of control.

So here I am. I've lost 27 pounds, putting me at 223. I've started to tell my weight, at least a little. It's not thin by anyone's standards, except maybe a Samoan's, but it's less then it was. I've lost 10% of my body weight. My goal at the moment is 145, but I'm sort of thinking it might be nice to go to 125, which has always been my ideal weight...and is 10 pounds less than I've ever weighed as anything even approaching an adult.

I bought size 18 jeans yesterday. Okay, it was a women's 18, and they were stretch, but they were Levis for the first time ever, and that made me feel sort of good. I tried on a size 18 skirt and it fit, and the Liz Claiborne size 18 "tablecloth" skirt that I've had stashed forever, fits, too. I don't mind those things, and I was pissed when the 18's at Lane Bryant still wouldn't fit, but it's still strange.

Who does this make me? Who am I while I do this? I made my weight part of my identity, because if you don't do that, you're sunk, but now that I'm changing my weight, what does that do to my identity? Who am I? I've been that particular person for so very long that I can't imagine being someone else. It's like when I think about losing M--I've been connected to him for so long now, who would I be without him? And who am I without the weight? And if I'm me, now, 27 pounds later, who was I before? If this is good, was that bad? And if less than this is going to be better, is this bad, too? Not good? Good for now, but not for ever?

And then there's the getting pissed part. It's going to come soon, about when I hit a size 16 (even women's). Men are going to start noticing me again (at least I hope so, at least I sort of hope so, if that makes any sense--because even though it pisses me off, I still like it) and then I'm going to get pissed, because I'm still the same person I was before. Maybe. Maybe not. I am a person now who is able to deny herself immediate gratification for a later good, which is certainly a good thing, but I'm not always sure that self-denial is the absolute best thing, either. When it becomes self-denial for self-denial's sake, then that's not good. But so far I seem to be able to stay away from that. But in any case, I'll get pissed. I'm the same girl I always was, but now I'm worth looking twice at? HUH. Maybe you're not looking twice at. Maybe I'll show you. Maybe I'll just gain some weight and we can see what you're made of. Love me, love my fat. Something like that.


A couple of days ago, maybe a week ago, I was able to bend down in the shower and grab my ankles. I know I couldn't have done that before. Buckling shoes with ankle straps is much easier. My necklace is hanging lower on my neck. (Maybe it will eventually dangle in my cleavage, much to M's delight, I imagine). MY SHOES ARE GETTING TOO BIG. Tell me that's not odd! My proportion in relation to the world is changing. I feel like Alice through the looking glass.

When I weighed myself on Friday morning and found that I had lost 2 more pounds, I had nothing more intelligent to say than "Holy shit." I think I think that each increment of weight loss is the end, I'm going to stop there, be that person, and it will be the end. That doesn't happen. I keep losing, and I will for a while, hopefully, probably, and will until I reach my goal.

If I stop at 145, I'll probably be an 8. That's so scary. I've never been an 8, not even as a teenager (because they've revised the sizes in the time since then). My size 20 skirt will swim on me.