Saddlebags and Inner Thigh Blobs

I have saddlebags. You know, those accretions of fat that hang on to the outside of the upper thigh. Known as "unsightly." Known as "D-Sgusting" with a capital D.

I tried to find a  Google image that would give you some idea of what mine look like. Can you say unsuccessful? There are no saddlebags on all of Google that compare with mine. Truth be told, I have rarely seen any as gigantic, and I don't suppose those ladies go around capturing images of theirs any more than I do.

Saddlebags are shameful. Mostly because not all fat people have them. You can be enormously fat and have nary a saddlebag. This is why fat women say, "I'm so fat! I am 265 pounds and wear a size 20 pant!" La-di-effing-da, lady. I'm only 220, but, because of my mutant upper thighs--which are composed not only of regular fat, but of outer blubber (the saddlebags) and amassed inner blubber (the titular inner thigh blobs), I wear a size 24.

Yep, this means that in order to get enough denim to accommodate my fat butt, I have this giant waist band that has nothing in common with my actual waist, which is, frankly, tiny in comparison to places south of it.

The Inner Thigh Blobs have been discussed in an earlier post, with reference to friction burns and pantyhose.

I spoke with a plastic surgeon about the whole problem. She said, "When you have maintained your desired weight for six months, we can do the reduction." I had said nothing about wanting to lose weight. I went in merely to consult with her, and the first thing out of her mouth is, "lose weight first." Well, no kidding, but I have to get down to my desired weight before getting the baggage off? Good luck to me on that.

I am sure I will go to my grave with saddlebags and inner thigh blobs, which, by the way, grow ever more horrid. The saddlebags have been affected by gravity after so many years, so they sort of hang down a little, making a small crease. I have to lift the saddlebag to dry the crease after bathing. Of course, these are not the only things I have to literally pick up and move around in order to dry myself off.

The inner thigh blobs are more and more gross as well. They have always been with me. In fact, in high school (when I was 130 or 140 at most), I used the saddlebags and inner thigh blobs as a short-skirt standard. If my skirt covered these areas, it was long enough to meet the school dress code. Even now, I use a similar standard--if my shirt covers the bulges, it's long enough, and I can go around town in the false belief that the upper thigh fat deposits are not as noticeable as they would be were I to, say, tuck my shirt into tight pants.

My surgeon charges $3,000 per "area." An area includes both sides of the body, so it would cost me $3,000 to reduce the outer bulges and another $3,000 to reduce the inner blobs. Of course, if you look at pre- and post-op pictures of saddlebag reduction surgery, there isn't much difference between the pictures. Even after spending $6,000 and six months in support garments, my thighs would probably still rub together. My luck, I'd probably end up with uni-thigh, like that poor woman who ended up with the Uni-Boob after have some breast surgery.

Down With Comfort Zones

Fine. I have a meeting this week with a bunch of people I've never met. Truth is, it's a support group for FATTIES LIKE ME. We're going to talk about our Relationship To Food (constant, loving) and wonder aloud how that plays into all our other relationships.

So, now that you've encouraged me, I'm going to go to this meeting, not in jeans and a frumpy top, but ALL DRESSED UP, including make-up and jewelry!!! I won't wear heels, because I can't walk in them, but I will definitely wear a dress and nice flats. AND SPANX, to show that I am not totally unselfaware.

The thing about me and SPANX is that when I walk, it makes that woosh-woosh sound of "HEY, YOUR THIGHS RUB TOGETHER!"

Fat story about thighs rubbing together: I went to private schools where we were required to wear pantyhose, and if you walk around in pantyhose day after day (let's say you don't have very many pairs, so you have to wash and reuse them for over a week, or until they die of runs), and your thighs are rubbing together hour after hour, THEY WEAR OUT at the inner thigh, but you still have to walk around.

So now your thighs are rubbing together and there's these blobs of inner-thigh fat that are bulging out of the holes in the pantyhose and (I don't mean to be overly graphic but....) friction, erosion, whatever, you can get very painful friction burns, which makes you walk funny, because you are in an inner hell of pain and what are you supposed to do about it? You can't take your pantyhose off, because they are part of the dress code, and you can't put gauze or tissue there because it will still rub together and sort of flake off as you walk, leaving a damning trail. So you just live in pain and agony and try to walk like you're not dying and hope you don't actually start to drip blood, because you know what THAT will look like.

To this day, I won't go to the mall or take any long walks if I'm wearing a dress, because this problem has not magically gone away, and pantyhose are not required. Fat thighs that rub together will eventually cause friction burns, and these hurt really really badly, plus then you have sores on the inside of your thigh, and who wants to have to explain that to a skinny husband whose thighs couldn't touch each other if he were put in some kind of thigh vice? So, if you see me around, and I'm wearing pants, fine, I'll go on a walk with you. If I'm wearing a dress, nope. Not happening. I'll say, "Sorry, I have a headache," or "Sorry, I'm a fat, lazy bum who never takes walks," but the truth is, if I go walking, my giant thighs will rub each other to death and I'll have sores.

Nor can you put bandages on sores like these to protect them from future walking, because (as above), when you walk, the bandages will just friction off.

Anyway, I'll be wearing a DRESS to the FATSO SUPPORT GROUP ("and why do you think you had french fries tonight when you know they are bad for you?"), therefore I will not be able to walk around the mall on my way home.

Dear Olivia

I just read how my talk of jewelry and clothes made you feel and your own feelings about all of that.  I hope you'll keep the post just as it is. I could feel exactly how you were feeling. And I do feel exactly how you feel about all of that. I have a closet FULL of clothes. SO MANY. I only wear a handful of my "safe" clothes. The others cling weird, or hit a weird spot so the bottom of my stomach bulge is all accentuated, and even if something does fit decently it still looks to me like I'm some ugly bumpkin trying to make myself into something I'm not (Worth It). It's a very bizarre thing to be realizing the extent of how truly sick I am in my head over areas related to my weight (all areas, basically?) and examine these issues and see patterns in them and discover such truths about them, but then to be actively affected by them still. It'd be nice to be able to just snap out of it once you understand how destructive something is and why it works the way it does. It's like if you kept stabbing yourself over and over and then were like, "Oh, duh, this is hurting me and all I have to do is stop making this stabby motion and it'll stop? Okay, well, I'm going to go ahead and get back to stabbing now or maybe I'll stop for a week or two, but then I'll go back to the stabbing." Okay, so cake and fried foods are more enjoyable than being stabbed, but still, you get my point. Anyway, do you want to play a game where we each make it a point to go out in public at least one time this week in makeup, jewelry, and something we normally wouldn't wear? If you're in, tell me in the comments! Then we'll talk about how it felt. Let's do it in the spirit of owning who we are, ending the shame, and stepping outside of our old habits. Yeah?

Love,      

Lilly

Olivia: yeah about the jewelry and clothes

I feel the same way. I pretty much feel that I'm not "womanly enough" to wear jewelry. I have also felt that because I'm not womanly enough (in any area, because I'm a fat fat fatty) that it doesn't matter how I dress. I can show cleavage--who cares! I'm not attractive and no one will notice or care if I'm showing miles of boob.

I've always felt this way--that not only does it not matter what I wear, but that if I do dress up, put together an outfit, try to be attractive, I will instantly be outed as an IMPOSTER WOMAN. Someone who wants to be an attractive woman, but who ISN'T, because she's Fat, capital F. So, I didn't and don't try.

The awful thing is now I look back at that poor young woman--me in the old pictures--and I think, you were so cute. You should have tried to look prettier. No, to be beautiful. Fat girls get stuck in the "you're so cute" zone, they forget (or, like me, never realize) that they are beautiful.

I still don't realize this. I still feel the same way: trying to be attractive is a fraud, doesn't work anyway, why try. Jewelry is for real women. Even make-up. Even lipstick. For a very very long time, I just didn't, and even now I only wear make-up rarely. It's for women, and I'm somehow not in that group, for all my boobs and hips and chromosomes, and stretchmarks from childbirth . . .

So I basically hate everyone who told me I was fat. Because I wasn't. Until you kept on and on and on about a few extra pounds until I freaked out about them and started dieting and fasting and freak-show yo-yo-ing and emotional eating and yep, finally, I fulfilled your prophecy and got fat. And now I'm fat. Happy? Now, if you're my mother, you can hand me the Plus Size catalog and say, "I got this, but I don't wear these sizes, so I thought of you." Or, "I found this enormous sweatshirt at a yard sale, and I thought of you."

Lily, sorry this is rough-drafty and angsty, but your jewelry post just Set. Me. Off. and made me hate people I should love because they should have loved me, but they didn't. Or they thought rude criticism counted as loving. FYI, it doesn't.

Is it possible for a woman in her SIXTH DECADE to finally and really see herself as an attractive woman, as someone who deserves to be loved, as someone who can be pretty. I see women in their fifties who are lovely. They are all thin. I see fat women who wear jewelry and make-up and put-together outfits and they don't look ridiculous, though I think I look ridiculous when I do that. They look good. They certainly look better than the trailer-trash style (jeans/t-shirts) I throw on my gross fat self.

Eighteen Inches

I have so many necklaces. For years I've picked them up whenever I find a super cute one. I don't wear necklaces though. They're for "one day" when I'm not so fat and can adorn myself without feeling like I'm trying do the whole (faux) silk purse from a sow's ear thing. Besides feeling like people would pity me for trying to pretty up this mess there is also the fact that jewelry looks ridiculous on me. I'll find something really cute that would go perfect with some outfit and then I'll try it all on and I'll look so unnatural and forced and weird that I just can't imagine going out in public. I have worn a few little pendant necklaces with sentimental value, always on very long chains because short chains (which are always so much shorter than they're meant to look on my fat neck) make me look like I'm some giant monster trying on human jewelry. Dear lord. I know how horrible I am to myself. I'm only trying to be completely honest and these are the things I think. I mean, I know I should be kinder to myself, but when we are all alone in our thoughts and all the bullshit is pushed aside, when you're not having to worry about hurting someone's feelings or not coming across as a bitch, there is truth and this is truth. Jewelry looks weird on me because of my size. Bracelets only accentuate the fatness of my arms, rings on these sausage fingers look silly, anything more than studs looks like I'm trying too hard and the rest of the package is too lacking to be doing big earrings, for goodness' sake. And the exact same thing happens with clothes - everything looks awkward and awful and so it sits unused just like all my damn costume jewelry. I know what's going on in my head is not healthy. I don't know how to increase my self-worth except for to increase my value in my own eyes. I don't know any better way than to start being a better person who does the things she believes in (like eating a lot of whole plant foods to nurture the body and not a lot of shit food). The other day I put on a little star pendant I got for Christmas many years ago and I put it on a short chain because when it comes to other people, I've decided I'm tired of caring what other people think. I'm too old to keep caring. Maybe after I have regained the respect of myself I can start worrying about other people. In the meantime I want to stop waiting for "one day" when everything is perfect because I'll be thin and just enjoy now, just as I am (but hopefully constantly working towards a better me). I want to wear my jewelry even if I look awful. Let them go home to their families and tell them about the hideous beast in Target who dared to wear big old hoop earrings and a funky necklace while also being hefty.

-Lilly

Eating All the Time

The truth is, I have to always be chewing something. I chew gum, I eat ice. I drink diet soda. I drink coffee. I do as much non-caloric eating as I can so I don’t become a 300-pound woman. Sugar-free jello is a great space-filler. But it’s not necessarily about emptiness.
I always thought this urge to always have something in my mouth to be the result of being told to stop eating. “You don’t want that much, do you?” or “Are you really going to eat that?”
This compulsion needs to be fixed before I go further with gastric bypass surgery. What would be the use if I just can’t stop putting things into my mouth?

-Olivia

The Gigi Factor

My best friend in high school (let’s call her Gigi!) was super thin and had all kinds of other wonderful traits about her. She really enjoyed pushing the limits and often wore very little clothes. At fifteen. In the late 80’s. She was pretty punk rock. You can imagine how much attention she garnered in our little town. As awesome as she was in so many ways hardly anyone bothered to know, though, because they were so hung up on her extreme body confidence. The way girls HATED her because of her body and the way she showed it! And then there were the guys (pretty much any and every man and boy) that would fall all over themselves to talk to her. But that was only when she was around. Behind her back men would say the filthiest things about her, which I get, it’s what guys do, but that’s all they’d say. They wouldn’t talk about her witty jokes or great taste in music or any of the other things that made ME want be friends with her – it seemed to always be something filthy or hateful and mean. All the wonderful things about her seemed to be negated in the majority’s eyes by her body and their reactions to how she displayed it. So what got fed into my brain as an impressionable teen from all of this is that being sexy makes you a joke and forces guys to no longer see you as a real person. And what I’ve learned in the years since then hasn’t changed that general impression. What’s been added is the knowledge that, even when a woman IS respected, if she’s even moderately pretty and has a nice body they may be extolling her other virtues, but there are dirty thoughts going on about her in male minds. I’m no prude. I don’t mind being an object of desire and I understand that many women enjoy that attention and find it flattering. It’s totally natural! But I’ve got issues. The thought of ­ inspiring dirty thoughts in random friends and strangers freaks me out. That’s not hyperbole; I am thinking right now of walking down the street and men leering and I can’t stop myself from shuddering and feeling queasy. Does being fat allow me to be more in control of who’s attracted to me? Does my extra layer of fat give me an extra layer of protection from creeps and predators? I’ve concluded that some part of me must think so.

Gigi and I remained best friends through our twenties, but she was pretty toxic. She was always saying shitty things about my flaws, I mean really MEAN things, but it was in joke form so that made it okay. She would literally cluck her tongue and make a little frowny face at my imperfections. How does that not mess with your head when your beautiful best friend acts like she pities you and you know that you’re going to be the butt of some joke at some point any time you get together? I’m kind of disgusted that I didn’t end my friendship with her sooner, but self-respect has never been my strong suit. I did end it, though, and thirteen years later I am still confident I did the right thing. The thought of having a half-dressed best friend hanging around making me feel like shit all the time now that I’m all old and bitter just makes me want to puke. I’d probably have ended up punching her if we’d stayed friends. So, that’s one little peek at one little contributor to my fat psychosis. There’s plenty more where that came from so stay tuned!

-Lily

EDIT: I read this post to my husband, who knows that I’m trying to blog through some feelings about my weight (although not exactly where). His reaction? “I didn’t realize Gigi affected you like that. Don’t let that bitch affect whether or not you’re fit. Don’t let her…” Make me feel like less of a woman? Continue to affect how I feel about myself? Allow how people reacted to her oversexualized dress to make me so cynical? Don’t let her cruelty hurt me any more? No. “Don’t let her ruin it for ME.” Because the tragedy here is not how my self-worth and worldview have been affected, but that The Husband doesn’t have a thin wife. Way to reinforce the ever-present belief that nothing is more important than NOT being fat.

Gastric Bypass

I’ve been considering gastric bypass surgery seriously for about three years. For the past eight months, I’ve been jumping through the necessary hoops.
The necessary hoops include the information meeting, the meet-the-surgeon meeting, the support group meeting. I lost the 12 pounds the surgeon required me to lose. Then I met with the psychiatrist to see whether I was mentally and emotionally stable enough to have the surgery and succeed at the weight loss. I’m ready to go. I just need to schedule a surgery date.
Now, let’s be honest here. Gastric bypass surgery is nothing more than surgically-enforced portion control. It’s the surgical removal of 90% of a perfectly healthy, optimally-operating organ because the patient can’t keep her big mouth shut.
Sure, it works, although the literature they give you is quick to point out that you’ll lose about half of what you want to lose, and then you’ll gain half of that back. Math has never been my strong suit, but this works out (trust me) to a sorta-kinda promise that you will probably lose about 25% of what you fantasized you would lose.
So, utopianly, I’d like to lose 100 pounds. Given the above math, I’ll eventually go from 220 to 170 and then gain back up to 195. That makes no sense whatever. But let’s just say I was able to lose and keep off the 100 pounds. Let’s just say I could live the rest of my life at 120 pounds. Wouldn’t that be the greatest thing in the history of the entire world?
What I wouldn’t give for that!
It gets better: the whole thing is free to me. It’s all covered by our health insurance. I wouldn’t have to pay a nickel.
Even better—I’m so on track with this that I could schedule my surgery before the end of 2012. I could be thin by next summer. Really thin. After all these years—these decades—of hoping and trying and praying and working and depriving myself, I could be thin.
That kind of thin—that 120 pounds thin—is something I have not been since one freakish summer starvation diet in college. I was thin for about six weeks. To get there again, to be thin for real would be amazing. Would be life-affirming. I don’t know if such a thing can be overstated. Thin people won’t understand this, but every fatty does: to be thin is something we would do almost anything to achieve.
And yet, I don’t think I will do it. It seems somehow wrong to cut out a perfectly good organ (and yet I made my husband have a perfectly healthy function disabled a few years ago). It seems like giving up. It seems weak—like I should be able to lose this weight on my own—with my own effort, through my own vigilant self-control.
Or is it that I so identify as a fat person that this “easy fix” would somehow invalidate me?
I’ve jumped through the hoops. I can schedule the surgery. I can be thin by spring. I could go to Hawaii next summer and not be the fat one on the beach. My boys could go to their sports activities and not have kids say, “Why is your mom so fat?” I could go through my day unashamed, not worried that people are disgusted. I could feel pretty.  
It’s entirely my choice. I just have to make the call. I don’t know what to do.

-Olivia

Junior High Angst

I want to be thorough as I discuss my way through my weight issues, and I think we can all agree that junior high looms large in any discussion of body consciousness.
Body/fat issues that stand out to me about this long-ago time (and yet no so long ago, is it? How simple to suddenly be there and feel that humiliation…) are these: my knee-socks keep falling down. My clothes from last year don’t fit. I blamed these phenomena on my being fat. The truth is, I needed new clothes. I needed soft knee-socks that stayed up, not those thin nylon excuses for socks that slid down constantly, that didn’t stay up unless I secured them with rubber bands, and even then, not always. I needed new tops that didn’t pull across my growing breasts. I needed bras. My mother had a rule: no bra until you can hold a pencil under your breast. What a stupid thing to say. At the very latest, a girl needs a bra when she first asks this: “When can I have a bra?” The answer is “now.” Because having a bra is not about being physically mature enough to fill one out—it’s about the fact that everyone else is wearing one…and they know you aren’t.
Junior high is bad for everyone—I know that. And everyone feels awkward and body-conscious at that time because everyone’s body is undergoing massive changes. How nice for those other children who went home to, “Don’t worry.  You’re beautiful. Let’s get you some new socks.” I went home to, “Here’s fat Olivia.”
My mother again: at 12, my mother said, “You weigh 125. You should never be more than 125.”
In eighth grade (at 125), I fasted for the first time. I went forty-eight hours without food. It wasn’t the last time. It wasn’t the worst time.
I fasted because there was a book in the house called Fasting: The Ultimate Diet. If you’re 12 and at the utter limit of what you should weigh (ever!), you definitely want the ultimate diet. The author was a pastor who fasted for spiritual reasons, but mentioned that he lost 20 pounds on a two-week fast. After all, if Jesus could fast for forty days and forty nights, you should be able to do a week or two! Twenty pounds would have put me at 105, almost the holy grail of 99, don’tcha know. I fainted in class. Not awesome.
Note to junior highers: fasting is not a plan. At 12 or any other age. Fasting is for religious purposes, or humanitarian purposes or whatever other purposes. It is not for losing weight. Fasting will make you fat, because the moment—the very moment—you break your fast by eating that apple, you will not be able to stop your body from eating until it is satisfied.
Your body wants to be loved not hated, nurtured not deprived. I’m just now thinking about that.

-Olivia

Hi, I'm Lily Olé

I grew up in a fat family with a (very) fat mom, fat dad, fat aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins. Most of us were good, old, American FAT – twenty to fifty pounds heavier than we ought to have been. Although I was always bigger (fatter and taller) than most girls in my class, at puberty, I started to really balloon up. I have had this gut of mine since I was about thirteen and the thick thighs and wide butt, too. Chubby at thirteen can be cute, but the older I got the fatter I got and now I’m forty and there’s nothing cute about it. My fat, disgusting body has been the source of extreme self-loathing almost my entire life. It’s so frustrating to be so hugely impacted in so many areas of your life by an issue that you haven’t been able to overcome in decades and how depressing to know that all it takes is to control your diet and you can’t do that one thing. With all I’ve accomplished in my life and I can’t get a handle on this one thing? How do I spend time every single day feeling shitty about myself, being nearly CONSTANTLY and painfully aware of my fatness in practically everything I do, and not have just FIXED my weight problem by now? It’s maddening! Well, I’m at a point in my life where I there is no going back so I may as well go forward. Becoming vegan six years ago set me on a path where I’ve learned a lot about nutrition. I understand the science of my body enough now to know how I got here and what it’s going to take to finally live healthfully. And I’m starting to understand how the things I’ve done and the things that have happened to me (some of them pretty awful) have all worked to help keep me fat. I’m hoping that sorting it all out here will be the thing to motivate me, but also…release me. Even if I stay fat forever I just want to stop hating myself. I want to look in the mirror and not think terrible things to myself.  I want to forgive myself for all these years of torment and stop living with shame in everything that I do. I’m ready to open up and L E T   I T   G O. I’m ready to love myself.

Introducing Olivia

I’ve been blogging for a while now, but always about something else, like books or movies or politics…never about myself. Never about my struggle—my lifelong struggle—with my weight.
It started when I was eight years old. My mother was excited about a new book she had purchased, The Diet Revolution by Robert Atkins. Having fought against overweight all her life, she must have wanted to save me the struggle—you know, get a handle on it early, before it was a problem. Nip it in the bud.
But what happened was this: at 8, I learned that meat was good and fruits and veggies were bad. I learned—at 8—that my mother thought I was fat and that oranges were a sin. Can you write a better recipe for body-angst?
That was the genesis of my body/weight consciousness. I dieted for the next four decades on-and-off, mostly on. I did what probably everyone reading this has done—been “good” and lost weight, been “bad” and gained it back plus some.
About a year ago, I became a vegan. This happened instantly—as powerfully as a religious conversion—because a friend (my co-blogger here) kept on and on and on about vegan living until I finally heard her. She sent me some books. I read them, and I was on board. In one frantic half-hour, my kitchen was cleansed of all animal products, from the meat in the freezer through the milk and cheese and eggs, and down through the boxed mac-and-cheese in the pantry. I never looked back.
But I was still fat. I am still fat. So, I’ve decided to blog my thoughts, feelings, struggles, and victories here—out loud—to find whether this kind of public catharsis and airing of long-kept secret hurts will be beneficial to my health.
If there is a way to losing weight in a healthy, longterm way, catharsis is certainly part of that. Vulnerability is certainly key. Speaking truth is certainly required.