fattypatties

I am not healthy. I have not been healthy for years. Now you know the obvious. In 1987, I was healthy. I had beautiful metabolic numbers. I walked and jogged a lot. I played tennis regularly. I was 30 years old and most people thought I was under 21. I rarely smoked or drank. I was profoundly unhappy, however. I was in a bad marriage and I was sure I was going to die because I weighed 260 pounds.

Instead of helping me see that I could enjoy my life and my body if I uncovered my own wants, desires and happiness, I got bad advice. I was told I could only be happy if I shed the weight. I was told that my unhappiness didn't come from bad choices or from unresolved past issues or from simply not taking the time to know who I was and what I wanted to be. No, my unhappiness was because I was a thin person living in a fat body.

So a doctor gave this healthy body two prescriptions. Tenuate, which is a synthetic amphetamine and a diuretic to "jump start" my weight loss. Then I went on a 800 calorie diet that I faithfully followed for 2 years. I took my love of movement and turned it into a regimen of running 2 to 4 miles a day. I took my social life and ditched it for a fear of eating. And it turns out I took my healthy body and ruined it's metabolism.

In 1989, I was more messed up that ever emotionally, though I only weighed 130 pounds. I was divorced with no idea of what a good relationship could be. I was suicidal. Oh, and I was addicted not only to the Tenuate but to valuum that I started taking to sleep at night.

I've never been really healthy since that experience. But, hey, I was "success." My "after" picture was taken and I wrote a nice rendition of "my story" that was placed in a book for anyone walking into the bariatric clinic to see so that other's could be sold the path I had taken.

By 1993, most of the weight had come back on, though I was beginning to figure out who I was and what I wanted to be. By 1997, my health got worse and I have been disabled by my chronic conditions every since. So it is hard to say that I am healthy in the normal sense of that word.

The prevailing wisdom would say that it is the weight that created my ill health, but I know better. I know I was healthy at age 30 and that I did things to my body in the name of weight loss that led to disability. I dieted my way into disability and now I have to live with the body those behaviors and bad advice produced.

My first decision to love myself came in December 1990 while in a hospital because I had made a half-assed suicide attmept. I looked around at my surroundings and said, "I'm not crazy and I'm not going to choose to be crazy." I didn't fully understand what that journey meant, but it was definitely a first step towards loving myself because I rejected other people's definitions of me and started seeking my own.

My second decision to love myself came in November 1992 when I was fired from a job I hated and I decided I was never going to work full-time at a job I hated ever again. This decision eventually led to my getting my Ph.D. in Sociology as well as choosing to write, produce and create multi-media, rather than take a traditional academic trajectory.

My third decision to love myself came in August 1997 when I was misdiagnosed with lupus. The diagnosis was wrong but the prognosis was the same, I was facing life with chronic illness. I had to find a way to live that life fully.

The final decision to love myself came in January 2001, when I decided to give up dieting. I decided I was going to be the healthiest and happiest fat, disabled, aging person I could be. The transformation was complete. I loved my mind, I loved my talents, I loved my body.

But here's the thing. I am happier than I ever was. I do more healthy behaviors than I ever did. I love the skin I'm in. I love being me. I don't get up in the morning hoping that the day will be over. I don't dread my work. I don't hate my life.

I have aches and pains, and sometimes, I don't really recognize my aging body with its new wrinkles and new ailments. But I love my body and I care for it and treat as wonderfully as I can.

Life is struggle, but there is a difference between a struggle that feels like it is oppressing you and a struggle that holds the potential for growth and discovery. I prefer the latter.

So I'm fat. I'm disabled. I'm old. I'm not a poster girl for any particular cause. I live outside those boundaries and cannot hold myself up as a shining example of any particular success. But I'd rather be who I am today, than who I was at age 30.

That was my journey and it is one that I have to reaffirm in many ways almost daily, but it is also one that comes as naturally to me now as believing that if I just got skinny life would be okay came to me then.

I tell my journey often not because I necessarily need to do so, though it does help me to share it. I tell it often because it saddens me when I see young people falling for the same lies I fell for. It angers me to know that there are still "helpers" out there who are telling people, "you are not okay, let me sell you this to make you better." But I also tell my story for selfish reasons, because I know that if the market went away for these products, then my life would be easier. I could go through a day without being told how wrong I was. Loving myself would be respected. The more of us who love ourselves and accept ourselves and don't fall for the sales pitch, the easier it will be for all of us.

I wish you a pleasant and adventurous journey.

A friend of mine gave me a card that still sits on the fridge. On the front it says "dare to be naive." Over the years I've contemplated a myriad of meanings for the card. This is the meaning I'm contemplating tonight.

The world is absurd, and yet, I am naive enough to want to find its meaning.

I naively think that when people say they want freedom, they know what that means, that trying to contain or control the chaos usually results in less freedom.

I naively think that people will take me at face value. But a false dichotomy grips this land called America. "If you're not for us, then you're agin' us." Can't I just be "for" something without having to take up a whole side. I don't fit. I don't want to fit into this neat box. I like fractals.



I naively think that in order there is chaos and in chaos there is order.

I naively think that I am a free person and that holding an idea that overlaps with one side of this artificial, false divide does not limit me from holding an idea that overlaps with the other side. I am free to have my own side, as I see it.

I naively think that my having a brain is a good thing. Apparently, the world sees it as an inconvenience.

I hold little power. I have no money. My opinion does not count and is not sought. Others decide for me. I am constructed by others and then made to suffer the consequences of the construction as if it were my own doing. I am naive enough to believe I might get to have say in my own identity.

This culture, this place, this 235 year old experiment is falling apart because of this false divide. Turns out that a house divided against itself just collapses.
I am naive enough to think something better might emerge from the implosion (maybe that's just what Vegas taught me).

You may be wondering what triggered this contemplation and its underlying anger, disgust and sadness.

Nothing and everything.

I'm naive enough to speculate and wait around to see what's next. I am naive enough to believe that there has to be a better way.

This month, I am participating in a ReVolution! -- Every Monday in January I plan to write a blog post here about my life and how Health at Every Size℠ has changed my life for better. This is the third installment of five.

HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE℠ AND GETTING OLDER


When I first decided in late 2000 to quit dieting once and for all, I was chronically ill with what I thought at the time was lupus (and have since learned was probably sub-clinical hypothyroidism). For the most part, these symptoms were chronic but not debilitating on a daily basis. I had flare-ups but had settled into routines that seemed to work. I had some sort of pain almost daily but usually dull pain and with regular exercise and eating good food and getting plenty of rest, I felt generally healthy.

I spent the first couple of years re-learning my hunger and satiation cues. I had dieted so much that I literally did not know when I was hungry or what my hunger felt like. In the past, I depended on outside cues to tell me when to eat and how much to eat. This was a process of mindful eating and, frankly, trial and error. I often waited too long at first, feeling ravenous when I finally sat down to eat and then finding I ate so fast that I was full long before I realized it. I slowed down my eating, learned to savor food and learned how to identify hunger before it was starvation.

In December 2002, I got pneumonia and became very weak. It was months before I could walk without gasping for air. I found a great program that started me working out in water with paddles and eventually I was doing 20 minutes on the treadmill and weight training in the gym. I became stronger and my metabolic health was excellent (blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, pulse rate, etc.). AND I didn't lose weight or gain weight.

By the Spring of 2004, I felt the healthiest I had in years. I was still dealing with arthritic symptoms and flare-ups but not as often and not as severe. When we went on the road in The Ample Traveler, I felt good and maintained that feeling for some time. I turned 47 that summer.

It was easy to believe in Health at Every Size℠ under those conditions. When I wrote Taking Up Space with Carl, I was confident and had no doubt that this was a better way of living than the 30 years I spent fighting my body's natural tendency to be bigger.

I sprang my foot in 2004 and had nerve damage that left me walking with a cane, but even that didn't slow me down or shake my confidence. I had so much experience with chronic conditions at that point, that it became just one more thing to care for with my body--an annoyance, but my view of health had long since changed into an understanding of relative health rather than a set criteria. So I felt I was the healthiest I could be with chronic conditions.

Then I turned 50 and the "other biological clock" for women started. I became menopausal, I started having metabolic problems and I went through a rough period with Health at Every Size℠.

The same conditions that are supposedly connected to fatness are connected to aging, especially in women going through "the change." I began to doubt my choice to not diet and spent many days thinking through the whole process. I felt alone in some ways because I had fat-acceptance friends who were talking about how healthy they were and I knew I was not healthy. In fact, it felt like at the time that I was turning into the poster child for all the conditions that they were bragging they didn't have. For a while I kept quiet. I didn't write here and I didn't reach out. I didn't diet, but my reason for not trying to lose weight was that I was thoroughly convinced that it would not work, that I wouldn't lose any weight. I had been down that road and it made me sick and I didn't want to get any sicker. But I wasn't sure about the new road and whether I'd feel better.

I did reach out to some private groups eventually and I began to see that fat women who were going through menopause and who had type 2 diabetes and other metabolic problems were using HAES℠ to help them deal with their conditions. I started reading about these conditions and discovered that there were strong indications that the dieting I had done for 30 years as well as the aging process probably contributed to those conditions.

Let me be clear about another aspect of this. It didn't help that I had little access to health care due to no insurance and it didn't help that I am an underpaid teacher who has to work several jobs to supplement my income in order to be able to teach. Stress doesn't help. Stigma doesn't help. Fear doesn't help. Isolation doesn't help.

So about 2 years ago, upon realizing that many of my health problems, including the chronic conditions that started in 1997, were probably from hypothyroidism,I had another epiphany like the one I had in 2000. I had been misdiagnosed because of the societal and cultural attitudes about fat. In 1997, when I first got sick, I had chronic fatigue. I couldn't sleep well. I caught one infection after another. I was oversensitive to light and had rashes from exposure. I had an abnormal ANA count. I felt like I had the flu all the time with my joints and muscles aching. It wasn't hard to understand why the doctor thought it was arthritic and sent me to a rheumatologist, who, like most specialists, diagnosed me within her paradigm. Thus, lupus.

Except there was one symptom that I ignored and my doctors ignored: I gained 90 pounds in about 6 months. At the time, my paradigm and my doctors' paradigm was calories in/calories burned. I was eating less because I was too sick to eat much, but I went from someone who rode a bicycle everywhere she went (lived 3 miles from school, so at least 6 miles on school days, probably about 30 miles a week total) to someone who was bed-ridden. It seemed obvious that was the reason for the weight gain.

However, rapid weight gain is a symptom of hypothyroidism and no one even explored the possibility at the time. Hypothyroidism mimics lots of other conditions, especially so-called "check-box" conditions like lupus (positive diagnosis for lupus comes from presence of 4 out of 11 symptoms plus elimination of other possibilities).

So as I face an aging body, I've come to realize that my aging process is affected by several factors: hysterectomy (not ovaries) at age 38, untreated hypothyroidism, and years of yo-yo weight gain and pushing my metabolism and immune system to its limits.

In the past year, armed with this new understanding of HAES℠, one that doesn't depend upon me being perfectly healthy to demonstrate its effectiveness, I have become more pro-active in my health care.

First, I bought a wrist cuff to monitor my blood pressure. This has resulted in a significant reduction of my blood pressure meds and a personal realization that my blood pressure and pulse are heightened when I go to the doctor. I take my basal temperature in the morning to monitor the hypothyroidism. I check my blood sugar often. I am faithful in taking my medications and supplements, including menopausal support. I use assistive devices without hesitation because they improve my stamina and overall health.

And most importantly, I continue to practice intuitive eating and try to move my body as best I can. I do not diet. I do not weigh. I do not worry about my body size. The truth is that under thyroid treatment I think I may have lost a little weight (judging from how my clothes fit), but that is an effect of taking care of my thyroid and not intentional.

I am not the spring chicken I once was and I am angry that much of my health was taken from me by cultural standards and socialization that has made my aging more difficult. But the answer cannot lie in now buying into that thinking. I believe with all my heart that if I tried to lose weight now, I would make matters worse. I believe with all my heart that dieting is not good for the health. I believe with all my heart that I dieted my way into disability and early aging.

I believe with all my heart that if I had known and practiced Health at Every Size℠ when I was younger I would be a much healthier 50+ woman.

I tell my story often because I hope it serves as a lesson for others. I told Sarah on the podcast this week that I was excited to see so many young people involved with fat acceptance because they might be spared the years of dieting and the effects of that dieting.

I think that history will look back on this period as barbaric when it comes to dieting and weight loss. We have abundance and resources and instead of celebrating and sharing that abundance, we have created generations of people afraid of food, afraid of our own bodies.

I have come to realize how strong my body is. I have abused this body and fought this body for years and it perseveres and even improves with love and care. As I have researched what dieting does to a body, I have come to realize that I could be dead now from many of the things I did in the name of "getting more healthy."

So let me affirm, right here and right now, that I may not be the usual poster-girl for HAES℠, I should be, because HAES℠ has saved my life and has made me stronger. Health is relative and has a multitude of factors contributing to one's daily constitutions. But given what I've had to fight and what barriers I've faced and what damage I've staved off, I am healthy at my size.

I've been in denial for a while now and for my own sanity I need to say something out loud.

Since March of 1997, I've been sick to some degree or another. I don't think there has been a day that has gone by where I have not experienced pain to some degree though some days are better than others and some years have been better than others.

I'm tough. I don't like being sick. I don't like admitting I'm sick. I don't like thinking about being sick. A part of me thinks, even after 13 years, that I can beat this.

Being fat complicates this. Getting old complicates this.

This culture is full of misinformation and blame-the-victim mentality and even though I've spent a great deal of time learning how to deconstruct that misinformation, I, like the rest of us, have some of it living in my brain anyway.

Now I've found out that I may have been misdiagnosed and that I may still be under-treated.

In 1997, I got sick at a party that several other people got sick at as well. We don't know if we all caught a virus or if the food was bad. The other guests had gastric symptoms for about 24 hours. Three days later I was cramping severely and dehydrated from several days of vomiting and other gastric symptoms and had to go to the emergency room and put on an IV. I didn't get well. I've not been well since.

The rest of the year was a series of doctors visits, lab tests and various treatments that eventually got me back to functionality. I managed to make-up the incomplete work and go back to school and actually finished my MA and PhD faster than many of my cohort. But I remained sick.

My husband is probably the only person in the world who knows how sick I've been. He has been my fearless care-taker and protector. For this he is and will remain my hero.

But I am acutely aware that there is so much more that I could have done with that 13 years than I've managed to accomplish. There is so much more I want to do.

I thought I had lupus. I met the criteria. And the preliminary tests sent me to a rheumatologist. Like mechanics and engineers, doctors have a tendency to diagnose within their specialties. I now know that I probably should have went to and endocrinologist. I have come to believe that I've been suffering from hypothyroidism during these 13 years. The lab tests didn't start being positive until 3 years ago, but I've had symptoms for years. Symptoms that have been misinterpreted.

I've slowly been dosed upwards on thyroid medication since being put on it three years ago. I'm back to showing all the symptoms. I feel like I'm walking through jello mentally. I'm cold even when it's over 100 outside. My hair is falling out (this is my most vain loss -- I once had very thick hair and now I'm balding). I'm exhausted when I get up from 9 or 10 hours sleep, when I can sleep. I have what I call energy dumps, where it feels like all my energy leaves my body instantly. I sometimes have pulled over to the side of the road to "nap" because of these dumps. My skin is dry in weird places (like my eyebrows or my finger knuckles). I'm irritable and feel raw with emotions. I'm fighting off weird infections almost weekly. In October alone, I had cold sores in my mouth, a UTI, a boil, and a head cold. My teeth and gums are getting worse. In short, I feel like all systems in my body are falling apart.

Please don't respond to this by giving me dieting advice or the latest alternative treatment. I've researched and I am capable of figuring the terrain out for myself. I just need to say out loud the I'm suffering. There are things I know I could pursue but there is no money to do them. I'm stuck with low-cost health care and therefore specialists and alternative medicines are beyond my reach at the moment.

This is a vicious circle -- I am finding it hard to work and yet I need to work to make enough money to pay for the treatments I need to be able to work.

I'm tired of being sick and sick of being tired.

I will probably write more about this because in the past writing has been my lifeline. Maybe I shouldn't be so public with this but somehow it is more real to put it out here on the net than to keep in my personal journals. So here it is. This is where I am today.

I do want to keep the silver lining in mind, however. If indeed this is thyroid deficiency (or related endocrine issues like hypothalamus and/or adrenals), it is treatable. Lupus is not treatable in the sense of actually changing the disease state. It is going to take some time and testing and money, but there are plenty of people running around quite happily and quite healthfully with hypothyroidism. I resent that this went on for so long without realization of the problem, especially since I gained 100 pounds in 1997 and everyone, including me, but also including doctors who should have suspected something, just assumed it was because I went from riding a bike 20 miles a week to being bedridden. Subclinical hypothyroidism should have been obvious in retrospect. But now that it is obvious, there are treatments.

I go to the clinic on November 10 to get latest blood tests. Hopefully we can figure this out and I can get my life back. Now that would be wonderful.

Well the stupid embed code was messed up on the Colbert Report Word segment. So you will have to go see it here.

I have to admit there is something appealing to an exodus of tv pundits to their own country.

I have a lot of thoughts about Ayn Rand, government and the current state of affairs in our culture that I will save for future posts, but I find it interesting that there is a renewed interest in Rand's work.

I had other thoughts about an earlier work by Rand that might be of interest.

I've got irons in the fire. I really do. I've been busy with a bunch o different things. Practical things. Artsy things. Social things. Growing and Developing things. I am planting seeds and furiously, fiercely nurturing these seeds. But I'm not seeing any buds. No little bits of green popping out of the ground anywhere. I keep thinking something has to happen. But nothing is.

Okay. That's not really true. There are things that are happening and there are good signs.

But it isn't happening fast enough!

Call me crazy, but I have always had several voices in my head. A committee. This is probably why sociology appeals to me much more than psychology. I am a group and I need to know group dynamics just to know my own mind.

I have a sensible voice that tells me I must go to work, put in my time, draw my check. I have a traveler voice that hears the call of the open road and can't stand to stay still. I've lived in the apartment I'm in right now for close to 42 months and that may be the longest I've lived anywhere in my adult life. And it is a small apartment -- only about 400 sq ft for 2 people and a cat. My vagabond voice is screaming at me on a daily basis. "Time to pull up stakes! Time to move down the trail!" I have an artsy voice. I like to draw. I like to photograph. I like to write poetry. I like to video. I like the satisfaction of starting a project and finishing it and saying "I made that." I have an entrepreneur voice. It is akin to the practical me and to the artsy me, maybe a blend of both. It wants to start something important, life changing, world changing. I have a scared, little me that hates the world and wants to crawl into a corner and not come out. I have an intellectual voice that wants puzzles and mysteries and problems and challenges and grand scale barriers to solve and overcome. My intellectual voice wants adventure as much as my vagabond. Something new to chew on. Something to learn and say, "now I know." I have a social justice voice that sees what's wrong with the world and wants to make it right.

My committee is not happy with each other right now and I'm feeling blue today. I have a bunch of reasons for feeling blue because all my voices have opinions. It's probably just decompression mixed in with a little, tiny fear of the future.

I guess it's time to call a meeting and work all this out. Or it might just be time to go read a book and do the laundry. Not sure which. Stay tuned.

I wrote in Taking Up Space that I am a reluctant warrior in the War on Obesity.

I don't like the idea of being a professional fat person.

I don't like the idea of being a fat activist.

I don't like the idea of defining myself as "that fat woman."

There are a thousand things I'd rather being doing, thinking about, playing with.

So I took a break for a while. I stopped writing about it. I stopped hanging out in forums. I stopped interacting with the fat activist community on a daily basis.

Then last summer I found Face Book and there was all this beautiful fat positive, fat activism going on and I was back in touch.

Also, last year The Fat Studies Reader was published. I co-authored the final article in the book. Actually, I authored an article that got combined with three other articles into one article. The book is getting a lot of attention. I sense a change and that change is actually interesting for me personally because it is opening up academic spaces that I might could wonder into. I have re-discovered a love for teaching at CSN over the past two years and I am feeling positive about the future as a fat woman and as a writer and as a teacher and maybe even as an academic.

But two incidences over the past few days have got me thinking about this and reminding me why I really dreaded.

First, there was a misunderstanding on one of the FB groups I post to and I felt like once again I was being treated like the angry one. Then later an FB friend posted about how great community is for addressing fat hatred and then as several people (including me) responded with anger about hateful comments we were scolded for not being more tolerant. Tolerant of hate? Being careful to not make a bully or a bigot feel shame. Wow. I'm very confused.

There seems to be a fear among activists regarding anger that I frankly don't understand. It is like many of them are waiting for permission from the powers that be to critique the powers that be. I'm reminded of Audre Lorde's article about the master's tools cannot be used to dismantle the master's house.

My anger is part of the deal. And I have lots of anger. Anger at being pushed into corners I don't want. Anger at being told that it is my responsibility to break out of those corners without holding the people who pushed me there responsible. Anger that the people I turn to to help me push back are too busy criticizing me to be of any help.

Someone said that they are happy to be a fat activist. I'm happy that I've met some incredible people and that I've found some incredible support. But I have to tell you that even with all the good stuff going on, I'm still getting this lack of true community and lack of anything effective being done. Okay, I've written that and I don't like saying that. It isn't exactly true. But the sad part is that it is closer to the truth than the opposite.

I don't want there to be a fat community, per se. I want the need for that community to end.

I want there to be freedom. I want people to be able to be themselves without fear. I want people to have a healthy intolerance for injustice, for hatred, for wrong. I want being right to be respected. I want human rights to be respected. Mostly I want to travel and make art and write and play with animals and take great photographs and move freely in the world without fear. And I want that and more for you too.

The key for me is how to do that and once again I'm faced with the question as to whether activism is the answer.

I cannot escape my fat body. I cannot escape the hatred and stigma that is placed upon that body. I am a reluctant warrior in the war on that body. I have to defend. I cannot have what I want otherwise.

So, here's my answer for now (and I am really just coming to this conclusion as I write):

We have to find some new tools. There is no other way to do it. Failure is not an option. I cannot forget all this. So I got to find someone, somewhere who want to forge these new tools with me. It's an adventure. It's new territory (something I love to explore). I cannot go back to this without something new and I cannot NOT go back to it because I cannot live silently. Something, somewhere has to give and right soon.

Everyone has limits. We have things that we are capable of doing and things we are not. Some of us can sing melodiously. Some of us have tin ears. Some of us can hit a baseball with a bat or a puck with a hockey stick or a golf ball with a club powerfully. Some of us cannot hit the broadside of a barn with a cannon.

I remind myself of this when I think of myself as person with disabilities. I often tell people I am no longer a talented walker or standing for long periods of time is not my best skill. It's funny. I have spoken and written publicly often about disabilities and mobility issues and accessibility, but I forget my own disabilities most of the time. I just don't think about it because I've developed habits that allow me to move around in the world. I don't think about it because I rarely test it.

In August, I got my real estate license. Suddenly, I am now faced with these limitations. Showing properties is a physical activity. There is no getting around it. It requires walking and standing in empty spaces without the support of benches or chairs. It can involve stairs and long sidewalks and porches and a number of other physical activities that put me against my own limits.

Since most housing is NOT accessible, using devices doesn't solve the problems. So even if I could afford a scooter, it would still make it nearly impossible to do this part of the job.

I have solutions in mind, but they are had to explain to others and thus the question keeps coming up and all of the sudden I am thinking about myself as a disabled person a lot more than I want to or am used to doing.

But I am disabled. I have nerve damage in my left foot that makes walking and standing difficult. I have chronic illnesses that sap my energy and make me have bad days with sleepless nights.

I don't like limits.

I don't like them one little bit.

Last year I went on thyroid medication for the first time in my life and within 2 months I felt better than I had in years. I thought "Wow, this is it. I finally am down to root of health and well-being and it is as simple as replinishing something I was missing."

A year later and I'm finding it not so easy. In November I started having symptoms again. I need an afternoon nap to make it through the day. I've spent the winter freezing any time the temp gets below 60 outside. Even after sleeping all the time, I'm exhausted and have brain fog half the time. I've become more and more dependent upon energy drinks to get me through work and I'm able to work less and less.

The blood tests confirmed my suspicions. My doctor even questioned if I was taking the medication daily. I am religiously, but after two increases in the dosage, I'm still symptomatic.

Add to the list, I cry daily. I seem to be at the whims of my hormones right now. My skin has dried out and I think I may look 10 years older. My hair is thinning and brittle. My hands and feet hurt all the time. Sometimes I'm up for hours at night because I'm struggling between feeling cold and feeling like the blanket is a 5 ton weight crushing my feet.

Here's the good news. I'm more convinced than ever that I've been suffering from this for a long time. I've even discussed with two doctors now the fact that the lupus diagnosis may have been incorrect and that what I was experiencing was early symptoms of hypothyroidism.

I'm also seeing from my reading and research that this is a fat-acceptance issue. My weight gains, my difficulty in losing weight, the affects of severe dieting and over-exercising all have a relationship with the fact that most of my medical practitioners have never done anything other than blame me for my body size.

But I'm not sure I'll find much solace on the fat acceptance side. Many advocates for fat acceptance (me among them at various points) have resisted the hypothyrodism explanation because it is often a pathologizing of fatness. The "glandular condition" has been generalized often and still carries with it a considerable amount of baggage from the days that alternative practitioners have touted increasing thyroid as a means to lose weight.

For me, I see now that if fat were not regarded as an important and stigmatized characteristic of individual worth and weight-loss at all costs were not the singular cure to most of what does or could potential ail us, someone somewhere might have wondered why I gained 90 pounds in the year I was diagnoses with lupus when the only thing that changed in my "lifestyle" was that I stopped riding a bicycle to and from school. Looking back on it, I can't believe how I readily accepted my decrease in activity as an explanation.

But all this aside, here I am now, struggling. I can't seem to get my doctor to take seriously how much this is affecting my life. I can't seem to find a solution or solutions that doesn't involve doctos. Oh, yeah, and because medical care isn't universal, the less I can work, the less chance I have of actually paying for more than one opinion about this.

Still, that brief relief last Spring inspires me. Those few months where I felt right again reminded me of how important finding that balance is. I struggle. But I struggle with a real hope of success, a taste of it, as it were. That can make all the difference.

Get a Life, Sheesh

Wow, I read my comments for the first time in awhile. Apparently if I'm busy doing business and living my life to actually write in a blog, the default assumption is that I must have died young.

It may amaze some of my fat-hating lurkers, but life occurs outside of cyberspace. So, sorry, but I'm very much alive and much healthier and, oh, haven't lost a pound (at least not that I know about, I don't really bother to weigh myself anymore.)

For those kinder readers, I will do a little catching up.

In January I was diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism, a condition that runs in my family. I started on the medication in February and, wow, I felt better than I had in years. All my metabolic numbers stablized and I have much more energy than I used to have. Apparently I've been subclinical for years. One doctor thinks I might have been misdiagnosed with lupus when it was subclinical hyperthyroidism. Certainly a lot of my fatigue and joint pain has cleared up.

I'm excited to be back in sociology "officially" and love my classes. I've started a new blog to that end called "First Person, Plural: Doing Sociology" and will probably be writing more there than here during the semester.

I'm also getting my real estate license and am working on finding a broker. I've worked for real estate clients for the past year and learned a lot about the business and decided it was something I could do that would make some money (most of the things I enjoy don't really have money-making potential).

I have done a lot of design work, but most of it in the past year has been commerce oriented, designing logos, website banners, magazine ads and the like. I did illustrate a book.

I've fallen in love with Las Vegas. I find the freedom here to be wonderful, especially after having lived a great deal of my life in the Southeastern US. Vegas is a lot of things, many of which have surprised me greatly. Before I came here, I had a one-dimensional view. Now I see there are multiple-Vegai. Our new company name, SINdustry CITY, sums up what I think of Vegas. It is a great place to work. My theory is that there is less stigma here because anything goes.

I'd like to make enough money, however, to leave during the summer. I'm so ready for fall. Today it was 96 degrees and I was happy and actually thought of it as a "cool" day.

Well, more later. And, oh, if you aren't happy I survived and thrived, keep it to yourself. I really don't care what you think about my body size or my health. Otherwise, I'd love to hear from you.

Sorry for the Long Hiatus

So here's the good news. I haven't been blogging because we have been megabusy. We have four clients for our little business and one of them has been a full-time project for the moment. We aren't out of the hole that got dug over the past year, but we are certainly heading in a better direction.

I was hoping to be able to finish the new website and announce it here when I came back to writing, but I haven't had time to get it up either. So, you'll just have to wait for the big announcement/link.

Not much else to report. Just got contacted by a couple of people and decided I'd better take a moment and say "hi."

So, Hi!

-1 Days to Go

So yesterday was the day by which I knew I needed a new job. I flew to Chicago on Tuesday and thought the interview went well. Then, nothing. I hate this. When looking for work, no news is excruciating.

There are some other projects coming along faster than I thought. Also, I may be getting some unexpected money soon. But as usual, I feel like I'm trying to swim in jello.

I sent out 6 resume's in the past 2 days and got one acknowledgement about how they were overwhelmed with applications and one screening appointment on May 8th. I've sent about 40 resume's out in the past 2 months. Did I mention how much I hate this?

13 Days to Go

The trip to Chicago for the job interview is back on. The company has been very accommodating and understanding regarding the Southwest Airlines stupidity. The nice thing about the whole affair has been that I will feel better about working for this company if the job is offered.

My tax woes continue, though I know that it will get resolved, the whole situation is a continuation of last year's fiasco that put me in my currect position, so it angers and frustrates me more than anything else. Let's just say I'm learning a lot about business deals that go bad.

I'm still quite anxious about the future, but definitely feeling more positive.

One highly positive development is that I'm writing to you from home. Not having Internet access at home has crippled me in various ways, including writing for this blog.

Also adding to my relief is Carl's recovery. He's not 100% yet, still getting tired a lot sooner than normal, but he is definitely up and out of bed. His creativity is coming back as well. He wrote a beautiful song last week based upon a dream he had. It was so wonderful to see him playing guitar and writing after such a long illness.

The short term picture has left me quite anxious, but I am bullish on the long term:

1. I've never been clearer about my desire to write for a living and how I want to go about making that happen.

2. Both Carl and I are growing in our creativity.

3. I'm starting, finally, to make some friends here in Vegas.

4. Several of our projects are starting to pick up some steam (more about that in later episodes).

Hopefully, I'll have some idea if I got the job for the summer before the last paycheck on the 27th. That will at least help me decide where to head next.

in the meantime, I remain anxiously optimistic.

39 Days to Go

Okay, I'm starting to freak out a bit. In 39 days, I will receive my last paycheck from the tax preparation gig. I do have one summer job in the works, but that leaves a gap between jobs. I've been doing the editing gig on the side and thought I had a client lined up to fill that gap and buy me some time, but that fell through last week.

INSERT RANT regarding Good Christian People who take up a lot of your time with promises they never intended to keep, expecting tolerance and special treatment for this bad behavior. My brother has a rule of thumb -- if a transaction begins with a person describing themselves, or their business or their project as "a good Christian whatever," either charge double or run away quickly. I should know by now, but instead I got taken once again and now I've spent over a month expecting a pay off with a new client that isn't going to happen even after we had a deal.

Anyway, suffice to say I've been on a roller coaster. Carl is very sick. I'm hating poverty. Every time I see light at the end of the tunnel, it seems to run me over.

Is it really too much to ask that I be able to do what I love and make money?

I have found some positive things to move towards that goal. I've found a syndication service that accepts entries. I've found a travel writing distribution site that has promise. I've found a list of 400 literary agents that I'm going to start working. The summer job looks good. I did a telephone interview today and will be doing an in person interview soon. If it comes through with a little temp job in May, I think we'll make it. I just hope this isn't an oncoming train!

But its 39 days to absolute poverty and I'd feel better if more things were settled.