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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The Biggest Loser 2014 - Too Big a Loser?

Bob and Jillian - Complete shock and horror??

As someone who has always struggled with weight issues, The Biggest Loser is one of those shows - out of the reality show heap - that I really love watching as it brings such positive change into the lives of the participants. Moreover, it seems to inspire so many who are struggling with the burden of weight gain to really make some healthy changes in their lives.

Some of the contestants who returned for last night's finale looked amazing. Tumi stands out most for me. She lost a ridiculous amount of weight and looked good - really good. She looked happy and more importantly, she looked healthy. Tumi was hardcore from the beginning and I am so glad she won the "At Home" prize.

Tumi - Biggest Loser - Looking amazing. Good job, girl.

But when Rachel walked on to the stage, I was shocked and perhaps a bit sad.  As you can see from the photo of Bob and Jillian - they were pretty horrified as well.I immediately thought - "She is way too thin". I am not even trying to take away her months and months of hard work, discipline, tears and resolve.She, like Tumi, worked super hard and lost a great deal of weight - 155 lbs to be exact to end at at 105 lbs, at a height of 5' 4". However, I felt she did not look healthy - she looked almost anorexic. What do you think?

Rachel Frederickson, Biggest Loser 2014 - From one extreme to the next?

And this compared to what she looked like before the season finale. Not saying this is her ideal weight but she looks worlds better at this weight than she does now. She was not even this small when she was a state championship swimmer - an athlete!!! C'mon...

Rachel Frederickson - after her Biggest Loser makeover

Rachel Frederickson last night - pretty girl but she looks so gaunt.
And she is only 24.

I was really conflicted about who should win after seeing her. On the one hand, I felt she did not represent healthy weight loss. She looked incredibly frail and even when she tripped on the way to her final weigh in, I thought she would break. I felt like this perception of weight loss should not be rewarded.

On the other hand, she worked hard - not denying this, but more worrisome, the self-image issues seem to be very real, and I wondered if not rewarding her hard work would make her somehow think she was not the biggest loser - not as small as she should have been to win.

The Biggest Loser last night sparked a lot of reactions - but I think one thing I took away from it is that the show and the whole concept may need to be tweaked a bit. It has to be more than simply losing a whole heap of weight, especially if it becomes too much weight. Perhaps the participants should be set a target weight as someone suggested on Twitter - a healthy target weight. It should not be getting so thin to the point of looking frail, just to win money!

There were a lot of mean comments on social media which are not constructive. No matter what side of the weight spectrum one is on, hurtful comments never contribute anything meaningful or positive. I just hope that Rachel gets some support as she resumes her life.

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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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Cheers to the Cooperative Waistline!

Too fat for the world!

I have done nothing since I have been back home besides lay in bed, watch tv and eat. This is clearly not a recipe for hotness. After another all-day binge fest of all my favourite Trini treats, I decided to see what kinda damage I was looking at it in terms of my waistline. Seeing that I am job hunting and may be called upon on short notice to put on  a suit and heels, I decided last night to ensure that I did not need to go shopping for said outfit. Nervous, I opened the door to my work accoutrements and selected a pair of pants that I know could make or break my plans for the weekend - Cold Stone Creamery, KFC, Hot Shoppe, cocktails. Nervous, I slipped one leg in, then another and then waited for the pull and tug motions around the hips.

But voila, the pants fit. Perfectly. Well, they could be looser but I am not going to complain. I have been really remiss with the healthy eating in the past few weeks. Cocktails like water, great dinners. Ridiculous. But the pants fit. Cold Stone, here I come! lol. I promise to work out next week.

I have just been in a bit of a funk though. Not a full-on funk. It's hard to be funky when you have not seen your family in months and there is sunshine. But there are so many negative feelings around certain events that have left a really sour taste in my mouth and I just don't have the energy to deal with them. Maybe next week.

Cheers to the freakin' weekend though. Gonna slide into some Caribbean friendly outfit, some platforms (yes, heels are back!!!) and turn it around with another round! Happy Saturday, guys!

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One month later

Gym membership is due today. After a month, I still don't look like Tyra but there has been some change. I have long since done away with scales because I truly believe they are evil devices. Instead I use clothing as a benchmark. For example, the reason the outfit I am wearing today came about (cute shirt with a knit vest) was because the shirt was fantastically tight one morning (I mean TIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!!), and the vest was aimed at covering the gut and the busting-out-ness. This morning I still wore the vest cause I liked how the shirt and vest looked together, but I did not need the vest at all. In fact I was looking for a cute belt to accessorise the shirt, but had no time so stuck with the vest. So things are happening. I steamed and then roasted some chicken last night, cooked some peas and made a veggie and whole wheat pasta salad, minus the mayo. No celery sticks and cucumber lunches here. I keep the inspiration alive with this fantastic image of myself in a few weeks, walking off British Airways flight whatever, sashaying through Immigration with the dude waiting for me with open arms - and I am sashaying. Not waddling. Well, I never waddle...but you know what I mean.

No woman likes weight gain, unless you actually need to put some weight on, and I have had some luggage stop me from living (albeit briefly) a couple times. I met an old friend a couple weeks ago and invited her out and she said she was not really socialising much (what she meant to say was AT ALL) because she did not want people to see how fat she had gotten. Add no job to this and this is a true recipe for depression and disaster. But at least she is making efforts on both fronts. And women can be brutal. Even though you may recognise that you have added some roughage to the hips and thighs, no woman wants reminding of the fact. Nothing is as annoying as "You're putting on weight" or "Look how fat you got!" Really? I am? Wow...did not know this.

I mean, it's the first thing any woman notices. Too-tight pants and shirts that cannot button are not signs of starvation. We know when we are packing it on so no need to remind us, thanks. This is most likely the reason my friend does not want to go out and do things she normally would have done - because of the comments and the stares and advice from not so well meaning women about not drinking soda and juice, and not eating after 6 etc. It's hard enough trying to get it off, but to have to deal with silly people always talking about it like there is nothing else going on with you besides the L.Bs is just downright difficult.

But my favourite saying ever, courtesy of my girlfriend is Weight you can lose. Ugly and dotish (stupid) are for keeps. Stuck it on my mirror for good measure...just in case I need to remind anyone.

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