Come to Jesus, I'm Fat, not P-h-a-t

Recently things got so bad with my personal space (e.g., I was oozing out of it) that Jesus came to visit me. He tried to be nice about it, but honestly, as a 1st -Century B.C. Israelite, he doesn't have a helluva lotta sympathy for us fat, 21st Century Americans. He patted me on my large knee and said, "Sooz, you know that old saying about Mohammed coming to the mountain? Well uh, pretend I'm Mohammed. And you're the mountain. Ok, that's extreme - sorry- but, for the love of God, come to Jesus. You're fat. Lose some weight, get back in shape for Christ's sake, before you turn 40 and all hope is lost. Don't let me see you on Maury in 10 years, bawling your eyes out and breaking his damn chairs with your vast ass. Seriously. You're better than that." Then he took all my chocolate and left. Bastard.
So anyway, I'm fat. This was going to be a tangent on my blog about accosting the yuppie bitches in the bike lane, but it's literally and figuratively too big to be just a tangent anymore. I've never had a flat stomach, but what was once a little "pooch" or my "panz-ita" is now it's own continental shelf. (Stay the hell away from me with your drills, Dick Cheney!! Oh wait, did you say free liposuction? And you'd pay ME for the trouble...well, hang on.. don't leave without givin' me yer phone number...) My butt was never tiny but I used to think that it was mainly gluteus in that maximus, with a healthy layer of cushion and/or insulation. Now, it's like a melting glacier. Speaking of Vice Presidents, somebody notify Al Gore. Except that my glacier is melting directly into my upper thighs, and causing quite a bit of erosion along the way. Not a pretty sight. And speaking of legs... I used to have them, and be quite proud of them. If I was vain about anything, it was my legs. They used to be toned and muscular, sometimes tanned, and in the summer- get this- I would even SHAVE them. Now- I don't even want to talk about it.
Well, I do, a little. Because I have started doing something about the situation, back in May to be exact. I re-joined the employee wellness center, and started going every damn day, on my "lunch hour." (as if we state wage-slaves actually have one). Cardio stuff roughly 3 times a week, and strength training or weights the other two days. On top of that, since it's gotten warmer I've been biking to work about 3 days a week. It's only 25 minutes each way, but it helps. Anyway since then, my quadraceps HAVE resurfaced and become visible again, underneath that arctic-seal layer of fat.
But no matter, I can SEE them! Even on a cloudy day! This, to me, is awesome. And it gives you an idea of what I've been reduced to, in terms of vanity and sanity. For me now, seeing my quadraceps=happiness.
Pre-baby, I pretty much took my body for granted. Sure I put on a few pounds every winter/holiday season, but they melted away quickly come spring and summer when I was either working outside all the time, or biking and walking everywhere. I didn't deprive myself of the foods I liked, because after a brief flirtation with anorexia at age 14, decided that dieting is one of the quickest paths to mental illness and an early death. Also, I suck at it. Once tried fasting in solidarity with a friend for Yom Kippur- didn't even make it til 5pm, and that was with all the juice and water I could hold. And in my profession, when you're out in the field at least, you're constantly moving, so you're constantly grazing. You'll eat whatever anybody throws at you, especially if it's free. We had M&Ms for lunch once, followed by an entire can of Pringles. It was yummy. I was skinny.
So ix-nay on the iet-day. I love food, I love eating, I think now that I'm an adult I make pretty intelligent, informed choices, so leave me alone.
Exercise has also always been the way I've dealt with emotional stress since I can remember. At first it was just to get the hell out of my family's house for as long as possible and not freeze to death, so I'd take the dog and we'd wander the plains for 3 hours at a time. She chased jackrabbits and prairie dogs, I learned to love the beauty of yucca and prickly pear in the snow, and walking without a particular destination in mind. I still prefer walking to any other form of transportation, even biking.
Then.. in 2005 I became pregnant, as planned, but I put on something like 97 thousand pounds, not as planned. And that with going to the gym at least 3 times a week, doing the prenatal yoga, walking as much as possible, etc. Happily, I lost most of it during the first year of her life what with the torrential, 24-7 breastfeeding and pumping, and no sleep. Then, the DAY she turned one year old, something happened. My body said, "enuf." The nurse-practitioner/midwife who saw me a few months after my re-ballooning told me very matter-of-factly, "oh, you need to sleep." Apparently women's bodies hold onto fat when they/we are in crisis mode. Evolution has taught us that when there is prolonged stress (like not sleeping for a year and providing at least 1,000 calories a day to another human, oh, and working full-time), there is likely to be even more stress to follow, like starvation. The mens, they don't do this so much, but we women hold onto our fat for just such an emergency. Oh, goody. So I'll survive longer than some skinny man in a blizzard (that's sort of a given, anyway). I'm sure I learned that somewhere in my Physical Anthropology 101 class, but I forgot it like everything else (except that all calico cats are female) right after the exam.
This new information sort of made me feel better, and sort of din't. I signed up for a weight-loss challenge at the WellnessCenter which officially started June 23rd, and I'm still at the exact same weight I weighed in at. Which is roughly 30 pounds over what I used to consider "normal" and acceptable.
My other/earlier point though was, the exercise is as much for my mental health as it is physical. Mentally and metabolism-wise, I'm like one of those self-recharging wind-up flashlights. If you don't wind me up, I just plain ol' don't work. And what with my incredibly tedious, boring desk job right now (and for the last 5 years) that has almost no advancement potential and no rewards aside from "if I work hard today maybe I'll only get 20 lashes instead of 30, and maybe I'll be able to buy a bag of groceries this weekend!!!" - yeah, I need some other fucking stimulation or I will slip into a fucking COMA!. Seriously. The other side of that coin is, and this is how it ties into the accosting yuppie bitches thing, (thanks to all of you chirping crickets who actually read it) the more I exercise, the more my rage is effectively managed, the less I'm likely to actually beat the shit out of someone and wind up in jail with a costly lawsuit on my hands. So you see, it's not just for MY health, it's for EVERYONE'S health!
Jesus lurves it when we're all non-selfish like that.