Another Family Gathering

I have been really down on myself and struggling in a depression. I have had much better days. I have been in this funk for a long time and I have no idea how, when, or if a shift into a better space is gonna come.

One of the places for me that is tough is visiting with my parents. I have hard boundaries with them about discussing my weight, health, & exercise. My last few visits with them, I have had to defend the boundaries. Just a little bit with my stepmom who always pokes at the electric fence that are these boundaries. She is coming from place of concern and in this funk of mine, I am so tempted to buy back into the fantasy of losing weight making my life better.

So basically, when I do see my parents, there is always a moment of uncomfortability in wondering when my stepmom is going to violate the boundary and I am going to have to defend it. Sometimes, it is as simple as just changing the subject. Sometimes it is just as simple as saying I don't want to talk about it. I feel uncomfortable for little bit, but then we get on to the task of visiting with each other. By the way, I enjoy visiting with them. We share the same politics and that is mostly where we spend our time connecting.

Today, there was a family gathering for the Jewish Holiday. I arrived first (which I rarely do) and the greeting from my parents for so overtly loving it took me by surprise. My father said "You are so beautiful" My stepmom gave me a lovely hug and a heartfelt greeting. There was no mention of my weight. We just sat down and started visiting.

Shortly after, other siblings and their kids started arriving and I was very conscience of how nice it was to be with my family, be part of my family, and see all my nephews, my niece, my sister and my three brothers along with all their spouses.

The den where we were hanging out in has two chairs and a couch. The couch is high up and easy for me to get out of. One of the chairs is low to the floor and not as easy for me. I found myself in this chair and as soon as I sat down, I signaled to my brother that I might need his help to get up. A few minutes later I positioned myself to get up and as I was standing up, I started to stumble back toward the chair but I caught my balance. As I started to stumble, my stepmother let out a shriek of panic that stopped as soon as I caught my balance and I looked at her and exclaimed that I am alright.

A little while after that my stepmother was moving around the room and I asked her to hand me my cell which I had left on the table next to the low chair. As she handed it to me she said something to the effect of …"I look forward to when you can just jump up and get the phone yourself." I took my phone and ignored her comment. On my way out at the end of the evening, we said our goodbyes and she said to me, "I know you know so I m not going to say anything" which was her way of poking at the no weight talk boundaries as I was leaving.

I think the reason that I do not go ballistic apeshit with her when she "pokes at my fence" is because there is still a part of me that thinks I should lose weight. A part that equates weighing less with happier and more comfortable.

I know that losing weight is and has always been a no win for me. So I don't go toe to toe with my stepmother about her comments because I want to have a relationship with my parents.

It is just tough because I am depressed, I am uncomfortable, I am unmotivated and when I think about what my next steps might be to improve my situation, I find myself unwilling to do anything.

I cannot talk to the parents about this because they are incapable a saying anything and all they can do is scream obesity boooga boooga at me.

I do have a few friends and my brother who I can and do talk to about this stuff so I am grateful for that.

I was glad to hang with the family today, even with stepmoms little pokes.

HUGE - FAT HATE- Self Policing ON Facebook?

very interesting… the facebook page for huge had an entry today about the actor who plays lan. The comments were ll positive except one and that hateful comment was shunned by the rest of the thread. I never saw that before…. how about that? to top it off, the hateful comment was removed not sure by whom....

This strikes me as awesome

here it is http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=291021791680&share_id=127808647265733&comments=1#s127808647265733

Save, Repair, Your Favorite Pair of Jeans

Hey everyone,,,, just a quick post about something I just saw featured on a local news show called LX New York http://www.nbcnewyork.com/shows/lxnewyork/

They featured a company that repairs denim jeans. I know over the years I have thrown away perfectly good jeans because only the area between the thighs had worn away. This company has you go online and mark up a diagram of your jeans where you want them repaired. You then mail them your jeans and they send you an quote to repair them. They also have a service where they can convert regular jeans into maternity jeans and then turn them back after the baby comes.

They are here in NY but they also do this service thru the mail.

The company is called Denim Therapy http://denimtherapy.com/repairnow-var1/?gclid=CIOS6p7NgqMCFdFN5QodHCBzaQ and I figured that there may be some in our community that will be happy to know about them.

Cheers,

Ivan

NO NEW KNEES FOR YOU!! unless I can amputate your stomach first

Hello Friends,

My mom and I are hanging out with an old family friend tomorrow who lives in Florida, She and my mom are both in their mid 60's.

This friend, who for the purpose of this post I shall call judy, weighs between 300 and 400 pounds. She also has arthritic knees and while I am not 100 % up on the details of her situation, I will describe them as I understand them. I will get very clear on the details tomorrow as we have plans to hang out all afternoon.

Here is the deal. The doctors wanted her to loose weight before they replace her knees, So they advised her to have the lap band procedure. She did this about two years ago. If she lost any weight, she gained in back. So the knees are still not replaced and she lives with horrible pain.

I assume they went to adjust the lap band to force it to work and get her to loose weight and guess what? They cannot find the device. I never heard of that before. It is not around her stomach and they cannot locate it. So guess what the docs are gonna do now. After the lap band failed. They are still not going to do the operation to replace her knees because surgery is too risky at her weight. What they are going to do is amputate her stomach with a full gastric bypass and while they are in there, they hope to find the dislodged lap band device. Apparently the risks of this surgery is acceptable. It just seems so very wrong that the Doctors are willing to risk her life this way.

I feel horrible for her. Worse is that in the few times that I have spoke about fat acceptance with her, she has been completely unreachable.

I am going to try to reach her again tomorrow. Surely folks in our community can understand the injustice of doctors refusing to provide the pain relieving knee replacements but encouraging the life threatening stomach amputation. Further, we have the insight to understand how someone like my mother's friend Judy could agree with the doctors about the bypass surgery before the knee surgery.

I anticipate my discussions with Judy falling on deaf ears tomorrow. I am sick with sadness about this.

Please friends, send me your good vibes to my brain so what I say tomorrow to her has value.

Gratitude for the Sphere

I am very grateful that there are so many smart activist voices out there discussing Size Acceptance. I myself have been not only been under the radar, but almost completely "off grid" when it comes to following the sphere and watching the different developments and issues here.

Long story short on my absence has been a crisis of confidence about my health choices and a really difficult battle with my own "Bad Fattie Guilt". I probably will blog about it more but right now I just want to say thank you to all the voices on the sphere waiting for me in my special inbox dedicated to the sphere.

Cheers,


Ivan

MAN UP!! -- Bias, Hatred, and Prejudice, Oh My!!

Dr Puhl from Yale did a blog post about the study showing how political candidates are judged when the only variable is their weight. As most of us would expect, the women got the worse reaction for being heavy. The surprising data out of this research is that people have a more favorable opinion of heavy male politicians that thin male politicians.

This got me thinking again about how the male perspective is underrepresented on the sphere. It also got me thinking about how my perspective about this may be unique to me.

Having been around our online community for almost two years now, I am totally tuned into the fact about women having it harder on an overall basis than men do when it comes to weight bias and fat hatred. I get it. Heck, until I got involved in the community I had no understanding about privilege even though I possess it in many ways solely for being white, hetero, and male.

Yet, I cannot help feel that my experience is diminished because as a man I do not have it nearly as bad as a women do in terms of Fat Hate. It gets me asking myself questions like, "What's wrong with me." "Am I one of the only guys that feels the profound sense of oppression for being 400 pounds?"

On top of this I also feel that in terms of good vs. bad fatty, I land squarely in the bad column which I have posted about in the past and will post more about in the future.

I think that what it may boil down to is that I am still working through the powerful programming that taught me I was bad, lazy, unworthy, pitiful, disgusting etc, It still has a choke hold on me. I am just lucky to have two fingers between my neck and that choke hold thanks to the Fat Acceptance community. I am constantly questioning myself. Sadly, the foundation of my self doubt are all those years of the hateful, biased, moral panic induced blitzkrieg designed by a variety of forces all serving their own self interests. Worse yet, not being honest to themselves when they frame their greed based motives as genuine concern for my well being. ughh!

So I am the subject of a mindfuck so comprehensive, so intense, so huge that I struggle to not beat myself up all the time for not doing enough to move from the bad fatty column to the good fatty column.

the kicker is, that even if I found my way into the good fatty column, I'd still be living in a society that hates me.

I think that recognizing that this is a battle that I cannot win overnight. I have to take it a little at a time.

It feels really big to me and I am struggling with all of this right now. Part of me thinks that I am some sort of weakling, somehow too soft, too whiney, to defective because, heck, men don't have it as bad as women. I don't see any other guys on the sphere talking about how hard this stuff is.

I'm lucky in that I can open up about this stuff and seek out support, advice, and even just a hello when I need it. I have to say that with the exception of a little tough love in the beginning about my lack of understanding about privilege, I have got nothing but good luvin from the community for which I am very grateful.

I so sincerely wanna find my place, my peace with my Fat Acceptance. It has been a difficult journey for me. We all have it hard. the girls and the boys.

A trip to the CARDIOLOGIST

I have an appointment with a cardiologist on wednesday. My pulmonologist is sending me to him because I have been short of breath for several months now and there hasn't any improvement there. There also hasn't been any deterioration either. He did an echo cardiogram and told me that there was nothing abnormal there. I think he is practicing a little defensive medicine.

My lipids were fine a year ago and I really do not think I have any heart stuff going on. I have to be honest, I am a little concerned about the cardiologist being a fat hater. Every doctor that I have met through this hospital has been fair and some have been actually remarkably understanding about my fat.

My pulmonologist sent me for am echo cardiogram which did not show anything abnormal.

I think that my breathing troubles are about my lack of movement. I joined the Y and have been to one water aerobics class. I would like to get the these classes more often. I think that I can recondition myself to better breathing.

I just want the cardiologist to be fair. If he is not, I will have to go see another one. I actually would like to get confirmation that there is nothing going on with my heart. I hope I get a sane enough doctor who can help me find out if that is in fact the case.

Is there anyone out there that is willing to share via comments or via links any experiences with cardio docs from a HAES perspective and does anyone knows what medical tests/procedures can confirm that my heart is in fact healthy, please comment.