Fat can also serve as a protective function for them, especially in people that have been victims of sexual abuse. They sometimes feel that being overweight will keep others at a distance and make them less attractive.

Hmm. In fact, I found several useful things in this article.

I definitely need to read more about compulsive eating, methinks. I knew I was a compulsive eater, but I had no idea I was such a textbook case. Makes me feel both more and less normal.

This photo was apparently featured on page 194 of Glamour. And apparently the editor-in-chief got TONS of positive feedback the day the issue hit shelves. Women were overjoyed to see a ‘real’ woman in a magazine, and especially a magazine like Glamour. But there has actually been some negative feedback, and there was a link in the article (click on the photo and it’ll take you to the article) about something last week that they’re calling “fatticism.”

Now as a woman who’s been overweight all my adult life (albeit much less so when I was younger) I always struggle with body image and feeling like people are looking/pointing/criticizing. And I’ve found that even when I’ve lost weight – i.e. I’ve been the size of the woman in the above photo (who is a size 12-14, fyi) I’ve been feeling good about myself and found that other people haven’t shared my sentiment.

But some of the acid that people were spewing over the “fatticism” discussion was downright disturbing. The fatticism discussion is about a woman candidate for Surgeon General who is overweight. People are calling her into question not because of her qualifications, which are impeccable, but because of her weight. Her weight! They’re saying that an overweight Surgeon General has no basis from which to tell people how to be healthy, or eat less, etc. But a lot of the verbal vomit that people are spewing over that issue point to something far worse – discrimination based on weight.

Honestly? My weight was an issue for one job I had. When I worked at a high-end real-estate sales office (some of the homes were upwards of $1 million) I eventually got moved into the basement because I didn’t fit the profile of the face they wanted to put on for their clients. They wanted my skills to run the office, but the woman who was in front of the clients? She was a size 0 fashion model. I worked very hard to lose weight and was at my thinnest when I worked there (around 187) and was dressing nicely, wearing makeup every day and spending hundreds of dollars per month on my hair, and they moved me into the basement basically because I wasn’t thin enough to be in front of the clients. Of course they couldn’t say that because I would have sued their asses, but it was a form of discrimination.

In spite of that incident, it still doesn’t occur to me that people can be so incredibly caustic over something like weight. People in the “fatticism” discussion were using extremely harsh language – hurtful language – hateful language, even – to describe overweight people. Yet the woman in that picture up there – that “plus-size” model – is a size 12! Size 12 is the average size for American women! (Wait, scratch that – I just found an article from March saying that size 14 is now the average.) How did the American average become plus-size? And why are people so incredibly judgmental and mean to folks who fit into the American average? Shouldn’t we “plus-size” women outnumber the skinny bitches?

It’s one thing to know that people can be hostile toward us women who are bigger than average. It’s another thing entirely to have people venting their spleen in an anonymous forum where they feel they have the freedom to say exactly what they think – no matter how mean and hurtful it is.

I’m inclined to think that fatticism, or discrimination based on being overweight, is real. I’ve seen it at work in my life. When is society going to become more accepting of overweight people? With more and more Americans overweight over time, how long will it take before social stigma catches up with reality?

Breakfast: Toasted bagel w/Buffalo chicken deli meat, honey mustard, cheese, salt and pepper kettle chips, diet coke, banana

Lunch/Dinner: Savory Pork Soup (yes, I cooked!), Pillsbury dinner rolls (4 – boo me) and diet coke. Two bowls of soup.

Snacks: Doughnuts. 2.

Other Beverages: Starbucks Frappuccino drink, diet coke

Exercise: As usual, none to speak of.

I went back to visit my family in 2006. It was the first time I had seen anybody in almost a year. I’d lost around 90 pounds, at that point – wasn’t exactly thin even then, but looked and felt a lot better. I was dressing sexy and a lot more confident. While I was there, I visited a few of my old co-workers… and met up with my old boss.

One minute, we were chatting in a mall food court. The next thing I know, we’re walking through a secluded part of the mall (it connected to a hotel and a convention center) and he shoves me into a men’s bathroom and starts kissing me.

Did I mention he’s married? And I’ve met his wife – they hosted a bbq at their house when I was working for him. I like her, and I liked them as a couple. How on earth did I end up in a men’s bathroom with his tongue down my throat?

Needless to say, it messed with my head. He went through the motions of trying to find a hotel room, and even asked where I was staying – luckily I was staying with family and didn’t have anyplace to bring him. I was repulsed and yet oddly… submissive? I somehow felt that I deserved the way he’d treated me. After all – he wouldn’t have kissed me if I’d been 90 pounds heavier and dressed like a bag lady. So somehow losing weight and being attractive invited his behavior, in my mind, and therefore it was my fault.

Ultimately, I left without anything else having happened because he didn’t have time to arrange it. I was leaving the day after I saw him, thankfully. I’d told him before that happened where I lived, and he mentioned that he got out that way sometimes for business, so he’d see me when he was in town.

After I left, he started calling me. I spoke with him maybe once or twice… the last time I spoke with him, he was asking me what I’d do to him when he came to visit. I faked a signal problem with my cell phone and hung up on him, and didn’t answer when he kept calling. He called over 30 times that day, and then never called again.

I think that’s a large part of the reason I stopped taking care of myself and started eating again. When I came home from that trip, I stopped going to the gym and slowly started eating unhealthier again. I think that maybe I felt like my weight was a self-defense mechanism. It protected me from my identity as a woman. When I was thinner, I apparently invited that sort of behavior… from someone I trusted, someone who was once a mentor to me. I felt unclean, and didn’t know what to do about it. So I started eating.

I swear I saw him this spring in my old town. I saw a man who looked exactly like him, with his height and his facial build and his way of walking, traipsing down the sidewalk a few blocks from where I lived. I worried that somehow he’d tracked me there, and was looking for me. I felt shocked and deeply ashamed when I saw him. I looked away, and thanks to all the extra pounds – he never even looked at me.

And now, to wake up today to find he’s sent me a friend request on Facebook. That really messed with me. That’s brought all of this back to the forefront again. Just when I’d started thinking that maybe it would be ok to start working out again, and taking care of myself… and he’s there to remind me of what happens when I do that.

Make no mistake – I use my weight as a self-defense mechanism. And I think that in this case, it’s totally warranted.

Breakfast: Leftover American Chop Suey, diet coke, dark chocolate almond cookie

Lunch: Toasted bagel w/ Buffalo Chicken deli meat, cheese, miracle whip, salt and black pepper chips, diet coke, Take 5 candy bar

Dinner: Burger and a few fries from Boardwalk, diet coke, 2 doughnuts

Other Beverages: Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino drink, Ghiradelli Mocha Hot Cocoa, diet cokes

Exercise: I walked a couple of miles to get food and back home. I’m thinking probably not enough to counteract all the crap I ate today.

Breakfast: Toasted bagel with buffalo chicken deli meat, miracle whip, cheese, salt and pepper potato chips, diet coke

Lunch/Dinner: I cooked American Chop Suey and ate two bowls. Plus diet cokes, of course.

Snack: Lowfat French Vanilla Ice Cream and two white chocolate carmelita cookies

Other beverages: Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino drinks (2) and diet cokes

Exercise: Took the dog to the park and walked with him a bit.

Breakfast: BBQ chicken deli meat on a toasted bagel, two slices of gouda cheese and miracle whip, Suddenly Pasta Salad Ranch & Bacon flavor, diet coke, cookie

Lunch: Roast beef deli meat on white bread, miracle whip, two slices of cheddar cheese, Salt and Black Pepper Kettle chips, two pickles, diet coke, two cookies

Dinner: Mc Donalds: Quarter pounder with cheese, large fries, double cheeseburger, diet coke

Other beverages: diet coke, Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino drink

Snacks: Red Velvet cupcake, white cupcake with chocolate icing

Exercise: Hah. Exercise?

Thoughts: The bf and I had a rough morning. We had a big misunderstanding, which led to a fight and we’ve both been unhappy all afternoon/evening. Guess what that means? Binge time! I always turn to food for comfort when I’m really unhappy, and today was no exception. The thing is, I don’t view it as an addiction, although maybe it is. But when I eat because I’m unhappy, I tend to view it more as punishment than an attempt to mute my unhappy feelings. I hadn’t decided to binge, but when the bf got home from going out, I was a little hungry, so I talked about cooking. He didn’t seem interested in eating or helping me cook… so I decided to get McDonalds for me. Not because I wanted McDonalds, or because I thought the food would make me feel better – but almost because I felt like crap and wanted to put crap in my body because I felt like I didn’t deserve any better than that.

Does this make sense? Maybe I’m alone in this, but I tend to think of binging on crappy food items as more a form of self-flagellation. I don’t cut – I make myself feel like crap with food. Maybe making myself feel like crap gives me control and prevents other people from making me feel like crap? Or maybe I feel like I deserve to feel like crap for causing trouble, and so make myself feel like crap? I don’t know, but I feel like getting to the bottom of this could give me a big insight as to why I binge on crap food as a form of punishment.

Breakfast: BBQ chicken deli meat, provolone and miracle whip on a toasted bagel. Suddenly Pasta Salad Ranch & Bacon Flavor and a Diet Coke.

Lunch: 3 cookies from the farmer’s market down the street. Fairly small, as cookies go. Not so bad?

Dinner: 2 hot dogs (at Nats Stadium – yay for ballpark food!) with ketchup and mustard, a couple of the bf’s fries, Diet Coke

Snacks: A Dove Miniatures Ice Cream Bar (3 bites – only 70 calories but oh-so-yummy!) and half a pack of cinnamon roasted cashews

Other Drinks: A margarita at the ballpark, a beer, diet cokes, IBC root beer

Exercise: I actually did a fair amount of walking around – at least a couple of miles in getting to and from ballpark/friend’s house (took the Metro! And walked far too much in the mid-90 degree weather! I hate the weather here).

Weight: 264

Thoughts: Went to the ballpark for a game. Worried that it would be horrible for me, as last time I was at a ball park, I pigged out. On the other hand, I always feel weird eating in front of people, and we met up with some of the bf’s friends at the ballpark. I don’t generally pig out in front of people I don’t know well, because I’m always thinking they’re thinking “Oh, hah, look at the fat girl eat!” or something like that. So I had a couple of hot dogs and that was pretty much it, which is minor damage for me at a ballpark. On the other hand, I had a margarita at the ballpark, and a beer with the friends afterwards, which probably made up for the calories I missed in food.

Oh, calories. You’re everywhere. Damn you.

See, I watch TV when I eat. It’s like downtime for me. I don’t actually have a table (need to get bar stools for my apartment) so I eat off my lap sitting on the couch. Because I have to hold my dishes, I don’t have enough hands to also hold a book (I also read and eat, from time to time) so TV is pretty much my only option.

However, I heard somewhere that eating and watching TV at the same time is bad. You’re not paying attention to what you eat, so you’re less likely to notice the body saying “I’m full!” and stop eating. Plus, I’m kinda big on appreciating food, and it’s sad that you don’t appreciate food as well when you’re doing something else while you eat. So TV and food is bad in that regard.

And I know I tend to eat compulsively when I’m in front of the TV. Last week, I had a sammich and potato chips. I’m pretty good about putting my potato chips on the plate so I can control the serving size and leaving the bag in the kitchen. However, practically before I could blink, my chips were gone. I got some more. “Just this once,” I thought. “They’re so tasty!”

The next thing you know, I get up and bring the bag over to the TV, and by the time I finish what I’m watching, a brand-new bag is half-empty. Oops. And I didn’t even notice I was eating all that.

This evening was sort of the reverse. I had a big SNAFU with the bf about dinner (which I need to get into another time – suffice it to say that I didn’t have food to cook and didn’t want to ask him to take me to the grocery store) and so I had just a sammich. But I knew that wouldn’t satisfy me (note I did not say I was still hungry – I just wasn’t satisfied) so I poked around in the cabinets to see what else we had. I was going to make rice and try to do something fun with it, but then I saw a lonely box of Suddenly Pasta Salad. I made it, and refrigerated it because I prefer eating it chilled.

Worked for a couple of hours, and then went to start something to watch so I could eat some pasta salad. Unfortunately, something is going on with my cable bandwidth, and my Netflix playback was so slow that it kept stopping and finally died altogether. “Oh no!” I thought. “What will I watch while I eat?” I wasted 10 minutes resetting my network stuff trying to see if something had just clogged the modem/router, but the bandwidth didn’t improve. Must be lots of people doing stuff online in the ‘hood this evening.

In the end, I had the fleeting thought that if I couldn’t find something to watch, I wouldn’t bother to eat the pasta salad. I wasn’t actually hungry. I just wasn’t satisfied with what I had for dinner. So I didn’t actually *need* to eat. If I couldn’t find entertainment for my down time, I’d be better off just working more.

Luckily (or unluckily) I thought to check on one of my regular TV shows online and it’s started up for a new season. I was able to watch an episode from my PC hooked up to my TV, so I had my pasta salad. But if I hadn’t had anything to watch? I so would have skipped the pasta salad.

That tells me that my dining and TV-viewing habits are hopelessly intermingled. I suspect that if I change that, my eating habits themselves would be more likely to change. It’s sort of Pavlovian now – watching TV? Eat. Perhaps I should work on deprogramming…

Breakfast: Toasted bagel w/bbq chicken deli meat, provolone cheese & miracle whip. Chocolate almond cookie. Diet coke.

Lunch: Half a Beef and Cheddar sammich from Arby’s and half an order of loaded potato bites (4). Dr. Pepper. Also, Antie Anne’s cinnamon sugar pretzel sticks (4).

Dinner: Roast beef deli meat sammich on white bread, provolone, miracle whip. Two pickle spears. Diet coke.

Snacks: Suddenly Pasta Salad Ranch & Bacon flavor with diced tomatoes. Meh.

Other beverages: Diet coke, of course.

Exercise: Does walking around a mall count?