Tag Archives: fat

It Never Ends Well For The Fat Ones

In the here & now, ,

Do y’all watch the MTV programme Catfish?  I’m a recent convert. I can’t even remember how I stumbled across it but to the dismay of my boy, who’s having to negotiate hard for TV time, I’m currently binge-watching my way through the first one hundred episodes ahead of their season seven airing next week. As far as mini-obsessions go, it’s not bad…it doesn’t involve eating so that’s a win, right? My boy’s perspective is bloody hell Mum, for an intelligent woman you don’t half watch some crap…

If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a show based around on-line relationships, with a couple of cool guys flushing out folk who are stringing other folk along with fake dating profiles. For someone like me, who’s endlessly fascinated with people – aka nosey – it’s irresistible.

Sometimes, like one time out of twenty, the person on the end of the dodgy profile turns out to be the real deal, but more often than not some rogue with questionable morals and a wild imagination has posted fake pictures to entice their poor unsuspecting victim into an on-line relationship.

Now, I’m probably thirty or forty episodes in at this point, right? And fascinating as it is, there’s a theme that I’ve noticed.  It never ends well for the fat ones. 

It’s a bit formulaic, and the story always unfolds like this; boy (or girl) meets utterly gorgeous girl (or boy) on-line and falls in love. Months pass, sometimes even years pass and despite endless texts/emails/telephone conversations the two never meet, so the one being strung along gets suspicious.

Along come the two cool guys and after a bit of detective work, utterly gorgeous girl (or boy) is rumbled, and generally persuaded to ‘fess up in front of their poor unsuspecting love interest.

Sometimes the person behind the fake profile is a bloke posing as a woman or a woman pretending to be a bloke. Sometimes it’s a woman who just looks like a bloke. Sometimes they have eyes that look in two different directions at the same time but mostly they’re none of the above…nine times out of ten they’re just fat.

And on some level you know, I get why they do what they do. As a fat girl, I totally understand the appeal of pretending to be somebody you’re not, and showing a gorgeous face to the world. It must be lovely, having members of the opposite sex falling at your feet declaring undying love at first sight. The truth is, It doesn’t really matter how warm or funny or bright you are, or how much love you have to give, if you’re fat you’re pretty much invisible.

This programme demonstrates the point beautifully. For all the victims’ chatter about being desperate to meet the person behind the pictures, and how what they look like doesn’t really matter anyway because they’ve fallen in love with the personality, as soon as an arse the size of South East Asia lumbers around the corner it’s pretty much game over, you know?

Now, being invisible to members of the opposite sex doesn’t actually bother me at all, because I’m not in the market for a love-interest for all the reasons we’ve discussed at length in these pages. If you missed those conversations I’ll summarise for you…I can’t be feckin arsed. Too much hassle and anyway I’m safer as a singleton. But if I was feeling fruity and in need of a good seeing to, I wouldn’t  imagine that my fat photo would drum up much interest at all.

I reckon that maybe one in a hundred fat folk would regard themselves as fat and fabulous…I envy the ones who do. Me, I’m definitely one of the other ninety nine 🙂

 

 

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That’s Just What Muscles DO

In the here & now, , ,

vest

One of the things that I’ve come to value the most about this journey that I’m on, is the discipline I’ve developed around pulling out learning from situations that happen around me. I’ve never been very good at seeing what’s happening right under my own nose – people I hang around with have been known to go on holiday, then come back and fill me in on what’s been going on whilst they were away. I get very absorbed in my own carry-on, maybe a little too much sometimes, you know? I’m fascinated by people, but only when I remember to look.

It’s two weeks now since I first stepped foot into the Kingdom of Pain, and apart from all the hurting, some good things have happened. I’ve got to admit, I rocked up with huge trepidation last night, for two reasons. Firstly I’d booked myself into a session at 6.30am, but written it down in my calendar as 6.30pm. At 6.30am I was still tucked up in bed snoring my head off…whoops.

God of Pain texted me enquiring as to my whereabouts…oh shit. Hello bad-books, here I am… rumour has it that bad things happen to folk who don’t show up. I apologised of course, and immediately re-booked myself onto the actual evening session, but when I realised it was the same class I’d done on my very first visit, my heart sank even further. Yes, it was that one…the one that nearly killed me. I hadn’t repeated it since that first time, so I had two reasons to be scared as I pulled my lycra pants on last night.

Closely followed, it has to be said, by two reasons to be relieved. First of all, I wasn’t flogged, or bawled out, I didn’t even get the stare. Perhaps he’s more forgiving, when it’s the first time..? There won’t be a second, I’ll make sure of that. And you know what else I worried about for nothing? Last night, I kept up.

Two weeks ago, all the getting down and getting up again left me wrung out ’till I couldn’t get my breath. My knees barely survived the experience and some of the exercises were beyond me. Now don’t get me wrong, by the time we’d finished last night I was wringing wet through and tired, but I did it. I did it all. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t elegant and I still have a hall pass on assorted body parts being allowed to touch the floor where other folk have to keep theirs suspended in mid-air, but in my own little corner, I kept up.

I am genuinely astonished at how far I’ve come in the last two weeks. I could never have imagined that my body would respond in the way that it has. But do you know what I’ve learned, in the course of pushing myself? I don’t need to be scared of things hurting a little bit, in the moment. People who are really really fit hurt too. Who knew? My muscles don’t scream when I push them because I’m fat…my muscles scream because that’s what muscles do when you make them work hard.

This particular lightbulb switched on for me a few days ago when I found myself  doing my own wonky version of a plank next to one of the uber-fit skinny string beans. Towards the end of the minute, long after my arse had migrated north in a desperate attempt to end the agony, she remained firmly in her plank, even though her whole body was trembling like she had her own personal earthquake going directly underneath the yoga mat. She was hurting, just like I was, even though my plank was a bit on the pathetic and short-lived side in comparison to hers.

Somehow, I’d always imagined that demanding these things of my body hurt me far more than people who were fit. And that pissed me off. I felt aggrieved, like it wasn’t fair. I imagined that once you were skinny and fit, it was easy to stay that way because sore muscles would be a thing of the past…working out would be a doddle if you only had one arse inside your yoga pants, right?

That’s bollocks. I totally get it now…you work out, you hurt for a bit and then you reap the benefits afterwards when you feel more flexible, or stronger, or fitter. It doesn’t matter how fit you are, working out hurts, in the moment. It’s supposed to. It sort of means you’re doing it right.

It’s probably one of the biggest light-bulb moments of my journey so far. The second I realised that actually everybody hurts, I stopped feeling like nobody understood how hard it was for me because I’m fat. For the very first time ever I totally embraced the fact that I’m just one of them. Hurting right alongside them in pursuit of the life I want to live. Just like they are.

It’s a fucking revelation 🙂

 

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Weeding Out The Fat

In the here & now, Reflections on past times, ,

struggle

So much for having a relaxing time of it whilst I’m off work this week…I’m skidding sideways into today’s post in a very last minute dot com kind of way because I got busy this morning having a bit of a sort out and I’ve only just nicely come up for air.

I have to hold my hands up and admit that having surveyed pretty much every fashion choice I have made over the last, I dunno maybe four or five years, I need locking up and the key needs to be thrown away. Immediately.

On the face of it, I had a clear out not that long ago, and it’s not that I’ve gone down another size since then or anything exciting like that…I just had a nagging feeling that I didn’t quite do it properly the first time. I sort of scratched the surface, but I knew if I looked there would be more stuff to go through and sure enough, today I not only did a second lap of the wardrobe but I went through all my drawers and the under-the-bed storage too.

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the items I’ve unearthed where I’d bought  something without trying it on, in the hope that whatever I’d brought home would make me look nice, only to ball it up in disgust and shove it in the bottom of my wardrobe or the back of a drawer when it actually made me look like the back end of a bus. The thing is, what I really wanted to look was skinny. That’s what I mean when I said nice…I meant skinny. There’s no wonder nothing much lived up to my expectations.

I never try stuff on in the shop. I think my aversion to changing rooms stems right back to my teenage years where it was all the rage to have communal ones. They’d be filled with skinny girls, looking effortlessly chic in whatever they tried on, and I’d be the fat one in the corner avoiding eye contact with anyone whilst I tried to force my spare tyre into whatever I’d managed to find in size large. Please God let something fit…I just want to carry a bag that says Top Shop…

I vividly remember getting so hot and bothered that no matter how much I’d managed to tame my unruly mop of hair before hitting town with my friends, by the time I emerged from the fitting room it would be wild and curly, sitting on top of a chubby red face which would never really recover for the rest of the afternoon. It was traumatic.

I struggled to find my groove, you know? I found it really hard to carve out my style as a fat girl, and desperate as I was to follow fashion and copy the kind of looks I saw in Jackie and the other teenage mags, it was nigh-on impossible. Other than the asymmetric layering styles that I’m fairly fond of nowadays, I still think that very few people can design great clothes for fat bodies. Scaling up skinny clothes doesn’t work. And most designed-for-fat clothes tend to be created with my mother in mind.

As I see it, shopping as a fat girl is sort of a Hobson’s choice situation…it’s on that basis that I’m prepared to overlook some of the very questionable purchases I’ve made and then buried over the last few years. It wasn’t my fault m’lud. I wonder how many folk will get their garment of choice home from the charity shop when I’ve dropped this lot off in the hope that it will make them look nice, and then ball it up in disgust and shove it in a drawer…

I’ve got to say though, all in all it’s been a good day. I’m feeling really organised, I’ve got a fair number of auctions running on eBay and about ten massive bags for the charity shop. Best of all, I’ve uncovered some old friends, in fact I’m wearing a shirt right now that I’ve not been able to get into for at least three years, and that’s a good feeling 🙂

 

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Getting Ready To Sparkle

In the here & now, , ,

awkward

Well that’s it! No more work until next Tuesday. I’ve booked a couple of days off and tomorrow will be pamper central as I hand myself over to my friends at the beauty salon in the hope that they can perform miracles and get this fat old body ready to sparkle. As much as anything it’s going to be lovely actually to just have a few days off work…I haven’t had any time off since January and I’m so ready to chill out.

I was thinking about Friday and the Blog Awards, and you know it’s the first time in ages that I’ve really looked forward to a night out. In my younger days I was a very sociable creature, but in more recent times I’ve formed an alliance with the Asshole voice in finding excuses not to accept invitations to pretty much anywhere, especially if it was going to involve hanging out with a bunch of folk I don’t know.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shy at all, and I can work a room with the best of them, but anyone who’s ever been ashamed of the way they look will completely understand where I’m coming from. How I look, and more especially what people think about the way I look never quite loosens its hold over me, so no matter how deeply involved in conversation I am with someone it’s…well, it’s just there.

I’ve found myself desperate to maintain eye contact for all the wrong reasons…it’s less to do with me being really engaged, and more to do with the fact that if their eyes leave mine for a second they might notice the rolls of arm fat poking out of the bottom of my sleeve, or the fact that I have sausages wrapped around my gin and tonic rather than fingers.

Even when I’m out with friends, I never completely disconnect from that feeling. I’ve got several friends who don’t come in a standard size and it would never even occur to me to judge them because their muffin top is making a bid for freedom, in fact I probably wouldn’t even notice. And yet, because my body doesn’t conform to what I regard as attractive I convince myself that other people will mind somehow, and I’m ill at ease no matter how good the company.

Letting go, getting hammered and dancing like a loon would just as likely get me laughed at as a skinny girl, but somehow ha ha look at that girl dancing sounds nowhere near as bad as ha ha look at that fat girl dancing…it’s like being fat triples the comedy value, so as a fat girl I’ve always been wary of opening up the window of opportunity for someone to take the piss.

This Friday, it’s different. They’re expecting fat. In fact, if you think about it I’m only here and writing this blog because I’m fat. If I’d been a skinny string bean I would have been far too busy doing skinny string bean things to even pick up a pen in the first place. Given that I’m so excited, and this blogging malarkey has opened up such an awesome new world to me and brought me so many new friends, it seems I should almost be grateful for the size of my arse.

Hmmm…I’m not sure about that. However, I do know there are very few people in the world I’d swap places with right about now, and it’s a long time since I’ve felt like that 🙂

By the way, thanks for all your messages about not being able to write a review on the Kindle store about my blog – it seems it’s only possible to review it (or subscribe) using a desktop/laptop computer or an actual Kindle device…mobiles and tablets are not supported by Kindle blog. As if?!!

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Six Fat Ladies On My Washing Line

In the here & now, , , , , ,

washing

I’ve always liked a nice washing line, in fact I think it’s fair to say that washing lines are one of my things. There’s nothing nicer than the smell of fresh blown washing, and there’s few things more satisfying than the sight of a long line of freshly laundered clothes bobbing in the breeze. It’s a pretty day today, lots of blue sky between the clouds, and for the first time in ages I pegged my washing out.

I observed the rules of course…anything that happens to part of a matching pair has to be pegged next to its partner. Each garment has to have matching coloured pegs. Where possible things of the same garment family should be grouped together, like trousers, or tops. Allowances can be made by exception, for example pyjamas have a top and pants but can’t be in two places at the same time, so a matching pair generally trumps garment family…

I know what you’re thinking. It is ridiculous, I can see that. My boy, who isn’t afflicted by the same degree of washing line OCD enjoys winding me up by breaking every single rule on the odd occasion his laundry bypasses the tumble dryer and makes it on to the line. Today though, they’ve been pegged by my own fair hands, and all is in order. I should be happy…and yet.

I looked outside to check on the weather and caught sight of my line of washing with the breeze through it, and there were six pairs of my black trousers lined up next to each other looking for all the world like six fat ladies getting their groove on. With the wind inside them they looked monstrous.

Is that what my arse looks like from the rear view..? Still..?  I can’t believe that something so stupid can turn my mood upside down so quickly. The asshole voice in my head went berserk and my new-found self confidence took a proper battering. How ridiculous is that? I can’t remember the last time I felt like this, and there’s absolutely no logical reason why I should.

Looking at them made me feel fat. And when I feel fat, I start thinking fat. I’ve been grazing all day, it’s now 4pm and I’ve got no points left. None. My weekly ones are all spent too. The sight of my cavernous pants drove me to loiter near my boy who was eating hangover carbs in the form of pizza and I turned the kind of eyes on him that even Charlie dog could only aspire to. Having checked that I had enough points left, he begrudgingly handed over two slices of heaven which didn’t even touch the sides of my mouth as they headed south.

I’d love to tell you that the pizza tasted amazing but the truth of it is I ate both slices so fast I barely tasted them. And there it is, right? The compulsion to anaesthetise my feelings with food when something makes me feel bad. Alive and kicking at the first fucking opportunity. I honestly despair that despite all the work I’ve put in, unpicking the knots in my thought processes and rebuilding the way I think piece by piece, I can still come totally unglued when my self-esteem take a knock.

I don’t wear size twelve pants. I know this. It shouldn’t come as a shock to see six pairs of fat pants going through the laundry. The fact that I’m on track to be in a size twelve this time next year should be enough…today, it wasn’t.

I guess we all get days like this, right?

Tomorrow’s a new day, with a shiny new week’s worth of smart points. Looking on the bright side, I’ll be starving when I wake up tomorrow given that I can’t eat anything else today so if I was forced to find a silver lining in this shitty day at least I’ll greet the new week feeling like Kate Moss 🙂

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