10 – The Young and Curvaceous

It’s 9:11pm and I’m sitting here wondering where the evening went. I’m also thinking that I don’t have it in me—“it” being a blog entry. I have all the mental ability of a toddler right now and I’d crawl into bed in the next five minutes if I had my way. There is light at the end of the tunnel: 3:00pm on May 24, when I finish the courses I’m taking and hopefully have two new trainees at work up to speed; but that light seems very far away right now. I seriously can’t fathom how I’ll come up with two more posts in that time frame; as such, I’ve decided that I just won’t. I will be taking a six week blog hiatus so that (a) you aren’t subjected to crap writing and (b) I don’t become a crazy person. But I promise, it’s just a break, and I’ll be back with a vengeance mid-June. For now, however, read on.

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Last week a couple young ladies became finalists in the Miss England contest. Normally this wouldn’t register on my radar as I don’t go in for the whole “women are really being empowered by beauty contests” BS. Ultimately it’s a bunch of gals being judged, in great part, on their physical appearance. If contestants wore mumus and bags over their heads, then I’d believe it was about their talent. Until then I’m not convinced. So why did this register for me at all? Well one of the finalists, Chloe Marshall, is a size 14. Now that’s a European size 14, which translates to a size 10 or 12 here, so my excitement does dim somewhat. I mean really, size 10 or 12 is just normal people in my books, but I suppose in the face of a lot of size fours and sixes as the competition, that’s pretty cool. But that’s still not the reason that I even know about this girl.

The newly crowned Miss Surrey had a lot of support. Many people felt that it was a good thing to see such a lard ass (Kidding! I mean seriously, size 12 is a plus size now?) in a contest like this; they felt it was brave. Well, not former pageant judge, Monica Grenfell. No, she was outraged at Ms. Marshall’s inclusion in the contest at all. In the Daily Mail, she wrote (this is fucking comical): “Who does she think she’s kidding? What’s she’s demonstrating isn’t bravery but a shocking lack of self-control.” She went on to say “It makes me mad when people like Chloe are allowed to glamorize obesity.”

Bitch, are you for real?

Now just for some context, Ms. Marshall is all of 17 years old. And Ms. Grenfell is…well way too old to be slagging a teenager. To read the entire dip-shitty article, go to:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=554870&in_page_id=1879 target=_blank

You’ll get to see pictures of the delicious Chloe and read the silly ravings of “her-career- depends-on-selling-books-to-make-people-thin” Ms. Marshall.

I’m reminded of another recent skirmish a little closer to home involving ’07 American Idol winner Jordin Sparks and National Action Against Obesity founder, Meme Roth. Just as in the first situation, a woman who had to be twice Jordin’s age set to picking on the then 17-year old, about 20 seconds after she won her dubious victory.

Now what both Chloe and Jordin will always have going for them is that they’re freaking cool and beautiful, whilst both Grenfell and Roth will always kind of come off like suspiciously angry older women in search of someone to attack. And frankly, in my books, that’s plenty of reason for both Roth and Grenfell to enjoy a big serving of STFU, but in the name of serious blogging, I’ll actually provide some other reasons for invoking a serious gag order on the two of them. There are five (add your own in the comment section of the blog at will): age, bullshit, success, gender and fear.

Age – Attacking Teenaged Girls Is Shitty and You Know It

This one is fast and dirty. Publicly attacking someone who is still too young to vote over their weight is tacky; doing so when you’re at least twice their age—tackier still. There’s nothing more to say really. Roth and Grenfell should know better.

Bullshit – Monica Grenfell Knows about a Fat-Friendly Fourth Dimension and She’s Not Sharing

Monica Grenfell would have us believe that teenaged girls today don’t just think that it’s okay to be heavy but are, in fact, being pressured to pack on the pounds. Really? I must soon find this parallel universe of which Grenfell speaks, where I will have the emotional space to perhaps work out my weight issues whilst accepting food being foisted upon me by envious thin people.

I have spent a significant amount of time with teenaged girls within the last six years and I can tell you, the ones that I’ve met are not thinking “Well since Chloe Marshall is heavy, I’m going to work towards that.” What I see more of is that the girls who will gladly accept a heavier role model are already struggling with their weight. And I’m not about to begrudge them the assurance that it’s okay to feel good about themselves while they work through it.

I’m not saying that there aren’t a shit load more heavy kids walking around today than there were twenty years ago, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s not because they saw someone fat on TV and decided that was the life they wanted to lead. I’m sure it had a lot more to do with the X-Box their guilt-ridden and divorced parents got suckered into buying, and the fact that their moms and dads work a job and a half each to keep the mortgage paid, and consequently haven’t fed their kid a home-cooked dinner since sometime in the early 90s. I’m really, really sure that Chloe Marshall, whose name I would probably never have known had Ms. Grenfell not written her dumbass article, had nothing to do with it. So are the six overweight women represented in our media making our girls fat—not fucking likely.

The idea that Grenfell and Roth feel they need to publicly open up a can of whupass on two teenaged girls in order to protect other teenaged girls from being pressured into becoming overweight is as ridiculous as it is disheartening.

Success – “We Hate It When Fatties Make Good!”

If Jordin Sparks hadn’t beaten out beat-boxing-Blake for the American Idol title, would Meme Roth have given a shit about the young lady’s weight? I think not. Would Ms. Grenfell be falling all over herself calling Chloe Marshall fat, lazy and deceitful (about her diet and exercise) if the teen hadn’t won the Miss Surrey crown and made it to the finals of the Miss England contest? I’m going to assume a big “no” on that score too. It’s only when a fat chick makes good that people like Roth and Grenfell get all hot under the collar. It’s like somehow, with all the discrimination overweight people face, it’s still not okay for us to have a victory here and there.

I get that Roth has a cause she’s fighting for but I don’t know when she got it in her head that attacking someone slightly overweight who has experienced 35 seconds of success makes her cause look good. Amusingly, the Fox News interview where she made the original comments about Sparks is not on the NAAO site and no longer appears on YouTube from what I can tell. You know, the one where she called Sparks the “vision of ‘unhealth.’” What is available on the NAAO site is the Inside Edition interview in which she does a bit of a back peddle. This would have been after the death threats, I guess.

As for Grenfell, it’s bizarre to me that a woman who’s entire success is predicated upon heavy folks buying her books, can’t manage to be nice in the face of a heavier woman’s success. I guess it’s only okay to be successful once you’ve lost the weight.

Gender – “What, Reuben Studdard, Fat?!”

So I’m late to this band wagon, but back when Meme Roth came out swinging at Jordin Sparks, every fat blogger in the world asked in shock, why she hadn’t burst a blood vessel when an even bigger role model, Reuben Studdard, took the American Idol crown back in season two. It does seem a wonder that she went out of her way to make an example of slightly overweight (another size 12-14 girl) Jordin, while undeniably quite overweight Studdard got a pass. I guess big boys don’t register on her radar.

But this is an old story and one that is not exclusive to Roth and Grenfell. The covers of US Weekly, People, Star et al rarely feature the weight issues of men in Hollywood. They’d have you believe that male celebrities don’t ever actually experience fluctuations in their weight. My sister and I used to laugh about the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because as the women on the show got thinner the leading men (excepting James Marsden) all got heavier. To this day, Nicholas Brendon (recently guest spotting on Criminal Minds) remains a little soft around the middle. And frankly I wouldn’t care if all the men in Hollywood decided to put on thirty extra pounds if their female counterparts weren’t held to such a ridiculously stringent standard. What makes me peevish is the lack of equality.

It saddens me, given how much women are still objectified in the media and in their every day lives (some 100 years after universal suffrage), that two women make it their mission to objectify us all a touch further. Sometimes you just shut up for the sake of the team.

Fear – It’s Us or Them

Maybe I’m imagining it, but doesn’t there always seem to be, in an attack like this, an element of fear? Fear that if one does not clearly delineate who the enemy is, one might accidentally be associated with said enemy. It makes me wonder if Grenfell worries about putting on weight some day or if Roth was a chubby kid. I just think it takes a special something to launch an unprovoked attack. And I think that special something is usually fear.

I was on the train last night and a fella boarded who was built like a tank; he was frightening looking and kind of dirty, so I went back to my magazine and avoided eye contact. Well then he turned on this beaut, black, fledgling queen and started calling him a faggot. And not in a nice way. Said fledgling queen responded with questions about scary fella’s self-esteem (how cute is that) clearly putting his health and his kick-ass wardrobe in danger. That’s when said scary guy started screaming “you fucking nigger” over and over again. I can’t tell you how un-Canadian that is. Everyone just stopped dead in their tracks. While the queen did his bit standing up for himself I think we were all afraid it was going to get physical and very, very bad. Luckily it didn’t; big scary fella turned out to be way more interested in making his way home and probably avoiding getting picked up by the cops than he was in fighting the queen. Ultimately he was all incredibly offensive bark and no bite. I had a mind to do a drive by insult on my way out but his stop preceded mine.

The point of that aside though, is that it’s pretty clear that somewhere in big, scary guy’s heart is some sort of enormous fear of a young, black queen. Maybe it’s the enormous cock that he fears. I don’t know and I don’t really care, but it’s the fear that makes him act that way. It’s the fear that makes him think he’s being rational to boot. And I believe it’s the fear that makes Roth and Grenfell act the way they do and think they’re being reasonable while they do it.

To add grave insult to much, much injury, they do their crazy in the name of helping the heavy-weighted.

At one point in a back peddling interview, Roth spoke about how great it would be if we could “get [Jordin] more healthy,” as if she was offering help. Well if someone wanted to offer me help with my weight, the easiest way to do this would be to have a direct conversation with me. Going to Fox News and saying I shouldn’t have won American Idol based on my weight would be amongst the least likely ways to get me on board. This seems rudimentary. But Roth would have us believe that she is concerned about Jordin personally. Bullshit. She was never concerned about Jordin Sparks personally—and that is part of the problem.

Monica Grenfell must think that all the food Chloe Marshall allegedly eats insulates her from the insults of others (ah the irony). If Grenfell was really just disturbed about the inclusion plus-sized women in the beauty contest she could have privately spoken to the judging officials. It was absolutely unnecessary to launch an attack on Marshall in the Daily Mail. And ultimately that’s pretty damn unfeeling—especially when you’re talking about someone’s body.

The idea that Grenfell or Roth are really concerned about the thousands of overweight people that they claim to want to help is laughable, juxtaposed with the way they treat individual overweight people, people who would ostensibly fall within their cause. Instead, what Roth and Grenfell seem most interested in is shame—that tried and true method for shedding pounds. Apparently no one has informed either of them that the “shaming method” of weight loss usually comes with an emotional price tag that’s unfeasible for the long term. Instead of setting up an environment where Marshall or Sparks might seek out Grenfell or Roth if either ever felt like losing any weight, they’ve reinforced the adversarial relationship between fat and thin in our culture. And that’s not a dynamic that needs to be encouraged.

It is possible, Meme Roth, to talk about obesity without denigrating anyone. It is possible, Monica Grenfell, to encourage people to lose weight, without attacking a teenager who doesn’t want to do so. I have to be kind of grateful for them though—if their behavior wasn’t so terrible, I might have nothing to write about.

9 – Gainful Employment, Sickness and Men Hurt Us All (and the blog)

I’m going to talk about my method for a moment. In order to, some day, score that book deal based on my blog that’s going to lift me out of the pink collar ghetto in which I exist, I try to post entries consistently—in my world that means every two weeks. Week one is devoted to research (or in the case of “Big Lust” consolidating weeks of research) and week two is about writing, tweaking, editing, re-writing and then having that prince of a man, my proofreader/editor, take a looksie—at which point, I post (and for those of you combing entries for typos and misplaced commas, he's only been on board for two weeks). The problem is that last week—the research week—was a total write off. Here’s why.

On March 25^th one of my colleagues announced his impending departure for a new job. In the normal world this isn’t a big deal, but in my world it means that the one other person who’s been helping me hold down the fort at work just jumped shipped. To add insult to injury I’ve been job hunting since August of ’07—which is only about a month longer than he’s been looking, but I can be petty if I want to be. This announcement came after another colleague bailed just a week prior. In addition to the shock of being left alone, there was the feeling of crushing despair about being the first to sign on ten years ago and being, obviously, the last to leave. Frankly, given the spiral of depression into which I fell that day, it’s amazing the last blog entry was posted at all.

Then on the 28^th I missed my dear friend’s 30-something birthday because I started feeling nauseated. The nausea progressed into some unholy cold/flu-like sickness that left me with only some of my hearing for a period of time, a snot-filled head, horrible hacking cough, all the focus of an infant and the wakefulness of a sloth. I had to use up 1 ½ of my eight precious sick days per year to beat this thing.

And lastly—men. Need I say more? There have been skirmishes on that front in the last couple of weeks that make my brain tired. And unfortunately, unlike during puberty, this kind of stress doesn’t make me all angsty/creative and thus prolific—it drains me like an alkaline battery in a digital camera[i] because now there are shriveling ovaries and the understanding of my mortality in the mix.

Now I will admit, things at work are not as abysmal as they were last week because they can’t afford to lose me right now; hence on the 31^st concessions were made and demands were almost met resulting in a decent raise, my own cave-like office and a promise that once the new folk are trained I will never again have to speak to another ungrateful, lazy, snarky, illiterate, insipid, shit-eating customer.

Unfortunately, however, this still amounts to zero research. So today, I speak to you from the heart. (Why do I feel like Celine Dion right now?)

I was overjoyed to see the hoopla that my interview with “Greg” caused. In addition to helping me get a better of idea of what y’all want to read and giving me lots of ideas for future entries (when I’m not too sick or depressed to research them) I was forced to think about my own feelings on this issue of discrimination against the heavy weighted.

Now clearly, as disgruntled employee of the month, I’m in no position to make any decisions about anyone’s job prospects based on their weight, so no one need fear me on that level. But if I didn’t admit that I have mean old nasty thoughts about people who are overweight, it would be completely dishonest.

So full disclosure: sometimes I’m as big a hater as the people that I resent for being haters.

Firstly, it’s all part and parcel of my, so far, absolute inability to accept myself as I am in this body. There are certainly times when I think I’m hot but the bulk of those moments are tied to my sexuality. While I’m thrilled about the verging-on-ridiculous enormity of my breasts at my present size, they’re only really the main event when my clothes are off—which is not the bulk of my day (in fact, I’m dressed right now!). And frankly, I do feel more secure naked than I do clothed. But it’s when I have to get dressed and be compared to everyone else in the world that I lose my cool. And while we all have days when we just think we’re the ugliest creature to walk the earth (or am I the only one; or is it just a female thing?) my days like that—when they aren’t revolving around my hair—are completely bound up in my weight. So yes, I hate on people because I kinda hate me.

But I don’t hate on heavy people across the board. As one reader brought up last week, it seems to come down to how people carry themselves. It’s all about the “fat slob” syndrome. For some reason, in my head, skinny slobs get a pass of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m looking to make friends with a slim guy who looks like he hasn’t bathed in a few days, but the judgment that races through my head when I see a heavy person seemingly not making an effort, is scathing to say the least.

While I applaud the heavy woman or man who dresses impeccably, part of what I’m often thinking is “Well you’d better dress well—you can’t afford not to.” And the irony in all this is that I’ve convinced myself that I look stunning in sweatpants (well two people told me I did so I’m sticking with it). I don’t think I’m quite a slob but the days when I don’t make a concerted effort are certainly numerous. I work across from a transfer station for Pete’s sake[ii]. I’m the youngest of six kids and the other five have spent the better part of 32 years trying to get me to dress up a little more. So clearly I’m not really “representing” on behalf of heavy folks but for some reason I think I get a pass. It makes zero sense, I realize, but I think I know why my brain works this way. I’m a mid-ranger in denial. I’m certainly not average, (and I’ve been called “fat” in no uncertain terms by people before) but so far I can still squeeze with another person into those freaking small public transit seats and I can still choose a side of the escalator. The result—I think I’m closer to average than I am to “fat.” Though, if I’m clearly in a certain amount of denial now, I wonder, if I put on 50 more pounds, would I still think I wasn’t “fat?” Food for thought.

I have too many friends who carry extra weight to think that generally people who are overweight can’t get the job done or that they lack ambition or that they’re lazy or so many of the negatives that have been brought up in the last couple posts; and frankly I know myself and I’m not like that. But I’m more critical of the passing stranger who is heavy than of the one who is slim. And that’s not cool.

It occurs to me that I get sad when heavy celebrities lose weight because I feel I’ve lost an ally. It’s like if they just maintain their size, then maybe it’s okay that I do too; or it’s at least okay for me to be accepting of myself, whether I eventually lose weight or not. But on the flip side, I’m definitely one to applaud the average person who loses weight; I applaud their moving closer to “normal.” It’s the same me who’s green with envy when some old high school acquaintance befriends me on Facebook and I realize they’re a shadow of their former selves while I’ve become 1 ⅓ of what I was.

So in a bid for further self-acceptance, as promised, a candid photo is posted below. I had never planned when I would post this picture after I made the promise to do so, but now seems an appropriate time. When I’m feeling like even more of a champ I’ll post the side shot—right now I still feel like my back fat is too cringe-worthy. Actually scratch that—no promises there. Baby steps, baby steps.

Come back in two weeks. I’ll let you know if I’ve made any movement towards accepting myself and by extension my heavy brothers and sisters. And by then I may even have researched something interesting for you to read.

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[i] Yes the analogy sucks but this is what I do for a living—gimme a break

[ii] A transfer station, for those of you not in the know, is where regional trash is consolidated before it is taken to the landfill. Now imagine what it smells like walking in to work on a day when it’s 35 degrees with the humidex outside—yeah, sweet.

8 - Big Hate

Last week was crazy busy for me, and busy in my world entails a certain amount of fast food. On Monday (the 17^th) that fast food was procured at McDonald’s, where I gobbled down two chicken snack wraps, small fries and a small iced tea. As I ate I couldn’t help but think of a comment that my interview subject had made the day prior: “It freaks me out to watch [fat people’s] food choices.” I have the distinct impression he would have been freaking out a whole lot had he been sitting with me that evening.

This week’s post is about the haters—that relatively large (pun intended) group of people who have a problem with other people’s weight whilst not actually carrying it around. A week ago Sunday I sat down with my friend Greg[i] to talk over what it is about bigger folk that gets so far under his skin. I met Greg years ago at a party; we’re Facebook friends and we socialize here and there, so we get along well enough—which is what makes all this so weird. By nature I want to hate anyone who automatically thinks less of me based on my weight, but Greg is a likable guy and thus I don’t. So knowing that I don’t hate Greg and I’m far from out to demonize him in this post, let’s talk about what goes on inside that head of his.

One of the first things that Greg wanted me to know was that, to a point, he was speaking representatively. Representative of what you might ask? Well actually the better question would be “who.” If money makes the world go ‘round, then those that control the money would, by extension, be those that have the most control over the spinning of our fair planet—and those people would be your CEOs. “CEOs are the stereotypical six foot tall, lean, white male” says Greg. Though not a CEO himself, Greg is white, about six feet tall and doing well for himself financially. So he figured (and I agreed) that he could reasonably bring some insight to the table. And with that in mind, we dove in.

We talked definitions for a bit and I found this bit terribly ironic. In my last post, trying to define the term “BBW” in a narrow way proved fruitless despite the fact that the tastes of the men interviewed were quite specific. In contrast, it seemed really easy for Greg to define what overweight meant to him: “Any man whose stomach extends past his chest is overweight. And for women if the belly fat exceeds the belt line by an inch or more, then she’s overweight.” “Cottage cheese thighs” were also mentioned as problematic. I did put up some fight when he mentioned another litmus test: “If you can’t see your junk to know if you need a shave or whatever, there’s a problem.” I parried with the fact that the point when a mirror is needed to help check out the pubes for a woman is far earlier than for a man, but Greg was unsympathetic. I figured maybe I wouldn’t bring up that I’d arrived at the mirror stage some time ago.

Of course definitions--even with someone as unequivocal as Greg--have some fluidity. When asked if a great personality would make an overweight person seem, well, less overweight, he answered in the affirmative. He even mentioned that the term “Rubenesque” evokes the idea of someone with a certain amount of personality as opposed to just the idea of a certain body type. For women Greg named further distinctions as well. For example, there is a definite difference between women whose breasts can be distinguished from/extend past their bellies and women who do not have this kind of body shape. Women who lack such physical definition, and thus a certain amount of femininity, will simply not get the same level of acceptance in Greg’s opinion.

As in many things though, definitions are usually the least of one’s problems; it’s connotation that causes all the trouble. In my last post I listed a number of ideas that many people associate with the word fat, but I figured I might be missing some so I got Greg’s list too: “unhealthy, will die young, lazy, don’t care, low self-esteem, not career-minded, play the victim, feel they are a victim, not in control of their own lives, not getting sex, unkempt, sweaty, frumpy, not well-dressed, will be likely to have food stains on their shirts” (this last one is my personal favourite for sheer funny factor). Now while my list was longer there were some that I had never thought to include and one that we parked on for a bit was “not career-minded.” At this point, we inevitably came back to the issue of who’s running the show. Assuming the world is run by gym-going, low-cholesterol eating, lean, white, male, six-foot CEOs, then the likelihood that an overweight man or woman is going to succeed in an organization run by that guy can decrease dramatically. Now admittedly there are fields where weight may be less of an issue than others, but Greg brought up fields where I wouldn’t have immediately thought that it would be such an issue. “In a law firm someone overweight might not make partner because he or she doesn’t fit the image of what a partner looks like.”

To make his point, Greg told me about a situation that had occurred in his own workplace. During a down-sizing he noticed a manager continually circling back to one overweight employee. It soon became apparent to Greg that his manager had no clue what this employee actually did all day, but the idea of the “lazy, fat guy” had managed to so severely cloud the employer’s thinking on the topic that this employee’s job was on the line. And of course this kind of discrimination grows in proportion to the amount of extra weight a person carries. In fact, Greg agreed that if I wanted to get ahead in many a work place, I’d be better off cutting out an hour at the office and replacing it with an hour at the gym. When, in a session months ago, my therapist told me that my weight would be a factor in my job hunt, I just kind of tuned her out; sitting with Greg that sunny Sunday afternoon, it was pretty hard to ignore.

But Greg doesn’t necessarily have a lot of pity for people in my position, even if he doesn’t think the discrimination is right. Ultimately, in Greg’s opinion, I’ve made my bed and I can’t blame anyone else for only having that bed to lie in. “I think the idea of genetics making people fat is a fallacy. No one forces you to eat what you eat or forces you to eat how much you eat. Genetics are a factor in body shape, but not weight. It’s about activity, lifestyle and discipline.” Greg’s overall feeling is there is a lack of self-respect in allowing oneself to get very overweight and that people simply don’t care. One concession that he did make was in the case of the stereotypical workaholic who doesn’t take care of themselves. “I’ll admit fat people are probably more apt to put someone else’s needs before their own. They end up not taking care of themselves; like people who are overworked and don’t take care of their health. And then I guess there are emotional eaters.”[ii]

Now “health” is one of my favourite buzz words when it comes to talking about weight, so I had to ask, ‘does a thin person who clearly eats a whole lot of unhealthy food freak Greg out as much’—and the answer is no. He figures they must be active enough to offset that choice which somehow makes it more acceptable. To further complicate the health question, Greg doesn’t mind a roll in the hay with someone unequivocally heavy (to a point) as long as they’ve got a cute face; in a weird twist, Greg could have been a survey participant in my last post whilst still being the interview subject for this one. “I couldn’t date someone overweight in the long run. I just couldn’t watch them keep making unhealthy food choices all the time; ‘like no, I don’t want an ice cream, I just ate’”

Some of you are now screaming that Greg is only one person and I need to take his words with a grain of salt (whilst others nod vigorously in agreement with him). Well don’t worry; I’m not buying it all without reservation. But I also don’t think Greg is that much of an anomaly. He’s a country boy who had the kind of active childhood often associated with rural living. He’s never been anything other than slim and agrees that his family ate well (by which I mean healthily). He’s 35, active, and strikes me as thinking harder than the average about his food choices (certainly harder than I do); but being super food conscious is kind of all the rage right now. When asked how long his issue with overweight people has existed, he recollected the fat kids in school. “These kids were different because they didn’t dress like the rest of us. Everyone was wearing jeans except the fat kids who wore stretchy pants because they couldn’t fit into anything else. They seemed to always be fat, lazy kids from ‘town.’ You certainly can’t run around and play sports at recess when you can barely fit into your pants. They were always eating junk food. I guess I teased them too.”

Thinking on Greg’s response makes me say, on the one hand, hurrah for stretchy jeans. But on the other hand I have to wonder if maybe what seems like this complex and involved form of stereotyping and discrimination is as simple as school yard preservation instincts that we haven’t shaken. Is it just a good old case of teasing the fat kid in elementary school; a continuing saga of excluding the person who’s different? I mean, really, the action is the same. The difference seems to lie in rationalizing it. In elementary school protecting our social status is more than enough motive to exclude or malign another person. It’s in adulthood that we have to find reasons to rationalize this behavior. And so we say things like “the burdened health care system” and “type-2 diabetes” and “shorter life spans” when we maybe really just mean “I don’t like fat people.” Ten and fifteen years ago we were all alarmed about smokers being the burden to our health care system, but it was still generally acceptable to discriminate against heavy people even back then. The only thing that seems to have changed from where I’m standing is that now that someone can voice concerns about my health, their discrimination has a good cover. Understand, I’m not denying health issues exist—I’m simply saying that I don’t think every person on the planet who has a problem with my size is really that concerned about my cholesterol or my triglycerides (both of which are great, thanks). Instead, I have to wonder if the man not hiring me is simply engaged in some form of bullying motivated by how he felt on the school yard when he was five and assumptions he’s made about me way in advance of meeting me. I want to think that humans aren’t that base. But time and time again we seem to prove that we are.

Greg has offered to lead me further down this path of non-acceptance, and if he reads this and still wants to hold my hand I may take him up on it. Frankly, I hate thinking too damn hard about what others might think of me; doing so brings up all the insecurities that I have about my body right now. But I’m trying to believe that facing the monster will make it less scary in the long run. You’ll just have to stay tuned and see. In the meantime this post ends on a bit of a downer; but I think the reality is a bit of a downer.

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[i] Of course that’s not his real name—we can’t have survey participants from the last post trying to find Greg and beat him down.

[ii] At this point I nearly fell down laughing because emotional eating is like an afterthought to Greg and is an enormous part of my every day existence; as I am fond of saying, another topic for another post.

7-Big Lust

I was going to call this entry “Big Love” (I never claimed to be all that original), but honestly the subject matter at hand has a lot less to do with love, than it does hot, sweaty sex.

If you’ve been with me since the beginning of this very young blog, you’ll remember that my eyes were opened to the world of men who like a big girl when I posted in craiglist’s Casual Encounters section back in December. I was on the hunt for some impromptu anger sex, and my assumption at the time was that if a guy knew that I was both black and BBW, I’d have some trouble getting laid. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’ve discovered since then that it is really no harder for me to procure a roll in the hay at my present weight, than it was 25 or 30lbs ago. So I set out to see why.

From February 8^th until the first week of March, I cruised craiglist’s m4w (man for woman) Casual Encounters section looking for men who preferred BBWs. I accosted them, sending them a chipper little e-mail asking if they’d be interested in an in-person interview or (as I wised up) answering some questions via e-mail. Of the 30 or so men who I e-mailed, I received a reasonable set of responses from nine; not a bad ROI in my books. And before I get going, let me say a huge thank you to the men who were willing to be so open and honest in answering my questions (a special shout out to ToBrickzShyAload). I’m even grateful to the guy who fucking stood me up for coffee last Friday night (you’re the one who asked, you weirdo).

My goal in conducting this rudimentary survey was to better understand the man who likes to have sex with a bigger woman. Ultimately, I wanted to know if the desire for a larger woman in bed was a legitimate preference or simply a fetish. The answer of course, is yes.

The first thing I tried to determine in all of this was some sort of definition for the term “BBW.” The answers from my participants varied but first we’ll let Wiki speak: “The terms ‘Big Beautiful Women’ and ‘BBW’ were coined by Carole Shaw in 1979, when she launched BBW Magazine, a fashion and lifestyle magazine for plus-size women.” In addition, “the term is a subjective, visually-determined concept that does not have an explicit lower or upper weight limitation, and may denote women who may be considered barely overweight to those who are morbidly obese.”

Having read the words of Wikipedia it wasn’t surprising that the answers of the men surveyed--when asked what BBW meant to them—varied widely. I got answers ranging from “anyone bigger than Marilyn Monroe” (who was about size six or eight by today’s standards—not a 14 or 16) to “a woman ideally 180-250lbs.” There were answers that were more about proportions like: “fit, hourglass…type body” or “a plus sized woman with shape.” And then there were the really confusing answers: a woman who “carries herself in a sexy way and exudes warmth and sensuality;” “a woman who “is comfortable with herself and takes pride in her appearance.” Or this next answer; whilst not a view necessarily espoused by the respondent, it was a possibility that he put forward: “fat ugly girls who can’t get laid normally but use craigslist for sex and then get a bunch of hot guys with big cocks to bang them.” I don’t know where he’s getting his information regarding cock size.

So my second question, which I believe was begging to be asked, was whether the terms “BBW” and “fat” are synonymous, or two different things. Here’s where things get funny:

“When I think of fat I think of someone who may be comfortable with themselves but doesn’t take care of their health or appearance.”

“I consider it different. Sure, on craigslist, every fat girl calls herself a BBW, but not every fat girl is beautiful or sexy.”

“Well it is pretty synonymous although a BBW might not be fat.”

So based on these answers, there are days when I’m fat, days when I’m a BBW and days when my BBW-ism or fatness will be completely determined by my beholder. Also I might not be fat at all. It does do a girl’s head in. Oh to have a nice, neat, relatively objective label like “slim.”

While a few men did simply say that the two were synonymous there was one answer that, I thought, made a great point about terminology:

“It is all about perception. The term[s] BBW, full figured, pleasantly plump, are used by people who find this body type sexy. The term fat is used by people who don’t.”

So let me park there for a moment. For many woman (and men) who fall into the group that is heavier than slim, fit or athletic, the idea of using the word “fat” to describe themselves is relatively abhorrent. I call myself “fat” on days when I’m feeling shitty about myself. When I’m feeling great I just call myself hot. There are so many negative connotations associated with the word fat—lazy, stupid, unhealthy, unkempt, slovenly, dim, weak-willed, unfeeling, greedy, utterly sedentary, smelly, deceitful, jealous, misanthropic, add others as you see fit—that not many people want to take on that word. And there isn’t the same cohesiveness in the “fat community” as there is in, for example, the gay community, so there’s been no great united effort to take back the word “fat” in the way that the word “queer” was reclaimed. Throw in the fact that most heavy people have, at some point in their lives, tried to be thinner (probably several times) and the reasons not to take on that term kind of snowball. While it doesn’t pack nearly the negative punch, there’s a reason slim people don’t generally ask to be referred to as “skinny.” “Skinny” stops being cool after about sixth grade (unless you’re talking denim), at which point it starts to be related to things like weakness in boys and really small breasts in girls.

Given these points I think it’s absurd for anyone to think that the majority of heavy people are going to refer to themselves as “fat” when seeking a partner for a relationship or just posting on craigslist for sex, unless they have made a conscious decision to use that word.

But back to the subject at hand.

So clearly no consensus was reached regarding what the terms “BBW” or “fat” mean. Having established absolutely nothing except the fact that I will never know if a man thinks I’m a BBW or a fat woman, I moved on to some other questions.

I wanted to know if, in an ideal world, these men would choose BBWs as their life partners. Now I made the mistake of essentially asking this question in two different ways, but the difference in responses to essentially the same question in some cases, was telling. The second time I sort of asked it, the question was framed as “if you’re looking for a long term relationship, rather than just sex, would it be important to you that she be BBW?” Of the six men who answered that question only two answered that it would be the ideal. The other four, despite their enthusiasm sexually for BBWs, went with either a “no” or a “not necessarily.” One fellow said that if he were to post an ad for relationship he would specifically mention a preference for BBW, but when answering the previously mentioned question answered: “No. For long term I’d want someone physically able to engage in an active lifestyle—skiing, sailing etc., but for a romp in the hay, there’s something to be said for lots of cuddly warm sexy flesh!”[i]

Which brings me to the issue of fetishism. Now strictly speaking, fetishes around the body tend to focus on a part of it as opposed to its entirety or the person as a whole. In the case of fat fetishism (not including Feederism, Stuffing and Gaining fetishes[ii]) the focus of the erotic arousal is often loose, hanging flesh.

So I looked carefully at the answers again, seeking signs of fetishism, and some phrases did stick out for me:

“[F]east for the eyes”

“[T]he way those soft thighs and bum feel”

“I’m crazy about big thighs and big buns”

“I love smothering myself into all [of] your body.” (Note this man did not ever “smother himself into all” of *my* body—he just wrote very conversationally).

“I am in heaven when orally pleasing a large behind and between thich [sic] thighs”

“[L]ots of cuddly warm sexy flesh”

Once again there was no apparent pattern in these responses. They came from men ranging in age from 27 to 49; men who dated BBWs, men who hadn’t or wouldn’t; men whose idea of BBW meant a woman who was probably around a size 12 or 14 and men who thought it was something closer to a size 24 or 26.

From where I’m standing, there’s a hint of fetish in those statements but on the other hand I’ve had this subject on the brain for weeks now. I did however, have an interesting conversation with the perfect man the other day (unfortunately he is married and has children—damn my bad luck). In his estimation, the BBW-loving men of our world are objectifying women as much as the guy who only goes for a huge rack on top of a set of legs that goes on forever.

And on some level I agree with him. I, like everyone else on the planet, have specific physical preferences when it comes to men—I like ‘em tall, dark and thin (what my sister describes as “skinny” with a grimace) and looking like they’re all of about twenty-one years old. But have the bulk of my sexual encounters or forays into dating been with men that look like that? No. Is it a deal breaker even in the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel world of casual sex (for women anyway)? No. Have I had amazing sex with people who didn’t fit the description and not so great sex with people who did? Yes and yes.

But then I’m a woman. Maybe this is one of those “men are more visual” issues. Maybe men need to have what their ideal visually and sexually to get it up more so than women. But I’m disinclined to agree with that statement. I have a hard time believing that every man with whom I’ve shared a bed has thought of my body as their ideal. In fact I know that’s not so. One former frequent flyer of mine has certainly told me what his ideal body type is (not mine), and has made mention of the “painfully shy woman with the best body I’ve ever seen” more than once. But obviously his preferences are not keeping him away. So if preferences unmet don’t generally keep people from getting it on and the Mars/Venus dichotomy isn’t necessarily a significant factor in casual sexual transactions—maybe, for, not all, but a significant number of guys, the BBW thing is, in fact, just a fetish. Not much different from the guy who wants to sleep with me just because I’m black. And I’m pretty sure I’m not cool with being fetishized. But, then again I probably won’t kick the next fetishist out of bed over it.

---

[i] While there’s ample fodder here for the beginnings of a discussion about fatness and fitness, it’s another post for another day.

[ii] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_fetishism for blurb about Feederism, Stuffing and Gaining.

6-Introducing Soon to be Superstars

Sasha, Liz, meet the blog fans.

Blog fans, say hello to Sasha and Liz.

And say hello to each other Sasha and Liz--you're sort of sisters now.

Sasha and Liz are two Weight Watchers members who have volunteered to be my guinea pigs for the coming year. Obviously two people do not a scientific sample make, so clearly this has nothing to do proving any theories. I just wanted to find some random people who would be willing to allow me a peek into their progress on the program for 12 months.

Liz is 27 year old rock goddess haling from the Golden Horseshoe. Liz's goal is to lose 24lbs on the program and she's been working at it since joining WW in October of 2007. This is the third time she's embarked on the program with her first attempt in 2003 and her second in 2005. While the the 2003 stint was very brief (six weeks) she spent almost a year on the program the second time but had to discontinue attending meetings for fiscal reasons (a very real issue with any paid weight loss program). This time, however, Liz's plan is to get to the point at which she's no longer paying and doesn't have to deal with that issue anymore. Liz is using the Flex (points) plan.

Sasha is a 25 year old mother of three little girls under the age of three--obviously a saint (grin). She has tried WW before but left the program due to a pregnancy. Her goal is to weigh 125lbs and she is presently at 177lbs. She started the program in the third of week of January and is using the Flex plan.

I'm looking very forward to bringing you updates of their experiences on the program every three months and I hope they enjoy the ride as much as I know we will.

5-Vacation and Work -- Mutually Exclusive

So I had these lofty plans to get all this work done on this blog on my week off. Instead I've spent my time watching crap loads of really bad daytime TV whilst sitting around in my pjs refusing to bathe regularly. Yeah, I kinda suck, but that's what vacations are for. Also a couple things that I am working on haven't come together as quickly as I had anticipated so I assure you, there are two potential posts that are not quite ready for public viewing. In the meantime enjoy these articles. Food for thought.



Smokers, fat folks mean health care savings

MARIA CHENG

Associated Press

February 4, 2008 at 10:45 PM EST

LONDON — Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

“It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. “But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

Mr. van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the “healthy-living” group (thin and non-smoking), obese people, and smokers. The model relied on “cost of illness” data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003.

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.

The results counter the common perception that preventing obesity will save health systems worldwide millions of dollars.

“This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars,” said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.

“If we're going to worry about the future of obesity, we should stop worrying about its financial impact,” he said.

Obesity experts said that fighting the epidemic is about more than just saving money.

“The benefits of obesity prevention may not be seen immediately in terms of cost savings in tomorrow's budget, but there are long-term gains,” said Neville Rigby, spokesman for the International Association for the Study of Obesity. “These are often immeasurable when it comes to people living longer and healthier lives.”

Mr. van Baal described the paper as “a book-keeping exercise,” and said that governments should recognize that successful smoking and obesity prevention programs mean that people will have a higher chance of dying of something more expensive later in life.

“Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don't survive very long,” Mr. van Baal said. “But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer's one day, they may survive longer and cost more.”

The study, paid for by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, did not take into account other potential costs of obesity and smoking, such as lost economic productivity or social costs.

“We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity,” Mr. van Baal said. “But they should do it for the right reasons.”





Is the obesity epidemic exaggerated?
(Head to Head: Is the obesity epidemic exaggerated?)

Saturday February 2, 08
Yes: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/336/7637/244
No: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/336/7637/245

Last week, the UK health secretary declared that we are in a grip of an obesity epidemic, but does the evidence stack up? Researchers in this week's BMJ debate the issue.

Claims about an obesity epidemic often exceed the scientific evidence and mistakenly suggest an unjustified degree of certainty, argue Patrick Basham and John Luik.

For example, the average population weight gain in the United States in the past 42 years is 10.9kg or 0.26kg a year. Yet, between 1999-2000 and 2001-2002, there were no significant changes in the prevalence of overweight or obesity among US adults or in the prevalence of overweight among children.

Furthermore, they say, the categories of normal, overweight, and obese is entirely arbitrary and at odds with the underlying evidence about the association between body mass index and mortality.

For example, the study on which the bands for overweight and obesity in the US are based found that the death risks for men with a body mass index of 19-21 were the same as those for men who were overweight and obese (29-31). Other studies have shown negligible differences between body mass index and death rates.

The association of overweight and obesity with higher risks of disease is equally unclear, they write. And, despite supposedly abnormal levels of overweight and obesity, life expectancy continues to increase.

They suggest that some public health professionals may have deliberately exaggerated the risks of overweight and obesity, and our capacity to prevent or treat them on a population wide basis, in the interests of health. They warn that this has unwelcome implications for science policy and for evidence based medicine.

But Robert Jeffery and Nancy Sherwood argue that a large body of scientific evidence shows that obesity is a major global health problem.

In the US, the prevalence of obesity in 1976-80 was 6.5% among 6-11 year olds and 5% among 12-17 year olds. In 2003-4 it was 19% and 17% respectively. Europe can also expect to see the numbers of overweight and obese children rising by around 1.3 million a year by 2010.

The risks of obesity on many serious health conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer, are also serious and well established, they write.

Most health economists and epidemiologists agree that the contribution of obesity to current healthcare costs is high and that it is likely to get much higher. Some have argued that we may even see real falls in life expectancy within a few decades, they add.

In summary, a large body of evidence documents that over-nutrition and obesity are a major global health problem, say the authors. With the continuing rise in obesity and limited treatment efficacy, options for averting a poor public health outcome seem to rest either on the hope that scientists are wrong in their projections or speedy investment in the development of more effective public health measures to deal with it.

They think the second option a more prudent scientific and policy choice.



I hope you enjoyed those two offerings. I hope to have some original content for you soon!

4-Watching Weight, Part I

I am four-time loser at Weight Watchers. It has become vastly clear that I am not cut out for this program. While some people seem to do well on it, I, sadly, do not.

I joined Weight Watchers four times between 1999 and 2005—two of those times I remained in the program for a year, while the other two times I lasted a few weeks or months. I lost between 20 and 25lbs on the two occasions that I really stuck with it and almost nothing on the other two. I have gained back every pound several times over and presently have zero intention of ever trying the program again. For some bizarre reason though, I have kept some of my old Weight Watchers materials. It’s interesting because pulling them out evokes both longing and aversion: longing for a time when I was thinner and ostensibly in control; aversion, because I had to spend so much time thinking about food in order to feel in control.

I first decided to try out Weight Watchers in 1999 at the age of 23. I had crested to 203lbs, was wearing a size 14 or 16, and generally feeling pretty uncomfortable in my own skin. I remember going to the warehouse at work to make the call to the 1-800 number because I didn’t want any of my co-workers to know that I was looking into it, despite the fact that I was quite good friends with most of them.

It was probably not a coincidence that I had been working my first desk job for a little over a year at that point. Until then I’d always been in retail environments that had required me to be on my feet all day. I had a roommate, which meant I was probably eating less than I would have had there been nobody at home to make me feel some level of shame about overeating. However, I had a hectic schedule, and the money to eat out more, so I could hide some part of my food consumption. Between being suddenly sedentary for eight hours a day and having more money to eat out, I started packing on the pounds.

My schedule was difficult to work around so I chose to go to a Saturday morning meeting even if I had to commute nearly 90 minutes to attend. In time having a Saturday morning meeting became a method by which I could cheat the system. I’d go to the weigh in on Saturday morning and then spend the remainder of the weekend eating whatever I wanted in whatever quantities I desired. Then on Monday I’d go back to “being good” and usually the goodness would show up on the scale the next Saturday morning, though I more than likely slowed down my progress with this methodology.

My ultimate goal, in 1999, was to lose about 30 or 40lbs and get down to my late high school weight of 165, but the first goal that most members try to meet is to lose 10% of their body weight. It took nearly six months but I finally lost my 10% and got down to 183lbs; I never lost anymore weight. I spent the rest of the year bouncing around that number—gaining and losing the same five or six pounds. I remember a friend admitting to me that she’d been jealous of my weight loss. She needn’t have been. After a year of taking my (somewhat smaller) arse across town to meetings I was fed up and frustrated and stopped attending at all; and the weight slowly crept back on.

It was between 2000 and 2003 that I made my two quite short-lived attempts at Weight Watchers. Both times it was my own lack of real motivation coupled with some un-enjoyable meetings that did me in. One of the meetings was simply too impersonal for me. It was held at a regional head office and I felt a bit like one of many cattle—no pun in intended--being herded through the process. The other meeting was in my very Italian neighbourhood and I was the only non-Italian in the room—which became disconcerting after a while. Besides that, the Italian meetings were held on Monday nights and since I usually spent my weekends cheating Monday was the worst possible day for a weigh in, in my books.

My second major attempt at the program took place years later in 2005. This time I went into the program at 222lbs. I’d now been working the same desk job for seven years, I was living on my own (and thus eating constantly without shame), and I wanted to get serious about dating but wasn’t feeling particularly confident about it at my weight. In addition shopping had become such a trial that I felt something had to be done. This time it only took me four and a half months to lose the 10%; but I had help. I had my wisdom teeth out in December of 2005 and didn’t eat solid food for two weeks. It’s amazing how you’ll lose weight when you’re essentially eating baby food. Overall I ended up losing about 25lbs and then, just as before, as the one year mark came up, I got tired of going to meetings every Saturday morning. This time it wasn’t even a long commute getting under my skin. I was only 15 or 20 minutes away from the meeting by subway and I had a friend going with me, so sometimes I even got a ride; but I guess I just got tired one day. And so by August of 2006, I had finished with Weight Watchers for the last time.

The Weight Watchers Method
For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with Weight Watchers, let me explain how it works. I’m going to base my explanation on my most recent attempt to stick with the program, but I can’t guarantee that it reflects the program in its present form whenever you happen to be reading this—Weight Watchers has changed dramatically since its inception and will probably continue to be tweaked as more information about weight loss becomes available.

There are two methods available in the program: The Flex Plan or The Core Plan. On the Flex Plan, foods are allotted point values based on calorie count, fat and fibre content. Members are then allowed to eat a certain number of points daily. This number is mostly based on the member’s weight but factors like age (i.e. if the participant is a teen or child) and pregnancy are taken into consideration. More recently, gender has also become a factor though for a long time it was not. So for me, at 222lbs, I was permitted 26 points of food a day. And for the sake of context, here are the point values of some common food choices that I would have made:

• 3oz of boneless, skinless chicken cooked = 4 points

• a medium sized apple = 1 point

• 1/8 of a 9” (diameter) fruit pie = 10 points

• a Big Mac =14 points.

Ultimately The Flex Plan is a simplified method of counting calories but some foods get more ‘bang for buck’ because of lower fat and higher fibre content. You can eat whatever you please but you must stick within your point allotment. If you enjoy freedom and have the ability to reign yourself in when you know you’re out of points, then this is the plan for you. On The Flex Plan you can also gain points by exercising—but it is sort of a zero sum issue. You’re only getting more points because you’re burning them off—you’re not actually gaining anything extra or cheating the plan in any way. Also, the makers of the plan recommend that you eat no more than four extra points a day even if your exercise has earned you more (four points amounts to about 25 to 30 minutes of high intensity cardio for most people). For someone working out heavily this really isn’t feasible—after a certain stage you have to put back in what you’ve taken out. However this doesn’t tend to be a problem for most members. While the overall idea of Weight Watchers is that one should exercise in conjunction with the eating plan, you honestly won’t find many hard bodied people at a Weight Watchers meeting. In my experience, members aren’t generally doing more than four points worth of exercise a day.

On The Core Plan a member can eat as much as they need to feel satisfied but the actual foods permitted in the plan are limited. Foods that are part of The Core Plan are ones you know to be healthy—lean meats, poultry and fish, whole wheat pasta, brown rice, whole grains and potatoes, fat free dairy products and a lot of vegetables and fruit. But even some of the permitted foods are limited in quantity—whole wheat pasta, brown rice and potatoes, for example, are only allowed once a day; ground meats with no more than 7% fat are only allowed once daily as well. The member, however, is allotted 35 points a week for foods that don’t fall into The Core Plan. The key to successfully navigating The Core Plan is understanding the need to stop eating when you are satisfied--not full or overflowing.

A member can switch between Core and Flex as often as they like—in fact, switching is sometimes recommended as a good way to kick-start more weight loss when one has reached a plateau—as long as the switch doesn’t occur in the middle of a week.

I don’t like being told what to do so I was always an adherent of The Flex Plan. And frankly The Core Plan didn’t exist the first three times that I tried Weight Watchers. The Core Plan was more of a response to proponents of The Atkins Diet and The South Beach Diet asking why Weight Watchers didn’t seem to really encourage healthy foods choices. Despite my reluctance to ever try The Core Plan though, I actually believe Core to be the more effective of the two in the long term. My feeling is that it helps people learn something they can take with them from the program should they decide to leave—relatively healthy eating habits. Flex, on the other hand, simply left me with an even more bizarre relationship with food than when I started out.

The Meetings
The meetings are an integral and interesting part of Weight Watchers. Missing meetings is usually the death knell for your Weight Watchers journey.

The group leader, a Weight Watchers employee, pretty much makes or breaks a meeting in my opinion. I’ve had some group leaders who I loved and other ones who made me never want to show up again. I’m sure that reason I stuck around for a year in ’99 and ’05 had a lot to do with having really great group leaders. I bumped into one of these women years later at my local Running Room and we still really clicked. When we’d have substitute group leaders I’d sometimes just weigh in and leave.

But the meetings have way of being a double-edged sword because there’s a certain amount of “group think” that occurs. Really heavy members will generally receive unmitigated encouragement. People that tend to fall in the middle, like me, will also receive quite hearty encouragement. People who look "normal” when they join (i.e. not people who’ve lost the weight and are maintaining) but for whatever reason have chosen to try Weight Watchers: not so much. There was a young lady in my 2005 meeting who was around 20 years old and came into Weight Watchers at about a size six. She lost ten or twelve pounds and left looking virtually the same to me. She seemed genuine about her struggle to lose the weight but most of us middle-aged fatties were having a hard time being sincere in our encouragement of her—at least I was. It was difficult to understand why she felt she even needed to lose weight.

Another phenomenon that tended to occur was that when people lost a lot of weight quickly--instead of the promoted healthy 1-2lbs weekly--they really did get the most applause. When my friend Patricia* attended meetings for a short time and proudly met her 1-2lb goal every week, the reaction she got was nothing close to that of those who came in saying they’d dropped six or seven pounds in the same time frame. She found it disturbing that this dramatic and generally unhealthy type of weight loss was held up as admirable without the group leader making much of an effort to temper the excitement.

At every meeting, there are, besides the group leader who runs the discussion, a variety of people taking your money and weighing you. The people sitting at those scales have the power, often, to make or break your day. I recall one old fella at my 2005 meetings who used to call out your weight so loudly that every one else could hear it, much to the chagrin of many. There was another woman who was so discouraging to members who had gained weight that some of the members complained to the group leader. There was also the complaint that she was harder on very heavy people than she was on others who were smaller. Ultimately, the actions and reactions of members cannot be fully controlled, and as such the meetings can be both the greatest strength and weakness of the program.

Weight Watchers, My Friends and I
Off the top of my head I can count seven of my friends who have been Weight Watchers members. I'm almost positive that there are more but it’s hard to keep track. Tonya* has tried the program and always slips up with alcohol. She constantly overshoots her points when she and her husband decide to crack open a bottle of wine. She’s no longer on the program. My friend Emily* has an on again-off again relationship with Weight Watchers. Sometimes she does the meetings and sometimes she doesn’t. She almost always seems to be counting her points but never quite religiously sticking with the plan. She’s never really been overweight, in my opinion, either though. My aforementioned friend Patricia was so perturbed by the unhealthy encouragement of dramatic weight loss that went on in the meetings that she attended, that she stopped going after just a few weeks. My good friend Krista* just seemed to tire of the program eventually. Another friend, Miriam*, one day decided she was finished with paying for weight loss and quit attending meetings after about a year and a half. She’s now on a new diet that’s doctor supervised and it seems to be working well for her—she’s lost more than she did on Weight Watchers thus far. I remember an old friend Norma*; she was one of those rare people who had managed to hit her goal in the program and was in the coveted position of not having to pay for meetings anymore. She called me one night because she didn’t know how to keep herself from eating. This was after her weight had floated back up and she was paying for the privilege of attendance again.

And then there is my amazing friend Val* with whom I started out in 2005, still keeping up with it 2 ½ years later. I asked her what makes her stick with it after all this time and she said the following (I’m paraphrasing here): “I like that I can eat whatever I choose to eat. There’s no one telling me what I can and can’t have; because whenever something is restricted then I’ll cheat. With Weight Watchers I can have what I want and find a way to eat that works for me so there’s never any need to cheat. Secondly I like that I’m not alone in this. On every other plan that I’ve tried I always hit a point when I start feeling like I’m the only person doing it and then I want to quit. The support that I get at the meetings really helps. Lastly the accountability. Knowing that I have to go to that meeting every Saturday keeps me on track. I can slack off for the weekend but I know if I don’t stick to the plan Monday through Friday it’s going to show up on the scale. So the accountability is a real motivating factor.”

Even though she's on The Flex Plan, Val mentioned that for the past 18 months or so she hasn’t actually been recording the point values of what she eats at all, but she has diligently recorded what she’s been eating. She finds that having to be honest about everything she eats keeps her in check (or at least lets her know why the number isn’t going where she wants it to on the scale). And to her credit I will say this—Val looks fabulous. I saw Val a few weeks ago and she looks great. I mean she can wear skinny jeans dammit.

But I have my suspicions (and Val had agrees) that she is the exception, rather than the rule. Val said that almost none of the people with whom she began Weight Watchers back in ’05 are still in attendance (myself included obviously)—or if they are, they have left and come back, thus losing the same weight again. It seems that while the psychology behind Weight Watchers works for Val, it doesn’t, in the long term, work for the vast majority of people, myself included.

In the documentary "The Diet Wars" Stephen Talbot compared Weight Watchers to being in a 12-step program; and I have to admit, the shoe fits. Weight Watchers meetings can sort of feel like being in a group of ever-recovering fatties. "Hi, my name is Isabel, and I'm fat." My therapist has indicated that she feels the point counting is only giving you a false sense of control over your eating habits, and only recommends using the program to kick-start weight loss but not as a long term remedy. And I'd have to agree (and no, I don't always agree with my therapist). If it's going to take attending weekly meetings and counting points for the rest of my life to keep me in check--I can't say I'd call that control. And while The Flex Plan is all about eating what you want when you want, no one talks about how dramatic the food reduction is for most new members. Upon starting the program I was easily eating a third of what I'd normally eat. I'm not saying this isn't a good fraction to shoot for but in my case I was left feeling quite deprived. When I finally got accustomed to eating less, I still had be really careful about my food choices or risk being left hungry...and angry. I could have a 10 point piece of pie but I'd have a hard time remaining satisfied for the rest of the day on just 16 more points. In fact I wasn't able to, so I'd have to overeat or starve. One option would leave me trying not to feel bad about having cheated (and usually eating to numb out the guilt) while the other option would leave me hungry and angry. I realize there are a lot of emotional issues caught up in my eating habits and that complicates what is, at its simplest, an issue of calories consumed and calories burned. But I don' t know many women for whom weight gain and loss isn't an emotional issue. While Weight Watchers does have a component of emotional coaching in the program, obviously it's not tailor made for each member.

My intent here is not to besmirch the name of Weight Watchers. I think it's one of the healthier weight loss programs out there. I just wonder if it's as kind and gentle and all-inclusive as it claims to be. Given the seemingly high member turn over, one might not think so. But I don't intend to have you simply take my word for it. I'm not even going to have you go on the word of my jaded ex-member friends. In the interests of checking this theory out I plan to follow some Weight Watchers members over the next year to see how it works for them. It will not, by any means, be a large enough sample to call the experiment scientifically sound, but simply an interesting look at random people trying to make this program work for them. I will give at least quarterly updates on their progress and in a year we'll see where they all end up. While it may prove nothing either way, it will be interesting to get a glimpse into the journeys of others as they navigate watching their weight.

*Of course those aren't their real names!