Our Own Obsessions

Even by my standards, this is a really long post. I've got about a year's worth of obsessing to catch up on though, so I'm gonna leave it be.

Like most people who are unhappy with their bodies (or maybe most women?) I have particular areas that are more troubling than others, namely my upper arms and midsection. And like anyone who is troubled by a particular body part, I take great pains to hide mine.

I say that I find sleeveless blouses inappropriate for professional settings (I actually believe this) or that I need to wear sweaters because the air conditioning in my office is so cold (this is also true), but I also know I would be mortified if my coworkers or boss saw my bare arms.

My closet is full of little sweaters and shrugs to wear over sleeveless or cap-sleeve dresses in the spring and summer. And yet I found myself reluctant even to wear the shorter-sleeved ones because the fat above my elbow so clearly draws the eye to the flab of the rest. I found myself going to a doctor's appointment the other day, wearing a long-sleeved button-up blouse cuffed to 3/4 length and jeans, despite temperatures in the 90s. That's an October outfit, not something to wear in a summer heatwave.

So I was idly Googling for clothing styles that minimize upper arms (as one does?) and found myself taken aback by the simplicity of a comment, which wasn't at all mean-spirited, but blunt.

I lost track of the page, so allow me to paraphrase:

You need to stop obsessing about your arms. No one but you sees them. People just see big girls, which they either find beautiful or not. They don't care about how and where they're big - that's your own obsession.

I blushed a little, feeling silly and delusional, as if the right length or cut of sleeve could transform my appearance from dramatically overweight to svelte. Whether I'm wearing a long-sleeved cardigan or not, the overall shape of my body is still far too large and far too round.

And yet, I don't want to put my particular obsessions on display. I don't wear form-fitting sheath dresses because they accentuate the largeness of my midsection where they are too tight. I'm shying away from clingy and solid-colored jersey or knit dresses in favor of prints and a bit more structure. I don't tuck things in because that draws attention to the bulge below my waist. So why should I wear tops that hang my upper arms out and invite observations of just how fat my arms may be?

Dysmorphic Denial

Periodically I put my height and weight into Model My Diet and gawk at the Current and Goal versions of myself.

(The 3/4 side view always gets me.)

I think about how dramatically the facial shape changes, to say nothing of the thighs. I think about how much I would enjoy being my Goal weight, and then I start getting denial-y.

"My legs are much more muscular and less fat than these," I think defensively, "but I guess the arms are about right." I try to tell myself that my hips aren't quite so wide, feel quietly grateful that the virtual model doesn't show cellulite, but continue to believe that no, that's not really the size I am.

The same thing happens when I see other women who wear the same clothing size as me. Currently (and for a while now) I've been a 14, though size 16 bottoms are fitting more comfortably than I'd like lately. Tops are usually size L, but if they're particularly fitted or have buttons that I worry will gap across the bust, I go up to an XL. That's about as big as fits in "standard" sizing (which is to say not specifically plus size) off the rack clothing. The few times a year I find myself in stores, there are almost always groups of women going in the dressing room with me, and because they're not obsessive like me, they're really open about the sizes they're trying on and don't act paranoid about who overhears. Seemingly without fail, there will be a woman who seems much larger than me saying that the size 14 is just too big. Or that she should go down to a medium in this top, even though I would have imagined her wearing a 2 or 3X. Maybe we're wearing totally different styles. Maybe they're talking about 14Ws, which I are a different cut. More likely, I am in utter denial about just what size I am and what that looks like.

Weirdly, though, this dysmorphic denial is supported by a lot of evidence and corroboration. As long as I can remember, my mother and I have pointed out strangers and asked, "Am I that size? Bigger or smaller?" etc. to try to get a clearer idea of just how fat we look (this is a delicate and admittedly very warped dance we do). Sometimes it can be cruel, with whispers more like, "I'm not that big, am I??" My mother is always kind and tries to be objective, but when I point out women who really do seem close to my size, she acts like I'm being ridiculous, saying no they're much bigger in these places, they're not as toned etc.

My best friend, who is quite tall and naturally thin (think runway model and you're pretty close) insists that I am average sized (no, I don't ask her crazy questions or talk obsessively about my weight with her). When I chide myself for lack of exercise or guiltily indulge in dessert with her, she says kind things, "You're not fat, I don't know why you always say such awful things about yourself," and even things that are so sweet they strain credulity, "You really don't have any idea how naturally beautiful you are, do you?"

So then I turn where every obsessive woman my age surely turns when she needs to pick on herself and compare herself to her friends: Facebook photos. Shockingly, I don't stand out in a crowd as "the big girl." I don't even look much larger than my best friend, even though we have half a foot height difference and I outweigh her by at least 60 pounds. Friends who I would definitely say are thinner than me in person actually appear larger than me in photos. Sometimes, I even look small and almost delicate.

And yet, the numbers and measurements don't lie. I may be a proportionate, hourglass kind of fat, but I am without question overweight, teetering dangerously close to obese again. I know that I do have muscles (despite my recent lack of athleticism), but these pounds are packed on somewhere.

Do I just hide it well?

What I'm doing about things

Reality or dysmorphia, I know that I need to lose weight and get fitter. I want to be healthier.

This past fall I inherited a small bit of money from a relative who had struggled with weight her whole life. A few years ago she had gastric bypass surgery, which I suspect resulted in malnutrition and never really resolved the issues she had with food and her body.

It was a very sad and sudden loss that I'm still a mess about. To honor her memory, I decided to use some of the money she left me to purchase an elliptical machine, which I am treating as an investment in a healthier lifestyle.

It's a beautiful machine, set up on a soundproof mat in my bedroom, more or less at the foot of my bed and looking out the window. The plan is that I can work out rain or shine, I'm not limited by the hours of the fitness center in my apartment complex or a gym, and gosh, it couldn't be more convenient, could it?

But I think the amount of times I've used it is still in the single digits, which makes me deeply disappointed and ashamed. I have a plethora of excuses about what's been going on in the rest of my life (I had recurring bronchitis all winter, I had massive job stress and depression issues, my apartment is a mess, I'm constantly exhausted, etc. etc.) but the reality is that I just haven't worked it into my daily routine yet. That seriously needs to become a priority.

My family also took on the health and fitness initiative theme for my birthday and Christmas gifts this past year. We tend to give each other gifts in themes, and this year my family gave me things that made me feel feminine and pretty while out in the world (leather gloves, jewelry, a new winter coat) and helped me pursue health and fitness at home (a Fitbit, a 15 pound kettle bell, a blender to make breakfast smoothies).

Wearing my Fitbit every day, I confirmed that my average commute is still 4-5 miles walking with an average of 20-30 flights of stairs, but analyzing the data, I can really see just how much of my day is utterly sedentary. One day I forgot to turn the Fitbit off of sleep tracking, and it said that while I was at my desk at work, I was "sleeping" with 89% efficiency. Oops.

My mother sent me an ebook of kettle bell exercises, which I skimmed and failed to internalize. I know the kettle bell is an excellent workout, but I need to make space in my apartment to use it, along with the weighted hula hoop, hand weights, and yoga mat.

What I'm saying is that I have all the tools I need, and I just have to use them.

And diet, that too...

The sicker I got this fall, the more garbage I ate. My default meals were pizza and Chinese (even though I've sworn off takeaway as many times as I can remember) and I got in the habit of picking up treats every time I was out.

The combination of weeks and weeks of bronchitis, codeine inertia, taking the bus instead of walking, and eating despicably resulted in 20 more pounds packed on rapidly between the summer and winter. More than 6 months later, I haven't lost any of it.

I'm trying to overcome one of my biggest food challenges by ordering organic food, mostly fruits and vegetables, from Fresh Direct. While New York City has an abundance of farmer's markets and groceries, none of them are a reasonable distance from me, or their hours don't work with my schedule. The grocery that is close enough and reasonably priced enough has a dearth of fresh produce - everything is half-rotten, picked over, and forget about organic (it's half a shelf, and it's dreadful). The "produce market" that is walking distance (if I'm feeling ambitious) has almost no organic produce, and what it does have is way overpriced.

I made the decision that I'm either going to pay upfront, a little extra for hormone-free organic milk, or I'll be paying down the line for cancer treatment, heart disease medication, etc. I've watched too many food industry documentaries, read too much Michael Pollan, studied too much biochemistry, and generally become convinced that our food system is as broken as it is corrupt. I realize this topic is super politicized and people are as vehement about our food choices now as we've been about religion in centuries past.

But the bottom line is that, as much as I can help it, I don't want to consume pesticides, antibiotics, or hormones. I would like to eat minimally processed real food, which mostly translates to meals I prepare myself, predominated by organic vegetables, whole grains, and free-range grass-fed beef, venison, or pole-caught fish (my brother and father respectively provide as much venison and fish as I request). I'm not all sanctimonious about it when I go out for meals (which is frequently) and don't ask friends or family about the ingredient sources in food they prepare. But for the food that I control, I'm trying to make better daily choices - that's where Fresh Direct has been a godsend.

The other sticking point with food has been at work, where we have a uniquely generous arrangement that the president buys everyone lunch, if we order in and eat at our desks. The lunch portions from most restaurants are usually large enough to split in two, to take the second half home for dinner. The trouble comes when I pick something unhealthy for lunch and then have the leftovers for dinner - it becomes two bad choices.

Two of my coworkers (a very thin woman about my age and an athletic guy in his late 20s) decided they would eat healthy lunches starting in the new year. (The guy used to request things like fried chicken or Mongolian barbecue and complain when I suggested somewhere that sounded too healthy.) My third coworker always wants deep fried food, barbecue, or Asian skillet things, which are not notoriously healthy. I get stuck in the middle trying to mitigate between another day of "Oh, I'd just like salad" and "How about Chinese?" It's not pleasant, and I am frequently so busy that I don't have time to eat until late in the afternoon, or I eat my lunch for dinner (nothing like a salad on my commute home at 9pm).

Increasingly, I've been going vegetarian for lunch, unless the meats are advertised as organic, grass-fed etc. (it's NYC - I actually saw one menu that kept listing Grass-Fed Cheese and it took me several times to get how that made sense). I don't kid myself that a curry made with fried tofu is much healthier than a curry with chicken, but I am trying to avoid the hormones and antibiotics in unknown meats. I also find that I am a champion at turning a healthy idea fattening - how about some cheese and avocado in that salad? Not the best choices.

As I've said, I haven't lost any weight yet, but I've stopped gaining and I feel considerably better. Replacing processed foods, sugars, and questionable meats with mostly organic vegetables and whole grains is making my system happier and more functional.

Now if only I can get up to speed on water.

The Most Important Meal of the Day

Breakfast is still a big challenge for me. My go-to is a bagel with cream cheese and a Diet Dr. Pepper. It's not healthy, and it costs about $4 each day.

I had all intentions of becoming a breakfast smoothie convert, using an adaptation of my brother's green smoothie recipe (loads of baby spinach, a banana, a glop of almond or peanut butter, chocolate whey powder, some yogurt, and some milk or chocolate soy milk). They're usually tasty and filling enough (I've been keeping a stash of raw almonds at my desk if I find myself famished and unable to get to lunch) and I can certainly see the health benefits. The trouble is, they're time consuming to prepare (my mornings have become seriously disorganized and hectic) and so easy to skip. A few days I gulped the smoothie down before getting in the shower and felt grossly overfull all morning, so I've learned to pack it in an aluminum bottle and sip it gradually through the morning.

It's too easy to skip a few days in a row and find myself with gooey spinach and nearly rotten bananas. "I'm just blending it all up anyway," I'll think to myself, then end up with something vile-tasting and stomach-churning, which puts me off the whole endeavor for the rest of the week.

In short, the smoothies are a chore, both to make and to consume. Maybe I need to start making them in the evenings and refrigerating them. Maybe I need to tweak my recipe. Maybe I just need to suck it up and deal with a nutritious breakfast, even if it's easier and more enjoyable to eat a bagel on the subway.

The Common Thread

It may not be immediately obvious, but what I see in writing all this out is that one of the biggest obstacles to a healthier lifestyle is actually my apartment. It's been ridiculously cluttered for months now, with tons of laundry, half-packed and half-unpacked boxes, piles of papers I need to go through and shred, closets that I've started to empty out and hastily refilled the wrong way, and things generally out of place everywhere.

The kitchen counter that would be most comfortable for chopping vegetables and preparing food is covered over with things I took out of cabinets and didn't finish reorganizing. I have a lot of dishes to wash and laundry to do. I can't exercise when my living room feels like a hoarder moved in (it's actually just the contents of my closets strewn around impractically), and it's difficult to focus on the elliptical when I know that I am neglecting so many things I should be tidying.

I've never been neat, and I know it's unhealthy to live in such a mess, but it's more nefarious than a stack of shoeboxes that I should get around to taking to the recycling room or a suitcase I didn't finish unpacking taking up a bunch of space in my bedroom. These little clusters of clutter and laziness (or depression or whatever you would call it) are inhibiting my ability to function. And that's really not okay.

Something I didn't really talk about (maybe not at all?) was the relationship I was in from last February through October-ish. It was a pleasant enough relationship that made me happy while I was in it and sad when I chose to end it. He was a lovely man, but we want different things in life, and we had insurmountable cultural differences and incompatible beliefs in the end.

Why I mention it is that just before we started dating, I spent a weekend cleaning my apartment from top to bottom, going all out until every nook and cranny was spotless. Almost all of the time my boyfriend and I spent together was in my apartment (another reason it didn't work out), and for several months I kept things in a constant state of ready-for-company clean. Around the same time our relationship started to fall apart, I stopped taking care of my apartment, leaving the kitchen a mess after I cooked dinner, reverting to old habits of not doing laundry for months at a time (I have a serious overabundance of clothing), starting projects and leaving all the supplies wherever I abandoned them, and by the time I ended our relationship for good, my apartment was well and truly on its way to becoming a disaster again.

I think back on those months fondly, not just with the rose-colored glasses of a relationship when it was good, but of how comfortable and relaxed I was in my own home. When my apartment was clean, my mornings were pleasant and efficient. I was early to work every day (for months now, I've been routinely late). I enjoyed cooking meals because my kitchen was always clean and ready to use. I could enjoy all my little artistic and crafty hobbies without guilt.

The messier my apartment got, the more I would recede. Eventually, it got to where I would change from work clothes into pajamas, eat whatever I could microwave for dinner in bed, and fall asleep watching half a television show on the computer, waking up a few hours later exhausted, the lights still on, and feeling like all I did with my life was go to work and back.

I know that if I had come home to a clean and inviting apartment, I would have been encouraged to cook and eat a real dinner, I would have spent some time relaxing and doing something interesting instead of laying down to watch TV, and hey, I could even have the motivation to exercise if it didn't involve moving a bunch of boxes first.

So I can see plain as day that I need to get my apartment back in order, for my own health and happiness.

TL;DR Summary

• Most people don't see the specific ways I'm fat, they just see that I'm fat. Still, I'm not going to hang my arms out or accentuate the fat if I can help it.
• I am in total denial about how fat I am but I recognize how much I need to address this problem.
• I bought an elliptical machine and have a bunch of exercise stuff that goes shamefully underused.
• I've been changing my diet, not "dieting," and lunch at work is challenging.
• I have to sort out breakfast.
• My apartment is both symbolic of and a major contributing factor to most of my health and fitness challenges lately. I need to get it together.

I hope to have some positive progress to report soon.