New Year’s Day 2012: Hello. My name is Dana, and I’m a fatass.
Hi Dana…
It would be more interesting for me to tell the story of how I got fat in a series of blog posts, but suffice to say that at my heaviest I was around 250 pounds at 5’6″ in height. I do not know what my exact weight was because when I wore the largest-sized clothes I have ever been in and felt fattest, I didn’t have a scale. But I have weighed in at around 249 at some point after acquiring the scale, so take that for what it’s worth.
The tendency for type 2 diabetes runs strongly in my mom’s side of the family. It is even beginning to appear in my dad’s family despite a lack of strong family history. My dad now has it and was startled to learn that a younger brother of his is afflicted with it as well. I remember Dad’s struggles with weight when I was a child but didn’t think much about them at the time because most of his excess fat seemed to show up in his belly. Most of us still believe that’s relatively benign and a “normal sign of aging” even though belly fat is a stronger predictor for heart disease and type 2 diabetes than fat elsewhere in the body. Not to be outdone, my mother’s been struggling with her diabetes since she was forty (Dad was diagnosed when he was 54) and several years ago I sneaked a peek at her blood sugar diary and saw numbers as high as 300. Judging by her state of mental health, she’s only deteriorated over the years.
Add to this dubious family history the fact that I was born in 1974 and grew up during the advent of the low-fat, low-animal-foods, high-carb heyday.
I was a sitting duck.
Happily, I had three advantages in the end: one, I’m something of a biology nerd; two, I have a pretty strong sense of curiosity; and three, I had access to decent information about nutrition, diet, and weight loss. If I sound a bit blasé about my parents’ problems it is because they might have the third advantage but definitely do not possess the first two. I mean, I once had to explain to my father what kidneys do. I love them, but you know the old saying about horses and water. Those two have been thirsty for a while. Nothing I can do about it.
But I can do something about me. This blog is about the usual boring weight-loss-blog-chronicling of a “weight loss journey”–namely, mine. I have already lost between thirty and forty pounds from my highest-ever weight, but I am in no way resting on my laurels because, quite frankly, I still look and feel like shit. My sleep cycle is fucked, my skin looks like hell, and I seem to be surrounded by a perpetual SEP field (somebody else’s problem, a popular geek term among role-playing gamers) that has pretty much walled me off from ever rescuing my already-screwed social life. Plus I’d like to avoid developing diabetes. Plus there’s the vanity angle.
Unfortunately, while there are many reasons I am not yet at goal weight and most of them have to do with me not being consistent in my efforts, there are forces at work in the world that under the wrong circumstances keep people from learning what they need to know about nutrition and weight loss. Even when you figure out what is going on and get onto a decent diet plan, it seems the whole world is working against you. So, along with chronicling my own weight-loss efforts, I will also be grousing about the idiots who, if they had their way, would see me eating in much the same way I ate when I got so hugely fat in the first place.
And got crazy.
And made myself sick with blood sugar swings and massive migraines.
And need I go on?
Oh wait, one more thing: I swear. Sometimes frequently and at length. If for some reason you get the vapors when someone around you uses salty language, you might want to find a blog to read that better fits your delicate sensitivities. Also, please don’t tell me I’m offending you. I will probably laugh at you a lot, and that would just make you feel bad. Save us both the trouble. Thank you for understanding.
