back fat

so one of the things that got me thinking on this whole body issue was a couple of weeks ago i was driving over to old chicago to meet jack & josh for a cheeseburger & a drink. i was driving along down 394 west when all of a sudden i felt very uncomfortable. i twitched & shimmied in my seat & then it hit me what was bothering me. i could actually fell the fat on my back, the small rolls of fat folding into each other under my t-shirt. & i was repulsed.

normally i roll with the punches, & being obese i usually literally roll. but at that moment i just couldn't believe that i'd neglected myself for twenty one years. yup, i've been overweight for that long. it started when i was 7 years old, in second grade, & got progressively worse as time went on. the kicker of it all, is i look back at pictures of me when i was younger, & it wasn't until end of elementary school, beginning of junior high, that i actually became a rather large porker. before then i was just kind of a piglet. overly round & puffy for my age, but it could still be described as "baby fat". i stopped believing that whole baby fat line when i was, hmmm, about sixteen. until then i held onto that phrase like it was gold hoping that one day, yes, hallelullia praise the lord the fat has left the body!

but no, next century & twenty-some years later there i was on the way wrong side of the 200lb mark. now i have no idea what prompted me to do it, but i reached my hand up & felt my neck, grabbed a hunk of flesh & realized that in addition to the back fat i also had neck fat. now granted, the neck fat may, possibly, be a bit of an exageration, but the pudge on my sides & back is no hallucination. that is an undisputible fact, ask anyone who's seen me with my top off.

you'd think that after this realization i would've gotten to old chicago & said to my waiter "can i have a salad with lite dresing on the side please?" instead i did order the cheeseburger i was craving, with, of course, a diet pepsi. because yeah, at that point the diet soda makes all the difference in the world. & i admit it, i enjoyed every juicy mouthful. the fries were just ok, but the burger was fantastic. i do highly recommend their burgers. you might want to get it to go & grab the fries from ruby tuesdays across the street though. at least, that's what i'd be inclined to do.

while the desire for a healthy future. to be a beautiful bride. to be a fantabulous role model for my future children. to be able to finally snowboard. to finally feel good waking up in my own skin. while all of these things are great motivations, & have motivated me in the past, it all came down to the fat. knowing you're fat is one thing. having to actually go buy & then wear the size 24 or 26 jeans reminds you. there's something surreal about realizing that just sitting, not looking in the mirror or at your clothes, you can feel how large you actually are, now that's the mother of all wake-up calls. &, of course, it helped that all of this came close on the heels of walking into the bridal salon & ordering my wedding dress in a 24. i really wanted to crawl into bed & cry. with a cheesecake.

yeah, the shame & depression that is caused by my weight also gives me the urge to soothe myself with all the same things that i've turned to in the past that have helped me get to the point that i'm at right now. while it is by no means a healthy cycle of behavior, i am becoming aquianted with it & coming to grips with the fact that i need to be hyper aware of my emotions & my eating patterns. do i want pizza because i'm hungry & pizza sounds good? or do i want it because i had an absolute shitty day at work & i might feel better to sit down to a plate full of pizza? eventhough the end result might be eating some pizza, the motivation behind the eating is important for me to recognize.