A Dumbbell In A Home Gym

Kimkins: Caveat Freakin' Emptor.

As I've said before, I try to stay away from blogging about Internet trainwrecks. But sometimes, one of them gets under my skin and I have to say something. And this isn't even just an Internet trainwreck; it's a full-blown fraud, in my opinion. More after the jump, if you're interested. And believe me -- even though this entry is long, there's a lot I've left out.

Showkiller.

So, hi.

Don't have much to report on the weight loss front; I'm still mulling over a lot of issues raised in last week's entry. I think I've got a new plan of action ready to go, but I want to think about it some more.

Thanks for all the comments, as always; I appreciated all of them and I realize a lot of us are in the same boat at the moment.

Because I feel like I owe everyone some kind of entry, I'll put something totally off topic under the cut. I've been holding out on all of you. I have an amazing superpower that I've been keeping under wraps ...

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Not Afraid.

(This is kind of meta. And also kind of stale, because the big kerfuffle happened a few days ago. I'm sorry ... I generally try to avoid doing blog posts about other blog posts, especially ones that have gone off the rails and/or become old news. But this one stuck in my craw. I've been sitting on it for a few days. I'm still ticked off. So here we are.)

The first thing you should know: I'm not generally a big Kirstie Alley fan. She strikes me as the sort of person who seems cool and hilarious for the first few minutes after you meet her, but then she just won't shut up -- she won't let you get a word in edgewise and she gets you backed up against a wall and stays right in your face, regaling you with cringe-inducing details about her period and her last gynecologist visit and her therapist and her bastard of an ex-boyfriend, and to top it all off she spits when she talks. I'm sure I'm being way too hard on poor Kirstie, but that's always the vibe I've caught off her. Something about her makes me intensely uncomfortable.

But I've been feeling this odd sense of kinship with her in the past couple of years. We both got really fat, and we both started getting rid of all that fat right around the same time. Man, it's like we're twins or something, huh? Sisters under the loose skin. Maybe if I were ever in a situation to actually meet her, we could be two formerly fat chicks swapping battle stories. That'd be kind of fun. If she'd let me talk.

Anyhow, Kirstie recently fulfilled a vow she made to wear a bikini on the Oprah show if she lost 75 pounds. I don't know what the reaction has been like elsewhere, but I checked out Big Fat Deal the other day and read this entry. Mo Pie did a great job of summing everything up, so I won't restate it all.

(And, y'know, I truly couldn't care less if she was wearing stockings on the show or if she really weighs what she claims she does, now or back in her fat days. None of that changes that she lost a hell of a lot of weight.)

Man, I was pissed off. It wasn't all that long ago that I was returning to the world of bathing suits myself, so this one really struck a raw nerve. It wasn't just the picking on Kirstie's body, though that irked me too: it was the whole "Well, I'd never go out in a bathing suit in public, and nobody else with my body type should either" attitude.

'Scuse me? I voted on Tuesday, and I'm pretty sure I didn't see any candidates for "Decider of What Overweight Women Can Wear In Public" on my ballot. I mean, I'm certainly not innocent of thinking things like "Sweetie, midriff-baring babydoll T-shirts are NOT your friend." But the thinking is as far as it goes, and then I just look at something or someone else and get on with my life.

And here's the thing: If Kirstie's thighs give you bad dreams, my thighs will send you into full-blown Freddy Kruegerland. My thighs are seriously unpretty, and I'm not saying that to be self-deprecating. They're porky. They're jiggly. They're dimply. Watch them wiggle, see them jiggle. If I catch sight of them in the full-length mirror in the locker room on my way to the pool, I wince.

They are what I made them after so many years of inactivity and poor eating. They're probably not ever going to look much better unless I go in for some thighplasty, and since I'm a horrible wimp about surgery, I think we can safely say that anythingplasty just ain't happening.

But I've recently discovered that I really like swimming, especially during summers at our community pool. So what do I do? Do I deprive myself of an activity that's really beneficial to me (including my poor abused thighs) just because the sight of me in a bathing suit might offend some snotty, judgmental twit who might rush home and write a scathing blog entry about me?

Hell no. No way. I'm almost 38 years old, and I've learned that there are always going to be snotty, judgmental twits. I can hide from them, or I can live my life on my terms. It's not a hard choice.

If my thighs or any other part of my body bothers you when I'm in my bathing suit, tough shit. Get over it, and get over yourself while you're at it.

Oh, and kindly cram the "Well, I don't think any woman with my body type should wear a bathing suit ever" crap. I'm sincerely sorry for you if you're so hung up about your body that you're too afraid to wear a suit in public, but that's your problem.

Or here's a thought: Go out in public in a bathing suit. No, seriously. Go to the pool. You might be surprised by just how little attention most people pay to you. At my community pool in the summer, everyone's looking at the cute teenage girls in their bikinis, which is absolutely fine with me. At the rec center pools, I'm around hardcore swimmers doing their laps or moms watching their kids. Either way, nobody's really looking at me. I thought I'd feel naked and exposed; instead, I just feel like part of the crowd. It's no big deal.

If you don't want to believe me, that's fine, and if you want to keep your body mostly under wraps due to real or perceived flaws, well, that's up to you. But don't project your insecurities onto me. I'm not gonna hide myself to make you feel better.

The Uphill Battle.

My husband and I went for a bike ride yesterday morning. One of the trails leads up to the main drag through our development. Right at the end of this branch of the trail is a short but unbelievably steep hill. Even now, with almost a year of cycling and other exercise under my belt, I still can't get all the way up the thing. On a very good day I can make it two-thirds of the way up before I stall out and face the choice of getting off the bike and pushing or toppling over on my head. My husband can get all the way up the hill, so he generally gets there first and waits for me.

While we were standing there catching our breath and deciding which way to ride next, a jogger came bounding up the hill and stopped. I glanced over at him. I guess he saw me look at him and figured he needed to make an excuse as to why he hadn't kept on jogging. "I beat my son here!" he said proudly.

"Ha ha!" I said. Really, I had no idea how I was expected to respond to that. If he'd been an older guy and his son had been, say, Jeremy Wariner, that might have been something to brag about to strangers. But this guy was reasonably young and obviously in good shape, and when his son pulled into view, the son turned out to be a small boy on a small bike. Which makes Dad of the Year's cocky attitude seem rather pathetic, if you ask me.

And it didn't stop there. The boy was having the same problems I do getting up that last steep stretch. I didn't stare at the poor kid, but I saw his face long enough to deduce that he was not having even a little bit of fun.

"C'mon!" Dad barked. "PUSH your way UP THAT HILL!" The boy made his way up as best he could but wasn't moving fast enough to suit Dad of the Year, and finally Dad said "Aw, just get off and push the bike. You're never gonna get up there like that" with palpable disdain.

Whatta guy, huh? And I betcha he just won't understand it when his son prefers to sit in front of the Nintendo rather than go out and take a nice bike ride with good old Dad.

The whole incident made me really sad. My parents were never like that with me, but there were certainly other authority figures in my childhood who did everything they could to make me associate exercise with torture and failure. As my husband and I pedaled off, I started thinking about those people.

There were the gym teachers who'd make the entire class run laps around the gym if one or two kids were acting up. I guess the message from this was supposed to be "Get angry at the kid who caused the trouble and discourage bad behavior through peer pressure," but the lesson I took away was "Running sucks."

And there was the sadistic bitch of a camp counselor who made us run "suicide drills" on the tennis court on a 98-degree and humid day because one of us pissed her off. Why the hell she wasn't fired when the camp infirmary filled up with girls in the throes of heat exhaustion, I'll never know. Again with the "Exercise is misery" message. Lesson learned; for years afterward, I avoided any kind of voluntary exercise.

And on top of those, I had the usual dramas with Being Picked Last For Teams, or Not Being Picked At All Even Though I Was Better At Soccer Than The Popular Girls Who Did Get Picked. These weren't the fault of anyone in particular, but they did nothing to make physical activity more appealing.

Man. No wonder that I've been so surprised in the last year and a half to discover that I actually like exercise. I really hope that the boy from yesterday manages to make that discovery too.

Just When I Thought I'd Seen Everything ...

And now, a handy eBaying tip from your friendly neighborhood Dumbbell.

Want to know a quick way to ensure that I never, ever bid on your item, not even if it's something I really wanted?

Simple! Leave negative feedback for an unhappy buyer, calling her a "fat cow."

Just in case you think you hadn't already made your point, call her that again in your follow-up response to her negative feedback. Some buyers are so demanding ... expecting their merchandise to be well-packaged and not smashed to bits when they get it. Picky, picky! People like that really deserve to be put in their place, don't they?

Mr. "Fat Cow" won't be getting any of my money. I'm thankful I saw that little exchange before placing a bid. At least he saved me the cost of international shipping.

Don't Mind Me.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with weight loss (although I sometimes wonder if I burn more calories when I'm really, really pissed off about something); it's about spreading the word about a horrendous wrong done to Absolute Write, one of my favorite online communities.

You can read a summary of what happened over at Making Light. Basically, Barbara Bauer, who's had a hair up her ass about the AW crew for a long time because two of their members placed her on their list of 20 Worst Agencies, managed to get AW's ISP to pull the entire site down -- both the main site and the message forums -- simply because someone posted Barbara Bauer's email address on the AW message forum. That same address is posted right on Barbara Bauer's friggin' site, for Pete's sake. Unbelievable.

(Oh, and if you need a quick appetite suppressant? Read some of the godawful 9/11-related poetry on Barbara's site. Good lord -- that stuff is truly a literary finger down the throat. Urp.)

So I'm going to help the AW crew give Barbara Bauer Ph.D. some bad publicity that'll positively dwarf what she got from the old AW forums.

Thank you, Dawno, for creating a handy Technorati tag:

BarbaraBauer

As you were.

The Latest From The Medical Journal "Duh".

I don't know about you, but the studies covered in today's Lean Plate Club struck me as new achievements in Hysterical Discovery of the Obvious. I love studies like these. Nothing puts a smile on my face and a spring in my step quite like the latest "Hey, fatties, guess what? Everyone hates you!" research polls.

Public opinion polls find that those who weigh too much are routinely stereotyped as lazy, slow and unmotivated compared with people at a healthier weight, who are more likely to be described as smart, competent and attractive.

The surprise? Overweight and obese people share many of the same negative views about their hefty counterparts.

"The surprise"? Seriously? Someone was actually surprised to hear that fat people often share negative perceptions about obesity? Huh. What d'you suppose the rent is like on that cave this person's obviously been living in for the last, oh, century?

Memo to future researchers: Save yourselves the time and expense of another study and take it from me, a longtime fat person: When you are told from a very young age that you're ugly and slobby and lazy and disgusting and basically a blight on humanity and that no man will ever want you and that nothing else about you really matters because you are what you weigh, then yes, you tend to internalize it and start believing that it's all true. In fact, you'll sometimes rise to the occasion and constantly tell yourself all that negative stuff even when nobody else is saying it to you.

And the quotes from Marlene Schwartz are right on the money: Overcoming the mental soundtrack telling you that you're too lazy to even think about starting a fitness program is one of the hardest things people trying to lose weight and get fit will face. I can buy exercise equipment. I can stock the kitchen with healthful, nutritious food. But I can't take out my brain and replace it with a new one that isn't laden with all my emotional baggage.

So yes, researchers: Fat people can and do share the negative perceptions of obesity. And yes, that incredible negativity can get in our ways when we decide we're going to improve our health and fitness. I'm not sure why that's such a shock, but apparently it needed to be said. Now run along and go do a groundbreaking study on some other earthshattering topic like "Gravity Makes Stuff Fall Down."

Haste Does Not Bring Success.

Can we talk about the Bally Total Fitness 30 Day Makeover ads?

I hate them.

I hate them a lot.

(Please note: I have nothing against the program itself, having never tried it. If you're currently doing it or something like it and enjoying it, grand. It's the friggin' commercials that are getting right up my nose at the moment.)

If you haven't seen them, you aren't missing much. People stand in front of a camera prattling on about how they were busy with babies and children and life and stuff and before they knew it they'd gotten FAT! and now they've just gotta get in shape. Time for thirty days of hell. We're treated to shots of them working out and grunting and sweating and pumping and being hectored by tiny muscular drill sergeants and generally suffering. Then we see the "after" scenes in which they talk about how incredibly wonderful life is now that they're thinner, and how the top modeling agencies are all calling and Brad Pitt's just told them that he's dumping Angelina for them and all that. Feh.

I hate the perfectly nice-looking women carrying on about how fat and unsightly they are in their "before" states. Can't speak for anyone else, but I know I'd certainly love to look like one of those "befores". Yesyesyes, I know it's all relative -- someone who's weighed 125 pounds her whole life would probably be horrorstruck to find herself weighing 145, whereas the day my scale flashes a "145" at me I will do great stag leaps of joy all over the house, traumatizing my cats for weeks in the process.

I hate the hideous bridesmaid dress one woman wears in her "after" shot. If that's really what she was getting in shape for, she wasted her time.

I hate the one with the husband grabbing his wife and saying "Huh-huh, you're so hot now that I just hadda cop a feel!" Oh, retch.

More than any of that, I hate the whole idea behind these ads.

This is what I take away from them: Fitness is something that should be rushed into headfirst. No time to waste, lardass! Your wellbeing and strength shouldn't enter into this at all -- it's all about you being fat. FAT! Your workouts should be painful and brutal and miserable. Hey, it's only what you deserve for doing unthinkable things like daring to get pregnant and put on weight in the first place, right? It should all be gotten overwith as soon as possible. And once you hit whatever goal you set for yourself? Yay! It's over!

(I could be wrong about that last bit, but if any of the makeover folks in the commercials have said anything about keeping up with their exercise, I didn't hear it. Maybe I was grinding my teeth too loudly. It happens.)

This pisses me off because it reminds me too much of me and how I used to approach exercise. I used to believe that of course, I could jump right into a workout schedule that would probably kill an Olympic athlete even though I'd been sedentary for years. I used to believe that if I didn't feel like I was going to die after my workout, I hadn't done anything worthwhile. And when I'd get tired of feeling sore and dizzy and winded and wretched and I'd give up on whatever crazy-ass exercise plan I'd concocted for myself this time, I believed it was because I was lazy and weak-willed and undisciplined and because exercise basically sucked anyhow. I know I've mentioned that in the past, my diet and exercise efforts rarely made it past the three-month mark, and I wonder now if that was an offshoot of the same flawed thinking. If I'd kept up a rigorous diet and a killer exercise schedule for three months and didn't see really dramatic results, I was obviously wasting my time.

I was so wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong about every last bit of it. And in going about everything in such a cockamamie, totally wrongheaded fashion, I feel like I cheated myself out of so much. And I don't even mean the potential weight loss. That's part of it, yes, but even if the Ghost of Weight Loss Future came to me tonight and told me that I'm never going to lose another ounce, I'd still ride my bike, go for long trail walks, do yoga, and lift weights.

I know how gooey and New Agey this sounds, but I've learned a lot about myself in the past year. I'm tougher, both mentally and physically, than I ever knew. I am not lazy (though some days, I still do a damn good impression of it). I am not weak. I may not be the fastest walker or the strongest weightlifter or the world's most efficient cyclist, but I'm tenacious and once I've started the task, I will get it done. And nothing feels quite like the sense of accomplishment I get when I manage to ride my bike all the way up a hill that defeated me before, or when I can do a new yoga pose that I couldn't manage in the past.

I realize that everyone's different; some people are unquestionably more motivated by the kamikaze all-or-nothing approach. But I feel that the breakneck approach is the one that gets the lion's share of the attention, and that my side is seriously underrepresented.

So if you're like I used to be and you're feeling sore and weary and frustrated because you've forced yourself through a workout you hated and you're thinking of giving up on this exercise thing and maybe tossing the healthful eating to boot, I want you to know something: It's okay to start slowly, so slowly that you can't believe you could possibly be doing yourself any good. The time to ratchet up the intensity and start kicking your own ass will come later, after you've formed a daily exercise habit.

And there is no reason on earth to do something that you find too strenuous or too painful or that you've tried a few times and just plain don't like. It's okay to take the time to find an activity you enjoy. You deserve nothing less. And you never know what might end up floating your boat. Up until last autumn I'd have never dreamed that I'd actually look forward to spending Saturdays on a bike.

I still have the fortune cookie message that I mentioned in my first entry, the one that reads "Haste does not bring success." And I still believe that.

Hot Water.

Every Tuesday afternoon, I quietly open up another browser window and pull up the latest Lean Plate Club chat on the washingtonpost.com site.

I really like these chats.

Most of the time. Sometimes I think these people are nuts, and then I wonder if I sound like a nut too.

One person today, who pointed out that she's slender and wanted to offer her hints on how to stay that way, gave the following priceless advice: To give yourself "a little something" for satiety, drink a mug of hot water.

Mmm hmm. Hot water. Not even hot water with coffee or tea in it. Just hot water.

Oh, for God's sake. Okay -- if that works for her, grand, but give me a break.

I don't want to pound on that woman because I thought some of the other comments she made were reasonable and I think she meant well, but stuff like that really drives home that sometimes thin people just plain Don't Get how people like me ended up needing to lose a shitload of weight. (And hey, good for them -- I hope they never have the personal experience. Frankly, it sucks.)

See, when I have a crazy insane crackmonkey queen-hell out-of-control craving, it is rarely if ever because I'm actually hungry. I know this always baffles naturally thin friends of mine who eat when they're hungry and stop when they feel sated and can't understand why the hell that's so friggin' hard for a hippo like me. Before you think about offering me a "helpful" tip designed to trick my tummy into thinking it's full, you really really need to understand that hunger has almost nothing to do with why I overeat, and neither does satiety.

I am an extreme emotional eater. If I'm upset, I want to eat. If I'm really happy, I want to eat. If I'm lonely, I want to eat. Hell -- if I'm bored out of my skull and need to amuse myself, I want to eat. I cannot remember a time when I wasn't like this. And it's been one of the hardest things for me to overcome this year. And I don't have any helpful hints on how to head it off, either. Every day is a new struggle.

Some days I'll feel an insane craving come on and be able to say "Hey, Self -- you don't really want those chips; you're just in a pissy mood, and devouring an entire bag of junk food ain't gonna make things better, sweetie" and mean it, and get on with my day. Some days I give in to the urge to chomp mindlessly but try to mitigate the damage by chomping baby carrots, grape tomatoes, and other things that I can count towards the daily fruit and veg consumption, things that are not nutritional Armageddon.

And once in a while I just give in and eat the damn cheese, or the whole chocolate bar. I duly note this in FitDay and vow that once in a while is not a big deal and tomorrow is another day.

Now, controlling those urges does get easier with practice. And I'm much better about recognizing when I want something because it sounds good and I'm hungry versus wanting something because I'm angry, giddy, bored, hurting, or whatever. But that's assuming that life is rosy and isn't sending me any of those wacky little curveballs it loves so much, and we've had a couple of those this summer.

You know what I seriously doubt would help at all? Drinking a mug of hot water. I'm not going to try it because it sounds pretty disgusting, but I imagine that if I did, it'd go something like this: "Well, that was ... gross. Now, how 'bout that brownie?"

That suggestion reminded me of one of the many dieting "aids" my mom brought home for herself (and by extension for me) when I was a teenager. It was essentially a pack of generic LifeSavers. You were supposed to eat one Magic LifeSaver and then glug down about 12 ounces of water, after which you'd feel full and sated and not tempted to overeat at all thanks to the Magic LifeSavers.

What piffle. I'm just sorry those people got any of our money.

N.H. Doctor in Hot Seat Again Over Remarks - Yahoo! News

I freakin' knew it. I knew there was more to this than what was reported.

I am so pissed off about this. I'm pissed about the initial wire reports that didn't even mention the doctor's remark about the woman's future love life. I guess that might have gotten in the way of the "Duh huh, this stupid fat woman's mad that the doctor said she was FAT!" angle. Couldn't have that.

I'm also pissed because I was doing battle last week with people on a forum about this, and I kept saying "The review board, who heard the woman's complaint and know the whole story, sided with her; is it just possible there's more to this than what we're hearing?" Didn't make a bit of difference; who the hell was I to try to get in the way of a good bout of Bash the Fatties? Apparently we were headed straight for a nightmare future in Slippery-Slopeville, where doctors would be too petrified to tell obese patients to lose weight for fear of being sued, leading to fat people keeling over dead left and right and then coming back to life and suing the doctors for not telling them they needed to slim down.

Here's the thing: I absolutely do NOT have a problem with doctors advising obese patients that they should lose weight. I used to boggle a bit at the doctors who didn't even mention my weight when I was getting upward of 250 pounds -- a surprising number didn't say a word. I was never offended by the doctors who did mention it, even if I thought the advice they offered was stupefyingly useless. (Some day when I'm feeling ranty again, I'll unleash on The Diet, that ridiculous mimeographed horror that doctors have been handing out to the fat since I was a kid.)

But there's a compassionate way to handle this, and then there's the Dr. Crapweasel method:

"Let's face it, if your husband were to die tomorrow, who would want you?" the state Board of Medicine says Dr. Terry Bennett told the overweight patient in June 2004.

"Well, men might want you, but not the types you want to want you. Might even be a black guy," it quoted him as saying, based on the woman's complaint.

As far as I'm concerned, the comment in the first paragraph is appalling enough and I'd have been on the woman's side even if that were the worst of it. It's inexcusable for anybody to say that to a fat woman, but it's especially wrong for a goddamn health professional. That second paragraph? Oh. My. God. I'm sorry -- what century are we living in again?

And if you're tempted to protest that surely she misunderstood him, think again:

In a telephone interview Tuesday from Rochester, Bennett denied any wrongdoing and defended his message to her, saying he has read polls that say black men prefer overweight women.

Oh. I notice he didn't mention the racial angle when he was interviewed last week. Hm, wonder why he didn't see fit to bring up that part or tell anyone that this was what the woman was upset about? No matter; the rest of the article makes it abundantly clear that this dillhole believes he's incapable of making a mistake. Indeed, he's so utterly perfect that I can't understand why he has any obese patients, or even any ill patients; surely, just being in the presence of His Exalted Medical Majesty should be enough to cure anyone of any disease. Maybe they should kiss the hem of his white coat for good measure?

I cannot imagine what it had to be like to be this poor woman last week. Bad enough that she had to go through that with this asshat, but then to have the media completely misrepresent her story and turn her into a laughingstock? Okay, they didn't use her name, but she'd know. She'd know everyone was talking about her. She'd know she was now the poster child for Those Oversensitive Fatties.

In the meantime, I'm sure that the media will spread this story just as avidly as they did the original "Fat Woman Upset About Being Called Fat" version, and I'm sure that the people who lined up to throw rocks at this woman will recant. Just like I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow and be a size 2.