Crash and Burn.

*Taps yardstick on desk* Ok, students, today I would like to talk to you all about "Crash Dieting."
Miss Freelance Fatty is SICK of crash diets, and wants you, her class, to know why they are so bad for you! Ok? Good!

Sigh. I really am sick of Crash Diets. There is a new one going around my work right now, the HCG diet. This one is a doozy. Not only does it rely heavily on a "nutritional supplement" but the diet restricts one to a diet of 500 calories a day. Yeah, that's right. So obviously its not the supplement that makes you lose weight, its the fact that you've gone from 1800-2200 calories a day down to 500.

This diet is bad for you. Period. Let's say on this diet you lose 20 pounds in a month. At least half of that weight is muscle right? So check out this math...

1 lb muscle = 50 calories burned per day (just to exist)
1 lb fat = 2 calories burned per day (just to exist)

So lets say you lose 10 lbs of muscle, and 10 lbs of fat on a crash diet.
BTW, when you lose weight too fast, you always lose muscle. When your body thinks it's starving, it will dump whatever takes the most energy, and as you see above, muscle takes 25x energy to keep alive than fat.

10 lb muscle = 500 calories off your metabolism
10lb fat = 20 calories off your metabolism

Total = 520 calories a day you are no longer burning. That's like a meal! So now, you've lost your goal weight, you go back to your, let's say 1800 calorie a day diet. And before this diet, you maintained your weight well, so you were burning that 1800 calories every day. But now, after losing that muscle and fat, you are now only burning just under 1300 calories a day. So you start to gain back the weight at about a pound a week. After 20 weeks you're back where you were.

But get this, you're worse off now! Unless you're really doing muscle building, you don't get that muscle back that fast... so you've only upped your metabolism by maybe 50-100 calories, even though you weigh what you did before!

This is where yo-yo dieting comes from people. You lose 20, gain back 25, lose 25 gain back 30... you're screwing your body when you do it this way. Crash diets always do just that... CRASH!

Ok, so why my ginormous rant about this today? Like I said, I have several coworkers on this diet now HCG. Its so ridiculous. But you know what annoys me the most? The fact that all they can talk about... is their diet. My one coworker, ICD, she is the worst of them all. All she talks about all day is "I can't have that!" Over and over again. The biggest blow came today... the reason I'm finally blogging about it...

One of the guys I work for brought in some trout he caught and smoked himself. It was divine. We were all having little snacks on it. So ICD comes over, and get this (I'm so not making this up...) She asks if she can SMELL it. Seriously. She lifts up the plate and smells it. So the guy who brought it in, looks at her like she's lost her mind and says, "Just have some." I bout yelled at him. Because I knew exactly what was coming next. "I CAN'T" she says, "I am not allowed to have it, so I'm just smelling it." And she walks away.

After enduring going out to lunch with her last week... and hearing her tell the waitress over and over again what she can't have... I am just about ready to scream.

But don't take diet advice from the fat girl right? Jeez. Oh, btw... I am keeping off this now almost 15 pounds I mysteriously lost. I think its the less snacking I'm doing lately. Being poor has its benefits I guess.

Ok comment time. Um, I am still so blinded with rage over this incident, I can't really think of anything creative... so why don't you comment about the crazy dieters you've run into. Add to my story!

Greasy does it.

What a day.

I ate way too damn much today. Every meal was a lot, and way too greasy. And then in between I snacked on bread, candy and chips. And lots of diet coke.

Oy. Days like this make me feel like I deserve every ounce of fat on my body. I deserve to be morbidly obese. I deserve to be unattractive.

Short post today. Too depressed to be witty. Tomorrow will be better. I hope.

Clothing is Such Sweet Sorrow...

God I hate being fat sometimes.

And not for the obvious reasons. Not for those reasons that most people hate it. More than anything, I hate the clothing situation. Now... I know how to dress my big body. I've been doing it for over a decade, and I think I've come to a point where I accept what I have, and hide what I don't really like.

I have very small boobs, and a very large butt. That figure is due, not only to genetics, but to my poly-cystic ovarian syndrome. The hormone imbalance I struggle with keeps my breasts small, and my stomach and hips quite large. Thanks a lot, God.

Anyway, what gets me, is the lack of selection for the big woman. Now, I'm not talking average, or slightly bigger than average, I wear a 26/28, so I know that I'm a BIG girl. But why the hell shouldn't I get to look cute? Isn't my money as good as a girl with a 32 inch waist?

Apparently not. There are only two options when you get to my size. Either you pay an arm and a leg to shop at places like Lane Bryant (my fave...) or Torrid (who actually don't carry 28), or you can try your luck at a plus size department in a regular store. These clothes are usually not in style, not fit to a real woman's body, and not great quality, but the prices are more normal.

The problem with Department/Low End stores is that their idea of a plus size department consists of Stretch pants, jeans with elastic waistbands, t-shirts with Winnie the Poo on them, and sportswear. I can't wear any of those to work. The occasional cute thing will come along and either be too small in the hips, or too short (I'm close to 6' tall btw)

I am a working mom, and as you can imagine, my budget doesn't really allow for much of a clothing allowance for me. 50 bucks a month is pushing it. I can buy 1 shirt at Lane Bryant for that, or three at Walmart, though neither has me particularly happy.

At this point I have 4 shirts I like well enough to wear to work. I work 5 days a week... so I have to repeat, or wear something that makes me feel like a moo cow.

The worst part for me is, I consider myself to have quite a sense of style. (toots own horn) I know that what I wear is boring, old-lady, mommy stuff with no flair. But what can I do? Better it fit well and be boring, than be stylish and have me tugging at it all day right?

So I've tried sewing my own clothes. My mom is a fantastic seamstress. Me? God I'm awful. Tonight I mangled the second project in a row. Too small through the hips, to long in the front, the neck is too small. Just shoot me now.

Why, oh why, is there not a line of clothing priced a little better than Lane Bryant, but just as cute? Torrid's flare for style coupled with Lane Bryant's great fit and all priced at Old Navy prices... It's not impossible. The industry just believes that most women, if they have let themselves get this fat, must not care about their appearance, so why bother. And those that do care... well let's milk them for all they're worth.

I know this has been a bit of a rant, but I believe this is a very real issue. And now that the average size in America is now a 16... I believe that someone going into this niche would make a whole HELL of a lot of money.

Especially from me.

Goodnight!

Pressure

God I hate the first post in a new blog. It's so intimidating. Like a big angry face asking, "Well? What have you got to say for yourself?"

Not much. This is the first blog I've ever written incognito. Usually I write these for my friends and family. Keep up to date, and show them the slightly unstable side of myself that always seems to come out when I'm typing.

I guess the best way to start is to give you a little background about me, before we dive in too deep, right?

Well I am 23 (almost 24!), I am a mother of one, been married for about 3.5 years. Yes, that means I was 20 when I got married, but that is a story for another day. My daughter 2, and we are desperately trying to get her potty trained.

This won't be, for the most part, a mommy blog. Though, when you are a mommy, it infiltrates every single part of your life. For the most part I want this to be a me blog.

Like Fat Bridesmaid, one of my favorite blogs, I will probably talk about my body and my weight. I am proud to be a big woman, but health is always an issue. Especially when you are as overweight as I am.

I can't believe I'm about to type this, because no one but my doctor knows this... I weigh 365 pounds. At my height it makes me a size 26/28.

Before my daughter was born, I always hovered just under 300, and was about a size 20-22. As anyone who has had a child will tell you, baby weight is a whole other animal. Between that, and the weight I gained when my husband and I separated for 6 months, I am here... 70 pounds above where I want to be, where I was just 4 short years ago.

So this is my journey, this is my life, this is my therapy. I love comments, please feel free. First post down, many many more to go!