Woof: Emotional Eating

Today, in a workshop, I shared a story about my dog and eating that I think says it all.

My dog, Jackie, is a little darling angel, except when she's not. Though I don't know her whole story, her body says that she had a rough life, most likely with a breeder, before she came to live with me. Like everyone who has been in a rough place, she has baggage to manage. For her, this mostly manifests positively-- she's is behind on love, so she asks/demands love from anyone with a free hand, foot, or snuggle spot on their body. Somehow, she accepts that I have to go to work most days, and is cool with that. BUT if I leave the house outside of that routine, she sometimes feels anxious and upset: who will cuddle her?! When she can't get the pets she seeks, she acts out by eating any nearby paper, and if shit gets real bad, she busts out of her room and digs in the trash.

Jackie, eating her bone, quite emotionally.

Today, when I left for my swim workout, Jackie gave me the eye: "I know you aren't going to work! You could be with me!" Indeed when I came back, she had partaken in both paper and garbage, in order to soothe herself. Because I'm crazy, I had a conversation with her about it:

"Jackie, bad!"

<blank stare>

"Let's talk about this. Mama spends all her money on a limited ingredient venison and sweet potato diet for you."

<blank stare>

"We've worked so hard to find the perfect diet for you! Why would you then turn around and eat GARBAGE?"

As my dog continued to stare at me, I had a thought. I was scolding her for eating MY P.Terry's garbage. I also invest a lot of money and time in eating for my health. While my lettuce wrapped burger with cheese isn't the worst thing I could do to myself, I didn't really eat it for the best reason. I chose to eat that more as a reaction.

As I've learned not to emotionally eat, or eat when I'm not hungry, I've picked up or magnified other self-soothing behaviors, some better than others. I wasn't particularly upset at that moment, but I was a little bored with my choice to stay home and organize my space on a Saturday night. This was in part, because I'm broke till payday. An interesting side effect of having tapped out of money early this month is that, I've never wanted to eat out more. I realized that, like a good American, I get off on consuming. Even just going and buying things I need, like razor blades or cat litter, is satisfying. Shopping often distracts me from my more inward pursuits...and in the absence of it...I wanted to eat--my old standby distraction. Just because I choose far less harmful foods in the past, doesn't mean I'm not still playing out a pattern.

In today's workshop, my nutritionist spoke about eating consciously-- eating when you need to and not for other reasons. One of her suggestions was to ask what you really need. Is it food? Or is it sleep or love or something else?

Slowly, I think I can get my dog to the place where she doesn't eat garbage emotionally. Woof, woof, baby girl-- you and me both!

Eating Outside the Boxes

Eating Outside the Boxes
As a long time fat girl, even when I wasn’t even vaguely fat, I’ve let diet advice guide my nutrition choices for most of my life. Following what I call The Science of the 90’s, like a lot of people, I ate low fat for a long time. Fat content guided all food choices. Sometimes calories, but mostly fat. Not sugar content, not amounts of crazy chemicals, not nutrient content, and certainly not taste. (Am I the only one with nightmares about non-fat cheese?)

In my household, cooking often meant Southern cuisine and a million potentially fatty choices. In between diets I ate my mom’s cooking, which can shame Paula Deen’s (tastes better, more butter, less racist), but I never learned her recipes because they weren’t low fat. And I couldn’t eat out, because I had seen the fat content of the Chili’s Old Timer burger and that was that. So…I ate a lot of frozen boxed food. I thought this was the best option, because everything was clearly labelled and portion controlled. Thanks to the guidance of an organization I’ll call…Fat Hawks, I believed that I couldn’t be trusted with choices beyond the box. I also had such a complicated relationship with food that I didn’t really want to invest time in it. So by the time I finished college and began the glamorously busy lifestyle of a teacher (jetsetting from one stack of papers to another and what not), I ate almost exclusively from boxes containing low fat frozen “food.” It was Unhealthy Choices, Fat Hawks, and Not-a-Cuisines for breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, and snacks.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, I was unhappy: mood swings, insulin resistance, low energy, and seemingly uncontrollable cravings. And I still struggled with my weight. Over the next decade, I learned a few things and made some changes. Thanks to Atkins (oh dieting) I discovered the power of protein, particularly eggs. By choosing less carby and more protein oriented choices, I was able to reduce many of the symptoms of insulin-resistance including my mood swings, but I still feared fat and I was addicted to convenience foods. Even as I started to prepare some of my foods, I still relied on packaged snacks and desserts to help me manage eating. And I was more confused than ever at the grocery store.

In 2010, my roommate started talking about her new awesome nutritionist, Carly. I started following some of her guidelines and experimenting with crazy items containing fat, like almond butter. I felt better. When Carly visited my running group (yes, I’m a big fat runner), her advice made more sense than any advice I had ever been given as an athlete, so I scraped together my teacher pennies and made an appointment.

While I had a lot of knowledge and had already made some positive changes, Carly helped me craft a set of choices all my own, not guided by diet advice, but by my body’s own responses to the fuel I put in it. I felt terrific. Cravings did not control me. I ate for health. I still struggled with the need for convenience and my own meager cooking skills; for an embarrassingly long time, I filled up on organic turkey slices, carrots, and hummus. Sometimes I still foraged for a fast-ish food lunch because I was unprepared.

On my 37th birthday, I recommitted myself to planning and eating the best meals for me…and right after that I started a job in a relative food desert…and right after that I broke my leg. That could have been the end of my healthy eating, and the start of ordering pizzas, but with the knowledge and confidence I obtained from Carly and my own studies, along with a lot of help from my friends, I began to cook my own fresh food in batches, a few times a week. I healed my leg weeks ahead of schedule, and became even more convinced of the power of good-for-you nutrition. Never mind an occasional morning taco problem, I’ve brought a powerful lunch to work almost every day for the past two years, and I feel better for it.

My journey is far from over. On the surface, I am not one of Carly’s success stories. After extended periods of excellent nutrition, with very little fat loss, we concluded that nutrition isn’t my problem. Not anymore anyway. With this knowledge, I’ve selected a natural hormone therapist, and we have identified a problem and hopefully, a solution. The medication is just a tiny portion of repairing my relationship with food though; the real change began when I learned how to eat outside the boxes.

Snort, Snort, Bitches

I just want to point out what a process it has been to get to the point where I can dress up as a pig, albeit no ordinary pig, and have men yell "Piggy, Piiiiigy, and Piiiiigggyyy" at me, and enjoy it. I've tossed around the idea of being Miss Piggy for Halloween before, but I always quickly ruled it out. Any true fat girl will know why this might give you pause. Given how I AM Miss Piggy, this was ridiculous and sad. To make my case about being Miss Piggy-- an over-the-top, confident to a fault, glamour loving, possibly delusional diva, I present this:

After rewatching this as an adult, I realize that Miss Piggy was one of my first profound influences. I remember experiencing some cognitive dissonance: I knew she was a sexy and fabulous, but I also already knew that larger women weren't sexy and fabulous. I get it now, and thank Miss Piggy for this model. Yes, I like to pretend that she is real. Anyhow, now that I've embraced the pig, I'm pretty sure I'll be Miss Piggy again and again. Snort snort!

Food Memories with Joan

I recently lost one of my best, and youngest, and sweetest friends to brain cancer. The time between her diagnosis and her passing was so quick, that I, like others, am left with a lot of thinking and reflecting, to accept what has happened, to even accept that it is a thing that happens in the world, but also, to define what Joan meant to me and will continue to mean to me.

Through the magic of bonding and networking, I'm discovering all of the different Joans that existed. So many people connected with her so deeply and treasured her in various ways: Joan Jolt, derby player; Nichole Mikko-Causby, the academic; Nikki, the girlhood pal and daughter; Nichole Sgarlato, the wife and daughter-in-law. In our fast friendship, she had already been several kinds of a friend to me, but one of the most important roles she played in my life, without a doubt, was eatin' buddy. For this reason, I cannot possibly carry on an eatin' blog, without memorializing her here first.

St. Louis 2011

From our very beginning, in Merry St. Louis, we bonded over food. At that time, we were both less conscious of what we ate, so we began with Billy Goat Chips, the barfood pizza at Lemmons, MEAT PIES at The Silver Ballroom, and continued on to daily specials at The Royale on Kingshighway, cookies from Whole Foods, and one of her faves for fish and chips: The Bleeding Deacon, which apparently closed not long after our time in STL (probably we ran them outta beer) but apparently has a cousin, The Crow's Nest, though it can't be as divey good as the Deacon. We ate at the Lemp Mansion (gross, but haunted?), at somewhere delicious in Soulard, and introduced our dogs at the Tower Grove Farmers Market. (Yes. We both came to a seminar with our dogs thus causing us to rent rooms, both in South City, cause that's how we did and why we loved each other quick.)

Often, it is so damn MUGGY in STL that it seems like the only thing to do is get a little drunk in an aboveground pool, aka hooz hole. The first time we did this instead of doing the homework for the very academic seminar that had brought us both to the city, we ended up laughing hysterically about how you feed company if you are SOUTHERN, and this is were we cemented our phrase ALL THE FOOD, which was pretty much the motto for the rest of our trip...and our friendship.

 At one point, our group took a side trip to Chicago to visit Hull House. I can tell you *some* stuff about Jane Addams, but I can tell you everything that we ate there. I'll just stick with her favorite, which was the hummus from The Parthenon in Greektown. You want to go to there. We quested for ALL THE FOOD in Chicago, but somehow couldn't manage it, so we had our pizza at Pi and our Chicago dogs at Pam's Chicago Style Dogs, both in St. Louis. The picture above is from Pam's where Joan was expressing her sorrow over the end of the Midwestern episode of our eating festival. Damn, I can't believe I remember almost everything we ate. Probably because we relived it a lot. It was not uncommon for us to send texts and whatnot that merely read "meat pie." One more: on the 4th of July, 2011, I made my famous meat cupcakes and she showed me how to mix chicken stock into the mashed potato icing for even more goodness. It was a down home Southern heart attack waiting to happen.

I'm supposed to present at a social studies conference in St. Louis in the fall...actually Joan and I were supposed to present on fashion and feminism, but I'm afraid I'll starve if I go. Though I spent 7 weeks in St. Louis before 2011, we definitely marked that place with our friendship, and I wish I could say I'd celebrate that in person there, but as is, I think I'll just feel the loss:(

Missoula 2012

In March of 2012, I decided to escape Texas for Montana and see my Joan Jolt for a bit-- I know that's backwards weather wise, but I craved some Joan and a trip. It was an interesting trip since she was teaching and working, but we fit in plenty of time for eating and eating. If you are going there, have a bison burger and sweet potato tater tots at Al and Vic's or its upscale neighbor, James Bar. She also took me to the Mullan Station, so I could marvel/hipsterjudge how a restaurant is also a bar that's also a casino that's also a laundromat that's also a convenience store. I don't recommend that for anything other than comedy.

Austin July 2012

When Joan Jolt got off the plane, I immediately drove her to the wonder that is Austin's flagship Whole Foods. By this time, we were mostly following paleo-like eating plans and I knew she'd be hungry, plus ZOMG the Whole Foods. I've gotten used to it, like it's a normal place to shop for groceries, but the downtown WF is really outta control for the amount of high-priced goodness. It was great to see this through someone else's eyes again to realize how truly remarkable it is, and how lucky I am to have it, never mind its one million logistical problems. Let me tell you what we ate: she had a rotisserie chicken meal and I had chopped beef on top of a bed of greens, and yes I remember even this mundane meal. Foodwise, the rest of the trip continued like that. We had Tacodeli, followed by Torchy's (where she famously called the queso "cheese dip" :)) followed by Tacodeli. We made our own breakfast...sometimes, grilled while setting up my very own inflatable garage sale hooz hole, and had made our own ceviche at the beach. I showed her what a Whataburger was (#paleofail) and when I dropped her off at the airport, I cried. Right after I told her where to get tacos in the airport. (I prefer the Ray Benson/ Salt Lick taco cart, except they need to offer corn tortillas.)

September 2012

So how did I get her back so quick? I broke my damn leg and I'd break it a hundred more times, if I thought it would bring her back. Since life is fast and full on my watch, she knew how catastrophic this would be for me."How will you eat all the good food? Who will play with the dog? How will you shop?" What kind of friend quits her job and drives down from Montana to cook for you? The Joan kinda friend. I had surgery on 9/4 and Joan was here by 9/11.

We were still indulgent on occasion (see Tacodeli above) but this was where we both discovered first hand how powerful good nutrition is in healing. I had already made a commitment to a year of no fail healthy eating (no, I didn't make it through the hardest year of my life eating totally healthy) and I figured that the leg made this even more important. Joan agreed, and we embarked on a plan. Our plan involved intense and rigid meal planning, since she would be cooking nightly for two people including the next day's lunch, and I would be paying for it all. Meal Planning FTW, especially since Foot Hongry was always happening at first. Fortunately, during the period where I was non-weight bearing, Joan cooked meals ALL THE DAYS. Except when we occasionally picked up food from Chipotle, Zen, Elevation Burger, or Fresa's. The net result was that when I returned to the doc for my 6 week post-surgery follow up, I was Ahead of the curve! The doctors said my bone was healed very strong and ahead of time, by at least several weeks, and my time remaining in the boot got cut from another 6 weeks down to a mere 4. Joan was with me during this appointment, and I know their words made a big impression on her too. There really was no other explanation other than taking good care of myself, foodwise and otherwise. Over the next 6 months we continued to discuss the ways that nutrition affects health, and the many dramas of Seymour related to my nutritional intake: i.e. if I eat bread, Seymour(the foot) don't wanna walk! 

I wasn't in the same city with Joan when she was diagnosed with the tumor, and phone contact was a little hard at times, but I know that one of the first things she did was turn to nutrition for answers, to the goodness of whole foods. For this reason, and because my mother taught me that food is what you do when tragedy strikes, the first and only thing I could think to do from afar, was send her a gift card for food. I wish I could have done more, and I wish that anything I could have done would have saved her.It breaks my heart to think of it now, but after a few weeks of radiation, she sent me a message saying "had an 'ahead of the curve Seymour type meeting with my doctors!" She believed in nutrition. It didn't go the way we hoped, but she wasn't wrong though. Food heals.

Missoula 2013

I don't know what to say about this one. I counted it up and I was only ever in the same city with Joan for like 100 days, including these four hard but precious days in Missoula that turned out to be her last days. Even then, it was still about food. Her husband made her smoothies, her mother-in-law brought her kale chips, I made sure she had a non-inflammtory milky milk type drink, her parents fed her, and we all talked about food. She asked for Tacodeli,  and I told her I'd get the recipe for the Otto to Montana. I brought her a Thunderbird bar, which caused her to tell me about her Raw Revolution Spirulina bars, and when her dad asked her if she wanted a bite of one, she said, "only if Aimee shares it with me," which I did. She could barely talk, but somehow we all talked about food, and everyone in the room agreed that Joan had influenced their thinking about food. She was my eatin' buddy, and I spent more time eating with her than anyone outside of my family, but she was also everyone's eatin buddy. Someday, all the memories and even this one, will just make me happy, but for now, I write this and I cry in the chocolate aisle.

I try to memorialize Joan at least twice a week by going to Tacodeli for her. If you'd like to participate, here's a list of some other things that I know she'd want you to eat in her honor. If you are a friend of Joan, feel free to add your own in the comments.

Avocados

Mango
Any fresh ingredients smoothie

Coconut Creamer
Ice cream ala Joan-- mashed frozen bananas with dark dark chocolate shavings

Thunderbird Bars

TAZA stone ground Mexican chocolate

Raw Revolution

Kale Kale Kale

Latin Quinoa Salad

Grandma's Hummus

Larabars
Kale Chips

Coffee Coffee Coffee
A lot

Paula Deen: My Two Cents

Whether I've said as much or not, this blog circles around Southern foodways a lot, by default. As the daughter of a southern lady, who can outcook and outbutter (fer real) Paula Deen, I can't really think about food or eating without embracing, rejecting, or somethinging the South and its food. My parents' return to the Deep South signaled a full license to return to southern foodiness to my mother. I've written privately about the considerable trials and tribulations of eating while visiting, but I don't really want to publish such publicly until I find a way to make it sound like less of an ungrateful indictment of my mom and all southern mothers, who are just tryin' to keep their babies fed, y'all.

Given that, I feel compelled to chime in on the whole Paula Deen racism mess. If you aren't familiar or you read this at a time when this has fallen out of our very shallow collective memories, here's the scoop.

Here's a little joke my Joan Jolt and I like to tell to each other often, for amusement, and as shorthand for southern eatins and hospitality-- which are the same thing. Picture: Some relatives are coming over. Your mom wonders aloud if she should make ham or chicken. The correct answer is... "yes." Biscuits or cornbread? "Yes." Pie or cake? "Yes." Really that's not even a joke. It just IS. If your table isn't full and your relations don't got the 'betes when they leave, you effed up. You will feel guilty and people will talk about it. And this isn't even for the good relatives. Just the shitty racist ones that you only like out of obligation.

Which brings me to my point. I think I'm in the camp of people who aren't surprised about Paula Deen's comments about race and racism, but not because I think that all people of the South are racist, or not even because I associate her down home style with backward racist attitudes. In my experience, I associate Deen's style, foodwise and otherwise, with the complicated blend of tradition and tragedy that is the South. When something is complicated, obviously it calls for analysis and reflection to negotiate, and there are plenty of people doing that in the South. However, whether you are talking about race or food, there is also plenty of encouragement to NOT think, to latch onto something perceived of as a charm of the past without thinking the implications of preserving that thing.

Here's an example. My dad is right on the cusp of having diabetes. His blood sugar can stay fairly low if he chooses the right things to eat. You know, like choosing steak at a restaurant over a pasta dish. Except recently he ate a steak and his blood sugar was high after. Why? Because the steak was dipped in molasses. Why? Because its the South. Multiply that traditionally inspired meal times a million, add in fast food, subtract some salads, and you've got the diabetes epidemic of the American South. It's perfectly obvious that people simply can't continue to have the sugary buttery overserving ways of the past mixed in the industrial agrobusiness foodcrap of the present and expect to stay healthy, but it a) tastes good and  b) is "just the way it is." It's not that people feel they are choosing the unhealthy tea over the healthy tea-- they are just drinking tea. Tea has sugar. Duh. (Seriously, I had a very hard time getting an unsweet tea at a Whole Foods in midtown Atlanta.) My point is that there's plenty of ways to just not think too hard about the consequences of food choices, which is how Paula Deen managed to sip sugar tea aka tea, all day for years and then be surprised by the diabetes.

Negotiating the ugly racial history of the South, can be similar. In my experience, there are progressive people and racist people in the South for sure, but the majority of the people just seem to turn away from the issue, to not think too deeply about it whenever possible. Society makes it possible. This, as you might suspect, is utterly ridiculous in a place clearly still recovering from a war about race (depending on who you ask, good God), still processing the travesties of Jim Crow, and clearly still marked by racial division and inequity in important things like...education. It requires effort to look away, to accept the simplest or most convenient versions of stories, but it happens because to look dead on requires confrontation-- and confrontation is impolite and messy-- not something that you do according to the southern messages of my mother. So it becomes easier to just pretend that a plantation is just a nice farm and that a flag is just a flag.

So this is how Paula Deen, and others like her, can really believe that a reference to black servitude is relatively innocent. Or choose to believe. She knows enough to know that her attitude is politically incorrect and of the past, because those ideas are on the surface-- but understanding exactly how hurtful it is to tap into that history with a sense of longing?-- Nope. Beyond her now public comments, I don't actually know what she is like. Perhaps she is a blatant bigot. Certainly, she is remarkably bad at talking about race. But I imagine that mostly she is just an unreflective person, minimally educated on the topic of race, raised in a racially unjust past, and living in a present space that only requires or promotes so much change. And she isn't alone in that. At all.

So no, I wasn't any more surprised by her comments than I was by her diabetes.

Now, in the style of one of my favorite slices of the internet, Tom and Lorenzo's Mad Style, I'm gonna put in some bullet point items that BELONG here, but just didn't fit in a paragraph.

• So...at Mother and Sons, Deen's Savannah restaurant, you get assigned a time to uh...gather. Then you are herded into your pen for your turn to feed at the trough. Seriously. When your feeding time is done, they put you back in the pasture. Also, my mom's food is better.
• The only time I that won my friend's Iron Chef contests, was when the theme was "this is why you're fat." I made meat cupcakes that incorporated all elements of homestyle goodness. One had a chicken leg up on top of the mashed potato icing! Thanks, South.
• My parents used to live at the base of the Kennesaw Mountain Civil War Battlefield, where the gift shop included many items and serious books on States Rights! but the only mention of black people... like existing... was a single Harriet Tubman coloring book. I'll never get over that. Stunning.
• When I visited the Mississippi Delta in 2008, I got to listen in on a panel discussion, concerning the Emmett Till murder, by the Committee on Race and Reconciliation in Sumner County.The recently formed committee on race and reconciliation. Discussing how to handle an event from 1955. It was clear that some people wanted to look at the history and its enduring legacy, but the mechanisms for doing so, were slim.
• I'm very confused about why people are upset about Paula Deen saying that she has racist relatives. Do they not have relatives? If you have relatives, some of them are racist. That's what relatives do, right? You can't control what your relatives do, and if you try, your mom will glare at you because you are the one causing the scene, which is also why everyone eats that biscuits that are served even if they have diabetes. Already.
• I don't hate it! I don't!

Like a '59 Cadillac

So, if you read my FB (and you must, at least somewhat, cuz how else would you get here?) you probably have the idea that I've been irreparably harmed by my heterosexual dating experiences. Broken-hearted, bitter, suitable only for a future as a spinster or maybe a stand-up comic whose shtick is reading emails and texts from her ex-boyfriends.

I wouldn't say that's totally untrue. Nope. However, there is one particular upside, an actual benefit, dammit, that I have gained from some of the men I've dated. This blog post will be somewhat of an expression of gratitude toward them, insofar as I am capable of that.*

The Miss Lady Foundation for Adoring Herself Indeed would like to thank Boring Ray, Stupid Melodramatic Jacob, Fat Matt, Cockpunch, Casey the Dumbass, Depressed Chef, Gas Station Joe/SpiteFuck, Emotionally Unavailable Jeffrey, and Stupid Scott for their contributions to my naked confidence. To be clear, there are a few more men than this, but not all of the men I've known biblically (cause my tits are like religion, thank you) have been open admirers of my physique, either admiring it only insofar as it was pleasing them, because they had fallen in love with my mind (which I appreciate), or in the manner of a few fools who may go to hell, not at all.

I absolutely do not think that women should base their self-concept on the opinions of men, nor do I think they should look to the male gaze for validation. Having said that however, I confess that I have. Since it's merely a part of the cocktail of my sources of self-worth, let's hope I'm not fucking myself up too much by doing so.

The men listed so politely above have, at one time or many, made sure that I knew I was beautiful naked. They wanted to see it more or up close or from a variety angles or whatever.  When Boring Ray first insisted on this, I had a hard time believing it. I knew I had some good parts, but the idea that I was wholly beautiful, and that the big voluptuous picture was not ruined by any of what I considered flaws was new. Since then I've had a bevvy of admirers, who, though they pretty much fucked up everything else, did worship my body without hesitation, and somewhat in isolation from the naked gratifications possibly taking place before, during, and/or after these compliments. I know that not all women would be surprised that men find them attractive when naked, but plus size women (well...all women really) receive plenty of bs telling us that our bodies are not eligible to be attractive. Clothing makers, advertisements, everywhere. I know that's not news, but I think the volume of negative messages just can't be overstated. Thus, I wasn't really sure until I heard it over and over.

My latest adventure was from a man who proclaimed me perfect. (Numerous times; in fact, even when he was dumping me via text by telling me to google the lyrics to this song about a woman who is perfect but the speaker still wants to be with everyone else....grrrr...)  He adored me physically so much that it was almost uncomfortable. How do I tell him not to nuzzle my FUPA so much?! Before he said all the stupid things though at the end, he did say this while drooling at my form: "You are shaped like a '59 Cadillac."

See, I'm willing to acknowledge that men are right sometimes.


With naked confidence,
Miss Lady





*To be fair to me, many of these men did stupid and/or shitty things that would complicate anyone being nice to them, not just a mean ol hag like Miss Lady.

Fat Friday

Finally, I feel fat enough to post something. Hooray?

So, I'm having a fat Friday. Do you know of this? It's exactly what it sounds like. It's Friday and I fucking feel fat. All the fucked up day long.

"Oh that's so sad!" say people who haven't had a fat Friday. Or "Oh you're not fat." Eff it all, it's Friday and I am fat.

It doesn't matter that I've got triathlon arms and legs at the moment, that make me love myself from the inside out. Admiring myself proudly in my new two piece cherry printed bombshell suit...doesn't change a thing. New paramour that thinks my body is the cat's meow? Nope.

Never mind that I had to win all that shit up above. Never mind that I had to wrestle my self love away from the media, my upbringing, etc. and never mind my commitment to loving myself. Being a plus size American middle class (is this specific to being white? or any of those things?) woman, means that you can still have a Fat Friday no matter what, pretty much instantly.

Umm...there may also be other confusing emotions mixed in here. Emotions = fat. Fat= emotions. Please see Betty Draper Francis for more.

Good news= after decades of me as a project, I could just as easily have a Sexy Saturday.