Author: Marlene Harris

Feb 13, 2022

So as it turns out, I can’t weigh myself regularly without it devolving into self-abuse and despair. It’s going to make the weight-loss journey a little tricky but at the very least, I am going to stall for months and months. I need a little breathing room. So I am no longer posting my weight here…until I want to. No one is reading this anyway, right?

Almost immediately after making the momentous decision to start this journal and try again for the ever-elusive goal of “somehow, not fat” which might actually be impossible, I gave up. I was like “I am going to do better!” then would eat two of three slices of fresh homemade bread with salted butter. So delicious.

I’d be like “start again, you can do it!” and resolve to wake up and exercise…except instead I would stay in bed and stare at the ceiling, feeling like I hated myself and waking up was like the worst possible thing that could have happened to me just then. Which would be closely followed by the realization that I had a bed to sleep in, food to eat and a decent job and I should stop whining like a little bitch. Which was followed by more self-hate and neurotic judgment about my general worth in the world. Mornings can be rough.

Not exactly the stuff of perky, thin fitness instructors who are just *filled* with positivity.

Last week I read an interesting article on something called Body Neutrality which briefly gave me hope. The idea is that going from “I loathe my wrinkled, fat ass with the power of a thousand suns!” to “I celebrate my special, unique body and shine my heart light through supportive positivity!” is a pretty big step. So large a step that it’s difficult not to embrace the “go fuck yourself” approach instead. So rather than pretend like body positivity is ever going to be a thing just aim at something more like being tolerant.

I immediately saw the potential. If I could treat my body like my irritating and passive-aggressive co-worker who I still have to be polite to…well, that could work. My body is that annoying colleague that heats their fish leftovers in the shared microwave, interrupts constantly, has asinine suggestions, who somehow manages to be both condescending and ass-licking at the same time and you still have to find a way to get the project done on time, collaboratively.

Suddenly the exhausting, uphill battle to like myself becomes something much more manageable – the requirement instead is to merely be polite and as neutral as possible. I don’t have to like my co-workers but I can’t abuse them and be a total asshole, either. Self-acceptance is the same as writing a really effective internal HR policy!

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In the end, my internal abuse continued and as it turns out, it’s difficult to fire your body from the job and hire a more effective one. So, that’s still a work in progress.

Still, it was enough momentum to propel me into exercise again. Four days in a row now…which may not sound like much but it’s a beginning. If I can turn four days into five days, that’s a whopping 25% better! If a make it to a week, then a week is way, way better than 4 days. A week is magical.

All of which is an attempt to follow through on the newest thing I am trying: just don’t give up. No matter what, just keep going. The tiniest step is better than none at all. We’ll see how that goes. I did give up and now I am un-giving up. I notice that I have done this many many many times. And that even the fact that starting again makes me hate myself. I notice that, too, since I am so convinced that this is going to be like every other time that I failed.

But that’s the point of a journey, right? You step in a direction and you hope that you get where you want to go…but even if you don’t at least you are moving on a path and still alive and the journey has value.

Wednesday, Jan 19
Weight: 178

It starts with breakfast. I intend to eat “something healthy” so I can “start the day right” and whatever ever other magical incantation I’ve been led to believe is good for me. I start surveying the options: yogurt with granola (kinda high in carbs and the yogurt is actually sort of chalky and gross), cereal (too much sugar), an egg and toast (the egg is a pain to cook and makes dishes, the toast carb-ish and I know I’ll just want two slices), leftovers from the night before? I dunno – white chicken chili just doesn’t sound good for breakfast. So then I don’t eat anything since nothing seems right.

And then I get hungry at 10am and I still don’t have any better idea of what I am going to eat so I have another cup of coffee. Maybe even another two cups since it’s an appetite suppressant and it makes me feel temporarily virtuous. This was easier on keto, I think, where I could just eat bacon constantly and put whipping cream in my coffee. The problem with keto, though, is there is no way to make stir-fried rice which is the most perfect food known to humankind.

“Be mindful, not controlling” is the advice I give myself in my head. Two minutes later I already feel like I’ve failed since I failed to notice eating the first half of my chosen meal since I was starving from not eating breakfast.

Eventually, I get hungry enough that I eat something. This morning, it was mashed cauliflower with broccoli and some leftover carnitas from the tacos the night before. As I eat, I am already aware that I am not following a plan, I don’t really know how much I can eat and still plan to lose weight, I definitely know the food is too complicated and has too many ingredients to write down in any food tracker and that I feel guilty for reasons I can’t really name. By the time I am finished eating, I wish that I could somehow just stop eating permanently so I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

But also, it tastes pretty good and I feel peace while I am mid-meal.

It’s hard to escape the obvious: I eat this way most of the time, which means by definition it’s not different. By virtue of it not being different, my body and my habits are unlikely to be different as a result. My mindfulness leads me to notice, again, that I want to lose weight but I don’t want to change anything because I am mostly happy. I mean, I hate the way I look — but that’s normal, right?

Even more importantly, I know that I’m making my son french toast this evening since he’s requested it and it feels so good to put food he loves in front of him. I’ve made the bread from scratch, the eggs are organic and so is the milk and it’s made with lots of love, care and pleasure — I LOVE to cook.

But instead of feeling wholesome and good about it, I feel like I am maybe feeding him bread instead of vegetables and all of the world’s problems are my fault. And I also know that I don’t have the energy to make two dinners — one plain chicken breast for me with a salad and him the world’s most delicious french toast. Nope. So I’ll probably just eat french toast I have already failed before it’s even happened. I might as well glue the french toast to my hips.

How come they never talk about these things in Noom?

Sunday Jan 16, 2022
Weight: 178

This is the first entry of a weight loss blog. I am trying to make my body smaller and stronger. It’s a ridiculous goal, one I’ve failed at many many times. But here I am again.

I’ve been writing these entries in my head for a long time, talking to a pretend audience but I never had the courage to follow through. Since this writing is intended to be anonymous, I still don’t have a lot of courage. But who knows? Maybe I’ll find some down the road.

First off, so you know things about who is writing this: I am a woman in my late forties, an American, white. I am pretty sure I am not at the pointy end of any population bell curve: not rich or poor, not sane or insane, not smart or stupid, not fat or thin. I haven’t invented anything and I am not an influencer on social media. I am not a special or unique snowflake of any kind. I’ve never had an extreme eating disorder or been famous. I probably don’t have much interesting to say, in fact, so unless you are reading this as a way to procrastinate or are struggling with insomnia, you might want to switch to another channel.

While I am by no means a thin person, I am also not extremely fat. Like a lot of women my age I am about 40 pounds from my personal ideal. I’ve never actually *weighed* my ideal so for all I know this is as good as it will ever get for me. No one has ever rejected me because of my weight but I have been called fat-shaming names by strangers. Oddly, it doesn’t get to me much since I am way meaner to myself than any stranger could be. My capacity to torture myself is way more flexible and creative than anyone else’s. I know you know what I mean.

So now you know me: a bland American white woman in her forties who wants to drop 40 – 50 pounds. I am more than a cliché, I am an entire marketing demographic. Noom sales people drool with capitalist greed when they see my online user persona. I’d claim I want to “get healthy” and “age with grace” but I am trying not to lie to myself. I grew up in the early eighties – jazzercise and Jane Fonda and all that crap – and I have chased the word skinny my whole life. If I were super healthy and could run marathons and stayed the same weight, I’d be disappointed. Like I said: it’s a ridiculous goal.

The strangest part is that the goal has no reason behind it. I wouldn’t be beautiful even if I was rail thin. And now I’m too old to be desirable anyway. Even if I were skinny and beautiful and young, attracting lots of attention because of beauty is more of a curse than a gift. Plenty of my gorgeous friends have paid a very, VERY high price for their beauty. They are definitely not happier because of their stunning good looks in any case.

More bluntly, the magical skinny is likely a milestone because I believe myself to be mostly valueless and at some point I drank the kool-aid and associated skinny with high value. I am not alone in this. Plenty of times in my life I’d think “if I were skinner I’d be better at my job” or “if I were skinnier my house would be clean” or “if I were skinnier I am sure that I wouldn’t have paid this bill late.”

I’ve also tried to pretend that I don’t feel this way about the rolls of fat on my hips and belly. That I am fine with…um, whatever, my unique inner beauty or some other bullshit like that. I am not fine with it. When I see myself in a mirror, I cringe away from my own reflection. There isn’t a way to make-believe I don’t. Trying to lose weight or trying to not think about losing weight are about equal.

I know I probably won’t get where I want to go. But I’ve decided that it has value to *notice* myself not getting there. It’s mindfulness of a sort — not the self-love kind where you sit in quiet, joyful meditation and realize the gift of being present with yourself and whole in your magical self-acceptance.

No, this is more the agonized, neurotic brand of mindfulness where I practice meticulous and slightly abusive observation of my own behavior and inner state. I want to know what the fuck is actually happening when I try to eat less and exercise more. I’ve read a hundred articles, tried every diet from keto to vegan to mediterranean to “mindful eating”. The only thing I know for sure is that losing fat is way, WAY more complicated, impossible and painful than the so-called experts generally acknowledge. When I lose fat, it comes back. When I change habits it doesn’t stick. Even when I am successful and think “I HAVE FINALLY DONE IT” I feel weird about myself – becoming food obsessed or ultra vigilant – and eventually end up back with the status quo.

So, instead of measuring my success in inspirational blog form, I’m going to measure my journey to failure in exquisite detail with as objective an eye as I can manage, recording the results here. Beginnings are the first step with a destination in mind but I’ll admit I don’t have any idea what the path looks like to that skinny mountaintop.