Caterwauling

I never realized that “The Biggest Loser” airs on the nights I drag my pudgy pork roast ass to Weight Watchers meetings. I finally discovered it a couple of weeks ago, and now the season’s almost over! Rats.

Tonight America gets to decide whether Heba or her husband Ed gets to proceed to the finals. I voted for Ed. I figure, he is way too willing to let her go to the finals, and she feels way too entitled to it.

A colleague went to high school with Heba. My friend is a man of few words, and even fewer curse words. But even he said, “Yeah, she was a bitch back then, too.”

Speaking of big losses, my pudgy pork roast ass shed 3 pounds in the past week. Which, wow. After gaining a pound last week and not even weighing in the week before, I will gladly accept as “omgwtfbbq awesome.”

Everything’s changing in Weight Watchers land. They’re kicking the Core and the Flex plans to the curb and presenting the Momentum plan as the best of both worlds. We got all new materials tonight and we’ll spend the next few weeks going over the changes to the program. Which seem awesome. More common-sense. Less guessing.

You know what I did this week? I ate all 35 of my bonus weekly points, on top of the daily allowance. I NEVER do that. I always stay exactly at my daily allowance. If I have special plans on the weekends, I may blow my extra 35 in one sitting, if applicable. Usually I have plenty left over at the end of the week — like rollover minutes you can’t use.

And sure, I’ve done OK. Lost a pound here and there. But this week I ate a piece of candy here and a slice of meat there. Nothing exotic — I know my portions and my points. And of all the weeks to have a significant loss, this was it. Who knew that you can’t eat healthy crap all the time? Apparently it’s the little “cheats” that work the magic!

Of course, I still have a bunch more pounds to part with. What’s cool, though, is that I’ve gone down not one but two jean sizes so far. It took from June to November get down one, and I’m closing in on the next one just a mere month later. The pants shall be arriving at work any day now — can’t wait to put them on and know that they’ll zip!

But the real achievement well, is something else I lost. The best way I can explain it was that I was talking to someone during my first or second meeting, and she told me her “next” goal.

Weight Watchers is big on goals — it’s achieving a series of several small ones that gets you to the big one. And my meeting-mate had said it was her dream to not have to buy clothes with an X or a Plus on the tag.

And by golly, it’s been years but I’m reaching her goal. I bought my first “regular” pair of jeans in I cannot tell you how long. Meaning, I can walk into practically any store (minus those damn juniors’ shops at the mall that don’t carry anything over a size double-zero) and find something that isn’t a purse, shoe or piece of jewelry. w00t!

Don’t get me wrong — I’m still mad at Old Navy for not only moving its plus sizes out of the stores and onto the Web “exclusively” two years ago, but also that it and its sister store The Gap seem to refuse to stock anything over a 14 on their sales floors. The Gap is worse about it but unless it’s pants or shirts in letter sizes, they don’t seem to want to attract the pudgalicious among us. Hence, neither is coming off my shit list anytime soon. Thanks for making me pay shipping all these years! *kick*

Actually since today is a day of victory, I do have another milestone to share. After years and years of avoiding anything other than ankle boots, or buying taller boots and just not being able to zip them all the way up over my chunky little calves, I’ve been trying on longer boots lately and finding that I can get them to zip. All the way up!

I haven’t bought any yet, save for my Old Navy ugg-type slippers (oh so comfy). I don’t need to buy them to prove anything to myself. But to not be excluded from a fashion I’ve always loved but have never been able to be a part of? Magnificent.

It’s the little things.

And one of these months, one of the little things will actually be me.

Till then, the journey’s both annoying and rewarding. And I often wonder why the hell I’m even bothering. But after revolving my whole life around how I did or didn’t look — whether trying to conceal it (i.e., struggling with not looking like a parade float) or trying to act like it didn’t bother me or that I wasn’t worried about having a heart attack on the spot — it’s interesting to find other things in my head that have nothing to do with the size of my ass. Or, even things in my head that aren’t critical of the size of my ass.

I think there’s a general misconception about pudgy people, that we’re lazy or unwashed or unmotivated or oblivious. No, no, no and NO. It just takes a lot more work to appear effortless, that’s all. And no one else’s opinion matters half as much as our own, so as long as we know we’re none of those things, we’re OK.

And it’s sad how people’s opinions of us go up once our sizes go down. But meh, I love me way more than anybody else does, and while more people may come around as I apparently become less offensive to stand next to (except when it was to make someone else feel better about themselves), I’ll never forget the ones who loved the “before” and who will be cheering me on all the way to the finish line. There aren’t many, but they make for a hell of a cheering section inside my head.

Thank you for rooting for me or, at least, for continuing to read all about it. 🙂 I’ve spent my life throwing myself into my work and never taking care of the thing that will outlast every last one of these jobs (if they don’t kill me first, of course!).

I have a funny feeling that I’ll get down to my goal weight, only to get knocked up and bloated within a couple of years of achieving my goals. But hopefully there’ll be a wedding (or elopement — I loathe Speidi but I could totally go the Costa Rica route myself) and other dreams will surface that I either never knew I had or I never thought I’d get them so why bother dreaming about them.

It’s time to dream again. The smaller I get, the bigger I’ll allow the dreams to be.

It’s good to be me. 🙂

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 11:05 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.