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TO FAT AND BACK

There’s a (pretty stupid) quip you may have heard: “Inside every fat person is a thin person screaming to get out.” That’s wrong.

What it should say is: “Inside every thin person is a FAT person screaming to get out.” If you’ve been fighting that fat person ever since puberty, or if you’ve just noticed that your inner fat person has begun screaming now that you’ve turned forty, then you know what I mean.

Weight management is hard. That’s because everything we’ve been told about diet (and exercise) for the past half-century or more has been wrong.

I’ve done it all: Stillman, Weight Watchers, low-fat/low-cal/plus insane amounts of aerobic exercise, Atkins, Slim Fast. It was, I regret to say, the Fast Food “diet” that brought me to the moment of truth in my fiftieth year. After having given up the weight battle for a year or two for no good reason, I weighed in at 195 lbs, which is rather chunky on a 5-ft 3-inch frame. With the use of a drug supplied by my helpful doctor, along with the previously-mentioned low-fat etc. diet and massive exercise, I managed to drop 50 lbs. in the course of the year. Turns out the drug was the notorious fen/phen, which I’m happy to say did not wreck my heart. With unflinching commitment, I reduced to something near a “normal” weight. But here’s the thing.

Losing weight is relatively easy. ALL DIETS WORK. The problem is keeping it lost.

About 1999, as my weight began slowly creeping up again (The Weight Creep is a very real entity to me!), I rediscovered Dr. Atkins’s New Diet Revolution, the revised edition of his original 1972 “fad diet” recommending low-carbohydrate eating. Up to the moment of this writing, medical professionals around the world are still horrified by its recommendations. Obese people and diabetics claim they could NEVER live without bread, potatoes, and brownies. How can orange juice be a killer? Bacon and butter are perfectly healthy foods. Previous “common sense” just isn’t.

If you are in a health category where losing weight and keeping it off could be a life-saver, then here’s where you can go for real help: dietdoctor.com

Everything you need to know about healthy eating and becoming your best you.

Meanwhile, I keep the Weight Creep ever in mind.

 

HER FORMER FAT SELF SPEAKS

 

The clothes she’s wearing now are hers, not mine.
But nothing’s bagged up for the D.A.V.
She’s practical. I take that as a sign
that she’s a long way from forgetting me.
God knows I put up a terrific fight
against the slow erosion I endured
or months, while she observed me day and night,
the history between us oddly blurred.
The image she admires is youthful, svelte.
She claimed to love the loveliness within,
but more when solid flesh began to melt,
as though our very nature made us sin.
I’m gone. For now. There’s nothing to forgive.
But we both know she has to eat to live.

 

Barbara Loots
published in Lightpoetrymagazine.com
winter/spring 2014

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