Salon.com > Weight Gain

All the weight I didn’t lose

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone knows this trick: You hold the camera above your face, stretch your neck and shoot. I take my own picture this way. You see my heart-shaped face, my cutely assertive chin, and my dark brown eyes. Sometimes I peer insouciantly over the rims of my glasses. You don't see the double chin or the pudgy roundness of my face. You don't see my body, apart from the cleavage I occasionally throw in. Pictures make me thinner than I am, or will ever likely be. That angle slices away more pounds than my surgeons, and that's saying a lot.

I am the “after” side of surgery, having lost more than 250 pounds. No one gets this, at least not without an explanation, because I still weigh over 200 pounds, and the weight loss fable is supposed to end when you're thin, not when you're merely “an average fat American.” I still wonder if I should get more surgery. I have so many pieces of clothing that fit, but that I reject because they cling in one place wrong. That particular place is my right thigh and calf, which are obviously larger than the left. (I call it my freak leg.) Doctors have no real explanation, but the general theory is that a fall I suffered when I weighed 600 pounds actually broke off a chunk of fat in my calf. That place just above my knee seems swollen, and is the reason I can't wear skirts anywhere close to above the knee. If jeans stick to the freak leg, I toss them into the back of the closet and try another pair.

Sexy dresses that barely fit

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:30:00 +0000

Over the past two years, I’ve lost more than a hundred pounds. There’s nothing impressive about this feat — it’s not as if I’ve lost the hundred-plus pounds sensibly, sequentially and permanently. Rather, I’ve lost the same five pounds about 20 different times through a series of dubious dietary stunts.

Per the established metrics of weight-to-height ratio and body mass index, I’m not what a medical professional would call exceedingly overweight — though Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the average “thinspiration” Pinterest page would post dissenting opinion. Essentially, I’m your garden-variety mesomorph who doesn’t eat to live but, rather, who lives to eat her feelings.

What consumes me, urging me to mindlessly consume? Usually nothing special — like so many other people, I nosh my way through shame and regret about the past and anxiety about the future. But 2011 and 2012 were exceptional — annus horribilis, times two: I got dragged off by a riptide of depression that I feared might kill me; one of my sisters learned she had lupus; one of my in-laws was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer; my mother’s COPD landed her in the hospital, and my beloved bachelor uncle fell ill under conditions too horrible to describe and died eight months later. It was not a good couple of years for illusions of familial immortality. No.

Why the “war on fat” is a scam to peddle drugs

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 20:19:00 +0000

For many years now, I’ve been talking to Dr. X about weight and health. Dr. X, who is one of the nation’s most distinguished medical researchers, is employed by the federal government, and isn’t allowed to make on-the-record comments regarding government health policy without getting those comments cleared first by Dr. X’s administrative superiors.

Dr. X has a theory about the government’s anti-fat crusade, which is that the public health establishment has been duped by Big Pharma into becoming unknowing participants in the following money-making venture:

Step 1: Convince Americans that not being thin is a disease that needs to be cured.

Step 2: Encourage the government to implement public health programs that, through lifestyle interventions, will purportedly make people thinner, and, by hypothesis, healthier.

Step 3: Document the complete failure of these programs in the medical literature.

Step 4: Get the government to approve a host of new diet drugs, since it’s now been demonstrated that lifestyle interventions don’t do anything to help reverse this deadly epidemic.

Step 5: Profit!

Study: Sleep loss could cause weight gain

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:15:00 +0000

Getting seven to eight solid hours of sleep each night might seem an almost impossible luxury to many people. But not getting enough sleep is known to impair mental function and increase the risk for heart disease, among other ill effects. Accumulating evidence also suggests that even short-term, partial sleep deprivation could pave the way for weight gain and other negative metabolic consequences.

Can technology save us from obesity?

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 15:29:00 +0000

SAN ANTONIO, Texas—So much of our information from—and interaction with—the world is now mediated by computers, cell phones and tablets that health experts have been practically running themselves ragged trying to find ways to use these conduits to help people make healthier choices.

Great success stories have come out of parts of the developing world, where cell phones have been used to improve maternal and infant care and help people adhere to medication guidelines. But in the U.S., attempts using mobile and online technology to tackle basic health problems, such as obesity, have largely been underwhelming, especially among the tech-savvy younger set.