Stats, a mission statement, and a piece of history

When I hear someone else's story about being fat, losing weight, gaining weight, I want stats, so I'll start with stats. I'm 36, 5'4", and currently 224 pounds. At my heaviest, (most recently in March of this year) I was 253 pounds. Once, several years ago, my size 24 jeans were getting too small for me. Right now I usually wear an 18.

After a lifetime of being fat and several years of losing and gaining weight with a lot of ambivalence, I am now losing again, and trying not to get smaller in the process. On this blog, I'll be trying to work out my ambivalence.

A good place to start is the incident that inspired my blog's name. About twelve years ago, I had a brief medical scare (all is and was well, so I'll not go into details) which was traumatic in and of itself, and which led to an appointment with an endocrinologist who, (winning the award for worst doctor ever) poked at me, answered no questions, and then said, "There should be less of you."

Afterward, I managed to not go to any doctor for three or four years and to gain probably fifty pounds. As someone who has always been overweight, I have always felt self-conscious about how much space I take up, but I have never, in my most insecure moments believed there should be less of me. Me is good. Fat, maybe is bad. Maybe there should be less fat. But in one brusque, offhand prescription, this overpaid asshole defined me as my fat and told me not to exist.

When I've lost weight in the past few years, usually stalling at about 200-215 pounds, I have struggled with the fact that by intentionally losing weight, intentionally changing my body, I am somehow admitting that my body (and thus me) is and has always been wrong. That pisses me off to no end. It makes the process of losing weight all about hating myself, which I don't.

So I am here, losing weight again and trying to figure out how to keep going, how to enjoy my body right now, as it is changing, rather than feeling that it's a bad thing I need to fix or get rid of.