The ‘Skinny’ or ‘Fat’ Debate

I often ramble on here just about certain things that I may have on my mind or that I feel I want to just “get out there”. This post is definitely going to fit under that category…

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine (K) and the topic of weight came up. [… a little information to preface: I have known my friend K for pretty much my whole life. She is short (just about 5 feet) and has always been really small and very skinny often trying to maintain her weight in the “healthy range”…]

So we were sitting by the pool and weight came up, as it sometimes does with women. She had mentioned that her cousin, who is overweight, got called fat and was obviously hurt by the comment. K responded by trying to make her feel better, but her cousin snapped back at “K saying “how she doesn’t know how it feels”.. or does she? K has been called “too skinny” plenty of times, and has even had the “go eat a cheeseburger” comment thrown at her for good measure.

As someone who has been on both sides of the fence, being called ‘too skinny’ is just as offensive as being called ‘fat’. I have been asked “are you still trying to lose weight? You are already too skinny” similar to when I was overweight and someone would call me “fat and tell me I need to go Jenny Craig”) Both comments come from opposite ends of the spectrum, but both comments have the same effect: they make a person feel inadequate about their body.

Although I have only considered the ‘too skinny’ comments in passing, after talking with my friend and considering my own experiences I do think that the skinny comment is just as offensive as the fat comment. Since our society [if you’re an American] values thinness, I don’t think people realize that it can be just as hurtful to call a person “too skinny” as it can be to call a person “fat.”

When I think back to the way being called ‘fat’ made me feel I realize that being called ‘too skinny’ makes me feel just the same. Both comments leave me self-conscious and inadequate. Regardless of where the comment comes from, it is intended to point of a flaw…

And I don’t think anyone really needs someone else pointing out their flaws…

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Counting

I am not a number person. Blame it on my hate for Math and any other math-related school subject, but numbers and I just do not get along. I always let someone else figure out the tip, always pass off the score envelope on Rummy 500 when the adding has to be done (because everyone else uses old mail envelopes for score keeping – right?) and 2 semesters ago was the hardest school semester of my life due to my statistics class. Why the number talk you ask? Well, yesterday I read a great post about calorie counting and it really got my mind going (love, love when a blog post does that, fyi) about my own relationship with calories and numbers.

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I am sure like many other people out there, calorie counting and I go waaaaay back. When I first started on my weight loss journey I was completely clueless as to what a calorie even was. I never gave a thought as to what I was put inside my body, and thankfully not because all I ate back then was garbage. Salad, to me as a teenager, was two pieces of lettuce and half a bottle of salad dressing. I had no concept of what was healthy and what wasn’t, which is partly the reason I turned to so many fad diets.

I think the first diet I started was the Slim Fast diet; the one with the shakes that taste like chalk. I have said before that I have tried them from Atkins to South Beach to the Caffeine & Nicotine diet (similar to the ‘Red Bull Diet‘ except with the addition of nicotine) and of course had no success. I would “diet” for a bit and then lose steam and end up giving up and eating 2 boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese. The cycle just kept going – and a vicious cycle it was. I would fail at whatever ‘diet’ I was on that week and then feel guilty and bad for failing, overeat and eat junk for 3 days, then feel guilty because of the overeating and try another diet plan.

It was these times that I first began to count calories. At first, I was counting calories to go along with the crazy diets I was but the ‘diets’ stopped and I was counting calories so I wouldn’t go over a certain number on a specific day (usually 1500). Towards the end of my actual ‘diet’ phase, it was more about the calories in/calories out. It was a constant number game, and on some days my “calorie count” could make or break me.

Even though I had lost almost 75+ pounds with all my crazy dieting, I still was just as unhealthy as when I had began .. except I was struggling mentally and emotionally. I was beat and realized that I couldn’t continue on the path that I was on because I was just making myself crazy. So, I needed to change. I needed a way of life not another f-ing diet. I began to learn more about healthy eating and living and through blogs, books, and some classes at school. I learned about what a calorie really was (fuel) and began to re-examine the food groups and macros.

Although my fad dieting is long behind me, there is still one habit that I have not been able to give up: calorie counting. It is almost like it is ingrained in my head; it is automatic. Although before I kept a food journal, now it is a mental log so at the at the end of the day I know where I stand.

I have thought about really trying to rid my life of the habit, but realize that it does provide me with some piece of mind. As someone who can emotionally eat, calorie counting does keep my mind from going crazy. I also use calorie counting for the opposite reason too. I count calories to make sure I have eaten enough energy for any given day. After all, it is calorie counting that allowed me to account for my unintentional weight loss last year. Calorie counting is a double-edged sword for me – although it does provide me some comfort, I also don’t like that is a behavior (just a personal opinion).

For now, it goes in ‘working on myself’ category and only the future will tell where this habit ends up…

-Amy

Q. Do you count calories? Have you ever?

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Too Big, Too Thin

For someone that has been on both sides of the weight spectrum, I can say that sometimes it is true about what they say about the grass always being greener… especially when it comes to weight loss AND weight gain. Yes, I said weight gain. In today’s society, most of the diet talk out there is centered on losing weight. What about the ones that struggle to gain weight?

http://www.nataliedee.com/

I don’t know if I mentioned on the blog before, but leaving my desk made a major difference in my diet. When I first got my desk job (at a college) I joked that it made me gain 5 pounds. Because I began sitting at a desk all day and not nearly moving around as much as I once was, I had put on a few pounds. Last May, after I left my crappy job, I noticed a difference in the way my clothes were feeling .. except they weren’t tighter. They were looser. Then other people started to notice too, and I got the words that I never thought I would hear in my lifetime: “You are too thin” Whhhhhaaaaatt?!?!? Of course, I quickly dismissed the remark as absolutely crazy. But then after hopping on the scale (at this point, I wasn’t weighing myself regularly) I realized that I had lost weight since leaving my day job – what the… Then after giving my daily routines some thought, a lightbulb went off in my head.

I completely underestimated all the “snacking” calories I was consuming at work. I was so bored out of my mind, that I was pretty much snacking and munching all. day. long. And although I was still snacking on healthy snacks, all those calories did add up and where I was sitting all day, my calories “in” weren’t balancing out with the calories “out” and so forth. Then, once I left my job I was not snacking nearly as much as I had been before. And I was moving around during the day more. That is when I started to lose weight. Makes sense. It also makes sense that I gained a few pounds when I first started there. But, something happened to my body over that three years at my job…

and when I left last May, I ended losing the 5 pounds I had gained but then kept losing. I wasn’t eating nearly what I was eating when I was working and I was constantly moving about, excited about not being chained to a desk all day. I ended up being on the skinnier side of my “happy weight” and (although it took me longer to realize than my loved ones) I had to get back into the middle of my happy weight spectrum. I had all this knowledge in my head about weight loss in a healthy manner, but never once thought about weight gain – in a healthy way (without eating cupcakes for breakfast…)

http://www.nataliedee.com

Honestly, I didn’t know where to begin. In our society, everything is about diet this or lose weight that. There is always a commercial about some new diet product or a celebrity endorsing a meal plan. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do know that for many, losing weight is an everyday battle. I am not saying that it is easy or making light of the issue. I just was surprised that with all of the information out there on diet and exercise, there was only about 1/4 of that on actually gaining weight in a healthy manner.

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For me, actually hearing those words “too thin” definitely brought about mixed feelings. Isn’t this what the “fat” me wanted all along? Isn’t this what I had been working towards? All those hours at the gym, all those desserts skipped? And here I was being told that I was now too thin, and I had gain weight. I felt like I couldn’t win. I definitely had feelings of resentment towards my body, and the fact that I now had to try and “undo” the weight loss.

I do realize that this was most likely some of my disordered thinking talking in my head, partly because when I did take a good, hard look at myself, I knew that I was too skinny for my liking. But, even knowing this, why was it so hard for me to grasp that I had to “gain” weight. It was like my mind was just revolting against the fact that I had gain. The emotions that came about all by three simple words: you’re too thin. And of course, the even harder-to-swallow words: gain weight still are with me to this day.

Even though I slowly realized that I could get back up to my “happy weight” without getting back up to 200 pounds, it was still a hard process. A process that did make me realize that for some, the quest to gain weight is just as hard as the quest to lose weight for others…

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The grass is always greener..

-Amy

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