Monday, April 7, 2014

Personal Week: Okay, So I'm Fat

Yep, I said it, the F word. No, not that one. Hell, that one is so over used, it’s hardly bad anymore! (But it is though.) The other F word. The one nobody wants to be called, let alone actually be.
Fat.
There. It’s not such a bad word. Three simple little letters put together to describe something the opposite of thin.
It used to be a good thing to be fat. Desired even. (Way, way back, but just sayin.) It meant that you were wealthy. Wealthy enough to have food every day. So much so that your body showed it. The wealthy and powerful were fat. It was cool. They were the “in” crowd.

(Tangent Time!)
I considered blogging about how I got this way. How somewhere around when I was little I became very self conscious about how fat I was, even though I wasn't fat at all. I was an active kid., when I got hungry, I ate. Somewhere along the line that changed. Then lots of other stuff, people I could blame (and did for a while) and circumstances happened.
Life happened.
Today I am fat.
I’m okay with that. It doesn't bother me. I can look at myself naked in the mirror and see my flaws, but fat never seems to be one of them. Gravity. Now that is a whole other story.
(End of tangent.)

Turn to present day in our society and fat is a four letter word. It’s about the worst thing you can say about someone. In fact, it’s hardly used to describe someone at all. Heavy, big boned, curvy, large, XL and more are used instead to try to soften the description of someone who is the opposite of thin. Fat has become an insult.
Or funny.
You can be fat on television or in movies, as long as you are funny. Try to be taken seriously and the roll goes to someone else. So you’d better be funny, or be what I call the fat chick behind the scenes. If you've ever watched a red carpet event. Ever. Look in the background. Everyone behind the person on camera is a fat chick. Doing the work that doesn’t get seen and probably wishing they were the ones on camera, but just happy to be in there somewhere.
WTF.
What a goofed up society we live in.
I could really go on and on about this topic. The long story of how I got here and how I feel about it and blah, blah, blah. Maybe someday I’ll blog about that. For now, I’m fat. I’m okay with that. Society isn’t.
They tell me it’s not healthy. They tell me I’ll have troubles.
I do have troubles. I have knee troubles from a car accident I had 23 years ago. I was in pretty good shape at that time. I was never what you might call thin, but I looked good. I exercised and walked a lot. Of course, I was young, so I  had that on my side too.
Now I’m fat, my knees have extra weight on them. They probably hurt a bit more because of that. But here’s the kicker; I can’t do certain things to exercise because I hurt my knees, so I am heavy, which hurts my knees.
WTF.
I used to like the stairmaster. Yes, the stairmaster. That junk rocked my legs like nothing else! Nope, not after you hurt your knees. Now I avoid stairs. A stairmaster is out of the question.
My blood pressure probably isn’t ideal. I don’t obsess about it and have been told by a second opinion that a normal increase is okay with age (ugh, age…don‘t even get me started), so I leave it at that.
Otherwise I am healthy. I don’t eat take out, fast food, soft serve ice cream…all those things that people think fat people eat all the time. I don’t drink a lot, I don’t smoke or do any other type of drug.
Then there’s sugar.
Apparently sugar is the new cocaine. I believe it. It is the most addicting thing I consume. It’s everywhere. It is the hardest thing to stop consuming that I have ever tried to give up.
I’m an addict. I admit that. It makes me glad I never did smoke or anything else, because this is hard enough. This is my vice.
For years I told myself that it wasn't so bad. Of all the things out there in the world you could be addicted to, sugar was practically harmless. So I’d put on weight because of it, so what? What did that really mean?
What it really means is that I have to cut it out. It’s the one thing I do to myself that is definitely not healthy.
I know this.
I tell myself this every day.
Every day I start off with the intention of doing better than the day before.
Most days I fail.
Some days I succeed. Some weeks are great.
Some days I try not to think about it at all.

Mostly I believe in being healthy. I don’t like being out of shape, getting winded taking a flight of stairs. That’s not good. But being fat doesn't mean you are unhealthy.
Being sedentary and not eating right = unhealthy.
Fat does not equal unhealthy.
I know a lot of people have very strong opinions on being fat, being thin, being in shape, being healthy.
These are mine. I chose to share them to give you a better iDDea of who I am.
This is my life.
My experience.
My blog.
Here you go.

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