LJ Idol Season 8 Week 16 - 'Cause We Love Our Love in Different Sizes
o/` "If he's extra large well I'm in charge
I can work this thing on top
If he's XXL well what the hell
Every penny don't fit the slot
The anorexic chicks, the model 6
They don't hold no weight with me
Well 8 or 9, well that's just fine
But I like to hold something I can see o/`
-- Perfect 10 performed by The Beautiful South
"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."
-- Mark Twain
They look so tempting: round, juicy globes sliced diagonally, their juices mingling on the plate with fresh mozzarella; the tantalizing aroma of freshly crushed basil perfuming the dark fruity essence of the virgin olive oil. Even the single egg, which I normally do not like, calls to me with its anise marbled white and perfect bright yellow yolk lightly dusted with kosher salt crystals and cracked pepper. I hesitate before lifting my fork and cutting a wedge of the cheese, which I dip in the olive oil and spear with a section of grape tomato. The first little bit of flavored oil drips onto my tongue and my stomach goes wild in hungry protest. I realize I'm looking forward to eating this simple feast...
...and that is simply not allowed. No matter that the tomatoes are fresh from the farmer's market and have never had a sheen of wax sprayed over them to make them look better. Never mind that the basil, grown with loving care from non-GMO seed, came from my own garden. Forget that olive oil is actually one of those things supposedly good for the body.
I can't eat it. I set the fork down, bite uneaten, and spend a few minutes dragging things around on the plate to make it look like something has been eaten.
"You're not fooling anyone, Kitty. Eat, don't play with it. It's all right," Diagenou says softly and pats my arm reassuringly.
I take my breakfast with him every morning while he drinks his coffee and allows the nutritional supplement to be pumped through his feeding tube. It could be and often is a chance to spend time together, to talk and to make plans. The primary reason for this arrangement, however, is to make certain that my breakfast gets eaten by me and not the pets and that I don't simply play food Tetris with whatever I've been given.
When I was born, I weighed eleven pounds and measured twenty-two inches long. The doctor told my mother to withhold feedings or she'd have a grotesquely obese child by the time I was two.
They put me on my first diet, allowing only 600-900 calories total, when I was nine years old. I've been on pretty much every doctor prescribed diet and tried every over the counter dieting medication or joined every weight loss program you can possibly imagine. At that age, I was already my adult height of six feet tall and I weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. The doctors didn't think once to question why by age ten a child would have already reached her adult height but they readily blamed my weight for almost anything which went wrong. "Eat less and exercise more" became such standard advice that I often found myself chanting it as I drifted off to sleep.
I've been staring at this plate of food now for half an hour. I glance over at Diagenou and he appears to have gone to sleep. The chair doesn't make much noise as I edge it out of the room and toward the kitchen. I'm hoping I'll be able to scrape most of the plate into the compost, perhaps feed the cheese to the dogs, and have no one in the household the wiser. He cracks and eye open as I'm almost into the hallway and asks, "Is your plate empty?"
Perhaps some people might have a talent for lying. I'm not one of them and besides, I know he can see from his bed that the stupid plate is just as full as it was when Dorie prepared it for me. Not only that, but I really ought to know that sneaking anything past a man who does what he does is pure foolishness. "I don't want to eat it."
"Is it rotten? Does it taste bad? No? Well, what the fuck is your problem with perfectly good, well prepared food?" he demands, frustrated. I can understand his frustration; while still able to eat some carefully prepared and cooked foods, most of Diagenou's nutrition comes from the feeding tube. It's a fact he resents most powerfully since salads and vegetables were among his favorites --- the very things I'm refusing to eat --- and he can't have them. I'm used to his harsh words by now and don't take them personally. I don't expect him to understand because I don't understand myself. It seems, even though it just doesn't work, I'm hard wired to be repulsed by perfectly good food if it tastes good or, worse still, if it's likely I'll enjoy it. Those two things are not conducive to weight loss, or so I've been told most of my life.
"N-no, it's delicious!" I wail. "That's the problem! It tastes good and if it tastes good, it can't be good for me. If I eat it, I'll gain even more weight and get even fatter and...."
He's laughing, damn him. I can tell by the way the blankets, which he's suddenly pulled over his head, are shaking. When he emerges, he's serious and his eyes are kindly. "Kitty, food is supposed to be a pleasure. You're wired to enjoy your food." He pats my hand. "Poor lady, someone has screwed up all your biological wiring and left you with this stupid belief that good food can't be good for you. Now sit down and at least try to enjoy your breakfast. Focus on that, not the calories."
I didn't lose weight. An active child, I continued to walk, bicycle, hike, and swim. Those were my favorite activities, aside from reading a good book. When I dutifully recorded these activities, along with every morsel of food eaten, the doctors accused me of cheating. No one, they said, could be doing all that and still either gain weight or lose no weight at all. I came to hate meal times, when everyone else could have whatever was being served and I had to sit there with a plate of plain lettuce, some fish or chicken which had been poached or broiled to death, and limp celery sticks or carrots for dessert. The carrots were, my mother informed me, a treat because they really had too much sugar in them to be considered diet food. The other family members, adults who ought to have known better, would laugh and wave spoons full of mashed potatoes and gravy or a forkful of steak at me. My grandmother, as I took my allotment of carrot sticks out onto the patio to eat in peace, chanted, "Fatty, fatty, two by four, couldn't fit through the kitchen door". I hid my carrots in one of the planters. One of my cousins found me digging and suggested I had filched some strawberries, which I was not allowed to have. My food allotment for the next day got cut in half. Later they found the strawberries clutched in the sticky hands of my little sister. I didn't get my regular allotment back and I got no apology.
I focus again on the simple steps which involve getting the fork to my mouth. I savor the sweetness of the tomatoes combining with the salty smoothness of the cheese and snap of black pepper while trying not to remember exactly how many calories are in that one bite. Color and textures have always been important food cues for me. I loved brightly colored dishes with simple flavors which enhanced one another rather than competing or being covered in icky sauces. Diagenou nods in approval and watches for my reaction. "Well," I say with a weak smile, "it didn't kill me."
We both hear the mental "not yet" and he hastens to answer, "Let your own body guide you, Kitty, and forget that shit about losing weight. It's not going to happen so it's time to take a new approach. Look at eating well and enjoying the movement you have instead of trying to make it all go toward a goal that will end in failure."
Another bite goes down, sweet and tangy. I try a bit of the egg, just the yolk, and find that the slightly bitter taste combined with its silken texture really do enhance the rest of the meal.
By the time I reached adulthood, I had a carefully balanced system which centered around my weight and eating: I knew exactly how much of which activity I would have to do in order to burn off the calories contained in a particular serving of food. I knew which foods supposedly burned more calories being consumed than they initially contained. If I somehow managed to go over the self imposed amount, generally about 1200 calories since that's the most I'd been allowed in childhood, I punished myself by exercising even harder and depriving myself of a meal. I ignored my hunger and the health issues it caused. My weight kept going up, doctors kept accusing me of not doing enough, and I doggedly went on to the next diet, the next prescribed exercise routine, the next brick in the road to self destruction.
"Did you set up that exercise routine for me?" I ask. He nods and I take the leafs of paper he's printed out for me. "Dee, there's nothing on here that involves exercise at all! I like these activities. A-and...how can you possibly count anything I do in the wheelchair, such as going to the farmer's market? I don't do anything except sit there."
"Exercise doesn't have to involve something you don't like. You're more likely to move around and be happy about it if it is something you enjoy. That's why we're going to start swimming once a week at the community center. As for the wheelchair --- didn't you complain about your stiff and sore muscles after we'd been out all day?"
"Yes, but..."
"No, no 'but'" he smiles slyly and gives my ample rear end a blatantly lustful appraisal "unless we're talking about the one you're sitting on. The muscles are sore because you're using them. If you're using them, you're moving around and if you're moving around you're doing something to make yourself healthier. Even vacuuming and housework count." He reaches over, thumb caressing the inside of my wrist. "Try it my way for a bit, Kitty, and see what happens. I don't care about your size, I just want you to be as healthy as possible and happy about yourself."
He's given me a lot to think about and I've come to realize that repeating efforts which do not produce a desired result equates with stupidity especially when you expect that doing so just one more time might change things. According to various medical studies, only five percent of men and women who diet ever achieve even ten percent loss of body weight. That amount is often not anywhere near enough to lower the risks losing weight is supposed to treat and within three to five years all of them gain that weight back plus some. Time to try something 'new'...except it's not. It's as old as humanity itself. No need to re-invent the proverbial wheel by trying to control something the body is already equipped to do.
I eat what I want when I want it, paying close attention to just what entices my body and to the signals my body sends about fullness and hunger. I eat in season, from local sources. These fruits and vegetables aren't chemically treated for long journeys and many times they're not grown from commercial seed. They taste better, they last longer, and they satisfy appetite better. All of us, myself included, actually eat less and become full more quickly from these healthier food sources. Through this process I found my love of vegetables, fruits, and spices again. I'm learning that food doesn't have to be bland to be good for you and that food which tastes good isn't bad for you nor is it a bad thing to enjoy your food. Weirdly enough, I don't find myself craving things like candy or commercial baked goods any longer. I can bake a pan of brownies or a batch of cookies, eat one and be happy because I allowed myself the privilege of having that food in the first place.
I've stopped looking for 'exercises' I can adapt to being wheelchair bound. Instead, I revel in that five minute walk to the bathroom. I actually like my hand weights so I've developed a routine with them that I can do while I'm letting Dorie comb out my hair. I concentrate on the feel of muscle against muscle --- how they move, how it feels to move them --- and marvel at the power of my own body. When I'm finished with them, I feel energized and ready to take on the entire world. I especially enjoy the days when we're out at museums or the farmer's market or going to the mall because even if I'm not physically walking, I'm still doing something. I admire the flowers just coming out on the planters or I watch people or I concentrate on a simple sensation such as the wind in my hair or the sun on my face.
Have I lost weight? Probably not. I don't weigh myself any more; in fact, I now adamantly refuse to let any doctor use that as a basis for treatment. I force them to focus on evidence based medicine --- what the laboratory tests say and how the patient actually feels or responds. My blood panels are excellent, better than those on many of their thing, apparently fit patients (the doctors have commented on this before). I've been told I look like I've lost weight even though I probably haven't. The only difference is that I stopped trying to lose the damned weight and concentrated instead on being well.
That sound? It's the weighty wheel of food hatred tumbling off my back. I'm re-inventing myself to be healthy at the size I am, no matter what that size may be.
I hope the bloody thing dashes itself to itty bitty pieces too small to ever bother with again.
I can work this thing on top
If he's XXL well what the hell
Every penny don't fit the slot
The anorexic chicks, the model 6
They don't hold no weight with me
Well 8 or 9, well that's just fine
But I like to hold something I can see o/`
-- Perfect 10 performed by The Beautiful South
"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."
-- Mark Twain
They look so tempting: round, juicy globes sliced diagonally, their juices mingling on the plate with fresh mozzarella; the tantalizing aroma of freshly crushed basil perfuming the dark fruity essence of the virgin olive oil. Even the single egg, which I normally do not like, calls to me with its anise marbled white and perfect bright yellow yolk lightly dusted with kosher salt crystals and cracked pepper. I hesitate before lifting my fork and cutting a wedge of the cheese, which I dip in the olive oil and spear with a section of grape tomato. The first little bit of flavored oil drips onto my tongue and my stomach goes wild in hungry protest. I realize I'm looking forward to eating this simple feast...
...and that is simply not allowed. No matter that the tomatoes are fresh from the farmer's market and have never had a sheen of wax sprayed over them to make them look better. Never mind that the basil, grown with loving care from non-GMO seed, came from my own garden. Forget that olive oil is actually one of those things supposedly good for the body.
I can't eat it. I set the fork down, bite uneaten, and spend a few minutes dragging things around on the plate to make it look like something has been eaten.
"You're not fooling anyone, Kitty. Eat, don't play with it. It's all right," Diagenou says softly and pats my arm reassuringly.
I take my breakfast with him every morning while he drinks his coffee and allows the nutritional supplement to be pumped through his feeding tube. It could be and often is a chance to spend time together, to talk and to make plans. The primary reason for this arrangement, however, is to make certain that my breakfast gets eaten by me and not the pets and that I don't simply play food Tetris with whatever I've been given.
When I was born, I weighed eleven pounds and measured twenty-two inches long. The doctor told my mother to withhold feedings or she'd have a grotesquely obese child by the time I was two.
They put me on my first diet, allowing only 600-900 calories total, when I was nine years old. I've been on pretty much every doctor prescribed diet and tried every over the counter dieting medication or joined every weight loss program you can possibly imagine. At that age, I was already my adult height of six feet tall and I weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. The doctors didn't think once to question why by age ten a child would have already reached her adult height but they readily blamed my weight for almost anything which went wrong. "Eat less and exercise more" became such standard advice that I often found myself chanting it as I drifted off to sleep.
I've been staring at this plate of food now for half an hour. I glance over at Diagenou and he appears to have gone to sleep. The chair doesn't make much noise as I edge it out of the room and toward the kitchen. I'm hoping I'll be able to scrape most of the plate into the compost, perhaps feed the cheese to the dogs, and have no one in the household the wiser. He cracks and eye open as I'm almost into the hallway and asks, "Is your plate empty?"
Perhaps some people might have a talent for lying. I'm not one of them and besides, I know he can see from his bed that the stupid plate is just as full as it was when Dorie prepared it for me. Not only that, but I really ought to know that sneaking anything past a man who does what he does is pure foolishness. "I don't want to eat it."
"Is it rotten? Does it taste bad? No? Well, what the fuck is your problem with perfectly good, well prepared food?" he demands, frustrated. I can understand his frustration; while still able to eat some carefully prepared and cooked foods, most of Diagenou's nutrition comes from the feeding tube. It's a fact he resents most powerfully since salads and vegetables were among his favorites --- the very things I'm refusing to eat --- and he can't have them. I'm used to his harsh words by now and don't take them personally. I don't expect him to understand because I don't understand myself. It seems, even though it just doesn't work, I'm hard wired to be repulsed by perfectly good food if it tastes good or, worse still, if it's likely I'll enjoy it. Those two things are not conducive to weight loss, or so I've been told most of my life.
"N-no, it's delicious!" I wail. "That's the problem! It tastes good and if it tastes good, it can't be good for me. If I eat it, I'll gain even more weight and get even fatter and...."
He's laughing, damn him. I can tell by the way the blankets, which he's suddenly pulled over his head, are shaking. When he emerges, he's serious and his eyes are kindly. "Kitty, food is supposed to be a pleasure. You're wired to enjoy your food." He pats my hand. "Poor lady, someone has screwed up all your biological wiring and left you with this stupid belief that good food can't be good for you. Now sit down and at least try to enjoy your breakfast. Focus on that, not the calories."
I didn't lose weight. An active child, I continued to walk, bicycle, hike, and swim. Those were my favorite activities, aside from reading a good book. When I dutifully recorded these activities, along with every morsel of food eaten, the doctors accused me of cheating. No one, they said, could be doing all that and still either gain weight or lose no weight at all. I came to hate meal times, when everyone else could have whatever was being served and I had to sit there with a plate of plain lettuce, some fish or chicken which had been poached or broiled to death, and limp celery sticks or carrots for dessert. The carrots were, my mother informed me, a treat because they really had too much sugar in them to be considered diet food. The other family members, adults who ought to have known better, would laugh and wave spoons full of mashed potatoes and gravy or a forkful of steak at me. My grandmother, as I took my allotment of carrot sticks out onto the patio to eat in peace, chanted, "Fatty, fatty, two by four, couldn't fit through the kitchen door". I hid my carrots in one of the planters. One of my cousins found me digging and suggested I had filched some strawberries, which I was not allowed to have. My food allotment for the next day got cut in half. Later they found the strawberries clutched in the sticky hands of my little sister. I didn't get my regular allotment back and I got no apology.
I focus again on the simple steps which involve getting the fork to my mouth. I savor the sweetness of the tomatoes combining with the salty smoothness of the cheese and snap of black pepper while trying not to remember exactly how many calories are in that one bite. Color and textures have always been important food cues for me. I loved brightly colored dishes with simple flavors which enhanced one another rather than competing or being covered in icky sauces. Diagenou nods in approval and watches for my reaction. "Well," I say with a weak smile, "it didn't kill me."
We both hear the mental "not yet" and he hastens to answer, "Let your own body guide you, Kitty, and forget that shit about losing weight. It's not going to happen so it's time to take a new approach. Look at eating well and enjoying the movement you have instead of trying to make it all go toward a goal that will end in failure."
Another bite goes down, sweet and tangy. I try a bit of the egg, just the yolk, and find that the slightly bitter taste combined with its silken texture really do enhance the rest of the meal.
By the time I reached adulthood, I had a carefully balanced system which centered around my weight and eating: I knew exactly how much of which activity I would have to do in order to burn off the calories contained in a particular serving of food. I knew which foods supposedly burned more calories being consumed than they initially contained. If I somehow managed to go over the self imposed amount, generally about 1200 calories since that's the most I'd been allowed in childhood, I punished myself by exercising even harder and depriving myself of a meal. I ignored my hunger and the health issues it caused. My weight kept going up, doctors kept accusing me of not doing enough, and I doggedly went on to the next diet, the next prescribed exercise routine, the next brick in the road to self destruction.
"Did you set up that exercise routine for me?" I ask. He nods and I take the leafs of paper he's printed out for me. "Dee, there's nothing on here that involves exercise at all! I like these activities. A-and...how can you possibly count anything I do in the wheelchair, such as going to the farmer's market? I don't do anything except sit there."
"Exercise doesn't have to involve something you don't like. You're more likely to move around and be happy about it if it is something you enjoy. That's why we're going to start swimming once a week at the community center. As for the wheelchair --- didn't you complain about your stiff and sore muscles after we'd been out all day?"
"Yes, but..."
"No, no 'but'" he smiles slyly and gives my ample rear end a blatantly lustful appraisal "unless we're talking about the one you're sitting on. The muscles are sore because you're using them. If you're using them, you're moving around and if you're moving around you're doing something to make yourself healthier. Even vacuuming and housework count." He reaches over, thumb caressing the inside of my wrist. "Try it my way for a bit, Kitty, and see what happens. I don't care about your size, I just want you to be as healthy as possible and happy about yourself."
He's given me a lot to think about and I've come to realize that repeating efforts which do not produce a desired result equates with stupidity especially when you expect that doing so just one more time might change things. According to various medical studies, only five percent of men and women who diet ever achieve even ten percent loss of body weight. That amount is often not anywhere near enough to lower the risks losing weight is supposed to treat and within three to five years all of them gain that weight back plus some. Time to try something 'new'...except it's not. It's as old as humanity itself. No need to re-invent the proverbial wheel by trying to control something the body is already equipped to do.
I eat what I want when I want it, paying close attention to just what entices my body and to the signals my body sends about fullness and hunger. I eat in season, from local sources. These fruits and vegetables aren't chemically treated for long journeys and many times they're not grown from commercial seed. They taste better, they last longer, and they satisfy appetite better. All of us, myself included, actually eat less and become full more quickly from these healthier food sources. Through this process I found my love of vegetables, fruits, and spices again. I'm learning that food doesn't have to be bland to be good for you and that food which tastes good isn't bad for you nor is it a bad thing to enjoy your food. Weirdly enough, I don't find myself craving things like candy or commercial baked goods any longer. I can bake a pan of brownies or a batch of cookies, eat one and be happy because I allowed myself the privilege of having that food in the first place.
I've stopped looking for 'exercises' I can adapt to being wheelchair bound. Instead, I revel in that five minute walk to the bathroom. I actually like my hand weights so I've developed a routine with them that I can do while I'm letting Dorie comb out my hair. I concentrate on the feel of muscle against muscle --- how they move, how it feels to move them --- and marvel at the power of my own body. When I'm finished with them, I feel energized and ready to take on the entire world. I especially enjoy the days when we're out at museums or the farmer's market or going to the mall because even if I'm not physically walking, I'm still doing something. I admire the flowers just coming out on the planters or I watch people or I concentrate on a simple sensation such as the wind in my hair or the sun on my face.
Have I lost weight? Probably not. I don't weigh myself any more; in fact, I now adamantly refuse to let any doctor use that as a basis for treatment. I force them to focus on evidence based medicine --- what the laboratory tests say and how the patient actually feels or responds. My blood panels are excellent, better than those on many of their thing, apparently fit patients (the doctors have commented on this before). I've been told I look like I've lost weight even though I probably haven't. The only difference is that I stopped trying to lose the damned weight and concentrated instead on being well.
That sound? It's the weighty wheel of food hatred tumbling off my back. I'm re-inventing myself to be healthy at the size I am, no matter what that size may be.
I hope the bloody thing dashes itself to itty bitty pieces too small to ever bother with again.