Goin' to the Chapel

Hello, Gentle Reader!  Guess what!  I’ve finally gotten past the eight-ish weeks of craziness and now have free evenings again!  Not…many, but more than I had, and I’ll take it.  I’ve missed you.

Moment of silence for those we lost.

And while I’ve been busy, there have been murders and midterms and I did some experiments with Spackle and a blow torch but we’re not going to talk about all that today.  We’re going to take a moment for the bad, then focus on something good in the world—or at least, in my world.

I’m getting married!!  Well, assuming he says yes.  At the time of writing this we’re less than a week out, but I want this junk ready to go – if I posted this on Sunday, Nov 11, I did something right. 

So because I’m me, when I could have just found a quiet sweet special moment to propose, I have instead made an elaborate, ridiculous plan.  Let me tell you about this elaborate, ridiculous project, which has filled my few free moments and I have been unable to share with the person I giggle over elaborate, ridiculous things with.

Back when we first started dating, I told “Andy” to never get it in his head that he gets to ask me to marry him.  *I* am commitment-phobic.  *I* don’t like feeling cornered.  *I* get to ask.  And “Andy,” he knows who I am.  I mean we’ve been friends for like 20 years now and only romantic for the last few.  So he gets it.  

"You guys are weird."

When we started dating, and I wouldn’t admit we were boyf and girlf until…like, wayyyyyyyy down the line.  We weren’t dating, we were just…dolphins.  That was our word for it, because I don’t care what you call it, it is what it is, but don’t rush me and don’t tell me what to do.  For our first Christmas he got me a necklace with dolphins on it and I wear it every day and people think I’m from Florida and dolphins are my spirit animal but no, dolphins are not my spirit animal,




this goose is my spirit animal, but also it took a really long time to admit the person I was in love with who was in love with me and we were going on dates and having romance-times together was someone I might call my “boyfriend”.

And we moved in together, and he secretly loves my cats (BOTH CATS, “Andy,” if you’re reading), and everything has been super great.  Turns out, it helps a lot when you’ve known each other since you were like 18.  You already know things like “what’s he like when he’s angry?” and “is he a good friend?” and “does she lie about money?” and “is she nice to dogs?”.  Over the last year or so my niece has been non-stop with the when are you getting married as though her biological clock is ticking like this when really, she’s eight, and she’s just really worried about being a flower girl.  Additionally my sister has been a little, hurry it up you’re not getting any younger.  And “Andy” himself has recently been like, “Man we really love each other, if only there was sommmmmething we could do about that…” and I have been like, “Get off my junk, we talked about this.” 

My other niece apparently burst into very genuine tears last week because it was so sad and unfair
that I am unmarried and have no kids…but she also burst into
equally sincere tears the week before that because it wasn’t fair
 that the ground gets to have all the trees.
  So.  Take it with a grain of salt.

But I have also been like, man, I want to marry this guy.  And I sat on that for a while being like BUT COMMITMENTTTTTTT!!!! before I was like, ok, but also marriage, let’s get serious about it.  And after that it took a while to say it out loud to someone (my sister), and since then it’s been kinda non-stop. 

Real Convo:

Me: *Deep Breath*  I’m going to ask “Andy” to marry me.

Sis: Oh GOOD! I have been wanting to go to a wedding!  How about a destination wedding in the Bahamas, I would love that!

Me: 

And then we got down to the serious business of planning elaborate ridiculousness, because we are cut from the same cloth.

So of course this video popped into our heads…but getting all my friends together to plan some sort of coordinated dance routine is not real life, and also as I mentioned, I have been super overbooked for two months.  Like, very few free hours, weekday or weekend. 

He loves baseball, which I will politely say I do not love and leave it at that, so we thought about doing one of those jumbo-tron proposals at the baseball stadium, but here’s the thing.  First, I’d have to go to a game.  I’d have to sit through not-my-favorite 72 hours of boredom on what should be a special day.  More importantly, it would baaaasically sign me up for a lifetime of him trying to get me to go to further, future baseball games because “that’s our special thing” and me crushing the hope in his eyes like Godzilla in Tokyo because no, obviously not, never, again and again, til death do us part.  Seems like a lose-lose sitch, so we moved on.

He ALSO loves movies…and I recently learned there is a completely adorable old-school drive-in movie theater in the mountains a few hours away, and fall in the mountains is my *most favorite* thing. Also recently a bunch of us all went to the mountains together and did I listen to the Last of the Mohicans Soundtrack?  

I know it's problematic but it is so good

Did I make everyone listen to the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack?  

I did. 

So I call the drive-in, and they’re like, sure, come on up, bring your friends.  I tell them I am asking the boyf for his hand, and they’re very sweet and excited, and 

basically tell me I can put a little video or something on the screen before the movie.  Now we are, as they say, cooking with gas.

I start to plan a movie, and asking friends to help.  Turns out, I have contacts in the film industry, who know how to do this.  What contacts?  His contacts.  He works at a production studio, where they have real cameras and real editing equipment and know what they are doing and are down to keep a secret. 

The joy, perhaps, is in the secret...

Let me be clear, when I say movie—I do not mean movie.  

Spoiler alert: this preview has not been
approved by anyone.

I perhaps mean trailer.  I mean a few brief minutes, and less of a plot and more of the hint of a plot.  I want it to start like a horror movie, because he’s way into that, and for him to not know what’s going on at first, til suddenly he does.  I want the green screen that says, this preview has been approved for all audiences, and a voice-over saying “In a world gone mad…” like Don Lafontaine (or my cousin) (who recently did a fabo music thing just btw), etc.  So I start trying to put this together.

Let me tell you a few things I have learned.  First, when deciding to do something you have no skill set in, it helps to get a professional.  I mean, the director, we’ll call her “Molly,” (except we won’t call her “Molly,”  we will call her “Carpenter,” like John Carpenter, because what fun is a secret movie project if you don’t have secret code names and also what if "Andy" sees a text pop up and 

Me waiting for Saturday,
when me and "Molly"
can be facebook friends....

he’s like, how do you know “Molly?” and I would rather deal with “Who is this Carpenter guy and why is he asking if you can meet tomorrow after work?”) is a MOTHERTRUCKING PROFESSIONAL.  

She went to grad school for this, she knows what she’s doing, she knows lenses and angles and “clean exits” and directs like it’s her job because it is, and also she’s just generally a joy to be around.  By the time you read this we are allowed to publicly be friends.

It would have the movie version of this fine art.

Worth noting: if it were just me this would have been recorded on an iPhone, probably portrait not landscape, and edited together with the Microsoft Paint equivalent of editing software.  And it would have been fine!  But this...it’s better. 

Like this, but honestly we were at a Starbucks with
a notebook so...slightly lower production value.

Then another professional, we’ll call her “Sammie” (code name “Tina” for Tina Fey) helps produce.  I don’t even know what that means but it means the day we got all our friends together to do a busy scene went WAY BETTER than it would have otherwise.  It also means I got to watch them plan out said busy scene, complete with little paper doodle scraps to represent all the people and a sketch of the area based on Google Satellite and a plan for all the cuts and angles. 

Another thing I have learned is what a terrible liar I am.  Again, I’ve had very few available daylight hours, and this kinda needs to get done by Nov 10 because that’s when we’re scheduled at the drive-in.  “Andy” knows we’re going to the drive-in, and everyone is invited, and he thinks it’s just cuz hey, cool drive-in and mountains.  Fine.  But coming up with things I’ve been doing in the meantime that are not “sitting at home covered with cats” on the one unscheduled evening I have wrested away from my anxious over-scheduling is not easy for me.  I’d rather “Andy” ask about “Carpenter” than “Molly” because I can laugh off the “Carpenter” questions and I would freeze cold if asked about “Molly”.  I am a terrible liar.

Luckily, I can outsource that. 

Real friends help you hide the
body first, and then ask why.

Me: Give me a lie for why I’m not going home at the normal time tonight.

“Jen”: You’re picking something up from a client. Your boss needed something at the last minute.  You had to finish a project that you forgot was due.  You met up with your coworkers for drinks.  You are stuck in ridiculous traffic. 

Me: Ok, we can make this work.

“Jen”:  Great!  Wait, where will you really be?

Other lesson: I hate keeping secrets.  Or wait, no—that’s not entirely it.  I can keep a secret.  I hate not telling good stories.  The difference is subtle but potent.  I mean, I started a blog because I love telling stories.  If you’re reading this, then I’m at least not super terrible at it.  I have been doing this ridiculous, complex project—my favorite kind—and I can’t tell the person I love to tell about my ridiculous, complex projects.  I have been having big hilarious convos with my parents (don't worry Dad, you can menace him about being a #provider in December)—and I can’t tell the person I tell about hilarious convos with my parents.  I have been planning this event with the drive-in people, the film crew, “Carpenter” and “Tina”—and I can’t tell the person I tell about all the interesting-ranging-to-mildly-interesting-ranging-to-totally-not-interesting things that I do or that happen to me.  The pay off on this had better be great, because sitting on it for 6 weeks has been a real pain.  I have a great story to tell about my day—and instead, I have to be like, no, hanging out at my sister’s house where I have totally absolutely I'm-not-lying been since last time you saw me was boring, nothing much happened.

(I HAVE GREAT STORIES TO TELL, READER.)

This one I didn’t learn, this one I knew—but our friends are solid gold.  People interrupted their New York vacations for this.  People showed up in the rain.  People drove hours out of their way.  People wore fake beards, terrible terrible $3.00 fake beards.  

They gave their time and their energy, their voices and their bodies, offered up their houses and their talents, interrupted their schedules, wrangled their kids and/or dogs, and all I gave them was maybe a donut but mostly a “Hey, thanks so much!” and billing in the credits of our definitely-going-to-make-it-to-the-big-time faux-horror trailer. 

We have low standards of hygiene.

I also learned that eating chocolate filled donuts through a fake beards is revolting, and that is coming from me, and I am a goblin. 

If you’re reading this, he said yes ᴥ ß I was looking for a heart symbol but instead I found this tiny octopusy thing.  Watch our dumb trailer; it is dumb for love.

We're such nerds :)

Super Fun Stress Times

Hello, gentle Reader.  I know this is just words on a screen, but I ask you sincerely—how are you?  You doing ok?  You holding it together out there? 

It’s been a rough patch, these last few (years) weeks.  There’s a lot to that, both personally and across the country, but I’m not here to rant.  I was coming in hot last post and then the world was like, you think you got heat?  I’ll show you heat!  It’s been…a lot, for me and perhaps for you.  

So take a moment, take a deep breath, know you are loved and not alone.  Cuz things are tough right now.

Which manifests in some weird ways.  For example, on my drive home today, I pulled into the gas station and turned off my car and couldn’t find my keys.

She likes my car.

My car is a rolling garbage pile, at least the front seats.  It slowly accumulates knock-off la croix cans, and empty cups I take coffee to work in, and fast food bags that, if anyone else just left in my car, they would hear choice words about.  I give myself permission.  It’s my car, and the chorus of rattling that accompanies sharp turns sounds like home. 

But there I am, and I don’t know where my keys are.  I look in all the regular places, and I mean—I just got in the car at work, it’s not like I was on some odyssey that started on Neptune.  So I think back.

But I have no idea. 

Like some kind of statement...

Immediately I decide I have dropped them back in the parking garage and left them there.  Not dropped them, like accidentally—I, in the gas station, imagine throwing them to the ground with purpose and intent, because that makes sense, then leaving them there like a statement.

  See, my car is an ooo-la-la fancy keyless push-to-start car and so it is absolutely possible to turn it on then drive off without the key.  So in my gas station moment, I am picturing me getting in my car, turning it on, getting out of my car to load my trunk with some work stuff, and tossing my keys onto the ground in defiance before getting back into my car and driving away.  I am not remembering this, I am imagining it, because it makes sense.  Of course it does, it is the worst case scenario, and so of course it is plausible. 

But I try to be rational about it, so I clean out my car.  Wrappers, McDonalds bags, used dental floss (don’t judge me), etc.  It’s like four loads.  No keys. 

I clean out the back seat, a space I have not accessed at all in three weeks, while imagining how I’m going to hop the privacy fence in the back yard at the house to wait til “Andy” gets home. 

I go into the trunk, and look inside the boxes from work that I have not opened at any point since they came in my possession, to see if I stuck my keys inside of them.  While doing this, I wonder how to get in touch with the parking garage people to ask them to go look for my keys.  

The keys of defiance.

I go through the stuff that has nested in the box I keep back there for Aldi runs, and I barely stop myself before actually checking the pockets of the rain coat I have not worn in months.

I check through my work bag, wondering how I am going to explain to the gas station attendants that yes, I have filled my car up, but I am not moving it—potentially ever.  I go through the bag again.

Eventually I find my keys—they are in a corner of the trunk, like below the fake floor over the spare, as though maybe I did throw them down in defiance and with intent, which I do not remember doing and is an objectively dumb thing to do in the trunk, but here we are.

And then I come home.  And all this makes perfect sense, because stress is a hell of a drug.

This is how I felt about it.

Related story, remember how the Ass Vampires were trying to keep my money from me?  Well, we got it worked out eventually, and they mailed me my rollover check.  It got here last week.  And I was soooo happy to have it-- you may remember I had some strong feelings about that process.   

And now I don’t know where it is.  Oh, I got the check!  I received it, I pulled it out of the envelope, I double checked the amount.  I have clear memories of all of that….and then I put it “somewhere safe” and now it, I assume, is still there living a life of peaceful serenity far from the hands of greedy money-grubbing financial professionals and also me.  I am really looking forward to having to call them and ask them to resend it, that’ll be fun for everyone. 

Right, Reader??

When super stressed out I also do perfectly reasonable and not alarming things like suddenly check back in with myself while I am driving and become convinced that I am doing something wrong.  Not “I just realized I have forgotten my turn signal” wrong, more like “I am suddenly certain I am going the wrong way down a one way street” wrong.  It’s cool.  Happens to everyone.

Both entering and leaving sleep is a chore—and I find that one particularly unfair.  Brain, if you are going to be filled with the level of –whatever this is—that won’t let you turn off, then you do not also get to be mad when you turn back on.  

Wait tho, but what is it?  Is there a word for this?  Not angst but not fear but not anxiety but not anger
 but also all of those things.  It is sludgy but slimy but clumpy, sticky,
 and it burns.  It smells bad—not like death
 or like garbage or like acridity
 or like hate but also
like all of those things.  New word.  We’re calling it…Kevin.
Get it together, Kevin.

PICK A TEAM—asleep or awake.  Save it for 6:30 am plsthx and leave 10:30 pm alone.  But noooooo sleep has no master, sleep does what it wants, sleep is better friends with Kevin than with me and then I have dreams where I get in a very angry fight with an acquaintance in my childhood home and have to go hide from him in the bushes (where I met a very nice stray cat who was happy I brought blankets, so…well, that was nice).  Kevin doesn’t want sleep, Kevin doesn’t know what he wants, but what he wants is fickle and has a lot of middle fingers in play. 

Related note, if anyone is interested in
going in on a run of "burn it all down"
shirts, lmk.

Sigh. 

Articles like this don’t help, but I am trying not to turn this into a rant.

Oh that Kevin!

My house is a mess—I mean we don’t operate at “ready to receive the Queen” levels here regularly but these days, when I get ready to leave the house in the morning, I note that we have slumped from our own standards.  And in that moment, I am actually quite excited that my project when I get home will be to straighten up and mayyyyybe take my space suit and boxing gloves and 900 pairs of shoes upstairs, and mayyyybe get my food processor and Tupperware and spilled coffee grains and junk mail off the kitchen counter. 

Kevin laughs sweetly during my earnest, over-tired dream-boarding.   I think he thinks I'm cute.

And then when I get home I am like, I HATE TODAY I HATE EVERYTHING DISTRACT ME INTERNET AND PROJECTS THAT CREATE MORE MESS BUT ALSO WHO EVEN NEEDS TO DO LAUNDRY and also I’d like a beer please and I'm def not doing the dishes and Kevin laughs again but now it’s a different…tone.  And then the process starts again, but it’s tomorrow.

So this is what happens when things are messed up.  Look, a long time ago I was in a long term situation where things were bad, life was bad, and I learned an important lesson about—never do that again.  Care about yourself, body, mind, and spirit.  Do what it takes to be ok.  And I do, I am really trying.  But these days, it’s not...so internal?  It’s not situations in my everyday life that I can just do something about—my everyday life is pretty great, a state for which I am profoundly grateful.  My job is fine; I am spending time with loved ones. I am being active and eating well.  It’s fall and I put out cheerful seasonal decorations.

But MAN.  Things with “Andy” are super great and my friends are lovely and I have almost totally avoided understanding that we are creating refugee concentration camps of children and the weather is really starting to cool off so, I’m not complaining, not that it matters, because I’m just a lady person, and btw men are getting mad too (It’s the same article but I’m still on it, Reader) which is great because then they drive cars over people in Toronto but now I feel like I’m getting off topic, and I have been getting a lot of cuddle time with my monsters and it’s almost time to change the garden over, at least it should be except climate change is throwing the entire ecosystem of the planet out of balance but at least my family is healthy and speaking of family, my grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge but now, on my watch, our president dog whistles white supremacists but again, I am only a lady, obvs I don’t really count but hey!  I got a copy of my insurance card today, which is a totally adult and competent person thing to do!  So things are great!

There is room for self-care in here.  Like I went for a real run on Sunday, and I’ve been eating all my vegetables.  (Which is good for more than just the reasons I was taught as a child but for microbiome prebiotic reasons and – you know what, let’s just say it’s good for actual health reasons and reasons of satisfying a personal mental obsession.  I’ll let you go on your own rabbit hole journey here if you’re interested.  It’s a great distraction.)  

And things like that do help in the moment, but for the moments after that, it’s more of a faith thing.  Faith that, well, this sucks but I believe it would otherwise have been worse.  Also I have great village, I have a wonderful community around me of friends and loved ones, and that matters.  (I mean, “Andy” just redid the whole dining room on his own bc I low key hated it and he wanted to be sweet.  That is ridiculous and amazing.)  It matters a lot.

Plus it’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, so in the spirit of self-care, I have already completely overscheduled myself through Thanksgiving doing fun fall stuff like mountain trips and going to the national fair (they have two midways, people) and canning with friends and whatever.  You won’t take my season from me, Distopia-World.  Kevin still laughs, because overscheduling is not the right answer, but neither is unstructured free time.  

There is no right answer, I am saying. 

Part of this process has been about being willing and able to recognize when it’s not ok, and I am not ok.  Turns out, that’s not surrender, it’s strength.  That is the moment I can take action to care for myself—when I stop pretending I don’t have to.  That is the lesson of not letting it be that bad again….

So Kevin can suck it.  I’m stuck with him, but he’s stuck with me, and I’m not in it alone.  Neither are you, Reader.  We get to laugh and look at nature’s fireworks and listen to powerful music and take long walks.  Be gentle to each other and to yourselves.  I don’t know what that means for you, for me it means ima pet my cats and carve a pumpkin and host a canning party and take my niece out for brunch and giggle with the boyf and put my chin in the air.  This is hard but none of us are in it alone, and it is ok to not be ok.  Drink your water, take your pills, call your person (and listen to this podcast).

I literally cried when they stopped making new episodes.

Fat rant.

Trigger warning, I have opinions.  I wanna talk about weight. 

When I Google-imaged plus size model,
this is the first image that came up.

A little background info:  My mom’s side of the family (and my sis) have always been skinny people with willowy bodies.  Not that they haven’t had to do work along the way, but their resting state is kind of Olive Oyl.  My dad’s side and I have not.  We're more Bluto.  I don't think I was obese as a child exactly, but I did get made fun 

of at camp for carrying around a spare tire.  I was in Jenny Craig in 4^th grade—and I liiiiiiied to those people about what I ate, I lied so hard.  I liked to eat, I loved ice cream, and you could rip the rest of the cheeseburger from my cold, dead hands.

I always thought I was problematically fat.  I wasn’t skinny, though I was skinnier than people I know who are like, you don’t even know what overweight is.  I want to be respectful of that.  

So for my experience, I was chunky but I’m not talking about even how I looked in a mirror, or what I weighed. I’m talking about what I believed.  My pediatrician told me I was going to be

Do you know what that word means?
I suggest googling the definition,
but here's a sample of the Google-images.
It's weird, too, cuz I was never that skinny...

lascivious.  I didn’t know what that word meant, but looking it up as an adult makes me feel…some type of way.  I was like 10, and to be honest, at the time, his tone meant I wasn’t gross and I didn’t need to panic, and I found it comforting.  We live in a hell of a world.  Anyway, I just knew I was overweight, period, and I knew that wasn’t a good thing to be.  I was never a sporty child (because don’t tell me what to do, and your costumes are dumb), though I did basically live in the woods until the great spider infestation.  I would do the mile run at school, or join the track team—and I’d do it, I’d run.  Slowly, but I would finish.  I was not competing with anyone.  But I still liked to eat, and a runner’s body is not what I had.

This girl is a badass, but her body is v different from any I've ever had.

I have a clear memory of a friend of mine, a girl I adored in middle school, who was maybe not the skinniest person on the planet either though perfectly healthy—my doctor would have called her inappropriate names too—and among other things, we bonded over that.  Also over having big old boobs, which came in early and hard and I had no idea what to do with.  

We left normal behind in like...6th grade.  We ran a mile+ every week in P.E.
 in middle school and I didn’t even have a bra,
much less a sports bra.
I *did* develop some killer stretch marks, though.

And one year for her birthday (for her effing birthday, Reader), I, me, this girl right here, orchestrated our friends group stuffing her locker to celebrate—and I got her nothing but diet snacks.  Low fat weight loss everything.  I remember that I got her a lot cuz she was like my best friend.   I remember walking by her, in front of her locker as we were all on our way to first period, and she was sobbing.  I remember she said to me, her friend, “Look what they did!” and I was like, “HA HA RIGHT?!……Wait…” and only then did I realize that I was a garbage person.  Also, because I was a dumb garbage person, did I apologize?  Not that I remember.  I remember being ashamed so never wanting to talk about it again.  Garbage.

Seventh grade is 12 yo. 
I Googled 12  yo and this
was the first thing that
happened and it makes
me want to burn the world
down.

I had thought I was funny, and edgy, and bonding,
(I seriously thought I was bonding, what is wrong with me) and I made her cry on her birthday, because we should all just accept that this is our lot as people with some jiggle in our middle circa seventh grade.  It is an appropriate topic of conversation.  It is what we deserve.  It is fine—chin up or put down the pie.  At least you’re lucidious.  (There is a chance he said lubricious—I was young and didn’t know the word—but adult-googling-me roots for the former, not the latter.)

Speaking of, when I got boobs, I started showing them off.  I have…never?...known how to dress, and certainly not for my body type.  This is the style of shirt that is in, I will wear it.  The style of shirt that is "in" has never been made for people with big boobs and a spare tire.  I wore it anyway.  I thought it was how to be pretty, meanwhile I was ashamed every time I looked in a mirror, and btw just showing off all my business.  In modern days, I have been known to shop at modesty stores online,

It is amazing what some sexual assault
will do for your desire to go unnoticed
as a female person in possession of a body!

because what I got is none of your business, and God forbid I get a comment or even catch you looking, because you will go to the hospital and I will go to jail and with a couple simple ensemble choices, I can avoid the whole situation for both our sakes.  

And while I have always been on the runs-to-fat side, with the time-proven capacity to achieve that state, I am not hugely over weight.  Have people asked me when my baby is due at, say, the auto parts store?  Yes.  When I gain weight (which I do, on and off, to a greater or lesser extent) it all moooostly goes to my gut.  Part of this is because the term “beer belly” isn’t just cutely alliterative.  Part of this is genetics.  We are barrel shaped, on my side of the family.  But also when I decide to start paying attention, I can get healthier—I can run, slowly, but for long periods of time, and not hate it.  I can maintain caloric intake goals, and lose weight.  So my story is, sure, real and valid or whatever, but doesn’t begin to represent the experiences of people who have struggled much more with their weight and the weight society adds to it for their lives.

But we're still calling *this* plus sized.

All of which leads us to what I wanted to talk about today, Reader, in this, the unfunniest of posts.  Obesity is not a character flaw.

Obesity is not a character flaw.

Obesity is not a character flaw.

I have been suuuuper rabbit holed on my microbiome research, and learned some interesting things relevant to this point.  Once you have a gut colony set up that processes food in such a way that it

I highly recommend
this book.

stores more fat and wants more sugar, it is hard to change.  Turning the boat takes long term, concerted effort.  Your gut bacteria tell you to be hungry, and what to crave.  They do or do not process the food you eat well.  Obese mice and lean mice, given a fecal transplant (the easiest way to quickly change your interior ecology) will change how they process their food.  That means lean mice, given an obese mouse’s gut bacteria, will gain weight based on the colony that lives inside them, not just the food they eat.  The way to bring them back to baseline depends on what you feed them—but not just the calories.  The same calories, in different formats, will cause them to lose or gain weight.  It’s about the gut bacteria you allow to thrive, versus the ones you starve out. 

Which sounds like something you could do, right?   But what do you do?  Keto, gluten free, paleo, South Beach?  Just starve yourself?  Don’t ask your doctor—most physicians spend years and years in doctor training, and of that, they get less than 20 hours of diet and nutrition training.  You can go to a nutritionist, but your insurance won't cover that-- or not much.  A couple visits.  Are you going to ask the internet how to properly lose weight?  Cuz the opinions—there are many, and they are loud.  Everyone’s answer is The Right Answer.  Not that there is no answer, not that it’s impossible to do, but finding the way that works for you, and your life.  Is.  Not.  Simple.  

It is not that GD simple.

Plus as you starve those bacteria out, they feel like they’re starving, and they have ways of making you feel like you’re starving too, that have nothing to do with how many calories you actually consume.  I think this is an especially heavy burden if those particular microbes are taking up a lion's share of the space in your gut.  My point is, we treat weight control like it’s a simple will power check, when it is much more than that.

Does this mean that the only answer is microbiology?  I wish, because I love that stuff.  

Fecal transfers for everyone!

But no, of course—calories in v calories out makes a difference.   

It’s just not a cut and dry difference—my experience of losing weight is not the same as the experience of someone else, esp someone struggling with more obesity than me, and not because I’m just sooo good at making good choices.  I hardly ever make good choices.  And for many of us, those choices were made for us, way before we understood what was going on, or after we were already in

But I still knew I was fat tho.

 a situation where “I know this processed high calorie meal isn’t the best but it’s cheap and available and satisfies me and making my own bread and buying better quality cheese is not going to happen because life.”  My mom put me in Jenny Craig but when life happened, it was Dominoes’ for dinner cuz that’s just where we were. 

In mainstream (and to be clear, I mean white; I can’t speak to POC) society, we absolutely treat overweight people like they are slobs in their character as well as their habits.  We do double takes when we see skinny people with fat plus-ones, because—I mean she can do better than that, right?  He must just be weirdly into that…right?  We say, don’t make me see that, your body, and we mooostly are talking about women, though men come under the societal-judgement-gun as well and it cuts deep too. 

I’m not saying obesity is healthy, that’s not the argument I am trying to make.  Being overweight or obese has all sorts of very real negative health outcomes.  I promise you, every overweight person knows this. 

We got you this. 
It's from everyone.

I’m saying the conversation we are having usually isn’t a conversation about health.  I know thick people that are healthier than the skinny people I know.  They have spent their lives thinking about the nutritional content of their dinner, and tracking their exercise.  I know plenty of skinny people who are so focused on how “you can never be too thin” that every time I see them, all I can think is that they need to eat a pizza.  We judge fat people—even me, even jiggly, fat, asked-if-I’m-pregnant me!—and it’s not about health, it’s about shame.  We don't side eye people eating lunch because we're trying to help them.  I think if we were more focused on health, then your doctor might have more to say to you than “lose some weight and exercise” (which by the way, the insurance companies make them say to you no matter how your labs come back) and there would be better marked trails to get from overweight to ideal weight.  It’s not so easy to find your way, alone and judged and not sure it’ll make any difference anyway.

Also healthy, sustainable weight loss is slow af and you can be right in the middle of a years long process, feeling like you are starving,  and STILL have strangers tell you you’re fundamentally a wrongbad person or be shocked to know you possess a single healthy habit.  

I read articles that talk about bigger people working real hard not to eat in public, because they’ve ridden that ride and they know how people look at them, the “helpful” comments they get.  I see grown-ass competent smart people starving themselves not because health, but because they internalize that fat is a character flaw.  I see loving family members interrupting celebrational dinners to ask—should you be eating that?  And I listen to my own internal monologue, which says things like, you’re too fat to be pretty, or your appearance doesn’t matter, because if it did, you’d be in trouble. 

I look back at childhood me, making my best friend cry. 

It's messed up.  It's fundamentally messed up, not to mention counterproductive to the goals we think we have of general decency or actually helping each other or btw some basic stuff like can you be thick and sexy.

Let Lizzo be your lodestar.

So that's it.  I’ll be funnier next time.  In the meantime, live your best life—your healthiest, kindest (to yourself and others), most genuine life.  The struggle is real, maybe we can at least acknowledge that fact. 

Rant over.