Fat Girl Problems

After the gym, sometimes breakfast has to be quick
aka smoothie alert. Blueberry and almond protein smoothie

Trying to lose weight is a real nightmare. Putting it on is fun and easy. Date nights with girlfriends, with those yummy cocktails and cute fried appetisers; along with rich entrees and decadent desserts. Weekend stay-ins with Netflix and shrimp fries with Thai sweet chili sauce. The real killer - work events - schmooze and lose...lose your willpower to resist glasses of great wine and bite sized goodies that demand you pop another and another and another. Family get-togethers, where there is always food, always a lot of alcohol and aunties watching you cross-eyed if you try to politely refuse.

But when you are trying to get all this excess baggage off your body, not that easy. The early morning wake up calls to unwillingly subject oneself to cardio and other torture devices, or to try to get a workout outdoors before the morning heat and glare get the better of you.

Last night the family got together for a good ole family time. I drank nothing and when offered a plate heaping with roti and curry - my kryptonite - I politely (yeah, that is my excuse) ate the vegetables, a bit of the chicken and gave my mother 95% of the rest. Nightmare.

It has been tough going but the competition element of it has been keeping me really honest. The first couple of weeks, I admit, I had chips once in a while. But I have been super good this past week and for good reason. The people at work are hard core in trying to win this thing and I see my chances of winning slipping away. But I am still doing it because it needs to be done and I need to do it for myself. Still...winning would be nice.

The numbers thing is always complicated. I hate scales and on my second weigh in, the weight numbers were up ever so slightly but the fat percentage was down. This is apparently a good thing, but when you have been programmed to count just the pounds/kg, it can be a bit of a buzzkill. But rallying.

Eating lots of salads and veggies, soups (I love soups so this is easy) and cut out the sugar and the snacks. The snacks have always been my problem so this is a small miracle. No cake. No cookies. No chips. No Haagie. Lots of water, tea and my post-workout smoothies. Getting more sleep, though still not enough. The hardest part has probably been trying to keep my meals fun and creative. I am not one for those crazy diets - onion soup diets or liquid diets. I eat like a real person, just without an excess of the "fun" stuff. Food should never be boring, even if one is trying to be healthy.

Part of my weekly supermarket stash last weekend. Fruits and stuff for teas, fruit juices and smoothies.
Greens for salads.

Chicken quesadillas and greens for dinner. Salad by itself - not food. That's torture...

...unless the salad is epic like this one - mixed greens, grated carrots, roasted onions,
chopped black grapes, pommerac, homemade garlic croutons, and some baked chicken.

So wish me luck. The battle wages on. Another weigh in this week so game on!

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How to Lose Weight on (the best) Vacation

As I sit typing this, I can barely walk. I resumed my regular morning workouts just last week after a 6-7 week hiatus, which included pre-vacation hustling time, a 3-week vacation and post-vacation indifference. It is always the same. Yesterday I worked legs – squats, lunges, upping the resistance on the cardio machines. Today, I am sore and miserable.

The good news is, despite the damage done by multiple “happy hours”, including pink beer in Amsterdam and coffee mojitos in Lausanne, as well the havoc wreaked by vacation foodie goodness, including Swiss cheese fondue and great pastries, I did not actually put any weight on. How is this possible? You don’t even have to pack gym clothes! This is how you do it.

One heavy suitcase. If you are on an extended vacation, and are not low maintenance, then you will still, despite your best efforts, have a heavy bag. We can talk about my success in only having ONE bag in another post. However, the limit on regular airlines like British Airways is 23kg, while on the budget airlines, I am only willing to pay for 20kg. So at the very least, you are going to be doing some weight lifting especially if it is a multi-trip itinerary. I had to hoist that bag in and out of taxis, trains, and hotels over a 3 week period, across 4 cities. That is a workout in itself, let me tell you. That pink bag is better than any weight machine.

The infamous globe trotting pink suitcase

Take the most inconvenient mode of travel. Taxis are a luxury in most any place. Taxis are also usually more expensive. The cheaper options like trains often come with their own challenges, but when viewed through the lens of weight management, one can turn challenges into freakin’ opportunities. Trains don’t drop you off in front of the hotel. Trains usually park your ass at some train station that can be as near as a 2 minute stroll or as annoying as a 20-minute huff and puff. Train stations also sometimes have stairs – no lifts, no escalators, but stairs. Tiring memories of London Victoria and Ealing Common come to mind as I hoisted my pink bag and brown self up and down multiple steps in agony. Taxis are for people who want the wonderful Italian dinner to stay on their hips. For the health conscious – take a train.

Avoid public transport and not only save money, but lose a pound or two. If your travel spot is gorgeous, as most tend to be, then why take a train, tram or bus to go everywhere? The canals of Amsterdam make for scenic walking routes and I did a lot of walking. Not always good for tired tourist feet but great for burning off the pink beer! At the end of my trip with a sore back caused by a pre-vacation fall down the stairs at home and lifting the pink bag everywhere, too much walking, particularly uphill walking as in Lausanne, was not the best option. But it still worked those glutes.

But still, take the train and be late for said train. I had forgotten about how “great” relying on public transportation can be, and even when on vacation, you can still find yourself running for trains. Don’t want to wait another 30-45 minutes in the cold at midnight in Geneva International? Run for the train, with pink bag. Don’t want to wait another hour for the train from Bournemouth to London? Run up the stairs, across the walkover, down the stairs and to the train door just as it is closing. Don’t want to be late for dinner date with friends? Run for the train! Yep…running for the train in Europe is inevitable. In the chase after the train you will probably lose necklaces (check), flip flops (check check), scarves (check) and the like. But there is nothing sweeter than losing a bit of weight (CHECK!!!).

Oh, and sit in the restaurant having cocktails while not checking your flight time and then realise you have 5 minutes to run about 100 miles from the table to the departure gate. That burns calories as well. These helpful tips should help you on future trips in managing all the goodies associated with vacation and your waistline!

*This blogger was not hurt in the pursuit of this weight loss.

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To all the Fat Haters...

Elle Rondes, owning her body and
not giving a sh.... Brilliant!

So, I have never hidden the fact that I am not a pencil in terms of body shape and size. I am more like a cute hourglass, with some extra padding. Needless to say, the hourglass has expanded in recent months, but I am not crying over it. Some may say, fat. I say “awesomely padded”. Lol.


Of course, I am not being indifferent either. I have cut way back on the snacks to start. Gone are the daily Magnum bars in primetime. Lol. (Magnum ice cream bars are awesome, aren’t they?) And I eat more vegetables now, though eating more fruit is still an issue, if you refuse to consider wine and strawberry daiquiris as part of the fruit family. And, therein lies my major weakness – happy hour weight gain. I can eat salad all week long. It just takes ONE happy hour outing to derail all my best efforts.

Of course I am also in the gym and while not a lover of working out (understatement of the millennium), I do it because the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. I have more energy during the day, I burn off some of those fruity stepchildren from the weekend, and my pants don’t need loosening.

This is where I would like to expand on a previously highlighted point, in a previous entry. Getting comments from anyone about my weight is annoying, but getting comments from FAT people about my weight is just infuriating – especially fat people who do not know what a salad looks like, or whose idea of working out is walking to the fridge. I make no apologies for this cause I am tired of fat, lazy people having an opinion. When you get yourself together, then talk to me. When you can rock a salad over a Big Mac, then you may comment on my slice of cake on a Saturday night. When you can run a lap around the Queen’s Park Savannah at 4 in the morning with me, then you can look at my waistline. And when your comments are uplifting and CONSTRUCTIVE, then we can talk about my fat ass all day. But until then, keep your comments to yourself.

I am happy, my people are happy, so why are you making my dress size your problem? Don’t you have enough problems in your own life? If you translate being awesome as having nothing positive to say about others, no matter what their size, colour or pay cheque, then you need more than cake to medicate yourself. The time taken to look at others could be better invested in being the best you can be – whether you are 300lbs or 100.

Don’t worry about me though, cause I am already there. Fat or not, I am truly super, baby! Believe it!

My weekend was awesome by the way and included a good dose of wine, champagne, white chocolate bread pudding (can we say, SINFUL??), great, great friends, lots of laughter and fun and good memories to last me the week. Oh…you said something? I did not think so.

Happy Monday!!!

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Fat Girls are the Talk of the Town

Everywhere you turn, someone is talking about a "fat" girl, or about being "fat". And "fat" these days is anything above size 0, making me morbidly obese by contemporary standards.

On the one hand, you have those who are being verbally stabbed to death because they have put some weight on. Exhibit A - former Miss World and Bollywood actress, Aishwarya Rai - before and after. I mean, from the elephant sound effects in this video to the articles online about her "flab", this is just horrible.



Aishwarya Rai's Shocking FAT Pics by desimad

I am glad that she has not even bothered to respond to these ridiculous articles and blogs about her weight. She just had a baby for crying out loud. Her husband seems to still think she is pretty awesome. So what is the issue here? One blog even said, and I tried to find the article again, the average woman throws off the baby weight and goes back to being slim after the baby and Aishwarya is just fat and lazy. That kinda blew my mind. The average woman? Really? I think too many people mix up celebrities who turn up on the red carpet 3 months after having a baby, looking like a pencil, after 3 solid months of work with Gunnar Nelson or some $500/hr trainer, with real women, with households to run, no nannies etc.

Stupid.

Then Tyra comes out today to say that had she started modelling in 2012, she would never have made it as a model, as at a whopping size 4, she would have been too heavy to be a supermodel. There is something not even mildly disturbing about that, in that it is very true unfortunately.

Miranda Lambert came out and said she is happy when she is a toned, not flabby size 8, something I can appreciate because on my own journey against the flab, I seriously have no desire to be a toothpick. I am not trying to impress anyone or look like anyone. I just know what makes me comfortable and this size is definitely not it. Like Miranda, I think I have a healthy appreciation for my body type but still want to be healthy and feel good about myself.

So the female body is and will always be under scrutiny - some will accept who we are, whatever our lbs say, and some will tear us to shreds.

This is what your husband may
look like in a couple years

But noone ever talks about the obese men. Noone seems to be making disgusting, insulting videos about their weight gain. Noone talks about how they go to the dogs after a couple years of wedded bliss and too many weekends on the couch, eating home cooked meals and watching football.

It does not matter that women get pregnant and God forbid put weight on and even worse, keep some of it on. What do men do?

Noone talks about the "letter b" syndrome - the shape your once trim husband takes on after a couple years, from a fit letter "I" to a lower case "b". For once I would like to open up my web browser and have the focus be on men's butts and bellies.

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Spanx - Surely a New Method of Torture

(The blog looks different, doesn't it?)

I remember saying once, If I ever get to the point in my life where I need to buy and ultimately wear Spanx, I will shoot myself.


Pass me the gun!

I walked into the lingerie store yesterday and there I was - in the control undies section. I could hardly believe it myself. What a nightmare. I now understand the pain of the corset wearing ladies back in the day.

The sales girl was happy enough to show me all the various versions of this thing, while trying to be part of a fake sisterhood.

Oh yes. I have a pair of these. These are good.

She said this with a straight face as I did an internal eye roll because this heifer was as fat as a spaghetti stick with no obvious signs of lumps or bumps. Lady, gimme a break!

There was one brand of torture wear - it has to be torture to yank yourself into these contraptions, and risk fainting after an hour of having your guts compressed to their breaking point - called Body Wrap. The thing looked like mummification of the living. I could not understand how anyone could feel comfortable in that. Lingerie sessions are usually fun and sexy but this one was rather gloomy. On top of it all, these predators are making a killing off fat people. These things are not cheap. I mean, wow...I have to pay through my nose for your product to literally suck the air out of me?

I put Body Wrap, Spanx, Maidenform and all the other sick brands back on their racks and walked out the store in total denial, and without making a purchase. I have somehow convinced myself that in 6 days I can somehow miraculously transform my body from Michelin tyre dude to Heidi "The Body" Klum and can tell Spanx et al to bite me. I say this after confidently and unabashedly eating 2 chocolate chunk muffins and having a couple vodka spritzers today, not to mention the roti lunch. Lovely.

In reality, I will most likely be back in the store on Saturday morning to get me something so that my ass does not look like a satellite at my event that night. It does however give me yet another wake up call that I need to get myself back in gear with the workouts and also quit snacking. Seriously.

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Fat Jeans Nightmare

Too fat for my fat jeans

So as it was Friday, I pulled out a pair of jeans to wear to work yesterday. I did not want to wear the regular jeans because I find them too short when I wear my heels and then, lately, it has been causing some serious muffin top. So I decided, since noone cares, I would wear my "fat jeans". You know, the not-tight, not-fitted jeans a woman owns for crises like PMS-related bloating and some weight gain. These jeans are so big that after I bought them I had to have them taken in.

Yesterday, I almost could not get them on!!!

That is all I am going to say about this. I am meal planning again this morning and you bet your life, I will be getting stuff for soup and salad next week. I was too tired to go hit the walking trail this morning - it was a hard week but I am back on the beat from tomorrow. This was the last straw - the fat jeans debacle - but if this was what I needed to get my fat ass back in motion, so be it. If only to make myself feel happy again as well, cause right now, I'm not.

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