Weight Wars

Dear public, online diary,

today I thew up all over myself. It all started when I got the bright idea to enroll in a training camp for kickboxing. I overestimated my level of fitness and was quickly forced to call it quits early after I vomited outside in the dirt. Oddly, my first day went fine. I was tired and exhausted, but I was not having problems breathing. My second day was much harder, maybe my body hadn't had time to heal itself from last week. Or else it was the five cups of tea I had just before I went. I read somewhere that being over hydrated can be nearly as bad as being dehydrated. But maybe it was just some odd, anxiety fluke that made me burn out on the second day. Either way, I am going back but I am waiting until Wednesday or Thursday to return, and not just because I want  my body to heal; I also want to avoid the camp until I have overcome my humiliation.

Why would I do something like crash-binge exercise? Because I weigh 174 pounds at 5 feet, 2 inches and that puts me back into the obese category. Last year I was around 155 pounds. Now, one ex-boyfriend later, and a summer of sweet chocolate indulgence later, I weigh 20 pounds more. I did weigh 25 pounds more but I lost about 4 pounds since Friday, which might not be the healthiest thing in reality. I heard that 2 pounds per week is the high end of acceptable weight loss, not 4 pounds in 3 days.

Either way, I am tired of carrying all this extra weight. I am taking a lighter load in classes so this means that I have plenty of time to do push-ups, leg lifts, jump rope, and to play with my punching bag. I have waged a war on my own weight since the age of 22 or 23, when I started to gain weight due to a prescription drug named Zyprexa that I was put on during a bipolar episode.

I have watched my weight go up and down by as much as 60 pounds. At age 25 I was 135 pounds. At 28 I was 194 pounds. At 29 I was a 155 pounds. My life has become whittled down to nothing more than cryptic numbers jotted in my notepad--Monday, September 10th, 174 pounds, down 4 pounds, aged 30, 40 minutes of extreme exercise, 600 calories going into the work out, ate 1000 afterwords just to make the world stop spinning. Yes, I literally ate a 1000 calories. It is not as hard as it sounds. A simple combo meal from Wendys or Carl's Jr can set a person back by over 1000 calories! I am trying to remain on a 1200 calorie a day diet, but that should not happen on exercise days, as I learned the hard way. Little food in the belly after an extreme work out left me feeling woozy, dizzy, light-headed, weak, and on the verge of blacking out. I ran to the fast food joint and stuffed my mouth with salt, grease, and meat. No, not good, but it was just a quick fix to get me home without having to pull the car over to the side of the road in order to vomit.

I have decided that I cannot be happy unless I have a Master's degree, psychotropic medicine, pot brownies to soothe my migraines and anxiety, and a better body. Ideally, I would just always be happy without having to strive for anything, but that is not the way my mind operates.

Classes are going fine. I went on academic probation this semester because my graduate GPA dropped to a 2.8, which is well below the 3.0 minimum for Master's degree students. Luckily, I can raise my GPA this semester and take all the remaining courses for my program next semester.

By spring, 2014, I should be applying for my Master's graduation ceremony (and I will be more fit and skinnier).
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I Have a New Therapist

Well, after my distressing couple of weeks dealing with a classmate/friend's suicide, I finally had a session with a new therapist. She is a PhD at the campus psych clinic. I opted to go to the campus psych clinic because the county's therapists are hard to get appointments with and they are more for crisis-riddled, 100% damaged people (like I used to be until I got adjusted to medication and my grad school life).

We talked about my classmate and how it brought back my memories from my cousin's suicide. I was close to my cousin and we lived in the same house for a few years. It all came rushing back, the closeness we had, the way his life crumbled in a matter of years, the sudden news of his suicide, the viewing, the sight of my dead cousin's brother sitting by himself in the corner of a park, strumming his guitar, while the rest of his family sat around sadly holding pictures of my lost cousin.

My therapist brought up the fact that it seemed like I was hiding from issues with suicide and self-harm in my life by ducking into my academics. I have to agree. What is worse is that failing classes makes me feel not only incompetent and dumb, but it hits harder because the only thing holding me together is my success in my college life.

I sometimes feel that I am also doomed to a life of self-harm, be it through cutting or drugs. I have to reframe my attitude. I have done not too bad the past 3 years. I got my Bachelor's degree in the arts/humanities, and got through my first year in a Master's program. Instead of thinking, "most people with schizo-affective disorder who come from a financially deprived past don't complete college but I did," I think "I don't have any practical work experience! I'm already 30! I'm doomed to poverty and poorly paying jobs!" That might be true, but I could at least focus on the positive parts of my life and personality.

Hopefully, I can work on these issues with my therapist. Also, she pointed out that it seems like I have issues holding a steady relationship and feeling like a complete person on my own. I agree. I think my insecurities are visible and that men with damaged egos seeking an easy lay prey on me, and I let them because I've never known anything else.

I have known that I have daddy issues, or rather never-had-a-daddy issues, but the fact that I feel like I am incomplete without a male sex partner is kind of news to me. I thought I was more whole than that. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. In the time since I started this blog, I have had 3 lovers and 1 one-night stand. I don't know how often other people change partners, but maybe 4 partners in 2-3 years is too much for someone who wants to settle down and be a good Catholic daughter.

My therapist said I was normal, in terms of my behavior, and this was mind-boggling to me. She said it seemed like I had a good handle on social skills except for when I analyze them for hours afterwards. I really want to be normal. I want to be confident, successful, a good role model, but I don't think I am and I have no idea how to be successful. Also, I have major issues with food and eating.

I have been binge eating as soon as the clock reads 5 pm. I have been exercising every other day for at least 30 minutes (either running or boxing), but I still feel like I am being lazy. If it wasn't nearly 100 degrees outside, I would probably spent the majority of my day walking off calories, running along the canal banks in my neighborhood, and doing burpees until I can't stand up.

Maybe one day I will have the ability to look at an ice cream come and not feel like I am about to have a panic attack, a flight or binge eat response, but for now I will settle for just avoiding ice cream cones completely. 

I Lost 1 More Pound and My History as Big Hips Woman

I lost one more pound for a total of 5 pounds. I am pleased. My big hips still have love handles, though.

I was reading this viral blog post about this girl who posted her picture on a blog. She was very pretty and heavy. Her blog post went on a tirade against people who have been mean to her because of her weight and how she is sick of hiding her body because other people don't like to see fat. In the photo she was in her bra and underwear.

My facebook friend posted it on her wall and I read the story. It resonated with me. I still remember strange men making comments about me being "too fat" to my face as I walked by.


*************Bio of Big Hips Woman**************
Unlike the blogger, I was never overweight as a child or young adult. I gained weight at the age of 23, but when I gained weight I gained a lot of it due to the effects of Zyprexa medication and a bad diet that I have had since my childhood.

Since then, I have been on a mini-crusade trying to get rid of the fat. At some points, I succeeded. About 4 to 5 years ago, I went on a crash diet and lost so much weight I went from a size 14 to about 130 pounds, or maybe a size 8. I never bought new clothes so I never found out exactly what size I turned into. Instead, I'd wear size 10 and size 12 pants with a big belt to keep them up. I lost a lot of weight but I did so by not taking the Zyprexa medicine and through a starvation diet. Naturally, being a schizo-affective with a propensity towards mania when unmedicated, I became floridly psychotic and was plucked from my daily routine of food obsession and food denial and locked in a psychiatric facility. I gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks and when I got out I just kept gaining it back, plus some extra.

I paid for weight training classes at the community college. I seriously worked out 3 times a week but the amount of weight I gained after dieting was too much and the exercise barely made a dent. I was in a class with only 2 other women. One had a tiny waist, bone-like arms, and huge breast implants. The other was a very thin, waif-like girl. Sometimes they would come into the mat room where I liked to hide doing my sit-ups and sit down along the wall, stare at me periodically, whisper and laugh. I don't care if they weren't talking about me, the looks on their faces and their obvious stares was enough to make me want to cry. Ironic that they were taking a weight lifting class but all they did was sit around, watch me and talk. Meanwhile, I was doing endless crunches and pedaling like a maniac on a stationary bike. Then came the horrible day when I ran into my old friend who had last seen me a few years ago when I was still about 115 pounds. She congratulated me on my baby. I felt ridiculous. "I'm not pregnant, just fat," I said. She apologized profusely but the damage had been done.

I continued with intermittent periods of intense exercise. I walked for hours every day for years but that never paid off. I would periodically run for hours but the weight wouldn't budge and my knees would ache for days afterwards. I would do yoga, lift a 10 pound weight, and I also took a semester of modern dance from the community college. This entire time I was doing manual labor and staying on my feet for 3-5 hours a day at my part-time job. Nothing worked.

Fast forward a few years: I was a returning student to the University. I  had just gotten out of "reintegration rehabilitation" for mental patients. It was an out-patient all-day 6 month bonanza of group therapy, art therapy, and lectures about how to deal with mental illness symptoms without resorting to drugs or relapsing. Through the whole thing there were catty females in the program who would chant obsessively that they didn't want to get fat. Luckily, they had no jobs or anything else to do during the day except to diet and depend on their men to support them. I notice that when people fail at the basic things in life like employment, education, and relationships, they always tend to fall back on the food thing. Anyways, I went to the University, concentrated on succeeding, ignored my food consumption, and gained 15 to 20 pounds. Hitting 194 was a bleak day for me. I dropped meat out of my diet and started monitoring how many calories everything had and I dropped to 181 in about a month and a half.

The next two years I exercised like I was training for a professional MMA match. I took judo twice a week for six months. On top of this, I used my stationary bike for an hour. I also used my mechanical rowing machine for at least 30 minutes. I walked for hours every day. By the end of my first year back at the University I had dropped 40 pounds and was 151 pounds. The next semester I took a modern dance class with many stereotypical dancer-type females. You know what I mean, the ones that took ballet in their youth and never took to a normal people diet. The type who think weight is a matter of self-discipline and not being a sloth. It was painful but I endured and danced and danced and got an A. Next, I dated an Arabian guy who kept feeding me deep-fried salmon, white rice, and potatoes. I gained 20 pounds.

I decided action must be taken, swift, brutal action. I enrolled in 1 hour of karate twice a week followed immediately by 1 hour of kick-boxing twice a week. On the weekends, I use a punching bag I bought for myself and  I still walk for hours every day. The result? The weight didn't budge until just now. 5 measly pounds. 5. Yes, 5 pounds. I'm 168 now, in the obese range. I am obese but I can flip you over my shoulder and throw you to the mat, I can do karate katas, and I can throw a nasty cross, hook, and a violent roundhouse. This isn't air-punching, cardio stuff, this is grab your sparring partner and flip them onto their backs. This is stand there and let your sparring partner lift you into the air so you fall on your back really hard, then get up and do it again. This is full-force roundhouse kicks on your sparring partner's command, your leg hitting pads as hard as it can. This is non-stop jabs, hooks, crosses, front kicks, roundhouse kicks, elbows, knees hitting the pads as fast and as hard as you can.

I've decided to keep up the martial arts routine, not because I am losing weight, but because I love it. I still want to lose weight, just so society will shut up about my body. Primarily, though, I want to lose enough weight to get into the main women's fighting division which is 136-144 pounds. That's where all dem tuff chicks are.I can't wait until I am up there taking real hits and giving real hits in a real competition. If I have to go on a parsley diet, or a 6 pm diet, so be it. I have so much determination that never showed on my figure, only in my eyes. One day, that slender sporty girl will be in the ring with me and she will suddenly realize that all those layers of fat were hiding hours and hours of training. That, just to be the weight I will be, I had to work five times harder than she trained for  and 5 times longer. She will realize that those years of being fat made me hard, made me angry, made me endure things she could not. I will tell her beforehand, "I used to be 194 pounds. I lost weight so I could sock you in the face a whole bunch of times. :)" And it will be true.

That is my bio as big hips woman. Thank you for reading. ~Electra

Spring Break, Mental Health, & how I gained Weight

I am being transferred from an intensive out-care program to the county's relaxed mental health care system. I am not sure how I feel about this, as memories of this county facility still haunts me --- being sent away repeatedly and then finally getting to see one befuddled doctor who wrote the incorrect prescription and left me without medicine for a good 2 months (while I was floridly psychotic).

Hopefully, I can make all my doctor's appointments without fail, otherwise there might be a three month wait period.

Wish me luck, I'll need it if this new care program is like the last time I remember.

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Good news = I am president of a club and I actually did get our event approved.
Bad news = I had no spring break because I have been working on arrangements for the event.
More bad news=I did like 2 pages of a 15 page paper only. I still need to do my programming homework.
Good news = I had a cup of chai and I'm feeling good,
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Lately, I've been reading a lot of race relations articles and I am feeling a little queasy from thinking about how many anti-immigrant/anti-minority people are running around out there. I'll keep it to myself for now, since I don't feel like going off on some political rant.

Ah heck, I'll do it anyways. marriage =. Immigration reform. Break the glass ceiling. Down with neo-nazis. Up with Bill Maher. Okay, I'm done.

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On my weight
OMG. I gained weight while taking two hours of martial arts twice a week! Four hours per week for nothing! Nothing! I now am at the heaviest I have been since I first modified my diet intake 2 years ago; 171 pounds. Yes, it's technically in the obese range. Yes, I hate my body (except for my boobs which have returned to a plump, seductive G cup). Yes, I gained a whopping 20 pounds in under 5 months. I don't know what to do. The more I think about my weight the more despondent I get and the more I want to comfort eat. I ate a doughnut today. I hate myself for eating that doughnut. The long walk to the doughnut store and back home only burned off a quarter of the calories I consumed in doughnut. I ate half my dinner today, but I didn't use my stationary bike or my punching bag as exercise, so I feel bloated and disgusting. My dinner was a couple of tablespoons of white rice and some nopales my mom made. My lunch was that doughnut. For breakfast I had a bowl of oatmeal with a bunch of fresh blueberries. Then, right after breakfast, my mom came home from taking the elderly neighbor lady to the grocery store. The elderly lady, in her naive kindness, bought my mom a tray of mini cupcakes. I literally doubled over when I saw them. My kryptonite. This is the reason why I don't buy any chips, baked goods, ice cream, or frozen pizzas. I have issues with moderation. I cannot eat a little handful of chips, or just 1 mini cupcake. I will literally flee the kitchen and hide in my room, without the treat. Then, for hours, I will think about the treat. Eventually, I break down, sneak into the kitchen, grab the entire bag/carton/tray of treats and secretly eat in my bedroom. This is the reason why I always buy roma tomatoes, cheese, and tea instead. When there are no sugary, sodium-laced, greasy alternatives, I eat quite healthy. But when a naively kind neighbor lady buys us mini cupcakes, I crumble after an hour of pouting on my bed and trying to distract myself by watching BBC documentaries on the internet. Yes, I ate 3 mini-cupcakes, and then I couldn't stop myself. I walked to the doughnut store and bought a coffee and a doughnut. I came home. 2 more mini-cupcakes. I despise mini-cupcakes. They must be walked into the jungle and left for the pumas. Down with mini-sprinkle cupcakes!!

I like my boobs. They are plump. They are the only part of my body I am fond of. I will now end this little blog entry by writing a positive, self-affirming statement about my fattened up body. My boobs are awesome. Guys always stare at my boobs. Sometimes, women stare at my boobs, too. Sometimes I think I must have spilled something on my blouse and people are just wondering what the stain is, which is why they are staring so intensely for so long, but then I look down and nope, just my boobs. Then, there is this awkward moment when both of us are standing there staring down at my boobs. I think I am kind of flattered. Still, it's like, what, am I wearing a dirty shirt? Are my nipples popping out? Is there like a stain that looks like a milk leak or something??

Weight Loss: 25 pounds in 6 months

My martial arts instructor commented last week about how I had lost 5 pounds since the start of the semester back in August. I laughed because he had hit my number right on the mark! What he doesn't know is that I've actually lost a good 25 pounds since the Spring semester. Fad diet? Jenny Craig? Gym membership? None of the above.

I started weighing myself this April. 184 pounds, tipping the scale into the obese range, and lugging around a lot of extra flesh. I decided the weight had to go. As a senior in college, it always bothered me that I was the heavy girl in class. I wanted to be fit, not the svelte, model-thin bodies that stroll around campus with chips on their shoulders, but active and healthy. Despite how I feel about fat prejudice, I understood that I was doing harm to my body and that I should take steps to improve my blood pressure, nutrition, and activity level---not for vanity's sake but for my internal health. So I started a improvised system of weight loss---it's not weight loss, it's weight control.

The key is to see life events as obstacles to control. If you have a bad day you feel like you're not in control. If you buy a fast food meal, then it's really out of control. You haven't just lost temporary control, you've set yourself back a week! I decided that I wanted control over my life. I wanted control over my urges. Maybe I couldn't squeeze back into the size 5 pants from 5 years ago, but I could work hard and lose a dress size, and I did.

I started writing down everything I ate and drank. Yes, drinks too. I realized those super market flavored drinks were around 160-200 calories each! That's not even something that would make me feel full! I saw that my spreadsheet of meals included lots of meat. I read up on meat. It turns out Americans consume way over the recommended allotment for protein by our meat-eating habits. I have always been fond of microwavable chicken patties. It took some time, but I finally acknowledged that the calories, the salt, and the excess protein was bad. So I quit meat cold turkey (pun!). Then, I started to count calories. I read the ingredient list if I was eating a microwavable dinner. I searched for calorie counts of different items like white rice versus brown rice (if you're going to eat rice, get BROWN! White rice is luxurious but man, will it cost you in terms of calories!) I even read the caloric count on the bottle of healthy olive oil I was using to saute my vegetables (count: 120 per tablespoon).

Slowly, things started to get easier. My blood pressure became healthy. I started to lose weight, slowly but surely. I stayed under 2000 calories and above 1300 calories most days. How much I ate depended on how active I'd been that day. If I'd just done homework, cleaned my room, took an hour walk, I'd have less calories. If I exercised for at least 20 minutes, I allowed myself to eat an after-dinner bowl of cereal (I have an odd habit of craving Honey Bunches of Oats at night).

Then, when I had some income, I purchased a moderately inexpensive rowing machine. I found that it worked both the arms and thighs and was easy on the joints. I began to use it, first for only 10 minutes a day, a few days of the week, then 20 minutes most days of the week. I tried to jump into it at first, going an hour, but the next day I was too sore to do any exercises. I learned that with physical activity, it's better to start off in the shallow end of the pool and slowly move to the deep end. I now have the rowing machine, a stationary exercise bicycle, a pilates band, a 10 pound weight, and several belly-dancing exercise DVD's. Yes, I actually use them. When I started the Fall semester at the University I enrolled in a martial arts class. It was very hard at first, especially for somebody who was about 165 pounds (I'd lost 20 pounds by then, eating healthy veggies, counting calories, working out, walking, and reading up on binge eating and other eating disorders).

Now, about 3 months in, I finally broke that weight plateau of 165 pounds and lost another 5 pounds. I feel more energetic, my health is good, and I feel in control of my academic life and my personal life. I've been a vegetarian 90% of the time since this April. My main staple dish is sauteed zucchini with coriander, cumin, and turmeric. Boiled cauliflower comes in a close second. First, I boil the cauliflower, then I put a tablespoon of olive oil and some teaspoons of spices in a pan and saute the softened cauliflower. It tastes good. My craving for high-salt, high-butter, high-oil foods has decreased. Sure, I have my bad days, but I just concentrate on regaining my control the next day.

I intend on staying in control from now on. I intend on managing my mental diagnosis by taking my medicine daily and keeping all my doctor's appointments. I intend on managing my schoolwork by keeping up with my home-work and readings. Lastly, I intend on managing my weight by keeping up with a healthy life-style and another semester of aerobic exercise classes.

I look through the internet trying to find people's success stories but they usually come with a hyped-up product to sell with the promise of extreme weight loss. Even though I'm not at my goal weight of 145 pounds, I'm slowly getting there. I'm 25 pounds closer to this goal. I did it the healthy way, not the pill-popping, starvation diet, lock your self in a gym and don't eat anything that's not raw way. I feel pretty good writing this. Hopefully, in a few months, I can write about how I lost another 5 pounds and describe all the new methods I will have learned!

Thanks for reading!

weight loss: 20 pounds in 4 months

Being bombarded with Carl's Jr. commercials and billboards promoting the latest beer brand makes weight loss an exercise in self-discipline. Everywhere I go, drink Coke, eat meat, buy Bud light, and always, always, it's being advertised by a size 0 model with huge breast implants and a winning smile. As if! There is no way that pretty model ate that burger in her hand, or drank that calorie-laden beer she holds. She probably is underweight, according to the BMI chart, and in no position to tell me how to eat healthy, let alone tell me to eat at a fast food joint or to buy beer.

To make things worse, there is no salad bar at my University, meaning that my choices are extremely limited. After shying away from the campus Taco Bell, I went into the snack bar, passing the Panda Express and Subway along the way. Once inside the snack bar, I could choose between a chicken microwavable burrito, a brownie, a sugary muffin, or a bag of chips. I could have one of their many sodas, energy drinks, or a coffee. I settled on a bag of chips and a large coffee, trying to reason with my gurgling stomach that the coffee would sooth the hunger pangs.

Despite eating only an egg at midday and getting lots of exercise through rowing and walking, I felt guilty ripping open the bag of chips. I'm way overweight. I'm 168 right now at 5'1-5'2. Every tiny choice I make inflates my fat cells and increases my risk of diabetes and fat-clogged arteries. No, I don't have any health problems. I just had a blood test and physical last week, and to my surprise, my thyroid hormone levels have raised into the normal range. My blood pressure was fine, my pulse fine. Yet I'm fat, so fat. Only part of it is the psychotropic medications my psychiatrist has me on, and only part of it is the poor decisions I made several years ago, yo-yo dieting, starvation dieting, and eating junk food. I've been a mostly healthy vegetarian for the last 4 months now, and yet I've only lost about 15-20 pounds. That's only five pounds a month. So what gives?

Unfortunately, the decision to lose weight at any cost has left severe consequences now. Starvation diets slows the metabolism, something not easily remedied, even years later. Plus, you either give in to hunger or you die, and I'm not dead. Once you start eating regularly, your body stockpiles every precious calorie on the chance that a Victoria Secret model will send you on another starvation diet sometime in the future. It's not easy to lose weight now. A non-yo-yo dieter would have lost much more than I have in the same time frame and on the same diet. But enough whining, I have lost weight, I will continue to lose weight, and I will do so eating brain and body healthy foods every day.

One trick I've learned the past four months is to use Indian spices on all my vegetables, with double the cayenne pepper. Coriander, cumin, garam masala, turmeric, and cayenne pepper are all ways to make a vegetable delicious and these spices also raise your metabolism and make you feel fuller than you really are. My favorite meal has got to be a zucchini drenched in lemon juice, sauteed in olive oil with the above spices simmering, and with a dash of black pepper ground onto the zucchini in the last stages of cooking. It's so good I have to immediately stick all but a small portion into the fridge lest I return for seconds.

Another trick I've learned is to refrain from snacking after 7:30 pm, and instead drink green tea with no sugar and just a little bit of fat-free creamer. I know, half and half is terrible for a dieter, fat-free or not. But seriously, you will have to pry that carton of half and half out of my cold dead hands. I cannot stand tea or coffee without it. And if I don't get my coffee or chai, I will start rummaging through the fridge for something to snack on. So instead I drink chai and don't snack on anything.

I watched this documentary, on fat and it was a very eye-opening experience. In this documentary, we follow several people who have either lost weight or are trying to lose weight. We also get to hear from a specialist who studies the digestive tract. The data was surprising. The specialist says there are transmitters in the gut, like neuro-transmitters in the brain, except they're gut-transmitters. He claimed that the gut was like a second brain, I am not joking or exaggerating!

Here is the title. It is available on amazon dot com. FAT: What No One Is Telling You. (2007). PBS Home video.

So anyways, what really caught my eye was the plight of a formerly morbidly obese female comedian. Over the course of a number of years, she lost all her weight, except for some extra pounds that refuse to leave. She went from being mega morbidly obese to moderately overweight! How did she do it? She began to eat small portions of healthy food with little snacking. More incredibly, she exercises for hours each day, without fail! The video showed her slipping into one of those full body work-out suits that make you sweat a lot, and using multiple exercise machines, plus cardio and weight exercises.
'All this so I can be chubby,' she dead-pans.

What is this point of my relating all this to you? Regardless of how you got to weigh what you weigh: life circumstance, medications, metabolism, poor decisions, whatever, you know have a problem you have to deal with. No, it's not fair that people laugh and harass you, make you feel unworthy of love and respect, or that clothes are hard to come by because discrimination is so rampant, but a problem is still a problem that needs to be addressed. This film made me realize that like my homework, I must work harder than the rest just to get an A.

Wish me luck, with some hard work, I can drop another 20 pounds in the following months: then I'll just be a little plump!

On weight, anti-psychotics, suicide, and metabolism

I have found an interesting and entertaining documentary concerning the existence of obesity. I hope that you already know why so many people are obese: the obesity gene began as a way of our early ancestors to survive through periods of famine without dying. A thin person would simply die, but an obese person would be able to live off all of their stored-up fat and still be able to bear children. This kept the human species alive for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Then, with the advent of food and medical technology, being obese was no longer an evolutionary advantage. Being thin became an advantage, especially a social advantage.

This documentary is available for free streaming on top documentary films dot com, and you can also find it on youtube. It's called "Why are thin people not fat?" Here is the link:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/why-are-thin-people-not-fat/
In this film the audience follows a group of naturally below-average-weight individuals who are put onto a daily caloric diet more than twice their previous diet. You may have heard of a previous experiment like this one. Prior to this film, there was a 1960's prison experiment where prisoners were allowed to leave prison early if they could get fat--some ate up to 10,000 calories a day (versus the 2,000 recommended caloric intake for males), and to the researchers' surprise, some failed to get fat.
The researchers in this documentary are looking into why some people can get fat and others can't. It's a very interesting watch, and I, as a thick woman, feel a little vindicated to finally see media that says people are genetically different, not just their genes but their metabolic rates as well (metabolism=how fast you burn calories, be it through exercise or transformation of calories into heat).

For myself I know what makes me fat: 1) hypothyroidism, which is a slowing down of my metabolic rate combined with low body temperature. This means that I can't burn off fat by converting it into heat because my body remains at a cool temperature. Also, the ability to burn off those calories through exercise is difficult, due to my slow metabolism.
At the moment, I'm not on synthroid, though I was in the past, due to the fact that health care in America is a murky swamp of paperwork and employment through which one must wade into to get the health care you need. Being unemployed, this makes health care impossible. Free clinics get booked so quickly that there is a 6 month wait period to see a doctor in the Central Valley of California where I live, with no guarantee that you're getting adequate health care. Now that I'm a student, I plan on making a trip to the campus physician to get my long-postponed prescription to treat my hypothyroidism.
2) Anti-psychotic medications, which I need to treat my schizo-affective disorder . Yes, I'm mentally ill, but you wouldn't be able to tell unless I'm acutely psychotic, which isn't that often off medication and doesn't happen at all on medication, so don't stigmatize me---I'm not a psychopath who goes berserk on innocent people. I also don't wander around town shouting obscenities; that's a different disorder. Nor do I accost random people to spout conspiracy theories, curse at them, or whatever preconception you have of mentally ill people. I just have different perceptions which scare me. But back to the topic: zyprexa pills are much like snicker's bars in that you will pack on weight if you eat one every day. I was on zyprexa for about a year, so imagine that. Hence, how I went from a moderate size 5 to a size 16 in less than five years. There is still research being done on why anti-psychotics cause extreme weight gain, some of which I believe (my opinion here) that some of the findings are being kept in the dark due to pressure and financing from major pharmaceutical companies. If you think that sounds like a paranoid talking (and, well, I am) then you should google Zoloft  and suicide risk and read the studies that were withheld until the relatives of suicides came forward and sued the pharmaceutical company for not disclosing that Zoloft increases the risk of suicidal behavior, especially in the initial period when medication is first taken.

Having just lost a cousin to suicide, I was not surprised to hear he was starting medication for depression. Frankly, I think the doctor and pharmaceutical company are liable for my cousin's death, but it's not my call at the moment. Plus, I'm still in mourning and I don't feel like thinking about who is to blame for the suicide of a 24 year old male with no history of suicide attempts (most suicides have a history of botched attempted suicide, they usually don't just kill themselves out of the blue). But now

I'm getting angry, so I'll change the subject: anti-psychotic medications made me gain weight. No, it wasn't lack of self-discipline or lack of exercise. I ate what I ate before. I admit, I liked pizza before and after my new medication, but I had never packed on more than 5 pounds for this indulgence. So I ate what I ate before, did my usual running before work, walked for miles during the day, and boom! 50 pounds settled on my short frame rapidly. Suspiciously rapidly. I had never had a problem with my weight before Zyprexa and all the other drugs I've been on (Geodon, Zoloft, Seroquel, Paxil, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Abilify, Zoloft-generics, and a host of others whose names I've forgotten). The moment I started taking the pills I began to plump up so quickly I began to think of myself as a puffer fish, you know, that one fish that expands into a balloon when you frighten it. ( image:http://www.google.com/search?q=puffer+fish&hl=en&biw=1280&bih=576&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=BLEjTq-NPIHkiALCuLzOAw&sqi=2&ved=0CCsQsAQ)

Now, having been on heavy anti-psychotics off and on from the age of 23-24 to my current age of 28, I have found that every time I get OFF my medication I immediately begin to slim down. Several years ago I went off my medication, lost 15-20 pounds in a matter of months, got a little zealous, began a starvation diet, lost another 15 pounds, then, unsurprisingly, went mad, got quarantined in a psychiatric facility,  was forced to take weight-gaining anti-psychotic medications, along with having my diet monitored to the point where I was not allowed to leave the cafeteria without eating a certain percentage of my plate, and gained all my weight back again. I was so close to weighing 125! So close. But then I would have been a slim nutcase and the county psychiatrist thought that would be a liability.

So I learned that I must have some sort of borderline diet crazed mentality in order to reduce my pudgy body to a moderately overweight frame if I plan on being compliant with psychiatric treatment. Being both hypothyroid and on a steady diet of multiple psychotropic medications, I am competing with a natural propensity towards obesity, so the best I can do without developing a severe eating disorder is to be slightly overweight---and even that requires a minimalist, sugar-free diet mixed with excessive exercise and the high-end anti-psychotics that claim to have less side effects.

Here's an example of a typical diet day:
no breakfast.
If I eat breakfast it's always half a cup of yogurt. I then drink about 3-4 cups of coffee to keep me energized until lunch.
Lunch=small plate of zucchini with lots of spices to trick my taste buds into believing I'm eating something delicious, + 1-2 cups of chai (tea with milk). Snack=nothing.
Dinner=small portion of whatever I want. This can be more zucchini, but usually it's something a little greasier like a handful of home-made cumin fries with a salad or veggie burger with a piece of buttery garlic bread. I then drink 3 cups of tea to trick my body into feeling totally stuffed, and into bed I go. I wake up, weigh myself, and spend the rest of the day going to class, caring for my grandmother, doing my homework, and hunting down either a salad or a cup of coffee to chase away the hunger.

If you're wondering why I eat fries, the answer is simple: they taste good, they're everywhere, and I will cave in and binge eat if I abstain from eating comfort foods for more than a month. Sugar I don't like, and I rarely eat cake or ice cream unless it's my birthday or my relative's birthday, but butter---that's my achille's heel. So I eat it in moderation and not every day, or week for that matter. But when I do eat it, I feel guilty. Right now, there's a box of garlic bread in the freezer that is singing siren songs to me, but I already ate dinner so I must boil 4 cups of tea and drink until I feel full. Yes, this vegetarian, chai diet actually works: I've lost somewhere between 12-20 pounds since I started it this April. I can't be exactly sure since I didn't buy a new weighing scale until May something, and the initial weight loss occurs very quickly at the beginning (and then slows down...), but I do know that a month ago I weighed 179 and my weight this morning read 169. I can now fit into a size 14, but just barely. Oh yeah, on top of the diet, I walk to and from the bus stop (30 minutes each way) all week long, plus one hour of continuous power walking every day, plus 20 minutes on a rowing machine three times a week, plus 10-15 minutes of using a 10 pound weight one to two times a week. All this...and still on the borderline between overweight and obese. On the plus size, my internal organs will be in great shape in time for the beginning of my new judo class this fall semester, even though I can't wear a bathing suit because I'll still be too fat.

Exercising While Top Heavy

I have found certain things are out of the question. For example, running while top heavy is not a good idea for me. It is painful to my breasts and back and I get comments. This would be a problem if I was a neanderthal who had to outrun a vicious sabertooth tiger, but I'm not so I am free to find other ways of exercise.

I found a great rowing machine on sale at amazon dot com and I have used it maybe 3 times the last two weeks. That's not that much, but if you consider that it's hitting over a hundred degrees in the Central Valley you'll understand why. Plus, I've been grieving over my cousin, but I can't just lie in bed all day and cry. I have to channel my emotions into something else. Like rowing.

Rowing is an excellent exercise if you're top heavy. There's no bouncing, no leaping, no jumping jacks. You just sit on a sliding seat, set the arm handles to the hardest level, and push off the foot rests for 20 to 30 minutes. I can feel the burn in my butt and thighs. Rowing is also good for strengthening the back muscles which will help to alleviate any back pain caused from large breasts. According to the internet, it's the second best all over exercise to do, second only to swimming. It also helps posture, which top heavy women often have a problem with. Myself, I often hunch over or lean to one side or the other and put my weight on my arms when sitting. Not good. Sometimes I just plop my chest onto the table when I'm using my laptop so that they can stop bothering me. I think I may need a chiropractor or a good masseuse.

Another thing to do is yoga. I took a yoga class my first year at the University, when I was thin, and I loved it. Due to my weight gain and sudden growth of breasts into a 36H cup (or 38DDD, depending on what bra I'm wearing), I can't do some of the trickier poses I used to do like that pose where you put your legs over your head until your feet touch the floor. Or anything that requires me to lift my upper torso. I still do some poses though, just to keep my body stretchy. I do sun salute and various other sitting poses where I look like a pretzel.

Sit-ups are out of the question. Each breast is like a weight that I have to lift every time I do a sit-up. I'm not being lazy. It hurts, especially my neck muscles, which get strained from all the tension. Then my back starts to get sore. Doing 100 is like crazy painful and I've never made it that high in one exercise session. There was this contraption at the community college I used to go to: a board with two arms rests. You step up and hang there, putting your weight on your arms, and you lift  your legs up. That was nice. I used that thing every class period. It not only toned my flabby tummy but it also made my arms a lot stronger.

Ellipticals are good, too. It's more like skiing than running. The University gym has a bunch except I hated the locker room experience and everybody else was thin or buff and I felt so out of place in my overweight frame that I quit going and went back to lifting a 10 pound weight at home. I'll give it a go next semester since I guess I'm being silly about feeling so out of place.

I've heard pilates is really, really amazing for everybody, regardless of size, but I haven't tried it yet. It looks like I'd need to buy a good DVD, invest in a mat and a giant inflatable ball, and find a place to exercise with lots of space (my room is little). So, maybe I'll try that later on. Another thing I'd like to try is resistance training but my mother banned any more exercise equipment after I spent about 2 hours in the living room trying to figure out how to put the rower together. My family complained about the giant pieces of rower they had to step over to get to the kitchen. I finally got it together and dragged it outside, but my mother was all, "was a rower something you HAD to have?" and "No more exercise equipment!"

What I really need is a good sports bra. But in my size that's pricey, around 40 bucks or even more! There's this woman who went on British television arguing that bra manufacturers should stop charging more for larger size bras. I agree. If you charged 30 bucks for a size 2 pair of pants and 40 bucks for a size 5, people would be howling. It's only because bustier women tend to be a little heavier (there are exceptions) that people feel it's right to overcharge them. It's fat discrimination. Not fair! People like to argue that it's because you use more fabric but it's not. Look at some of the 34AA bras out there. Sure, they're little, but they're always stuffed with expensive padding and dolled up in shiny fabric, lace, and other types of bling that isn't used on full figure bras. Full figure bras don't get the same flashy treatment, which should actually make them cheaper since manufacturers don't have to pay for all that padding, print designs, lace, and more padding. It's like they know we have no choice but to wear a bra since we're well-endowed and they feel free to charge whatever they feel like. A flat chested person can run around with no bra if she chooses and the manufacturers know this so they cater to them with pretty designs and padded cups. A busty woman is frowned upon if she steps out in public with no bra. The last time I went out bra-less (my ill-fitting bra had left a red welt on my torso and it hurt to wear it so I went without a bra) I was hooted at, leered at, and some jerk yelled, "Nice tits." I felt pissed off, powerless, and very conspicuous. As soon as that cut disappeared I wriggled back into a bra. Manufacturers know that large chested women have little alternative than to shell out a wad of cash. Considering that there are plenty of heavy busted women nowadays and not that many 30AA cups, you'd think the profits they make in a year would justify lowering the price just a little bit. But no, I have to shop at expensive places for custom bras. Or "specialty bras" as they're humorously called. What's so special about them? There's like a trillion overweight, large busted women running around and it's totally normal now. Why am I being segregated from department stores and fashion outlets? Anyways, I'm done griping.

I got 4 cute bras in the mail today through Cacique. 38DDD bras. They fit alright. Mostly, I like that they're not matronly or minimizing or plain. What is the deal with minimizing bras? It's like saying, "Sorry, you don't fit the acceptable range of boobs, please flatten those out so they don't distract my boyfriend." Plunge bras are way better than any minimizing bra. They're much more flattering. Especially if you're overweight like me and want to move attention away from your plump figure, a plunge bra with a low cut blouse works nicely. By the time men realize I'm fat they're already hooked! I was very insecure, being an older student at 28, going to the University my first semester with very slender and pretty sorority girls, so I started wearing cleavage-revealing tops. It might not have made me fit in with the thin sorority girls, but it didn't hurt my grades, either!