a couple of small things about fat
1) Tonight we were doing a drill at roller derby practice wherein we had to kind of gallop. (The idea being, run sideways on your skates without the wheels turning-- a very basic agility thing.) I was thumping along doing this, and looked down, and realized that my tiny-ass booty shorts and nude stockings made it look like I had this enormous expanse of bare thigh hanging out. Not very long ago I would have been mortified at the very thought of this, let alone the idea of engaging in an activity wherein said thighs would *move*, but here I was galumphing along, probably jiggling all over the place, and I really didn't care. (There wasn't a whole hell of a lot of jiggling, though, I'll allow my vanity that much-- my thighs are pretty diesel at the moment. Work on your feet 40 hours a week and then skate 10, and get back to me on the jiggling issue.)
2) My work pants haven't been fitting right recently and I look like a schlub. It's winter, and my store isn't really what you'd call "insulated", so I generally wear a pair of stockings, some spandex capri leggings, legwarmers, and possibly booty shorts underneath my work pants. So the odd fit could be explained simply by the fact that my trousers are over at least three, often four layers of clothing. The problem is that they still fit *loosely*, which doesn't make any sense, and worse, is a severe issue since while I'm a bit pear-shaped, I don't really have what you'd properly term an "ass", so clothing doesn't really stay put around my waist. It slides either up or down. And my pants? Down. Not Hot At All.
So out of curiosity I weighed myself tonight and while my scale is hardly anything remotely approaching accurate, or even consistent with itself, it is approximate. And for the first time in several years (since starting derby, in fact) the needle was under 200 pounds.
Given my height, if I'm over 200 pounds my BMI is 30 which makes me officially, medically, obese. (That's 100% the criteria they use, btw, in all the media hullabaloo about the Obesity Epidemic. There's no adjustment for muscle mass or even such trivialities as, you know, gender. A human who is 5'7" and 200 pounds is obese and that's that. A bunch of the Olympic athletes are obese, for the record. It actually has absolutely zero to do with fat. You can be obese with a body fat percentage of like four; it's a meaningless statistic, but there it is-- babies get denied health insurance for it. It's the very definition of bullshit. Oh, am I digressing?)
I know I've lost weight because I've been eating like shit, so I'm not actually happy about that. But I'm also perversely sad that I'm no longer in the "obese" category, and I'm probably going to keep rounding myself up to 200. People double-take and refuse to believe me when I say how much I weigh, and I think it's sort of important that I keep saying it. Because otherwise people really believe that the headless fatties they use to illustrate The Obesity Epidemic are what actual obese people all look like, and what's even funnier is how many people believe that 200 pounds looks like that. Nobody has any idea what obesity actually means, or looks like.
Me, I feel like it's my duty to jiggle those thighs all over town. This is what 200 pounds looks like. Well, 196. And it will crush you like a walnut if you say anything stupid. C'mere. Or don't-- I can catch you. :D
2) My work pants haven't been fitting right recently and I look like a schlub. It's winter, and my store isn't really what you'd call "insulated", so I generally wear a pair of stockings, some spandex capri leggings, legwarmers, and possibly booty shorts underneath my work pants. So the odd fit could be explained simply by the fact that my trousers are over at least three, often four layers of clothing. The problem is that they still fit *loosely*, which doesn't make any sense, and worse, is a severe issue since while I'm a bit pear-shaped, I don't really have what you'd properly term an "ass", so clothing doesn't really stay put around my waist. It slides either up or down. And my pants? Down. Not Hot At All.
So out of curiosity I weighed myself tonight and while my scale is hardly anything remotely approaching accurate, or even consistent with itself, it is approximate. And for the first time in several years (since starting derby, in fact) the needle was under 200 pounds.
Given my height, if I'm over 200 pounds my BMI is 30 which makes me officially, medically, obese. (That's 100% the criteria they use, btw, in all the media hullabaloo about the Obesity Epidemic. There's no adjustment for muscle mass or even such trivialities as, you know, gender. A human who is 5'7" and 200 pounds is obese and that's that. A bunch of the Olympic athletes are obese, for the record. It actually has absolutely zero to do with fat. You can be obese with a body fat percentage of like four; it's a meaningless statistic, but there it is-- babies get denied health insurance for it. It's the very definition of bullshit. Oh, am I digressing?)
I know I've lost weight because I've been eating like shit, so I'm not actually happy about that. But I'm also perversely sad that I'm no longer in the "obese" category, and I'm probably going to keep rounding myself up to 200. People double-take and refuse to believe me when I say how much I weigh, and I think it's sort of important that I keep saying it. Because otherwise people really believe that the headless fatties they use to illustrate The Obesity Epidemic are what actual obese people all look like, and what's even funnier is how many people believe that 200 pounds looks like that. Nobody has any idea what obesity actually means, or looks like.
Me, I feel like it's my duty to jiggle those thighs all over town. This is what 200 pounds looks like. Well, 196. And it will crush you like a walnut if you say anything stupid. C'mere. Or don't-- I can catch you. :D
