Read this: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Shame.  It hits all the levels. Being fat is different from being fat and black is different from being fat, black and female.  You can barely move from the weight of it even if you’re physically fit, even if you can run or float. You can spend all of your time fighting what people think you are without really having a chance to figure it out for yourself.

I’m in the middle of a move, so I haven’t had time to go to yoga, only stretching some at home, mostly in bed, trying to figure my way around the new place, letting go of the old.  When I finally did go to a yoga class, I was shocked that my chaturangas were solid and strong, and my Vasisthasana was two-legged instead of my usual top leg forward for support. I was amazed. Again. In terms of asana, I’m a better yogi now than when I was smaller and practiced harder.

I’ve been amazed at my practice in the past few months because I’ve gained about 30lbs in the last nine months (honestly, much of that weight came between November and January. The holidays were fun!). But my practice has improved, a lot, since last summer when I was practicing pretty vigorously 5-6 times a week during teacher training. And I was 30lbs lighter.

I want to make sure everyone understands this is not “muscle weight”. I gained fat. My breasts are huge, my belly doughy, my hips and thighs can’t get into favorite skirts and jeans. I always think: “My practice would be so much better if I were smaller. If I were skinnier I’d be able to wrap myself around… myself, better.”  Would binds be easier if I had less to go around? Yes. No doubt. You can’t wrap 2 feet around 3 feet.

I also seem to improve when I limit my vigorous practices to maybe 2 to 3 times a week. I always have this desire to exercise hard, all the time, truth be told hoping to lose weight, even though I know from years of experience now, I won’t.  But maybe my body just needs more time to repair itself, to grow stronger. I’m starting to think that’s not really uncommon, especially the older you get. The older I get.

According to conventional wisdom, my practice should be getting worse. I should be getting weaker not stronger, less flexible not more. But I’m not. I notice my palm finding the floor in twists, not just my finger tips, not on a block. My core is stronger than I think it is. I try to trust my breath to lift me up when I think my muscles can’t. And I can tell you for a fact that I couldn’t do more than one chaturanga last summer, but now I can. And I can push up from it too. Well a few at least.

In terms of asana, I’m a better yogi now than when I was smaller and practiced harder.

Diets don’t work.

But I know that I feel better physically when I cut out carbs, especially sugar. My skin is clearer, my digestion/elimination is better, my sugar crashes aren’t… aren’t, and I don’t get the wicked headaches I used to get all the time (maybe I destroyed my liver with all the ibuprofen?). I’ve learned that when I do eat too much sugar, like during the holidays, a piece of bacon will settle my stomach. Bacon!  I’m trying to eat this way, for my health, without the focus being on losing weight.

But it feels like a weight loss diet. It has the same texture and pattern, one that insists absolute fealty and obedience to the Diet God (it’s so not a goddess), or in this case maybe it’s the Health God. I feel deprived and bitter and put upon. I feel like I’m holding myself back on every level, weighting for some perfect state of health that’s not going to come. I feel trapped, torn between giving up dieting for weight loss, and eating in a way that works for my body, which is dieting!

Then I read something like this from gluten free girl:

When I found out it was celiac disease, and all I had to do was stop eating gluten to find my health again, I never thought of all the foods I had to live without. I thought only, yes. Yes to being alive. Yes to all the foods that do not contain gluten that I can eat. Yes to food and being awake and my body healing. Yes to all of this.

And I feel small, horribly, horribly small. In spirit, not size.

If I found out I had celiac disease would I be this happy? I doubt it seriously.  I would weep at the thought of never having bread again. I make awesome bread. I have a huge framed poster of bread in my kitchen. I doubt I could look forward to a life without bread and not feel I was being punished for something, I know not what. Because that’s what dieting for any reason feels like, like punishment for unknown and made-up crimes.  But not to gluten free girl. She’s just happy as a clam without bread. And not to anyone who sees a huge restriction as an opportunity to create something new.

I want to let this trapped feeling go but I’m so used to it, it’s all I know. I’m not sure what’s there without it. How do I make the switch from focusing on what I can have instead of what I can’t. How do I say YES to life, when NO has been shrieking at me constantly for so long? How do I drown NO and resuscitate YES?

If you have any ideas, let me know. Alright?

Fat is the subject of the hour.  There are so many things to link to and others do a better job, because they’re deep in the folds of the obesity argument. But I want to capture these even just for myself and have reference points when the urge to diet and exercise excessively come up.

At The Atlantic Megan McArdle starts an epic battle (in blogging) with the obesity panic and what to do about it. It starts here. Old but found this link to an NPR story, Top 10 Reasons Why the BMI Is Bogus, at The Rotund.

Also at the Rotund, The Limbo, does a good job of talking about period between souring on dieting and truly being accepting being fat. I touched a little on some of these issues in my other blog, but not in terms of fat.  I’m going more in depth on this in another post because it’s so fraking important.

I’ve been thinking about fat and why it has a tendency not to go away for good once someone has packed it on. (You know, other than the obvious we’re all just greedy lazy gluttons who sit around all day eating sweet, fatty, salty Doritos.)

When I read Elizabeth Kolberts article, Why Are We So Fat in the New Yorker, I was reminded once again that fat is not longer considered a symptom of disease (or even a side effect) as it once was.  Every single book, author and study she mentions says it’s all about the calories we consume, not the kind and/or quality of the food we eat, or non-food factors that my have affected the American populace as a whole.  Disease is a byproduct of being fat, which is caused solely by our overeating/underexercising (it might as well be a word).

But let’s say fat is a symptom or side effect, which never goes away, even when the body has healed itself of the disease that caused it.  Emphasis mine, of course.  The assumption is always that we now eat more calories, so that’s why we’re fat.  What if we assumed that we eat more calories now because we got fat as a side effect, and we need those extra calories to maintain our higher weight.

Think about it this way:  If you have breast cancer and you have mastectomy, after your treatment, the cancer, the disease is gone. But you’re not going to grow your breast back. It’s kind of that way with fat. There’s some hormonal imbalance for whatever reason (puberty, pregnancy, high sugar diet), you gain the weight.  You change your diet or go on or off birth control pills or stop using hairspray, so your hormones are balanced again. But you don’t lose the weight, because it’s not important or your overall health.

Emphasis mine, again.

I know I’m a bit late on this but this Nick Kristof column is scary on many levels.  Lady pee (as Stephen Colbert called it) is going to turn everyone female!!! Forget about marriage only being between a man and a woman. There won’t be any men! No more babies!  It’s going to be all Children of Men!  But that’s just the half of it. It turns out I could be fat ’cause I drink tap:

This month, the Endocrine Society, an organization of scientists specializing in this field, issued a landmark 50-page statement. It should be a wake-up call.

“We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology,” the society declared.

“The rise in the incidence in obesity,” it added, “matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in generation of obesity.”

Emphisis mine. There are only two theories really about the so-called obesity epidemic: calories or hormones.  But both of these theories are firmly rooted in food. In both camps there’s at base the idea that you can control your weight: it’s either how much or what you eat that’s causing you to be fat.  It’s your choice.

Kristof’s column goes way beyond food.  If you’ve read other posts you probably know I’m with the endocrinology people, I’m in the hormones crowd.  It’s all about how foods affect hormones that regulate fat accumulation and burning. But it’s still about food. It’s always about food.

This isn’t about food. Could obesity really be caused by water and hairspray?  Holy shit. Really? It’s not the processed foods? Or butter and eggs? It’s not the commuting to work by car and sitting at your desk all day? Really? Can I quit the gym if I just stop drinking tap water?  (You know how many diets insist that you drink 8 glasses of water a day. Oops! Psych!) And hairspray? Where did that come from? Who still uses hairspray?

It’s fascinating and it may be a conversation changer, if it turns out the science is strong behind this (although it looked like the science was strong behind low fat diets so really what does that prove?).

Let’s be honest: what to eat may be an ever popular topic in America, but nothing gets the attention faster than phrases like “undescended testicles” and “genital deformities.”

Yes!! Finally, people are catching on. From Ode Magazine:

Even the American Heart Association (AHA), a leader in the campaign against dietary fat, recently revised its nutritional guidelines, increasing the daily recommendations for fat. “The science just wasn’t there,” acknowledges Robert Eckel, president of the AHA and a professor of endocrinology, metabolism and diabetes at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Fat is delicious. I also really want to get this book: Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. I hope it has recipes with lard and suet.

Why am I fat? It’s not the fat in food that’s for sure. Is it the HFCS? Maybe. Right now I’m feeling like I don’t really know and I don’t really care. I just want to enjoy my food.

And Bonus! My stomach has stopped hurting!! Just magically after what 2, 3 years I can eat and not be in pain!! It’s so exciting!

Paul Campos’ article Fat Judges Need Not Apply makes me want to cry.  Why am I surprised? I knew this.  I know this. Women are only worth what they look, like nothing else. I should only be surprised that it looks like most of the comments, so far, are from men and not women.

Most people are talking about the men’s desire quote or creepy old Rehnquist, but it’s this quote that gets me: “for average-height women, no increased mortality risk correlating with weight begins to appear until weights above 200 pounds”.

Why doesn’t anyone EVER says that?!  No amount of fat is acceptable for women.  They make you think you have to be a size 2 to be healthy.  So women who wear a size 14 think they’re headed toward imminent death!

And god forbid if you’re a size 16!  Newly fat Brit author Tanya Gold put on weight and discovered there’s no amount of money that can get you a designer frock if you’re that size. None!

Is this a tipping point? Every obsession has it’s end?  Suddenly tulips are no longer that necessary.  With Campos using the science, and fat women with a lot of money to spend during the New Great Depression, and the fact that models can’t possibly get any thinner (unless designers start to use corpses in their ads; they’d all consider it modern and edgy), could we be seeing the beginning of the end of the reign of fat terror?  Can I have some butter now?

It hasn’t even been 24 hours and already my stomach isn’t bloated up at the top of my chest. It’s still fat, but not bloated.

I went back to scrambling eggs in a little cast iron skillet. They taste even better!

I want to avoid this. Really I do. I want to be all “hey I’m confident in my body right now as is.” But I’m not. I’m really not.So here I go again, because I don’t really feel that well.

I’m getting headaches again, waking up with them. My knees are suddenly killing me. I’m tired all the time. I feel heavy, like I’m just dragging myself around. And my skin, my skin is not flawless. So. The dreaded D word. I refuse to call it a “lifestyle”. First of all I hate the word “lifestyle” and second, it’s not a lifestyle. A lifestyle is living on the beach and surfing every morning, or a farm and taking care of your animals. This is a diet, plain and simple.

I’m all over the fatosphere, reading the fat positive blogs, so I know that diets don’t work, if by “work” you mean solely that you lose weight “permanently”, then no diets don’t work. But what if by work I mean other things like, having flawless skin, no headaches, no bloating or stomach pain, and no uncontrollable farting. No uncontrollable farting is a goal to work toward.

So this whole situation doubly sucks. Because now I have to give up all the foods I truly truly love, and I’m not even going to fucking be skinny.  What’s the point?!?  See above.

I love sugar, I love bread, I love jams and jellies and crepes. It’s not fair, it’s not right. What am I suppose to do for fun and pleasure now? Pooh was right, Pooh was right.