Friday, February 27, 2015

My Six Hundred Pound Life



Do any of you watch that show?  On TLC?  I find it fascinating.  The amount of food those people can eat, for one thing.  And the way they do it.  They'll take, like, a normal bite of a burger, but then, instead of putting it back on the plate, they take another bite, and then they start, like, working their jaw around the side of the burger, and all of a sudden the WHOLE DAMN THING is in their mouth, like watching a snake swallow a rat or something.  They have to WORK to get that friggin' burger all in their mouth at once, but dammit, they're gonna DO IT.

It's like watching a competitive eating contest, except with only one competitor, and the contest never ends.

And their family members.  OH MY GOD, their family members, who are running out to Burger King at eleven at night to get another sack of burgers to feed a person who is already so fat they can barely get out of bed.  It's the definition of enabling, right there.

I'm not making fun of these people.  Everybody's got something.  It's just ... really, really interesting to watch, is all.

This is the time of year when I start to put on weight.  Every year, right on schedule, after months of being inside and not nearly enough working out, the pants start to feel a little tighter.  I'm probably up about ten pounds from where I was in the fall, but I know that come spring, when I'm coming home from work and changing into jeans and heading right back outside again, the weight will come off.

And honestly?  When I'm thin, in the summer, I start to think that maybe I could stand to GAIN a few pounds.  Maybe it wouldn't hurt as much to sit on a hard chair if I had a little padding back there.  Maybe ... my face wouldn't look quite as gaunt if I weighed a little more, although I think that gauntness may be more a product of age than weight.

But then comes February, and I actually DO start to gain some weight, and I panic.  Oh my GOD my face feels ... full!  My stomach feels flabby, despite ninety billion flipping Jillian crunches!  I can't get FAT!

And then I feel like an a** hole for even fretting about it, when there are real problems in the world and people out there who weigh FIVE TIMES what I do.  Nobody cares about your ten pounds, Rocky.

I just wish I could gain some weight and not have to worry about it, is all.  Maybe someday I'll get there.


2 comments:

the queen said...

Oh my god, that show is a mirror of my own fat behavior. I do the "it's water weight" self-con, only when they do it it's "that seventeen pounds is water weight." A neighbor was 400 and got the surgery, and after two years has found a way to eat enough tiny fattening meals to gain the weight back. That doctor's a hard ass, though. No moderation ever. Oh I have so much to say about that show.

rockygrace said...

say it, queen!

It kills me how they flat-out LIE to the doctor. "I'm sticking to the diet! I only ate two carrot sticks yesterday!" When the cameras caught them slamming quarter-pounders.

So then the doc sticks their can in the hospital and puts them on a liquid diet and their family members SNEAK IN FOOD. It's like giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor store. Amazing. and so sad.

I am sure that it must be incredibly difficult to lose a large amount of weight. The way these people sabotage their own efforts fascinates me. And then you mix in the childhood abuse and the self-esteem issues and the enabling family members and it's a wonder that any of them make it.

I LOVED the two-part episode about Melissa. That woman got sh*t DONE.