Blanket Burning

Awhile ago, I read a great post about the F word over at Bonjour Gazel. That's right, we're talking about FAT again. (If you haven't checked out Gazel's blog, do it. She has stellar taste and she writes eloquently about everything.) Basically, the summary of the post was that your weight and health is YOUR business, not anyone else's. Anyone who thinks it's their right to ask you how much you weigh, or judge you, or give you advice deserves a flip of a big different kind of F word.

I'm hoping to make something clear, because over the next couple of months, I'm going to be working out and losing some weight, building myself some healthy ass-kicking habits.
This is just what I need to do, personally.

I have come miles and miles in terms of understanding who I am and accepting myself and thinking I'm beautiful, but I still feel the need to get fit. This isn't because I want to look like a billboard or a girl in a perfume ad (bitch, please, curves are where it's at!), but I want to be more like me.

If watching TV teaches us anything, it's that apparently ALL fat people would be more beautiful if they lost weight. That they all secretly yearn to be thin, that they ALL eat badly. They all want to be saved by the church of skinny and cry on TV. Well, I'm calling complete BULLSHIT on that.

I have met and seen SO MANY amazing, beautiful, stylish, gorgeous people who just happen to be plus sized. They are loud and proud and they rock the world. These wonderful people have made me realize that being FAT isn't the issue. Personal confidence is the issue. If you want to be large or small it doesn't matter, EMBRACE yourself. Do what you want, no matter if that's running a 5K, eating a cupcake (or two!), or wearing horizontal stripes.

If I could walk around and NOT care about what other people thought about me, I wouldn't feel the need to go to the gym and work out. But that's not the person I am. I am glad I grew up fat, for all the pain it caused me, it also taught me a bunch of things I might NEVER have learned. I would be a different person. I learned compassion, humility and I'm sure it sparked a passion for writing in me, but there are some things that are still holding me back. Being fat also taught me anger, and bitterness and resentment, things I never want to feel towards people I truly care about. It brings out the worst in me, and the worst now needs to be taken care of. Now that I have realized the beauty that fat has given me, I need to handle the darkness it has given me too. Wow, cue the dramatic music...

I can't get over this idea, that what is holding me back from living my life is my own body. What's holding me back, is me. I've been told I have a bold personality, but there is a difference between volume, and action. I can live now, but I'd be hiding inside myself, wrapped in my security blanket. So that's what is going to have to happen now: bear hunting and blanket burning.

What do you love about yourself about today? What do you wish other people could learn to embrace more?

Confessions: Excuses.

I've been a bad blogger lately. I wish I could say I've been running around the streets of the world, going on insane adventures, but it's just life as usual. And I'm okay with that. My good friend Adrian and I were talking about it, and we concluded the best things in life can be the little ones. Things like thunderstorms and cheese, bacon and egg bagels for breakfast.

Instead of writing, I've been reconnecting with old friends, making new ones, going out for sushi, and singing karaoke. Watching movies on the big screen (Hobo With a Shotgun, WHAT?) and shopping for dresses to wear to the Media Arts awards. I've been making bagels from scratch. I've been going to end of year banquets. I've been enjoying the weather. Not only that, but with my internship finishing up, the hunt for the perfect job begins!

In other words, life is what happens when you're busy planning to blog about it, and that's the way it should be.

The only other thing I can say is that I've been watching Community and I'm addicted to it. Particularly Troy and Abed with their unending bromance and crazy schemes. I kind of want to be best friends with them forever:


YEP. AMAZING!

Tomorrow, I'm seeing the Tim Burton exhibit at the TIFF Bell Lightbox after work! Post about that FOR SURE!

Confessions: The F Word [Part II]

If you haven't read Part I, you can take in my teenage angst and the before pictures here. Life rolled on. I couldn't find a job because of the recession that summer and my motivation disappeared. Some of the pounds came back, school started again. Ho hum!

After the holidays that year, I met a boy. I liked him, he liked me back. He told me I was beautiful, we went on dates and one crazy day, I suddenly had my first boyfriend. It was even Facebook official, gasp! We had the same sense of humour and music addiction. The same wild imagination, and the same night owl disease. I felt as if I'd known him for my whole crazy life.

We both had a weird appreciation for Garth Brooks. I can't really explain it much more than that.

Sadly, the fat girl I used to be was still around. I had no relationship experience. It was painful how uncomfortable I was letting someone into my personal space. He was understanding, and we took things slow. It backfired- we ended up feeling like friends. So after 3 months, I broke it off. I'll never know what would have happened if I had been normal when we started. What if are two of the worst words I can think of.

After that, lost for answers, I gained 10lbs in only a month. That's 35,000 calories. Enter my royal rumble with the life long problem of Binge Eating Disorder, aka BED. When I first heard about it, I thought it was bull- how could eating too much be a mental disease? I googled, I took books out at the library. Every account, every symptom sounded just like me.

I'd eat without stopping until I was ready to throw up. Sometimes a couple times a week, if it was bad, maybe every day. I forgot what being hungry felt like. Autopilot. Realizing I had a real problem, that's how I crash landed onto my psychologist's couch. I went through two months of weekly therapy sessions. Worked my issues. I learned about what I was doing to myself. More importantly, I figured out why.

When I got to feel hunger, it made me excited. How I had taken that feeling for granted! At the end of the summer, Rebekah and I took a trip to Montreal. While I was there I got a Nightingale tattoo to remind me of all the things I was above doing to myself. How I would be so light I could fly. How I was free. (Dear mom, if this is how you find out about my second tattoo, I'm sorry...)
I've been on and off the wagon since then. There are days when giving up and eating the whole pizza feels like the best solution to any and all of my problems, except for one. That's my ongoing weight loss. Beyond the total aesthetic of being slimmer and feeling good, my family has a history of diabetes on one side. I don't want that for myself. I know I've got one hell of a fight left to get to a decent BMI and a stable state of mind.

I'm writing this just in case someone like me reads it and needs to know they aren't alone. I want them to know there's always hope left. I've been going on for four years and I won't stop. A few days ago, my roommates put me up to a personal challenge. To lose 25-30lbs by my 21st birthday. I accepted, gladly. So you can expect to see a fitness/health post here every now and again! With that, I think I've run out of storytelling fodder. If you want to follow my weight loss odyssey in more detail, you can check out my other blog Sleek G33k.

As is at the moment!

Confessions: The F Word [Part I]

I'm sick right now, and taking bioxin for an infection from blisters on my heels. My day was spent reading and sleeping. I feel pretty awful about doing virtually nothing, even if it is in the name of recovery. There are cakes to be baked and scripts to be read and I'm napping away the hours and guzzling grape gatorade. My lovely roommates keep Florence Nightingaling me. Telly has slept on my bed, keeping me company. My mother is texting me for constant updates. Really, I'm just sick, in productive life limbo. Typing doesn't take energy, so I thought I'd make a post on something near and dear to my heart. Personal health, and losing weight.

This story starts out sad, but I promise it's going somewhere worthwhile. I'm not the type who likes to bitch and moan for no good reason. At the beginning of my life, if you don't want to sugar coat it-- I was the fat girl. I was bullied on the playground. To this day I can remember in clear detail things that kids said to me. Things that hurt me, things that make me angry now. The words hit my back like rocks I wasn't strong enough to carry. Photos from my teenage years.

This pattern followed me through childhood. When I got to highschool, I wasn't bullied because of my size. I was ignored. My friends had crushes and boyfriends, while I had video games and junk food. My friends had dates and their first kisses and sexual experiences-- I had size 18 jeans. I wasn't Riley. I was so-and-so's fat friend. I wished to be anorexic, but food was too comforting when I was upset. I tried to make myself throw up -- it never worked. My gag reflex just wasn't strong enough and I got scared when my nails cut the back of my throat and I saw blood on my fingers. That was scary as hell, and it might be graphic but that's what really happened. I feel it's really important to be as honest as possible here. So maybe, sometime, some girl just like teenage me will read this and realize she's not alone. I stayed large, out of control, lonely and self loathing. A part of me even hated my friends, because they had everything I didn't. They were who I couldn't be, and they couldn't understand what it was like to be the big F word.

I don't know exactly what it was that flicked the switch, I can only guess. I want to say that in the summer of 2007 I realized I had a year before I graduated from high school and there was a world of college waiting for me. A new life, possibilities unexplored. Maybe it was because when I stepped on the scale I saw 235lbs. At the time I didn't even realize just how big that really was. Whatever it was, I snapped a before picture and got down to business.

The "before" photo. Summer 2007.

I ended up losing 20lbs that summer, using a website called Calorie Count. Juggling school and life that year, I worked my ass off- literally. At my prom I was a glorious 182 lbs. Lighter than I had been in years! College happened, and despite that I was healthier than ever before, I still didn't have what I wanted. I made friends, and I got crushes but that was it.

In the second semester of my first year, the first girl I had made friends with in my program committed suicide. I have never in my life felt anything like it. Blinding crippling grief. Then numb. Then sorrow that hollowed me out raw, and left me wide open without motivation. I had brief thoughts of dropping out, and I saw it in the faces of my friends. I spoke at her funeral, it's the kind of heavy I will never fully be rid of. However, instead of dealing with it by eating, my appetite was gone. I worked out with DVDs in my res room or I ran on treadmills. Almost every. Single. Day.

My life saver, Josh hugged me tight and I remember his surprised question while his chin was on my shoulder. "Have you lost weight since like...last week?" In my need to distract myself from pain, I was being cut down to size. I finished first year at 160lbs. I don't know at what age I might have been a comparable number. All I can provide an example for is that in grade three, I remember being around 130lbs. It was a new, all time low.

[To be continued...]