Dating and Fat Girls

I recently saw this article and clip about fat girls and dating, and it raised a lot of good points about what heavy women face in the world of relationships. While the video may speak for the majority (although I don’t really know), it’s also true that not all men avoid fat women. In fact, some men prefer more curves and heft, or at least aren’t bothered by it.

Dating, though, is a two-way street, and the article only tells one part of the story, that of men not wanting to date a fat woman. The other side is that it doesn’t matter how willing the guy is if the woman is unable to accept or even recognize the interest.

For myself, when I was in high school and college, I knew that other fat girls and women dated and had sex. But it always seemed like they inhabited a parallel universe, one out of sync with mine.

In my world, I literally could not conceive of a guy wanting to be in a relationship with me. Sleep with me, maybe – as the video points out, sex is not necessarily the issue. Some guys may even prefer obese women because they may have low expectations and take whatever attention they can get, even if it’s just physical.

But someone actually interested in my thoughts, liking me and wanting to spend time with me and hold my hand? I barely liked myself much of the time, and I knew too well the darkness of my thoughts and feelings. No one would really want to be around me – or at least, that’s what I believed. It didn’t help that my initial (if limited) interactions with boys my age were with those who were only interested in taking advantage of my poor self-image.

It meant that even when a couple of genuinely nice guys seemed interested, I failed to recognize it. As with many others who have low self-esteem, my mind and heart simply couldn’t grasp the concept of someone truly liking me for myself, especially not in a romantic way. I couldn’t accept what was offered.

So if we think about changing the dating world for fat girls, I think it would need to address both issues. That being said, it’s encouraging to see any recognition or dialogue around this. Awareness, after all, is the first step, and it’s hard to be aware of these issues when those who don’t experience them never even see or hear them.

Eating to Lose

Note: For information about the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program, visit www.AmIHungry.com or visit my website.

Last week I wrote about how I decided that I wanted to lose a few winter pounds. That’s all well and good, but as we all know, the intention alone is not enough. While it would be nice if the pounds miraculously fell off simply because I wanted them to, it doesn’t work that way. So how to make that goal a reality?

Lots of people offer suggestions on this, and I find some basic things helpful. Having a positive mindset, allowing myself not to be perfect, setting short-term goals that are small but attainable, staying motivated by reminding myself of the reasons I want to lose weight.

But in my experience, the real key is eating with the intention to lose weight.

What I mean is that instead of stopping eating when I’m full, I stop when I’m no longer hungry, or maybe even still a little hungry (depending on my later activities).

It’s a fine distinction but an important one. In the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program, we talk about how regularly eating to a feeling of comfortably full is maintenance eating. Eating to just satisfied is a better approach for losing.

I faced two main challenges in this process. One, remembering that being a little hungry isn’t something to be afraid of. I don’t want to get ravenous, but feeling a little twinge, or hearing a few rumbles, is not a reason to rush out and eat. I can wait until I am more truly hungry, or depending on the situation, I can have just a little to tide me over.

Which brings me to my second challenge: letting go of what my head tells me and listen to my body. The problem comes when I look at just how little I truly need to not feel hungry. My head clamored away at me at first, saying things like, “You should be able to eat more than that” and “You’re not going to last if you eat so little.” It conjured up the FDA guidelines, even though I don’t follow them anyway, and tried to point out that I’m not eating a full serving size in some cases and surely I want to?

The first week was the hardest. I started serving myself less by default, using smaller dishes to help remind me. I focused on building flexible, small snacks into my day as I needed them. I did my best to ignore the panicked noise in my head, or remind it that I could always eat a little more if I got hungry later, that it’s okay not to feel full on a regular basis. (Of course, I may decide to on some occasions anyway.)

Once I got through that, it became much easier. My head realized that I hadn’t died or suffered terribly. In fact, I felt better much of the time, clearer and lighter, and my food budget thanks me. And I’m happy to say that it’s working.

I share this only in the hopes of helping others think about how it’s possible to lose weight without going on a diet, without weighing and measuring and counting. And if that is your goal, perhaps eating with the intention of losing will also help you.

To Lose or Not To Lose

You’ve probably heard the conflicting information about body size and its implications for health. Some say that a larger size is, by default, bad. Some say that a little extra weight may actually be a good thing. Some people who are morbidly obese live happily to their 90’s, like my great-grandfather. And that doesn’t even get into all of the social connotations and other issues around weight and how people react to those who carry a little (or a lot) extra.

Give that, how do you sort through all the noise to decide for yourself if you want to lose weight?

This is a question I recently debated for myself. Not that most people would look at me and instantly think, “She’s overweight.” It’s more that I considered whether or not I wanted to shed the few pounds I gained over winter, especially since I had never lost the few pounds from the year before.

On the fact of it, that small gain isn’t the end of the world, especially since it’s not enough to impact my health. And unlike my major weight loss years ago, I don’t need to lose the weight in order to do the physical activities I want, like hiking.

Those are the main things I always think of when people are concerned about their weight: health and being able to do what you want. If those are fine, is the weight really an issue? And yet, still the question came up for me. Why?

Part of the reason, I’ll admit, is the numbers, though not in the typical sense. I’m not aiming for something on the height/weight charts, but rather I was measuring against myself. I could no longer say that I had become 130 pounds lighter than I was, having lost half of my body weight. It was more like 126 pounds lighter. In the grand scheme, those few pounds are negligible, but I still have an odd vanity about the numbers.

Plus, I couldn’t do one thing that I wanted: fit comfortably into some of my clothes. Again, not the end of the world, but I really like some of those clothes, and I intensely dislike clothes shopping. It means I’ve avoided buying anything new and have gotten tired of rotating through the same subset of items I can easily wear.

Finally, I wanted to still the niggling doubt in my head. I’m more than ten years older than when I started losing before, with 40 approaching in just a couple of years. Could I still do it?

So, I decided to go for it, with the aim of bearing able to wear the clothes I wanted by the time I leave for Florence on May 21, and next week I’ll write a little about that process.

For now, I’ll close by saying that while my reasons this time may not be as noble as my initial weight loss, the important point is, they are my reasons, something I’m doing for me and no one else. That, in the end, is the only way I think you can truly answer the question: to lose or not to lose?