The Obligatory Year-In-Review and New Years Resolution Post

2014.  This was not my favourite year.

I dealt with a lot of stress, mental health issues, physical health issues, house stuff, money stuff, relationship stuff.

The high point of my year?  NOT having Cancer.  Which is a really, really awesome thing, but a pretty low bar to measure a whole year by.  Also, this last month the last remaining portion of my colon decided to get its shit together, figuratively speaking, and push my colitis back into a state somewhat resembling remission.  At any rate, the daily ass-bleeding has stopped for the most part.

Not having Cancer was Ay-Oh-Kay in my books, as was the reprieve from daily ass-bleeding, but quite frankly, the rest of the year just felt like a god-damn struggle.

I know it's not been all bad.  The change in mood between this post and this post from a few weeks ago can probably tell you how all-over-the-place I have been. I've been making efforts to maintain some level of positivity.  Some days are 'be thankful and count your blessings' days.  Some days are not.

On a side note: I had a pretty decent Christmas. Got to actually see my family and eat turkey.  And then every single member of my household got sick as shit for the next four days (not from the turkey, from the flu).  So while Christmas was much better than last year, the universe did it's damndest to make sure Boxing Day blew chunks (metaphorically).

So basically, 2014 can fuck right off for not being the vast improvement over 2013 it was supposed to be.  You're fucking fired, 2014.

So, now that we've got all that bother out of the way, some plans and resolutions for 2015:

1. Be more active, whilst remaining actively body-positive.  This will include: 
• Continuing to swim at the Y three mornings a week
• Returning to kick-boxing once a week
• Using my lunch-breaks to walk each day, or taking evening walks after dinner
• Refraining from negative self-talk and avoiding the "D-word".  Riots, not diets, folks.
• Eat more system-friendly foods that will keep my fucked-up digestive happy
• Drink water. Lots of water. Because dehydration is a bitch, yo.
2. Finish working on The Table Formerly Known as the Penis Table
3. Blog more, both here and on The Art Blog. I also have a plan for a third blog that has been in the works for a while.
4. Paint. Draw. Craft.
• Submit work to art shows. Try not to get frustrated if not accepted. Keep trying.
5. Write.
•  Look for opportunities to write outside of blogging.
6. Make music
• Find a conveniently-scheduled and receptive open mic to attend.  Attend with some regularity
7. Audition for plays
8. Continue to practice good self-care, for the benefit of both my physical and mental health:
• Take my blood-thinners and butt-meds regularly
• Get my blood work done regularly, as required
• Continue seeing my counsellor for as long as work will cover it/I can afford it
• Bitch-slap the jerkbrain when she starts getting too loud.
9. Make friends, and make time for friends.
10. Make time to keep being a good mom, girlfriend and person, overall.
11. Make time for me.
12. Breathe.

So that's all from this end for this year.  Here's to new beginnings.

I look slightly deranged. I kind of like it. Cheers, y'all.

Now this is a holiday I can get behind. Get it? Behind? Because I have a big ass.

Content note: weight, diet and food talk

It turns out today is International No Diet Day.  So I had pizza and garlic bread for dinner.

Don't get me wrong, I would probably have had pizza anyway, but now I feel extra justified in my choice.

I gave up dieting a year or so ago, and decided that I was going to try and love my body, no matter what shape it takes.  It's not been an easy task.  I will admit, I still own a scale, and I still step on it from time to time.  Some days i take the number i see with a grain of salt.  Other days, It's hard not to fall into a pattern of self-loathing.  Mostly, I'm trying harder these days to try and listen to my body and what it wants.  I believe it's called intuitive eating. 

In retrospect, when I look back on the 5+ years I spent actively trying to lose weight, the health benefits that I experienced during that period came not from the weight loss itself, but by my increase in physical activity and some improved eating habits. That is to say, I think I benefitted from the good stuff I added to my nutritional intake during that time, rather than the "bad" which I had taken away.  

By the way, can we stop ascribing labels like "good" and "bad" to food? This lends itself to labelling ourselves as "good" and "bad" when we allow ourselves certain indulgences.  

But anyway, I digress.  The fact that I was able to walk faster, run further and do more physically, I now believe came from the fact that I was making my body stronger, rather than making it smaller.

These are the things that I try to concentrate on now during my recovery process.  I concentrate on reducing my negative self-talk and avoiding in engaging in diet talk with others.  

Learning about fat positivity has helped me, after 30+ years, to stop feeling like less than because I don't fit into a size 8 or into societal expectations.  I no longer feel like I need to deprive myself of things other, more slender people take for granted, simply because my body processes food differently than others.

I've learned that clothes are supposed to fit your body, not the other way around.  If my pants don't fit, I don't try to force my body to change; I change my pants instead.

Links

Dieting Does Not Work

Great Fat Positive Blogs and Resources

This is Thin Privilege

The Fat Nutritionist

Dances With Fat

Tutus and Tiny Hats

Friend of Marilyn

Source

Source

Fat Rant - (Content warning for ED discussion)

Those who have been reading for some time now (not that I've had anything much to say lately) will know that a few years back I lost about 65 lbs on the Weight Watchers program.  At the time, it felt right for me, as I was in a very low place, self-image wise.

To keep a long story short, I eventually quit.  Aside from rampant corporatism that left a bitter taste in my mouth, I also grew irritated with the constant measuring, portioning, counting points and so forth.  When I found myself in Canadian Tire contemplating the purchase of a kitchen scale so I could measure my portions to the very gram, I took pause.

"Holy Shit! This is ridiculous," I thought to myself and decided from there on, I would make a contining effort to make sure I included enough nutritious food in my day-to-day (which I do, most of the time) and I would remain active (which I have) but this counting calories-points-whathaveyou was a large steaming piling of bullshit that I would no longer have any part of.

I began reading up on Health At Every Size and fat activism and decided I was going to do what I could to love my body, regardless of what shape it decides to be.  As long as I was feeling good, feeling healthy then that would be it and I was NOT going to let a number on a scale or in my pants tell me different.

Why, because life is too fucking short to spend every minute of the day obsessing over every tiny tidbit that goes into my mouth and going "Oh dear, have I gone over my Points?  Fail, Fail, Fail." and generally beating myself up when the scale doesn't show me what I want it to.  That's disordered thinking, folks.  Psychological health is important as well as physical health and preoccupation with food and weight is damaging.

Here's the problem:

I've since, in the last three years, gained back about 25 lbs as one is wont to do when they spend a number of years fastidiously restricting their food intake and that is fucking with my head a bit.  I'm trying really, really hard not to get all down on myself for this and keeping perspective.  I still eat pretty well.. much, much better than I used to.  I still Kick box, take walks weather permitting and this past summer The Well Travelled One and I went on a bunch of 2 and 3 hour hikes and plan to do more this summer.

But my pants don't fit.  And that sucks.  Because I'm cheap.  Instead of being reasonable and logical and maybe buying some new fucking pants that fit, little stupid jerkbrain starts telling me that I'm gross and sloppy and look packed in and if I just lost 10 lbs or 20 I'd look soooo much better.  and I feel bad about myself.

I shouldn't.  But I do.

32 years of societal programming is hard to undo, y'all.

Son, Margaret Cho will F*** You Up But Good.

So, I can't say I've ever been a huge fan of Margaret Cho. No particular reason, her humor just never grabbed me. Shit happens. But Margaret Cho won about 867,482 cool points with me after I read her blog post Being Mad on Twitter, written after some negative backlash to some pictures she posted on Twitter of the new ink she had recieved.

First of all, I admire anyone with the guts to proudly post their ass on twitter. Second, I highly recommend checking out her post, as it is a very raw and powerful read.

Someone on the Jezebel article pointed out that out of all the positive feedback on her tats that she chose to focus on the two negative comments, and oh isn't that sad. Yeah, it is, but it's not uncommon. It is so easy to write off positive comments as 'just being polite' or 'sucking up' or 'you have to say that' but the negative chews at us and makes us doubt ourselves and feel less than. It becomes magnified in our psyche.

That is why such blatant negativity is so very toxic. Sometimes there is a time and a place for constructive criticism but sometimes there is no time and no place that doesn't make you an asshole for not keeping your damn comments to yourself.

Having once been a young girl who saw herself as fat and awkward and gawky, and being a woman who still struggles not to still see herself that way, I have to agree with Cho when she says "...no young girl should be told she is ugly. If she is, you kill her spirit..." I cannot fathom any scenario where telling some they are ugly or fat (and don't give me concern-trolling about health worries) accomplishes anything beyond kicking a chair out from someone and taking power in their suffering. There is nothing constructive to be had in binding someone, often an impressionable young girl who lives in a society that tells her hat her only worth is in her beauty, to your own personal definition of worth and stomping on them and telling them they are unworthy. It's a bullshit move.

Palpable in Cho's post is her righteous anger, and I fucking laud her for it. Even though fans may criticize her for going off on the naysayers, I say screw that. There is always such talk of forgiveness, and women especially are expected to be forgiving when others trample on our sense of worth. Even though I'm usually one to brush shit off, there is something to be said for anger, for anger can keep us from being complacent. Learning to love yourself is a tough road, even if you've been more or less supported your whole life. I had a loving family but still felt that the rest of the world was telling me I wasn't good enough.

I love the way Margaret describes her Learning to love herself as a kind of ongoing battle, defending her 'borders' and fuck anyone who doesn't appreciate or respect what she has worked for. She defends her sense of worth like a mama bear defending her cubs, and will rain down a storm of shit and hellfire on those whose aim is to degrade and belittle. And if people judge her harshly for not taking the high road, well so be it. She does not apologize for being angry at the hurt others have dealt. Nor should she.

"Lady, Are You On Glue?"

Cross-Posted at MyFitnessPal.com

"Are you on Glue?"

That is what my inner sloth said to me when I decided yesterday that I was going to sign up for this year's Warrior Dash.

I'm laaaazy. And I'm not in awesome shape. Oh, I'm in better shape than I used to be (I can do pushups! and FULL SIT-UPS!) but on the whole I don't tend to think of myself as athletic, or even particularly fit. Hell, at time I've revelled in my own non-athleticism.

In high school, those who took phys ed had to, twice a year, run a 2400m race. At the beginning of grade nine, I was the kid who half-ran, half-walked, red-faced, huffing and puffing and in tears by the end of the run. At the end of grade nine, I was the kid who stolidly refused to run, and walked, head high and throwing glares at the Phys Ed. teacher, the entire distance to finish dead last with a time of roughly 23 minutes and 18 seconds.

I had my compusory gym credit, and I never took it again after that.

So needless to say, signing up for something like this is rather out of character for me. I mean, seriously? climbing? Fire-jumping? CLIMBING? (I have a wee fear of heights.. and climbing)

I don't know. I feel like challenging myself.

I can't actually register until the 13th, when I get my baby bonus so I have time to back out, if I want to. But really, what do I have to lose? I have two friends interested in signing as well, one a mom who has taken up running and wants to get in (better) shape, and another who will be roughly 17 months post-transplant when the race comes around and is also looking for a challenge. Not to mention my kick-boxing instructor and some women from that class may be signing up as well.

This could get interesting.

HEAS Rhetoric: Understanding how weight =/= health

Cross-posted at MyFitnessPal.com

In response to a blog post I recently read from Balancing Jane, I wanted to hash out how to reconcile the idea of the "Healthy At Every Size" (HEAS) philosophy by reframing how we look at weight loss in relation to health.

Many have pointed out that the correlation between weight and health is not as direct as the media would have us believe. Being overweight is not always an indicator of poor health, just as being average or underweight is not an indicator of good health.

In my comments on the post I proposed a simple change in framing to kind of articulate how the rhetoric around weight loss can be reconciled with the HEAS principles by focusing not on size but on choices.

For example, one might say something to the effect of:

"My friend recently lost 100 lbs. As a result, her blood pressure and insulin levels have evened out."

This phrasing indicates a direct correlation between weight loss and health and implies that it was the loss of 100 lbs that directly contributed to an increase in the friend's health.

Now, what if we worded it as the following:

"My friend recently started making changes in her eating habits. She's been watching her portions and choosing more fruits and vegetables and less processed junk. As a result, her blood pressure and insulin levels have evened out. She's also lost 100 lbs."

In this phrasing, the change in the friend's health is not correlated with her weight, but with her food choices and activity level. The weight loss is treated as an additional benefit of her choices rather than the causal factor. If we left out the last sentence, and did not mention the weight loss, one could reasonably argue that by changing habits one could achieve better overall health, without weight playing into it.

Sustainable lifestyle changes through the pursuit of pleasure

Cross posted at MyFitnessPal.com

I was going to start out talking about The Biggest Loser, but I realized that, having never really watched more than one or two episodes I'd kind of be talking out of my ass.

However, I do want to expand on a point that one commenter on another person's blog (I REALLY should take note of these things) said in relation to the sustainability of lifestyle changes. Changes that feel like chores are not sustainable.

In making a real lifestyle change, whether it is to eat better, or be more active, it is so important to adjust your attitude and take pleasure out of these changes. I see a lot of people who seem to seek self-punishment in the form of grueling exercise in the name of making an end, and while in the short term, I can find this admirable I have to question if it is sustainable. Maybe that is why I never got involved in things like Crossfit, bootcamps and the like. To me, these things don't seem like fun, they seem like self-punishment. Part of my success laid in finding activities that got me moving but were still FUN. Baseball, belly-dancing and kickboxing were all things I joined because I never felt like I was just exercising for the sake of exercising but I was having fun, or learning a skill. Losing weight was always a bonus, whereas the ends were to get good at a new skill - some better accomplished than others.

Finding pleasure in food is another area that I feel is needed in order to be sustainable. Many people on here claim that a love for food has been the root of their weight issues. Mine, I would say, has actually been a contempt for food - that is to say up until the age of oh, say, 23 contempt for any food that wasn't hot dogs, Kraft dinner or canned spagetti, or plainly speaking, junk.

I didn't really like much else. It took forcing myself to really alter the way I thought about 'healthy' food versus 'treats', to frame healthy food in such a way that it was appetizing. To revisit all those foods that I had turned my nose up at ten zillion times before.
It started with a single piece of sushi in a mall with a friend. "Just try one" my friend urged me. I tried it. At first, my instinct was to spit it out, but I forced myself to really taste it, to savour it. The next few times I tried it, it was easier, and eventually I was hooked.
I started trying salads (a thing I hated in all it's forms.. I'm still not fond of mayo-based salads). Mayonaise in small doses. I was like a mother sneaking vegetables into her child's food, only it was my own. I brought a Ceasar wrap to work one day and found myself drooling over lettuce.. drooling over the thought of it's crispy refreshing crunch, and the warm bread and the chicken. Those things that were once abhorrent to me, and that I had only struggled through in order to have dessert, I began craving. And those things, the hot dogs, the KD, I found I didn't enjoy as much and I would ask myself "Why am I eating this if I'm not really enjoying it?"

(In fairness though, sometimes I DO still really enjoy a big bowl of KD and ketchup)

A lot of weight loss systems have used the adage "Nothing is as good as thin feels" up until recently. It's fallen of in popularity, due to it's potential for ED triggering.
MY favorite philosophy, however, comes from the movie Ratatouille. In the scene where Linguine faces off with restaurant critic Anton Ego, they have the following exchange:

Source

Ego: You're slow for someone in the fast lane
Linguine: and you're thin for someone who likes food.
Ego: I don't like food. I love it. And if I don't love it, I don't swallow.

I think this could be a philosophy that would help a lot of people, and doesn't frame food as the enemy.. food is NOT the enemy - actually, food is like that friend we all take for granted, but don't really realize how lucky we are to have it, and we should appreciate it.
... eat for pleasure, not merely for fuel. Pay attention to quality, taste, really savouring a meal or a snack, rather than mindlessly filling the gullet because it's there. If we (and by we, I mean those of us for whom boredom eating is a problem) start to really pay attention to not just the quantity of what we eat, but the quality, then we stand to be more choosy in our habits.

When I say 'back on the horse' I am in no way referring to smack.

What is this horse I speak of?  It's metaphorical, don't think on it too much.

So I broke down. Kind of. As some of you already know, about four and a half years ago I made the decision to join Weight Watchers and managed to lose myself somewhere in the area of 60-65 lbs. Without getting all long and drawn out about it, I left the program this past winter after they rolled out a new program that rendered pretty much all their previous program materials obsolete. It seemed like a money grab to me (especially since part of your start up was paying 15 bucks for an electronic calculator), especially in light of the fact that they were still selling the old calculators up to a mere couple of weeks before the new program got rolled out.

So that was that. I tried to follow on my own, but granted, I didn't try very hard and I've fallen back into a lot of my old habits. Snacking at night, snacking out of boredom, afternoon Tim Hortons' visits etc. And here I am, 10 months later and I have gained back 20 of the 60ish I had lost.

It's go time, people.

My pants have been rebelling for a few months now. I'm down to one pair of work pants and 2-3 pairs of jeans that fit comfortably. I've been wearing a lot of skirts and dresses to hide the fact that well.. my pants don't fit.

This is what it's about. Pants. Pants and feeling comfortable in my own skin. And pants.

I'll stop saying pants now.

So today I signed myself up at myfitnesspal.com because I can't bring myself to go back to Weight Watchers. I'm still hurt and angry. Irrational? Oh, probably. But is it?

I've always been able to see through the diet industry for the sham it is, which is in part what lead me to my gain later in life. I didn't yo-yo so much as I climbed steadily. But it is. A sham. There are no easy answers. The diet industry builds up these miracle cures in our diseased conciousness and sets us up for failure. The more we "fail" the more desperate we become in our efforts and the industry keeps racking in the cash.

I cannot say it clearly enough: THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS.

Hell, for some of us, thin may not even be an option, because not all of our bodies are built that way. We can only, realistically, aim for good health. That means so much more than our food intake, and our activity levels... it means managing our stress levels, removing or at least minimizing our exposure to those toxic people in our lives.

Ugh. I'm rambling. I'm sure I'll have more to say on the subject as time goes on. I know it won't be easy, but I've done it before. I can do it again.

No More Fucking Around

Fuck this "putting back on all the weight I lost last year" thing.

FUCK THAT.

Cruelest irony of all -- As I stood in the change room at Giant Tiger, vainly attempting to struggle into a pair of size 16 dress pants (as I couldn't find an 18), my frustration with my inability to find a simple pair of affordable pinstriped or plaid pants mounting by the second, what song should happen to be playing over the P.A. system?

BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY.

Almost poetic in it's sadistic humour, isn't it? 

*Shakes fist at heavens CURSE YOU, POETIC JUSTICE!

*sigh*.