Books and Movies

I went to a birthday party with my kids after lunch, where I ate a huge piece of Mud Pie. I then spent the rest of the afternoon reading Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir by Jennette Fulda. How’s that for irony? Especially since one of my kids announced my weight to everyone at the table, and another said I needed to go back on Weight Watchers. (On a side note, at least one of them is too young to realize that this was completely rude.)

Jennette Fulda literally lost half of herself. 51.9% of her body weight, according to her blog. Her top weight was 372. She now weighs 180. She’s 5′9″ and she looks fabulous, as you can see if you check out her progress page.

I need to lose at least half of my weight. I don’t quite weigh as much as Ms. Fulda’s top weight, but I’m only 5′5″, so you do the math. This book was just the kind of book I needed right now. She doesn’t talk about dealing with the emotional reasons she overate. She doesn’t talk about her dysfunctional childhood - in fact, she has a fairly functional family who has always supported her, no matter her weight. She doesn’t blame her weight gain on past abuse or trauma.

What she does do is talk about making a choice. And then making another choice. And another. And another. And each of those choices added up to completely changing her lifestyle, becoming a thin person, discovering that her body was capable of things she never knew, and finding happiness.

I’m realistic. I used to dream about becoming a size four, attending my high school reunion, and knocking everyone’s socks off. I know that after having four children, and being morbidly obese for years, that this will never happen. Even if I reach my goal weight, I will have a lot of loose skin hanging around. Ms. Fulda still does, but she doesn’t much care about it. What she does care about is the fact that she can now not only walk miles, but run. She can put her foot up on her bathroom counter to trim her toenails. She can squat, and then get back up without using anything for leverage. She owns her body - it no longer owns her.

That’s what I want. I want to feel like my body is something I can work, not something that works against me. I only hope I can keep making all of those little choices that add up to big change.

I highly recommend this book. Ms. Fulda is extremely funny, and I found myself laughing aloud just as many times as I teared up in commiseration. Here’s a couple samples:

It was inevitable. I would have to learn how to cook. the best way to control what I ate was to prepare it myself. This was going to be painful, literally. My feet began to hurt if I stood for more than five minutes, but if I could survive a nine-hour gallbladder attack, I could withstand bowing arches after ten minutes in front of a skillet.

My diet book had some recipes in the back, but they included strange ingredients like “shallots” and “littleneck clams.” I didn’t even know clams had necks. I strated a search for recipes online and nixed anything too complex. Anything that involved separating egg whites or getting out the sifter was a no-go. I wasn’t even sure we owned a flour sifter. I also had zero tolerance for weird ingredients. I was not averse to buying one or two new spices or veggies for a recipe, but if it turned into a grocery store scavenger hunt that required me to find eye of newt, it was out. No toil or trouble. ~p. 64-65

I had been tricked. I’d started all this healthy eating and exercising only so I could get what I wanted - thin. Now I was actually enjoying it. It was like the time I’d tried a free trial of Netflix thinking I could get a free month’s worth of DVDs and then quit once I’d gotten my free rentals. Now I had hundreds of movies in my queue and would never be able to watch them as quickly as I added them. Thank goodness I’d never joined a bug-eating club. I might find myself swatting flies, dipping them in Dijon mustard sauce, and enjoying it. ~p. 185

4 out of 5 stars

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