T Minus Eight Months, Eleven Days and a Shimmy and a Shake...

I have been thinking a lot about fat acceptance lately. Getting married creates a whole new kind of angst when you are trying to feel at ease in your own skin. The nanosecond you announce an engagement on Facebook, for instance, the targeted marketing software that the social networking site has embedded in it immediately bombards you with ads touting the latest and greatest methods and products for getting that perfect "Bridal Body".

Sod off, Facebook targeted marketing software.

I am torn on the issue of fat acceptance. I am a believer in the idea of human bodies, especially women's bodies, being healthy and beautiful at any age, size, or shape. I know that no matter how much weight I lose, I will most likely be considered overweight by those infamous weight/height charts in doctor's offices. That is the way my body is shaped. Those evil broadsheets of lies and shame do not take into account my rather mammoth bosom, nor does it consider my always, er, we'll say "lush" bum. I will always be considered "fat", even after I lose 70, 80, even a hundred pounds. Thus, I want to know that there is an element of fat acceptance out there where I can find a place.

But I do finding myself disturbed by a growing trend amongst the "big and beautiful" community that women of so-called "average size" are somehow "too skinny" and "unhealthy". I saw a friend of a friend comment recently that a plus size store that topped out at a certain size catered to "overly skinny women" and that women over that size were "healthy". I was rather shocked. I don't care what the rest of your health profile looks like, if you are well into the 20s clothing size-wise, you are at risk health wise. It's an indisputable fact. Even if it is simply that you have more aches and pains than an "average" person, or a unmanifested but still higher risk for heart disease, diabetes, etc, it's still there. It's still an added issue, much like a sun worshipper that hasn't gotten a suspicious mole...yet. The friend the person was addressing is one of the most active and busy larger ladies I know, but I would still hesitate to try to say that overall, women that are moving well past a bit overweight are healthy.

It's a slippery slope. Most of the wedding sites I am part of cater to the weirdo bride (Offbeat Bride, Indiebrides, etc) and they have a strict policy of no diet talk. I like this, because if it shut down from the start and left to other websites to address, there isn't the chance that every thread will become a lament about it. There is a lovely new site by the author of the DIY Bride books that is about fashion for the plus size bride. When she was approached by a solicitor of a weight loss product and subsequently gently rebuffed the request to advertise, explaining her policy, she was treated to a diatribe about the evil evil evils of Fatty Fatty Two by Fours and how she was indulging a lazy, sedentary lifestyle. Maybe I am just contrary (peanut gallery: "Yes!") but this annoys me as much as the ridiculous notion that 120lbs is too skinny and 220lbs is healthy. There are people that are heavy duty folks that are most emphatically NOT lazy (not me, of course, I am lazy as shit) and the automatic assumption they are is nasty and inaccurate.

So as I often do, I proudly sit atop the fence-watching scrawny girls dash about on one side, full of energy and verve, but clearly missing out on something; and then there are the chubbos on the other side, a little slower and not as spry, but picking up on that indefinable something the other girls are missing out on. That something is butter.

I think I will see it as this: I have some definite goals for the future of my body, and for the wedding in particular. But that doesn't mean I can't love and accept the body I have in the mean time.

T Minus Eight Months, Seventeen Days and a bit of change

As I type, it is raining outside. Which is conventionally, the place you would most expect to find said rain and so that is good. It is good for the plants and grass, too. What it is not good for is my discipline. It is a large storm now and the hour is late, and so there is little chance I would be choosing to have a walk/run/stumble just now. The few hardy drops lazily skimming downward earlier this evening truly should not have been enough to deter my attempt at that time, however. Granted, I have not felt well the past day or two, but I am concerned that even without that additional very valid excise, that I would have happily stayed in regardless. I am the inventor, creator, and chief patron of what I call the Composite Copout. It isn't simply the rain, or feeling a bit under the weather, or not being able to find socks, or that I barely ate that day so do I really need to exercise? It's that each of these things comprises a small part of what seems to my extremely well-developed procrastination gland to be a toweringly righteous monolith of justification. I have convinced myself that truly, no sane human could possibly be expected to perform the most basic of tasks, regardless of the goal, under these harsh conditions. The justification tower is made of Jenga blocks, I must remember, only huge ones...large, and heavy, and lacking in any stability. I will meet a bad end one of these days under the determined weight of my own self sabotage. It's a sad state of affairs when my self destructive tendencies are more determined than I am!

So tomorrow, if the rain comes, which it is supposed to, I won't let a few drops get in the way. I will go out and take it slow on slick macadam if need be, or stay in and dance like a spaz to my iPod. Whatever I have to do, I will avoid at all possible those vicious tumbling blocks.

T Minus Eight Months, Eighteen Days and some hours and stuff...

Those amongst my fans that read my Livejournal, my blog Points for Creativity, my Facebook, or even just listen to my fevered mutterings and occasional bursts of song in line at the grocery store know that I have my own personal motivational speaker/evil genius, April. The other day, April texts me and says, "You know have a fan club on Facebook." Sure enough, she has begun Get Jess to the Dress, a page predicated upon some very basic concepts:

1. I am getting married within the year.
2. I am a chubbo. (my words, not April's. :)
3. I have terrible habits and require shame and dismay to break them.
4. Friends are great at providing shame, er, support.

And thus, Get Jess to the Dress was born. I felt the least I could do was offer some insights, and possibly amusement as a parallel offering to April's motivation and so have begun this blog as a personal memoir of what I hope will be a successful loss of at least seventy pounds before my wedding. As with all my blogging forays, there will be grumping and grousing, no doubt, and occasional Naughty Words, though I will try to keep them to a minimum. Mostly this will be somewhere for me to take the triumphs and frustrations of getting in shape and planning a wedding and attempt to make them hilarious reading for you even as I sweat, swear, and vow to stuff my face directly in a vat of cream cheese and chocolate.

Today's breakfast:

Grapefruit half...oh my stars, the decadence...

Today's planned exercise:

Chasing a toddler and attempting a "run" later. (my running is, at this time, still a swift, shambling walkish looking thing, much like a particularly upbeat zombie)