Does This Blog Make Us Look Fat?

Yes, Greta and I have some big news. We’re moving. Thanks to the overwhelming support for Does This Bog Make Us Look Fat? we’re moving to our very own domain. We’ve got a redesigned site and we’re so excited about it.

If you’ve visited us in the last two months we are so grateful and if you’ve linked to us - well we just can’t say thank you enough. THANK YOU. Please consider adding our new site to your blog roll.

The new site has some of our favorite old posts but we had trouble moving the comments so please pop in and say hi so we can be sure we have you in our new home. We’ve discovered that our readers and commenters are WAY better at this being witty thing (and at losing weight) than we are.. so please come on over. If you don’t we’ll cry and then probably binge on a tub of frosting. (Sometimes we’re emotional eaters.)

Meanwhile we’ve loved being a part of Blogs Monroe and thank them for helping us launch this crazy little idea. But as is our constant problem we kept moving to bigger sizes. Hopefully this new size and site is one we can all celebrate. The site will be up here for a while as well but our new posts will all be at our new digs - http://www.doesthisblogmakeuslookfat.com.

Again, thank you and please come visit us at our new home.

Love,

Greta and Kiki

Jane Fonda…what have you wrought??? I…I have no words. I think it’s because my face still hurts. Thoughts?

BREAKING NEWS ALERT:   NICOLE ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING…..

Page six and every other gossip paper has these photos of 50 year old Patricia Heaton. She’s had four kids. She’s tiny, like I think size 2 or something. She admits to having plastic surgery we’re talking tummy tucks and stuff. As an actress looking good is part of her job so I completely understand the plastic surgery.  But she doesn’t have a belly button anymore.

I like Patricia Heaton and LOVED Everybody Loves Raymond. But hmmm?

I just figured we have the weekend. We can look at these pictures and discuss. Again I think she looks great, seriously she’s had four kids and turned 50 last week. I should look so good. But I have to say the belly button ooges me out a bit. Yeah? No?

Of course if you saw me in bikini there’d be much more to cause ooges.  So you have the floor. And I assume you have belly buttons.

I guess one less thing to collect lint. Discuss.

I have returned from the Doctor’s office.

My ploy did not work. I begged, pleaded, cajoled, got pissy, but they still made me get on the scale. It was not pretty. To add insult to injury, when I stepped off the scale, the button on my formerly-favorite khaki cargos (the ones that always fit me, no matter how many pounds I’ve floated) popped off and rolled on the floor.

The nurse saw it. God bless her for not laughing, but she totally buried her head in my file and started writing something. The truly humiliating part was when I bent over to pick up my sad little button. What’s the ettiquette here? I just kind smiled and palmed the thing. Meanwhile, I had my daughter with me. She’s 5. She snorted and said, “Huh, Mom. I guess you need to get new pants.”

Ugh.

A new study about how people perceive their weight suggests that if you’re worried about being fat all the time you’ll actually feel physically sick more often than cool people.  The study was conducted by the DUH I COULD HAVE TOLD THEM THAT er, sorry it was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and published this month by the American Journal of Public Health. (OMG I lurv their Oscar Red Carpet issue.)

 Science Experiment:Researchers studied data on 170,000 men and women. Keep in mind that a lot of self-reporting involves some dude in a lab coat calling up and asking what you weigh.   Researcher say they’re aware that most people like, lie. “Sure Mr. Scientist, here’s my real weight. While you’re at it I give you permission to put my picture and that number on a billboard.” So anyway these 170,000 people were asked what they weighed, what they’d LIKE to weigh and then.. here’s the INTERESTING PART… they were asked how often they felt physically or mentally unhealthy.

Results: Men who wanted to lose 1, 10, or 20 percent of their body weight reported that they felt unhealthy .05, .9 and 2.7 days a month respectively. Women who wanted to lose 1, 10, or 20 percent of their body weight were even worse off (reinforcing that medical fact that women have everything worse in all medical bad news studies) felt unhealthy .1, 1.6, and  4.3 days a month respectively.

Analysis: Researchers believe that this means you shouldn’t worry about your weight. You SHOULD worry about eating well and exercising. They say this data indicates that freaking out about your weight makes you feel like crap. After this study researchers also confirmed that horizontal stripes on your butt do indeed make it look huge.  However the stripes do confuse sharks trying to attack you so don’t get rid of those striped pants. They could save your life.

Real Life Application: This research may be lead to medical professionals emphasizing your diet and activity level instead of your doctor saying, “Wow.. you really need to look more like Sarah Jessica Parker if you don’t want to use up your sick days at work Bertha.”

Summary: It is STAGGERING to think that 4.3 days a month or 51.6 days a year we actually feel sick - maybe ONLY because we feel overweight. I’d like to lose 20 percent of my body weight and I think I feel like poo 2 out of 7 days a week. That means I feel sickish 96 DAYS A YEAR!  So though I’ve mocked this study… it’s spot on accurate to what I think happens in my life. And you? Does the amount of weight you think you need to lose correlate to the amount of time per month you feel ill? Is it a motivator to think maybe losing 10% could cut down the days you feel physically bad? Or is your motivator for losing weight looking good in tight pants? Currently I’m all about wanting to look good in jeans. I’m working on evolving my thinking. I need to eat well and exercise so I feel better and then eventually I will look good in jeans. I love science.

Ok DTBMULFers. I need permission to make some new rules. Tomorrow may be a bad day. I have to go to the doctor’s. Nothing major, just prescription refills. But…they will make me get on the scale. Why, why, WHY do they make us get on the scale?

I am not a child. I do not want or need to know my “growth chart” percentile. “Greta, you’re X% bigger/smaller than the other 37 year olds!” Woo hoo!! I do not want to even SEE the chart that tracks my weight over the last twenty years. I am not GOING to the doctor because of my weight. Somebody please explain why this information is necessary when all I need is some stuff to keep my pores from clogging (whole ‘nother post, people) and a Z-pack.

Soooo, here’s what. Fellow DTBMULFers, I need permission and/or a consensus. Let us proclaim the following:

Henceforeward, ALL doctor’s office scales are five pounds heavy (10 if your BMI exceeds 26).

To make it “all official,” I’ve generated this DTBMULFer Approved warning label. feel free to print it out and take it to your next doctor’s appointment

Who’s with me??

This a site I found called My Shape. You put in a ALL your measurements, style preferences, and general budget and they find clothes for you. It takes a while to put in ALL your measurements but it was fun to see what it came up with for me. I’m even considering buying something and for sure I’ll keep in mind the stuff they recommended the next time I cruise the clearance racks at Target and T-J Maxx. I also envision the joy I’ll get by CHANGING my measurements when I theoretically lose weight. Some of my measurements were terrifying I must admit. Oh and they said they’d mail me a free tape measure. I like free stuff.  Maybe this will help me switch to a “focus on inches” instead of pounds philosophy? Anyway if you have twenty minutes and no idea what looks good on you give it a whirl.

Oh and it’s STICK WITH IT MONDAY! I’ve got my new pedometer and I’m not afraid to use it. (Okay I am sort of afraid but I will use it. None of the clothes they showed me had a good place to clip my pedometer. Maybe that’s a new fashion line I can start. Pedome-chic.)

I have to admit. In real life I’m known to drop an f-bomb more than your average suburban wife and mother. I rarely curse at work because I try to comport myself in a professional manner. Not swearing in the office is a part of being a professional. Unless you’re a sailor. I have never heard a sailor swear but in my personal life I’ve been described as someone who can swear like a sailor so I’m extrapolating that they do indeed take swearing to the next level. But at home, it’s bombs away. Furthermore I believe I’m at my funniest when I let the language fly.

When my children were very little I curbed my enthusiasm for cussing after the 3-year-old pondered aloud in frustration “where is my GD Green Power Ranger?” Then the next day, faced with some sort of perplexing toddler dilemma, the child uttered from the car seat “what the friggin’ he** is this?” Instead of mama or dada my own grandmother suggested to me that my newborn’s first words would likely be “that sucks.” Due to my affinity for that phrase. I tried to cool it after those lovely parenting moments.

Fast forward a few years to now, the kids are not toddlers and I do not restrain my language. I began to write for this blog and naturally incorporated my extensive curse word vocabulary into the drafts. I chuckled at my oh-so-humorous dirty word skills. F-Bombs were even more effective in print.

Then I paused. I had trouble hitting the publish button. My goodness, fiddledeedee, what ever was my problem? I am a free-wheeling funny gal blogger. I should be able to drop a bomb and use some of my other favorite curse words and pornographic anatomical descriptions to HILLARIOUS effect in this forum. What the he..  ck? Plus we’re talking diets, fat and weight loss. If ever I use ugly language it is when I’m talking about what a FAT@SS  I am. Or how FLOOGING hungry I feel,  or how GOOD DARMED confusing the SON OF BENCHING diet industry makes me. Really, I’m filled to the brim with great swearing in relation to this topic. But somehow I couldn’t do it.

I’ve been thinking about why not. Why not swear? I love so many bloggers that do. They crack me up and I have nothing but love for them and the words. I believe in free speech. Totally. What I’ve determined is I can’t swear PUBLICLY. My problem isn’t with the words it’s that I’m totally a priss when it comes to putting them “out there.” I have no problem using the words in real life. Is it that I am not evolved as a blogger? Is it that I can’t really tap into my authentic voice? Or is it that maybe - I’m trying to be better. Is it that along with cleaning up my diet I’m trying to clean up my language, at least online? Is there a connection between learning to discipline my body and disciplining my language? Or am I just a-scared that my fist grade teacher will read this and FIND OUT?

 What I know is that I will be cultivating fake swear words for use in my blog posts. I realize this is just as juvenile as swearing but it is where I am right now. Below is a list of some initial alternatives. Maybe with this method it will be very clear that if I ever DO drop an f-bomb here it is because I’m bucking serious. And since I’m probably at odds with the entire internet I expect the comments section to be filled with profanity,  directed fairly and squarely at my fat@ss.

Bombs away. 

good darmed, son of a bench, fat@ss, hot sheet, sheet for brains, frack, fracking, sholy hit, ding hole, duck wad, flooging, grass hole, anyword-bag…

You get the drift… please feel free to add to my list… I’ll need it as I’m not doing too well on the diet and it’s fizzing me off.

Uh oh. Kiki and I might have it all wrong. I often feel like the stairmaster and eliptical trainer are laughing at me too.We’re screwed. Also…I find that people find me MUCH funnier now that I’m in my thirties and fat. Seriously, I was 90ish pounds in high school and totally annoying. Kind of like Posh Spice with tackier clothes.Now what???

Didja see this?  This is the The Svalbard Global Seed Vault  or the Doomsday Seed Vault as some are calling it. Holy Flipping Apocalyptic Nightmares BATMAN!

Basically some pragmatic Norwegian people have placed 100 million different seeds from 100 different countries in a vault on a remote island in the Arctic Circle. They started this project to combat “dwindling bio-diversity” - meaning we’ve only got seeds left on earth to grow a few zucchini and some dandelions. If you’re trying to find seeds to grow, say a kumquat, you’re screwed. 

So protecting bio-diversity is one thing but then the OTHER reason they’ve got the Doomsday Seed Vault is for DOOMSDAY! In other words if there’s a “regional or global man-made or natural disaster” the survivors will be able to travel to the Arctic Circle, near the village of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen (will MapQuest work after the apocalypse?) and bust open the vault and get some seeds. Then they’ll have to haul tail back to California or Idaho or wherever people farm because you sure as tish can’t grow stuff from seeds in the Arctic Circle.

Anyways I’m thinking of starting a Doomsday Xanax Vault because if I’m forced, after the “natural OR man-made global disaster,” to trek to the Arctic Circle to ensure the survival of mankind I’m going to be FLIPPING OUT.

Here’s the good news: This vault will be in my basement because I’ll need to harvest the pills as soon as the Spitsbergen hits the fan.

P.S. I know this isn’t a “diet” post but in a way it is because the seeds make food and the anxiety about Doomsday helps me control my appetite.