Fat brained

 

Looking at these pictures side by side, it's easy to see my progress. Down 65 pounds in a little over one year. To start with, the woman on the right almost never posed with her husband for a picture without putting him entirely in the front to hide behind. She rarely hiked up hills and she never shopped in the "normal" section. She was resigned to being seen first and foremost as fat. And the sad thing is, it didn't even bother her much. Big personality. Big body. Hard to kidnap. 

I'm not here to tell you how I did it. Or why. If you're a friend you already know. And you're probably tired of hearing about it. If not, one of the biggest things I've learned from the whole experience is that each body is unique and the real secret of health is learning what does and doesn't work for YOU, not what did and didn't work for me. 

I'm here to talk about the fact that the woman on the right won't get out of my brain. First and foremost, fat. It doesn't help that my body is almost 50 years old and the skin I grew to fit around 300 lbs of me isn't going anywhere. In the mirror, all I see is flabby, wrinkled, very generous curves. In the picture of me with my love, all I see is that huge thigh and the saggy jawline and dangling bossom. Even as I buy smaller and smaller sizes, my belly bulges and my legs look like something you'd order at KFC. Every, "Wow, you look great!" sounds a little like, "You would not believe how hideous you looked last year."

Thin people tend to view fat as a discipline problem or a health problem. They aren't wrong exactly, but the biggest part of it, for many of us, is the mind problem.  It's the part of every woman that looks in the mirror and sees only the flaws. The pain of the teenager who was probably at the ideal weight for her 95th percentile bone structure trying to process 150 appearing on the scale when a chart said she should weigh between 120 and 140. The misery of failing to diet those ten pounds away. The pounds that followed because, "what does it matter, I'm fat anyway." The voice of the national guard recruiter saying 180 and 5'7" was too fat for the military even with a perfect score on the ASFAB. A record-long run in the friend zone of men who loved to spend time with me, but just didn't see me 'that way'. Depression and chronic fatigue and ADD feeding back on me the popular idea that fat people are lazy and undisciplined creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doctors who said such profound things as "try eating salads sometimes." Walking out of 90 minute of intense cardio and weight lifting during my gym rat period and having an instructor tell you to try water aerobics (one look - first and foremost fat). 

The last vestiges of my before wardrobe hanging off my body make me feel sloppy. Shopping for new clothes is almost impossible. Every 18 I pick up seems impossibly small. Shirts that fit my waist and chest barely squeeze over my arms. Skinny cut jeans (and they're all skinny cut suddenly) that fit over my thighs are several sizes too big at the waist. I can fit into the clothes in the 'normal' section, but they don't flatter. They seem to draw attention to the parts I would rather disguise and exaggerate my disproportion. 

I figured out how to get sugar out of my head (and my mouth). I figured out how to move. I can't figure out how to silence all those voices. I can't see the three stone I've dropped as pebbles on the road behind me, only the bumps and lumps of the ones that still cling to my frame. The final product is literally unimaginable to me. There is no image of me thin that's not also an image of me as a child. There is no 50-ish formerly obese body I can imagine to inspire me on my journey. The body I expect to have, with that extra twenty pounds of skin hanging off its shrunken frame isn't terribly inspiring. More importantly, she isn't ME. I'm big - both garish and invisible. I'm not sure I know how to be small. I certainly don't know how to think it.

Career? Or Job?

I have to go back to work. After almost four years of only working a few occasional hours a week, I need a regular income again. Our budget has always been tight, but I was managing to stretch it far enough until the kid started to drive and our water bill almost doubled (mostly unrelated except for timing). If you know me, you know I have a straight up phobia around looking for work. I'd rather be covered in spiders while making a speech in my underwear in high school (in fact, if someone would like to pay me to do that, let's talk). It's irrational and mostly baseless, but I've never gotten a good job the old fashioned, send in an application, get an interview sort of way. All the good jobs came from someone else doing the leg work or me knowing someone. If I could hand my crappy (because it literally scares me to work on it) resume to someone and just do whatever they choose for me, I probably would.

This time around is extra scary, though, because some big things have changed since the last time I was in the workforce. I'm married now. I can't go use up all my people energy (INTROVERT with a capital I-N-T-R-O-V-E-R-T) at work and then shut myself in my room all night to recharge like I used to do. I have to find something that leaves me able to be civil to my husband and the teenager. No point in doing something for the family that turns me into someone they hate to live with.

Please don't mistake introversion for shyness or devoid of people skills. I am neither. I just find people mentally exhausting. I'd be great at a job that requires strong interpersonal skills and a lot of time completely alone. Comment if you know of one! I just can't people all the time. 

On the upside, I'm Keto now, which means I'm not physically tired all the time. I think I started having chronic exhaustion around puberty (I carried a pillow so I could nap in study hall). I lost track of how many days I struggled to keep my eyes open at work in the afternoon or to find a way to nap over lunch. For the first time in my life I can imagine putting in an eight hour day and still having the strength to cook dinner AND wash the dishes. I think I'd still have my last job if I wasn't so foggy and distracted all the time from being tired. I might even have managed to work my way up. I might have had a career.

And that's really the question I'm struggling with today. To be or just to work. To search out something I think I'd want to do and put my heart into it or to find something that will get the bills paid and put my time in. To use my education and skills or just my hours. To risk the stress of real responsibility and having to attend meetings that should be memos and failing hard (because the higher you climb the harder you fall) or the stress of being insanely bored and treated like I'm lesser because that must be the only job I could get.

In my dreams, I find a professional job that's mostly computer work (I'm a solid graphic designer, great with presentation software, basic digital skills, decent writer) and only required 30 or less hours each week. In reality, my choices seem to be part time unskilled work or out-on-a-limb, they'd-only-choose-me-if-no-one-really-qualified-applied, kinds of full time jobs. If I have to choose between the two, it won't be an easy choice. Wish me luck.