Fat Girl on a Date

Sorry for the hiatus, y’all. I’ve been showing my house and packing and etc. Oh, and going to the racetrack, but that was just for fun, not related to moving.

Anyway, the other day I read this post on Junkfood Science about BodyWorks, a government-sponsored anti-obesity program for teen girls. Check out the post. It’s comprehensive, as Junkfood Science always is. Among the problems with the program is this “healthy eating plan”, outlined in a BodyWorks recipe and menu planning book:

Breakfast recipes include those for cereals, egg white omelets, austere fruit dishes, French toast and pancakes, with an average 226.50 calories and 4.3 grams of fat per serving. Among 63 servings represented in the recipe choices, they contain a total of 5 tablespoons oil and 3 whole eggs.

Lunch recipes offer a range of vegetable salads, sandwiches and soups. Each serving averages 0.25 teaspoon oil and 0.02 teaspoon salt. Lunches average 227.25 calories and 8.2 grams of total fat per serving.

Dinner is an enormous collection of vegetable-intensive recipes dishes that are equally ascetic, with a mere 1 ½ teaspoons salt total for 191 servings and 0.07 tablespoon of oil per serving. The dinner recipes average 264.2 calories and 2.18 grams of total fat per serving.

The “healthy desserts” are fruit-based, averaging 1 teaspoon added sugar per serving. Desserts average 184.5 calories per servings, with 2.69 grams total fat.

Even if the girls are allowed dessert, a full day following this “healthy” meal plan would provide them with 902.45 calories — about one-third (37.6%) of the daily calories needed by girls this age and activity level, according the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutritional Research Center at Baylor, used by the Dietary Guidelines.

(Apologies for the long quote. There’s much more on Junkfood Science. You really should read it all!)

Reading this, I realized that I don’t really know how to eat; I just know how to diet - and I know how to blow off a diet. I’m guessing this won’t come as a shock to most folks out there in the Fat Acceptance world - I bet that’s true for a lot of women, and maybe men, too. I think I even knew this, intellectually. Yeah, yeah, I’ve basically dieted on-and-off for my whole life, I believe that pretty much all the eating that women do is disordered in its obsession with quantifying nutrition, etc., etc., etc.

But seeing that diet plan made me realize - again, and viscerally - how fucking crazy it is, and how fucking crazy I’ve been. Because that’s how I’ve eaten - or, more accurately, how I’ve tried to eat - my whole life. I’ve happily chewed on 180 calorie Luna bars and considered them breakfast. I’ve packed 270 calorie Lean Cuisines and counted that as lunch. On the flip side, I’ve eaten half a pizza at a time, gone through a half-gallon of ice cream in a couple of days, snuck down to the gas station to buy three candy bars.

I’ve dieted, and I’ve… well, I’m not sure if I’d call it binging. I don’t want to minimize Binge Eating Disorder by comparing it with my more generalized overeating. But the point is, I’ve never just eaten normally.

And maybe that’s why intuitive eating is so hard for me.

Readers of the blog know that I’ve been struggling a bit with intuitive eating. First, I was worried that I couldn’t trust myself without limits. Then, after I started to loosen the limits, I caught myself using intuitive eating as an excuse to eat poorly.

Now, I’m coming to understand another difficulty: I’m having a hard time distinguishing between intuitive eating and habitual eating. What feels like intuition, for me, is often poorly concealed habit. A key element of intuitive eating, as I understand it, is conscious eating. Knowing what I’m craving. Acting on that craving. Paying attention to whether the craving has been met. Habitual eating - which can feel a lot like a craving, can even become a real honest-to-goodness craving - is the opposite of conscious eating.

Some food habits I have that I’ve just begun to notice:

• I eat dinner as soon as possible after getting home. I come in the front door, drop the bags, change into my loungey clothes and head into the kitchen. Doesn’t matter if I’m getting home at 5:30 or 8:00.
• I have a meal-sized sample of everything I’ve cooked. Doesn’t matter if I’m making risotto at 8:00 in the morning or muffins at 9:00 at night.
• When I shop for groceries, I buy myself a drinkable treat. Could be a latte (when I’m at the grocery store that has a coffee shop inside) or a diet soda or whatever else looks good, but I always get something.
• When I shop at the coop, I take a run through the salad bar for lunch.
• At restaurants? I always order the same damned thing. The Kurdish restaurant? Dowjic. Tex-mex? Chicken taquitos. Cambodian restaurant? Loth cha. Thai restaurant? Green curry. Chipotle? Burrito bowl, no rice, black beans, fajita veggies, chicken, tomato salsa, corn salsa, “just a little” cheese and sour cream, lettuce.

I want to get a handle on all these little habits. I want to recognize them as such, so I can call myself on them. That’s not to say that I’ll deny myself these pleasures, but I want to do so in full awareness of what I’m choosing - and why.

That actually reminds me of something else I’ve been noodling about lately. A commenter here keeps a food diary online. She takes pictures of her meals and posts them on her blog. I’m always interested to read it - in part because I’m fascinated by food in general (dammit! I’m a living fat stereotype), but also because I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing. Oh, I probably wouldn’t post it online - that’s not what this blog is about, and I certainly don’t want to start maintaining another one! - but the idea of capturing what I’m eating appeals to me. I like order. I like lists. I love to plan things. I would take some pleasure in keeping track of what I’ve eaten on a given day - not to see whether I’ve been “good” or “bad” but because I’m really, actually interested. And, while I’m no longer counting calories or fat grams, I do want to be sure that I’m eating a balanced diet generally, that I’m getting the nutrition that I need.

But where’s the line between a disordered obsession with food - an obsession with how much and how many and “good” and “bad” - and a healthy awareness and interest in what I’m eating? Am I kidding myself to think that I can have one without the other?

So, after receiving a pathetic response to my most recent dating profile, I was inspired to dig up some of the other real winners I’ve gotten over the past few months:

Hey Princess:

My life , can’t you understand a relation between two eyes. Though they blink together, see the world together and sleep together, yet they can never see each other. But my dear we are human beings, there is always a positive possiblity to meet. I cherish any thought of you and living for the day when our physical separation will no longer be. I promise you i m quite seriour about the relationship. I am quite sure i can do any thing for it .. no matter about the physical distance.I am waitting for your positive responce.

Not to be outdone, this guy:

goddess:

would you be intersted in taking ownership of a well trained, worshipful, obedient slave to amuse yourself with????

i would love to be yours to do with as you please.

And:

Hi Dear,
What’s up? i think this is the right time to say hi and have friendship.I liked your profile and please dont shun your door without knowing completely who is knockin your door.
Life is afterall exporing new things, ideas, places and interesting people( I dont mean here some blind relationship)

One of my favorites:

you delicious thing, I want to meet you. If I’m not too repugnant. YES I know I’m an inch shorter than you. I WILL STAND ON BOXES. I WILL WALK ON PLATFORM SHOES. I WILL ACT LIKE MICHAEL J FOX.

BEFORE HE GOT PARKINSONS

Seriously?

Ok, everyone, I need some advice with regards to online dating.

Specifically, I have two questions of etiquette:

1. If a dude I’m not interested in messages me, should I write him back? To, like, reject him? It seems harsh, but then just leaving him hanging seems rude. What’s the way of online dating?
2. And, is there a generally agreed-upon length of time/number of emails before I should buck up and meet someone in person? I know, I know, it’ll depend on the situation, but, you know, are we talking two messages or twelve?

Help!

Dear Men:

So you see a girl you like on a dating site. You check out her pictures - hot! - you read her self-description - witty! - you decide to drop her a line.

For gods sake, put your shoulder into it, at least a little. Don’t send something like this:

Err, sorry. I don’t have much to talk about right now. I just wanted to take a stab at this meeting new people thing that we are apparently attempting by joining said website…

All that aside, I am sick, just enjoying the weather and break. Yeah as in school break. I have off until July 8. Now back to hacking up my lungs. Sorry, TMI.

Love,

Fat Girl on a Date (on behalf of, um, everyone)

Hey. Hi. It’s been kinda quiet around here for the last week. I’m sorry about disappearing like that. But we need to talk.

I started this project with some personal goals. I wanted to do some thinking about fat acceptance and feminism, wanted to push myself to get out there and do some dating and I wanted to give myself a space to write. But, as I’ve said before, in writing the blog I’ve found a community that I’m really glad to be a part of - and I feel like, in a small way, I’m doing something that’s important. I’m proud to try to represent the life of a single fat woman. I want other fat women to read the blog and feel like somebody else gets it. I want unfat folks to read the blog and get at least a smidgen of a glimpse into what life’s like for us.

Anyway, and I think this is called burying the lede: I’m about to make a big life change, I can’t focus on dating as much as I meant to when I started the blog and I want to recruit some more Fat Girls Dating to write here. I’m not going to shut down the blog, but if I’m not going to be so much a Fat Girl on a Date as a Fat Girl Getting Ready to Move I’m going to need some help.

So, a couple of women are working on guest posts. Those will be coming soon. I’m going to keep up writing about the stuff that’s on my mind and, hey, if I happen to get a date in here or there? Trust me, I’ll write about it. But I’d love to have more. Got a story to tell? Want to chronicle your own dating life? Drop me a line in the comments or email at fatgirlonadate at gmail dot com.

(As for me, I’m moving from Minnesota to Pennsylvania in a couple of months. I’ve quit my job and I’m taking what amounts to a nine-month structured sabbatical to figure out what I want to do next. So I’m not eager to meet someone here - and once I’m there, I’m going to be living a pretty inward-looking life. Not sure I’ll have much chance to meet men. And who knows where I’ll go after that?)

I was given How to Cook a Tart by a friend who was moving cross-country and liquidating her chick-lit collection. Read it last week. Laughed out loud at the first line, then the rest of the first paragraph:

What a disastrous way to start the day, Jasmine March thought as she stared down at her husband’s nubile lover, dead on her kitchen floor. Jasmine held her breath and surveyed the vivid crime scene. Her special marble rolling pin lay six inches from the girl’s bashed temple. Blood pooled in a rich raspberry hue. On the counter, tinfoil lay balanced askew over the plate of Jasmine’s homemade chocolate brownies. Jasmine winced. One of the brownies was stuffed into the girl’s mouth. As Jasmine gazed down at the young woman’s willowy waist, she was sure of only two things. One, her husband’s birthday dinner was ruined. Two, her rolling pin, thank God, was not chipped.

Ha!

The rest of the book doesn’t quite live up to that paragraph, but it’s damn good (in a light, sitting in the backyard with a sipping cup of limoncello and painted toenails kind of way). But that’s not why I’m recommending it here. I’m recommending it because it is, more or less, a fat acceptance tale. There’s a very explicit pro-fat plot (Jasmine, the fat heroine - a cookbook author - cooks extravagantly and without concern for calories, her cookbooks aren’t selling well in the fat-phobic environment, she’s outraged) but what’s more compelling is how Jasmine’s size plays through the story.

There are some hiccups along the way to fat acceptance. Jasmine’s life revolves around food. She eats much more and much more decadantly than the other characters. Her daughter is anorexic because, her doctors say, she doesn’t want to grow up to look like her mother. In several cases, dehumanizing language is used to describe her body (she “lumbers” down the street; her husband pulls the covers up over her “bulk”).

But overall, Jasmine is portrayed as happy, smart, attractive, together. The first time her husband lays eyes on her, she’s eating and he’s mesmerized with desire - as are all the other men in the room. A much younger, very attractive man comes on to her throughout the book; he loves her spirit, style and her body. She is happy and resilient throughout the book. You want to be her friend. You want to eat her food. It feels like a relief to read a positive portrayal of a fat woman in a light novel.

Give it a go. Let me know what you think! And, please, recommend other fat-positive books - I’m always looking for a good read.

Last week, researchers at the University of Minnesota concluded that parents shouldn’t encourage their fat children to diet. Read the article and the comments (but beware Sanity Watchers points!). There are a lot of interesting issues raised (things that Fat Acceptance has been preaching for years) but what the article made me think about was my own childhood.

I come from a great family. My parents are stilled married after 40 years. My only sister and I are close. My grandparents have been an important part of my life, and my aunts and uncles and cousins (and the occasional great-aunt and second-cousin and whatnot) are nearby and beloved.

We’re a family of fat women, for the most part. Both my grandmothers were fat. My mother and all of her sisters were fat at various points of their lives. One of my father’s sisters is fat; the others are not. My sister is not fat. My female cousins are.

All these women have lived with their fat in different ways. Some haven’t dieted; most have. One had weight-loss surgery. One has tried all the crazy diets and drugs. One died recently, having not been to a doctor in years. My mother, who was very fat as a teenager, stopped eating refined sugar as a young adult, practiced a form of intuitive eating, and has been slim ever since.

I have been fat all my life. At least, I have felt fat all my life - I’ve been meaning to dig up some photos and see if it’s actually true. By the time I was in high school, I was definitely fat. Fat enough that it was next to impossible to find women’s clothes that fit me. I wore men’s jeans and a lot of this stuff. (But then again, I wonder: Even then, was I as fat as I think I was? My prom dress was a size 14 - a stretchy 14, and I was positively stuffed into it, but a 14 nonetheless).

At some point, in junior or senior high, my mother started helping me try to lose weight. She never pressured me. She never made me feel bad about myself. She told me that she had been fat as a teenager, that it had been horribly painful, and that she didn’t want me to suffer what she had suffered. One time, she promised to buy me a jean jacket I had been coveting (somewhat like this - yeah, I was a dork) if I lost a certain amount of weight. Often, we’d plan out a diet together - never very restrictive, just fresh and healthy. It seemed good. I never felt ashamed; I felt like she was helping me do something I knew I should do anyway.

But now I wonder. Fat genes obviously run rampant in my family. Fat neuroses, too. I don’t know if I got mine from my mother or from the rest of the women in my life or from the world at large. And I don’t want to acknowledge the questions - the wishful thinking - that are niggling around in the back of my head: What if my mother hadn’t wanted me to diet? Would I be smaller now?

I try to eat seasonally - and living in Minnesota, I’m telling you that it’s a challenge.

Epicurious is here to help, with its seasonal ingredients map. You can browse by state and month and it’ll tell you what’s fresh at the farmers’ markets. Be glad you don’t live in Montana (nothing yet) or North Dakota (cabbage only)!

Of the many things that just made sense when I found my way to fat acceptance and Health at Every Size, intuitive eating was at the top of the list. Of course my body knows better than a million nutritionists what it needs. Of course I should eat what my body calls me to eat. Looking back, it flabbergasts me that I had to be told to do it; I guess that’s why it’s called “intuitive.”

But as it turns out, intuitive eating is harder than it looks.

Getting to know my cravings has been an education: identifying the particular taste that’s making my mouth water, deconstructing a general desire for a Chipotle Burrito Bowl into a specific craving for the acids - tomatoes, lime juice - that give it its flavor. I don’t know whether I’ve ever had an eating disorder - I’ve never been disagnosed with one - but I’ve certainly been weird about food all my life, and although I do a lot of cooking I haven’t spent much time actually tasting it.

But understanding and following my cravings is only a part - the fun, decadent part - of what intuitive eating is about. It’s not an excuse to ignore the good meals I’ve cooked in favor of a “craving” for fast food. It’s not an open invitation to stop at Dairy Queen every day on the way home from work. With the freedom to eat what my body asks for comes the responsibility to be honest with myself, and that’s the hard part. On a superficial level? I want ice cream every damn day. Hell, I’ll eat it for every meal. (I mean, it’s practically yogurt, right?  And yogurt is totally a breakfast food.) But if I look closely at myself I have to admit that I’m still pretty muddled about what I want to eat. The signals I’m getting about Peanut Buster Parfaits are less an accurate reflection of what my body needs right now and more an emotional release after years of telling myself that I can’t have them.

So, having given myself a few months of what I’m calling “Stage 1 Intuitive Eating” - giving in to my cravings without examining them too closely - I’m ready to take it more seriously. I’m not going to start restricting the foods I eat, or forcing myself to eat things I’m not interested in eating. I am going to continue to eat what I crave - I’m just going to take more care to be sure that I’m really craving what I think I’m craving.