Thursday, March 12, 2015
Blair and clothes that last forever and 5XL
Let's talk about Blair, shall we? Are you familiar with Blair, the women's clothing catalog? The home of elastic waistbands and tragic sandals? The poor woman's Lands' End?
I say that with no snobbishness whatsoever, btw, at least as far as price-point goes. Lands' End sh*t is outrageously overpriced. "But it lasts forever!" people say. You know what? Some of us don't want our clothes to last forever. Some of us get sick of clothing items that last year after year after year. I've got blouses in my closet dating back to HIGH SCHOOL, ffs. I WISH that sh*t would wear out, so I could throw it away in good conscience. But noooooo, there's that STUPID gray pinstripe cotton shirt that will. not. die. Bah.
So while I will not bag on Blair for being cheap, I WILL bag on Blair for their horrible clothes. The only company making uglier clothes than Blair right now is Alfred Dunner. Don't even get me started on Alfred Dunner. Who wears that sh*t?
But! Back to my point. I think. Inexplicably, there was a Blair catalog in with the rest of the ads in my newspaper this morning. And right on the front of the catalog, there was a star, emblazoned with "Introducing sizes up to 5XL".
5XL. What. the. actual. f*ck.
What is size 5XL, anyway? I checked out the size charts in the middle of the catalog. Guess what? Blair has "updated" their size charts, so that what used to be an 8 is now a 6, what used to be a 24W is now a 22W, etc. I see what you did there, Blair. And a 5XL is a 32W/34W, for measurements up to 63-59-65.
Um.
I don't know what my fascination is with grossly obese people. I really don't. I guess it's watching all those new episodes of My Six Hundred Pound Life that's doing it to me. Did you see the one last night? With that guy? Who tipped the scales at 777 lbs? Yeah. Six Hundred Pound Life, my ass. Dude was going for Eight.
I think maybe it's the amount of food you would have to eat to sustain that weight that interests me. Maybe it's envy. Maybe *I* want to be the one eating a dozen donuts at a time, or five quarter-pounders-with-cheese, or an entire gallon of ice cream for dessert. Except I don't think I could do it. I'm pretty sure that I'd just end up making myself sick.
Except I think I read somewhere where if you eat a really really lot for a really long time, your stomach starts to ... stretch. So pretty soon you can fit more and more food in there, and it takes more and more to make you feel "full", so you just ... keep on eating.
But ... at some point, don't you look in a mirror? Don't you hit, say, four hundred or so, and go "whoa doggie, time to ease up a little bit"? I mean, looks aside, who cares about looks really, how could you possibly think that it's good for your heart to be trying to pump blood through all that fat? What about, like, your arteries? To say nothing of your joints. Last night's episode started when the dude twisted his knee and landed on the floor and had to lie there until the next morning because he couldn't get up by himself.
Hey, YOU try lifting seven hundred pounds off the floor. Sh*t, I'm amazed the dude was ambulatory at ALL.
And yes, I get it, these people obvs have other issues going on besides the food. Maybe just like anorexics, where it isn't really about the food at all but instead is a need to have control, maybe obesity is ... is it the opposite of anorexia? Is it about having no control at all? About not wanting to have control?
And none of it's any of my business whatsoever, in the end. Hell, if you wanna eat your way into the record books, freaking go for it, as far as I'm concerned. It just seems so ... sad. These people can't go for a hike or push their kids on a swingset or do anything. Except eat.
I dunno. I'm just musing, is all. Musing about Blair and My Six Hundred Pound Life. I wish I was a better muser.
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2 comments:
for what it is worth, there is a LOT more to weight than calories. I do not doubt there are people who are 800lbs who are shoving a mountain of food in their mouths, but a lot of times the obese eat no more than the nonobese. if weight loss were no more complicated than basic math (calories in < calories out = weight loss) no one would be obese. the human body however is biology, not mathmatics..
I personally am overweight. I started my weight loss journey when I was 9 because my mother was told I was overweight - despite being normal on the BMI charts, but I was nine and I weighed 150lbs (because I was 5'7") so there for I had to lose weight.
As I got older I refused to be on a 'diet' but yet I still followed the 'weight loss' advice, eating low calorie foods full of junk and fake foods and my weight slowly and steadily went up. Finally I got sick of it and I restricted calories. I followed popular diets and I lost weight but I also could no longer function so I gave up. a handful of years ago I tried again, again went with a popular diet and lost a lot of weight and I became so cold and so tired that I was sure my thryoid was fried. I had that sucker tested five times and each time came back normal but I had every single solitary symptom.. including weight gain. I had a 500 calorie deficit most days and (and the days I didn't I broke even) I still gained weight.. in the end I gave up. If I was going to be hungry and gain weight, i was going to be full and gain weight.. and at a certain point I stopped gaining..
Anyway.. you probably have absolutely no interest in this.. but know that to sustain a 600lb body, you need to eat almost 4000 calories a day.. that is simply to sustain that weight and not move a muscle all day. moving a 600lb body through space takes a lot of effort and calories, so continue to be that weight via simple math, they would probably need to be eating upwards of 6k a day.. pretty darn hard to do that day after day.. so again.. more to it than what goes in the mouth.
I can not wait for the day they finally figure it out..
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calrmr.php
Tails, when I was in elementary school, the pediatrician told my mom I was on the high end of the BMI thing and she'd better watch my weight. I weighed 80 pounds at the time and was approximately the thickness of a string bean. That stuff's messed up.
I seem to recall that there are different methods of testing for thyroid problems - something about Hashimoto's disease - and I know of a couple bloggers who have struggled to get thyroid problems properly diagnosed. I wonder how many medical issues the doctor on the TV show rules out before he okays the surgery?
Thank you for the link to the resting metabolic rate calculators! It *is* interesting stuff.
I really hesitated to put this post up, because I was afraid people would think I was fat-shaming, which I absolutely am not. Thin, fat, whatever - we all do our own thing. I don't know why I have such a fascination with the TV show - I guess I'm just a sucker for reality TV, and this one seems a lot more *real* than most of them.
I guess I was assuming that, except with certain medical conditions, weight loss or gain really WAS basic math - isn't that what Weight Watchers is based on? Thanks for pointing out that it's not that simple.
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