I am fat

I am fat. Please do not tell me that I look great because it will not help me. Hiding the scale behind the bathroom door or avoiding mirrors will not help either. I know I am fat. My arms look like those of a sumo wrestler, my stomach has love handles that are not lovely at all, my back even started to pile on the fat. The usual suspects that are always the first ones to accumulate fat aka my thighs and butt are enormous and no amount of clothes cannot hide that. Even my legs that use to be my pride and joy are swollen. The only good thing about being that fat is that I finally have a respectable breast size (although having a rack was never my obsession).

I am fat. I have never been that fat in my entire life. Granted that I was never a size 0,  but I used to be OK at 60 kg for 168 cm tall. I had curves but they were just big enough to get me noticed. My husband says that when we started dating some 13 years ago, I had a big butt but a flat stomach. He says I had a great body then. And to think that I used to obsess about that body of mine, trying every crazy thing (except diet pills) to get rid of the extra KG I thought I had. Now when I looked at pictures of myself 13 years ago, I just want to jump back in time or cry.

I am fat. Even at the final hour of both of my pregnancies I was never this fat. I let myself go and I am not sure how it happened.

Strike that! I can tell you exactly how it happened.

- Love of food:
I love food, I love to eat. I am not keen on cooking but make something nice for me and you can guarantee that I will probably lick the plate. I love to eat and things would have been easier if I just made good choices about my diet. But no: the more mayo, greasier, cheesier, saucier, the better for me. I will pick pasta with tomato cream sauce and extra cheese on top any day over lean meat and vegetables. My weakness is everything I qualify to be comfort food aka carbs : rice, pasta, bread. I crave them the most. I can tell you 100 ways to get fat faster but I am not here for that (let me just give you a few examples to satisfy your curiosity: toast with butter and deep fried egg dripping of oil, or toast with nutella and butter, or tempura vegetable on a bed of rice with mayonnaise....disgusted yet?)To top it all I am not a big fan of fruits. I tolerate apples, watermelon, strawberries and bananas but only when I am forced to eat them (like that time my father in law asked me to eat an apple a day during my 1st pregnancy while I was at his house). I am lucky though because I do not have a sweet tooth. I know some people who gained weight gorging on chocolate. But that is not me. I will enjoy some from time to time but I rarely crave it.

- Binge eating:
I go through bounds of binge eating. This has nothing to do with hunger but more to do with my mood at the time. I can be sleepy, upset, sad, PMSing or just bored and I binge eat as a result. Boredom can be prevented when I find something to do ( I usually end up going shopping: fight an addiction with another) but for the rest I have no idea what to do. I tried hiding food once and it did not work. I distract myself reading books or watching movies but I end up craving some chips to go with.

- Lack of self control:
Sometimes I just wish I could say no or better yet enough. I wish my brain would send a strong signal, electroshock strong,  to my hands to stop picking the food and to my mouth to stop chewing. But it rarely does. I am the one who would order extra at a restaurant. I am also the one who cannot resist a buffet. I will go for more and more helpings particularly when it is breakfast time. I tell myself that I will skip lunch so I can eat a lot.

- Motherhood
I really do not want to blame motherhood on this but I have to. My kids are picky eaters.  Sometimes, even threatening to kill them will not encourage them to finish their plate. As a result I end up eating the leftovers. Even my husband does that to me when he is not that hungry. I think that another reason is that I tend to cook a lot. I am afraid that it will never be enough. Even when I was a newly wed I used to cook for four when we were just two and barely eating at home. Therefore you can imagine how much I cook for a family of four now. And since I am the one at home, all that leftover food goes to me or the garbage.
I also tend to snack a lot because of the kids. I would buy some bread at the bakery , rice balls at the convenience store or a simple burger at Mcdonald and indulge with them. I often wish I could just sit there with them and watch them eat without having a bite myself. But I could never resist. Before having kids, I rarely snacked. My husband used to complain that the house did not have snacks at all. I could stay an entire day without having food in my system and I would be just fine. But do not count on that nowadays. I throw fits when I am hungry. 

- Lack of exercise
I am not too keen on exercise but I was always moving in my daily life. At college, I walked on the big campus or even cycled to classes. Once I moved to the US, I started to drive and move less. I had a baby and shed all my pregnancy weight and some more. I was really skinny so I did not feel the need to exercise. During the week end, the family would walk around in parks or the mall so I got some exercise. When we moved back to Japan, the weight started to come back because I was binge eating on all the Japanese food I missed. I started to do baby swimming with my second child so I thought I was getting enough exercise. In reality one hour a week was barely enough. I did walk every where though. It was hilly around our house so I did manage to burn some calories. But I should have done more. I should have joined a walking group, I should have gone to the gym or enrolled in a dancing or yoga class. I had great opportunities to do that for free plus some time on my hand but I was just plain lazy. The cold Winter did not help either. I preferred to stay indoors sipping on hot chocolate and binging on comfort food to keep me warm. Even friends calling me to meet up somewhere would not do. I always had an excuse to stay at home. The more excuses I found not to exercise, the bigger I became. And once I decided to get out of that phunk, I started to interact more with people and do more as a result. I was going out for window shopping, lunches, classes or I had many tasks as I got more involved in my sons school. I did not need to do exercise because I was constantly on the go. After one week of being super busy every minute of every day I realized that I had lost one kilo without any exercise at all. I decided to continue with that phase. Then, it was time to pack our bags and move out of Japan as the husband got relocated to a new destination. As I type this, we are in the new location but I gained more KG after just two months here due to boredom, lack of exercise and binge eating on all the good Indian food I did not even know existed.  Back to zero.

On and all, I think I just let myself go. I do not take care of myself. I used to have an excuse with babies and all. But my babies are growing up. They are so many things that they can do by themselves now. They need me less and less. That gives me more time to myself. I can even have a hot bath if I want to or read an entire book cover to cover in a few hours. I could find time to pamper myself because no one else is going to do it for me. Things would have been easier with friends to give me a push or invite me for a spa. (Spa can be so boring when you go by yourself)
It is not about being fat.. I remember being skinny, enjoying my new body (except that I missed my curves) and shopping every week to dress for it. I even bought an LBD for the 1st time and posted some pics of me wearing it on Facebook. So many good comments and likes I received. Yet, it was one of the most depressing moments of my life. I think I had postpartum depression and did not even know it.  Moreover, I remember being just 60 kg and although I had a complex over my big butt, I did not let it stop me from living my life.  It is about feeling good about one self. I can be overweight and be great. But I am not.

All this to say that it is time I do something about this body of mine. They say treat your body like a temple, yet I treat it like a waste bin. And then I complain if it does not do things I want it to do. I will start taking care of myself whether it is to eat better, exercise regularly, pamper myself or all of the above. I owe it to myself but also to my family. They deserve a better mother and a better wife. Besides I am running out of excuses to move my butt ( by now I have used everything in the book).
Will I be happy after I loose some KG? I doubt it because after all happiness is a state of mind. Loosing some KG will not take me back to my previous glory. If I believe what some people out there (and my BFF) says, I passed my peak (being 32 and all). My body is going down hill from now on: my skin is loosing its elasticity, I can no longer pull an all nighter and I am even producing less eggs (sorry, sorry TMI). So there is no way I will look as good as I did when I was 22. And I do not want to. What would be the point of aging and maturity then? On the contrary I want to look my age, I want to look appropriate and sophisticated. I was never that when I was 22. And if I cannot be that in my 32, then at least I can start the process so I can get there by the time I am 42. And it starts today with shedding some kilos....

All that talk just because I can no longer post style pictures on my other blog without looking like a whale....but also because I want to look good dressed in a Kurta.....