Mermaid or Whale

From something forwarded to me in email this morning:

Recently, in a large city in Australia, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said, "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern,
Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.) They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? Just look at them ... where is IT? Therefore, they don't have kids either. Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me: I want to be a whale.

P..S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends.

With time, we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren't heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!¨

Dieting is not Fun

I'm tired tonight. It's been tough getting much sleep while in Newmarket. Sleeping on that couch isn't great and then when I can't get comfortable I decide to start reading, since I'm awake anyway. By the time I'm tired enough to be sleepy it's pretty late. Then, before the sun is awake, those little girls start screaming for their parents and wandering around the house waiting to get noticed by the aforementioned parents. No, they aren't deaf, they just seem to wait before taking action. I think they like that kind of attention. It makes me bonkers but they must like it, thrive on it even. Why else would you allow your kids to behave that way?

I'm glad for tomato soup. Even though it doesn't look like much without the milk/ cream in it it does take the edge off dieting hunger. Should be about a week before I have more grocery money. I've got a great list ongoing in my head. Pickles are at the top of the list. Sure, they aren't a staple item but they are good and crunchy and of the green variety.

Starving for a Man

I've heard a debate about how women are becoming (being) anorexic in order to conform to the media image of a stick thin woman or the other side of the debate says she wants to be stick thin but with boob implants in order to please men. A few people try to say she's doing it for herself, to feel better about herself. Don't believe them.

I'm doing it to please men. Also, to try to stretch my grocery shopping dollars from one end of the month to the other. It's not fun or particularly amusing. But, one can of tomato soup can be filling for quite awhile if you take your mind off of things immediately afterwards by watching TV, playing games on the computer or taking a trek outside. The TV is a poor distraction, all those ads for fast food don't do me any favours. Plus that McDonald's commercial with the alarm clock pisses me off to extremes. Who wants to hear an alarm clock shrilling away at you when you're in the middle of watching mindless TV.

I don't think I have lost much weight so far. My sister did say I looked thinner when she saw me last weekend. So there is hope.

Don't count on me ever having the boob job part of this though. My boobs are just fine, already a happy pair of DD, I expect they will shrink down to a C or B and I will be just fine with that. I had a Family Studies teacher in high school who tried to keep herself a bit chubby cause each time she dieted to be a bit thinner her boobs disappeared. That was just her body type, thin and boobless. I think about her now and then. My body type is not thin or boobless. I'm one of those curvy types, just over doing it on the curviness at the moment. Once I melt myself away I will have an hourglass figure. Even now I have a small waist, though it's hidden away under big clothes.

That's another interesting thing, the clothes you choose to wear. I go for comfort and nice colours. I don't care for the tailored look and I really don't care for fashion. Why follow what worked for some other skinny woman when I can wear something that works for me. I'm a fashion leader in my own mind. I do look very good in red too, I wear it on days I want to dress to impress. Or days when I'm feeling kind of down and need a little boost. It almost always works too.

I think I will get out for groceries on Monday, if not over the weekend. I have about $100 left to cover this month. Rent is taken care of. I bought the TTC pass so I'm ok for getting around on all the buses I could stand for (literally since they are often busy with standing room only). The only real expense left for this month is groceries. I can manage. It's only for myself after all.

Sometimes I think about what if Todd and I had kids. How would I be managing if I wasn't alone now? I guess I could get help from the government, a little freeloading for the sake of the kids. But that wouldn't be good for me. How would it feel to have your kids know you were freeloading when they see other Mothers on TV with great careers, cars, a house, dating, taking trips here and there and never seeming to really have any financial hardships. It wouldn't be a good feeling to be a Mom struggling these days. At least she might be thin. The media and men in general like a thin woman.

I'm glad the fashion show types are beginning to change. They have made some rules for standards of how thin a woman should be to appear in their shows. She is still underweight but they prefer one who doesn't look like she just escaped from her grave. Not a little meat on her exactly but the potential to live until the end of the show, not quite starving herself to death.

In that case it is interesting to think about who they are doing it for. Those teenaged girls (most of them seem to be high school age) who dream of making their fortune by trotting down a runway wearing something someone thinks is going to be the next big fashionable thing every woman simply must have. What are those girls starving themselves for? Think about how ironic it is that they have to be stick then to sell clothes to us. We, who are not often stick thin, yet perhaps dream of being so in order to get dates. Round and round it goes...

I Smell Like Tuna

I've been eating a lot of tuna (and some tomato soup) lately. I think I am starting to smell like tuna. Time for a change. It's not easy coming up with something else though. Most low cal food is not all that interesting or tasty to begin with. A lot of it is pricey too, if you go with the Weight Watchers brand or the new no name, low cal options the grocery stores are marketing.

I would love to have something chocolate. I'm craving it here, when I'm not out. I seldom bring any home though cause I just know I will eat it all. Not much chance I will save some for the next day. Luckily I only buy a tiny bit of anything, not a vat as I would really love to have around.

Anyway, I need to find something other than tuna now. I've gone past the point of no return with fish in general I think, at least the affordable kind that come in a handy tin can. Salmon was the year before last. I did lose about 40 pounds but I think half of that came back once my Mom was back from Florida. We are not good for each other in that way. We both like the good things in life like eating out and chocolate. So unfair that they cause plumpness in women. (Men too but that's THEIR problem, I can only deal with so much at one time).

On Monday if we don't have the freezing rain they are threatening I will go out and explore the grocery store for new ideas in diet food. Oh joy, I love self torture.

Future MILFs

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Weight Loss Freedom

Dr. Phil: The Seven Keys to Weight Loss Freedom

When you use Dr. Phil's seven keys, you begin to: rid yourself of wrong thinking, heal yourself of emotions standing in the way of a healthy relationship with food, create a no-fail environment, shape your eating behavior into what you need for lifetime weight control, get real about nutritional choices that worked to your detriment, change your priorities to include exercise, and plug into a circle of support for encouragement and accountability. In short, you are changing how you're living.

Key One: Right Thinking
Lay aside self-defeating, invalid mindsets that do not work. They have the power to keep you from making different choices or developing new behaviors. Too often, we let these negative notions go unchallenged, and we act as though they were true. You must monitor what you're thinking and challenge whether it is true. If it's not working, replace it with thinking that works.

• Do You Have Faulty Thinking?
• Challenge Your Faulty Thinking
• What's Your Weight Locus of Control?
• The Challengers' Internal Dialogues
• Keep an Online Diary

Key 2: Healing Feelings
Overcome emotional overeating by managing inappropriate reactions to stress; solving problems rather than dwelling on them; changing self-defeating thoughts, since more often than not, feelings follow thoughts; gaining closure on unfinished emotional business; and learning new ways to cope without resorting to food.

• Are You an Emotional Eater?
• The Challengers Work to Gain Emotional Control

Key 3: A No-Fail Environment
Design your world so that you can't help but succeed. This involves removing temptations to eat and rearranging your schedule in order to avoid or minimize triggers to overeat.

• Take a Personal Environment Audit
• The Challengers Unlock The Door to External Control.

Key 4: Mastery Over Food and Impulse Eating
There's only one reason why you haven't changed the bad stuff in your life. You're getting something out of it. I'm not saying that you're getting something healthy or positive, but people do not continue in situations, attitudes or actions that do not give them a payoff. This key helps you identify those payoffs, unplug from them, and replace bad habits with healthy behavior.

Key 5: High-Response Cost, High-Yield Nutrition
To lose weight, you must choose foods that support good behavioral control over your eating, that is, high-response cost, high-yield foods, organized into a moderate, balanced, calorie-controlled plan to ensure weight loss.

• What Should You Be Eating?
• A 7-Day Meal Plan
• The Rapid Start Plan
• The Challengers Master Key 5

Key 6: Intentional Exercise
Prioritize regular exercise into your life most days of the week — walking, jogging, aerobic dance classes, yoga, playing a sport, or lifting weights. Exercise does more than simply burn calories; it changes your self-perception so you stop labeling yourself as a couch potato.

• More About Key 6
• Robert Reames' Training Tips
• A Sample Exercise Program for Beginners
• Take Dr. Phil's Exercise Audit
• Keep a Workout Diary
• The Challengers' Fitness Competition

Key 7: Your Circle of Support
Surround yourself with supportive, like-minded people who want you to lose weight and succeed at your health and fitness efforts.

• Dr. Phil's Social Support Audit
• Circle of Support Do's and Dont's
• Find a Local Support Group
• The Challengers Struggle to Find Support

BBW and BHM Bloggers Blogroll

I've changed my site around a bit so I can use my Blogroll as a list of sites created by plus sized men and women so they can have some kind of community and meet each other through blogging. It seems to be the easiest way to have a free personals something or other online. I'm not sure how much work it will be for me. I know it will need to be maintained and sites checked now and then. Plus the original listing to make sure it's a genuine site and not some schmuck looking for any female with boobs.

Anyway, anyone who would like to join can send me an email and I will add them to the list. Right now I'm the only one on the list but I hope that will change.

BBW Women Bloggers

BBW Bloggers Webring for women only.

Love Your Body Project

Found on CafePress.

Love Your Body Day but we missed it last month, October 18th.

Odd how often I just miss these things. But, that will all be caught up to the minute once I'm famous and have a staff to take care of all those details. I can be free to just be gloriously me and get paid wheelbarrows full of money too. I can hardly wait. Any time now... how much longer do they think I'm going to hang around here, just waiting?...

Creative Fat Grrls on LockerGnome

A bold (risky) step for Creative Fat Grrls everywhere.

Note: It's so new I haven't even done more than login and make a first post. I am likely to change the theme and see if I can do something about that huge Google ad taking up most of the real estate on the top of the blog.

Would really like comments, optimistic only. You pessimistic fat-bashing types can piss off. :P Don't make me sit on you.

"When we lose twenty pounds we may be losing the best twenty pounds that we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty"--Woody Allen

"If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush." --Dawn French

I don't want to bash skinny grrls but that was pretty funny.

The art above came from DiVaVaVoom

Faboo gifts and apparel for the forgotten woman. Amy's saucy, voluptuous diva designs prove that beauty comes in all sizes, not just a size 5.

Have a look at the calendars.

Amy Flynn is a professional illustrator who has been designing greeting cards, childrens' books and the like for far too long. After painting one too many little skinny women for her clients, she created "DiVaVaVoom" for her friends both big and small.

Could you Spare a Cup of Fat?

I really think it's time someone invented a pill that kills fat cells. Just take one and all your extra fat dissolves. How simple would that be. Movie stars could take a double dose so they can keep their skeletal good looks.

If it became common they'd be cheap too. Everyone would have a pill or two as needed. Think of all the savings to the environment. No more exercise and diet books would need to be printed, all those trees could be spared! The existing books could be recycled. You get to choose to compost them or use them as wood burning fuel.

Everyone would wear the same sized clothes, or near enough. Everyone could eat less cause food would get kind of boring if there wasn't that whole challenge of not getting fat. Then, all those exercise machines and gadgets could be made over into machinery for hospitals, factories and other more productive things.

Health care costs would go way down too. All those doctors working on liposuction, stomach stapling and such would be transferred into more useful things like helping cancer patients and sports injuries cause far more people would be involved in sports and extreme sports too.

I bet things wouldn't go so well for TV. As people felt better and became more active they'd be less likely or interested in settling down in front of a TV screen for the evening. Maybe more would go out to movies. Likely they would choose something else, something more interesting than watching other people do things. Now, all slim and trimmed up they would do more of those things themselves.

Few people would need a second dose. Once they felt good (emotionally and physically) they wouldn't settle for a sedientary lifestyle. Keeping active would keep them in better shape.

The one thing I do wonder is what would happen to all that dissolved fat? Could it be somehow put to use. Could it be gathered in it's dissolved and compressed form and shipped off to all those starving people in Third World countries. I'm not sure how that would work exactly. It could be kind of complicated. However, instead of listening to those informercials begging for dollars you would hear them begging for your used fat cells instead. Your wallet would be of almost no interest if you'd just spare a few hundred fat cells instead.

Thank you very much.

Chubby Girl Brigade

Chubby Girl Brigade

For Big Girls Only

For Big Girls Only - Diary of a Fat Girl

The Lard Biscuit: True Confessions of a Fat Admirer

The Lard Biscuit: True Confessions of a Fat Admirer

I don't begrudge the slender women their men. But, it is always nice to read something like this, in support of women like myself who are not slender, who do have a "huge ass" and the boobs to match.

Thanks Donald.