Quodlibets

Call on me! Call on me! Ooooh oooh oooh!

I had this GREAT idea today while talking to my friend Tim.  He said that he thought I had acquitted myself reasonably well on the football knowledge front last season, in reference to my earlier post.  (Thanks Tim!  I still feel uninformed, but it's nice to know I don't necessarily come off that way.)  And then I asked him about his fantasy football league.  I've been toying with the idea of fantasy football ever since I developed this burning passion for it.  But I don't really want to join an all boys league.  Tim called it a boys' club, and it totally is.  I think I know 4 men that do it, and I think all 4 of their leagues (separate ones) are just men.  Maybe not by design (although 2 of aforementioned men have football crazy significant others), but nonetheless, I'm not really very interesting in a boozy boys' club draft scene.

I joked that I will have to start an all girls' fantasy football league.  And now I totally want to do it.  Tim said there were 10 teams in his league.  10's a good number, but I don't think I know nine women besides me that into football.  I can think of five besides me who might do it, and that includes the above-mentioned significant others of male fantasy footballers.  Argh!  I know it's kind of late to get in the game to think about this, but now I'm so gung-ho about it!  I suppose I'll have to cool my heels until next season--I can try to recruit ladies all season long, and maybe we can have a league next year.  I envision a very fun draft day, and one that would probably kill my fantasy footballer (male) friends.  So, ladies, start thinking about it.  Hell, for all I care, we wouldn't even have to pony up very much money for a prize, because I just want to play for fun.

Is this idea totally cockamamie, or are you girls really out there like I think you are?

Baaaad Blogger

Yeah, I could have blogged on Monday.  I took the day off to recover from the weekend (and boy oh boy was it nice), even though I didn't have nearly as much to recover from as say, Sam did.  Sam went to all three days of Lollapalooza, and that last day was a killer.  I know, because I was there.  I think part of the reason I didn't blog is that I don't feel like I have very much to say about it.  I only saw three bands (Kings of Leon, MMJ, and PJ), and I kind of liked it that way.  I'm not cut out for festivals.  They just don't work for me, as musical events.  Nonetheless, I went, and of course, it was stifling and disgusting on Sunday.  I don't think I was cool once from the moment I walked out the door at 3 until the moment I got home at 10:20.  Some moments were hotter than others, but for the most part, I just felt sweaty and gross and more tired and more tired as the night wore on.  And you know, the music was fine.

Saturday was my 10-year high school reunion, and it was fine.  I saw one of my closer friends for the first time in years--he's a dad now, and that's pretty darn surreal.  I also talked to a few other people who I was glad to talk to, and then, when things started getting fratty, I left.  It wasn't bad, and it's wasn't the best time ever.  I drank some beers, I felt like smoking, I repeated my life story fifty million times.  There were no nametags.  That's kind of weird, isn't it?  I barely recognized most people.  Anyway, it's over, and I suppose there'll be another one in another 10 years.  One night, every ten years?  Worth it.  Plus I got to spend all day Saturday with my mooj, and that's always enjoyable.  We cooked a very nice dinner together, and that alone might have been worth it.  I miss my mom's cooking, I'll tell you what.

Now I'm sitting at my desk, once again killing time.  I've become crossword obsessed even more than I was--I bought a Sunday crossword book, and those f-ers take me hours, and even then, I'm using my librarian skills to ferret out answers from the internet.  You know things are bad, though, because I'm doing crosswords at home.  Before, it was a work-thing.  A killing time thing.  And now, it's a love thing.  I love them.  I don't foresee getting sick of them, either.  The other thing I'm going to start doing (as soon as Sam gets me the requisite supplies) is start studying up on this year's pro football stats.  I'm totally nerdy, and I'm not content anymore to just read Peter King and ESPN the mag's analysis.  Oh no, I need to go all in.  I'm half-way cringing about liking football so much, and and half-way ecstatic that the season's starting very soon.  Last night, I told Sam that we couldn't fly on a Sunday (at some point this fall, we're going to visit his parents in SoCal) or if the Bears were playing MNF, we couldn't fly on a Monday.  He thinks I'm crazy, but I'm serious, too.  I'm not missing any Bears games.  Sunday will be NFL day in the Efro-Mano household.  Sam better get used to it.  Pro Football Prospectus, here I come.  You readers, prepare yourself for even more football talk this coming fall/winter.  I'm boning up, and this year, I'm not going to sound like an idiot when I talk about it.

Back to the crosswords.

"Rethinking Thin"

I was so hesitant to read Rethinking Thin, by Gina Kolata.  I think I'd briefly read a prepub alert about it in Publisher's Weekly, and I think it might have been in the news/blogs for a short while, but I'd never considered reading it.  I even passed it by a few times at the public, thinking I would hate it.  But I gave in a few days ago and checked it out, and then I steeled myself, and when every other book I tried to read sucked, I started it.  I'm so, so glad I did.  I've struggled very much lately with body issues, on the heels of my abandonment wholesale of WW.  I've been feeling guilty daily for what I've been eating, even as I rationally know that I can't ever go back to a steady diet of lean cuisines, egg whites and broccoli, with a kicker of one 100 calorie pack a day.  It's weird, too, because some days I've felt corpulent and bloated and hideous and every bad word you can think of for a fattie.  And other days--well, I've felt gorgeous and sexy and perfectly myself.  And a whole host of other things that go along with that territory. 

Rethinking Thin was good for me, partly because it confirmed my choices.  I'm not saying that this is a book that's about fat acceptance or glorification (because it's not, first of all), but it's a book about the realities of diets, and the realities of fat.  It's confirmed for me, too, what I've suspected for a long time--that no matter how much I eat or don't eat, I'm never going to fall within society's definition of acceptable weight.  Even if I went back to that egg and broccoli diet (effectively starving myself), I don't believe my body would let go of all the weight.  And I think that this book, medically, is saying that's not odd.  That this is the case with many, many overweight people.  The book barely dips its toe into all the medical studies that have been done about obesity or that are being done right now about obesity, but it gives you an overview.  And it's a very illuminating overview.  I can't even begin to explain all the results, but the studies seem to prove (at least to my untrained eye) that these issues aren't issues of willpower, or personal failure.  These are issues of complex interactions between hormones and nerves, between our bodies and our minds, and these, in some cases, are genetic issues.  I'm not saying I'm one of those people who doesn't produce leptin (I mean, clearly that's not the case.).  But why is it that I never feel full for more than 30 min, even after eating what is clearly enough food?  Why am I always hungry? 

I never did think it was because my brain was tricking my stomach, not mentally.  I never thought it was because there was something wrong with me mentally.  I don't stress eat (and in fact rarely can bring myself to eat when very stressed and upset), and I don't self-medicate with food, not really.  I'm just always hungry.  Those physical aches that are hunger pains?  I live with them nearly constantly, and did all the way through the months of WW diet.  It's not normal, but it's not in my head, either.  I'm hungry when I wake up, and then I'm hungry about a half hour to an hour after breakfast.  And then I'm hungry about an hour after lunch and that lasts until dinner.  Then, an hour after that, I'm hungry again.  Take it from me--I don't eat every time I'm hungry, because if I did, I'd weight A LOT more.  I do have an iron sense of willpower in that sense (and I do have some willpower: I gave up smoking and have been effectively done with it for two years?  Three?, and can easily choose to have one cigarette every six months if I want.  No issues.  I also keep to a rigid sleep schedule that I KNOW works for me, and am so insane about it that I even kept to it in Italy, on vacation.); I can keep myself from snacking if I really want to.  I'm not saying I'm a pleasant person to be around at 4:30 pm if I haven't snacked, but I can absolutely abstain from eating then if I want to.  It's just that there are gnawing hunger pains and medusa-like mental wrecks if I do so.

I'm not trying to make excuses for being fat.  Except that I kind of am, because I really don't think being fat is the kind of thing that you should be forced to make excuses for.  Does that make sense?  At the end of the book, the author describes a conversation with a friend:

"I told a skinny acquaintance about the Penn dieters I had been following and the sad, but predictable, outcome of their attempts to lose weight.  'Did they really, really try?' he asked.  I drew in my breath.  It was like a slap.  'Yes, of course they really, really tried,' I said.  Of course, of course.  How could they have tried any harder?"

Isn't this it?  Isn't this the attitude that most of America has about us, the fat people?  If you only tried harder, ate less, exercised more.  If you only didn't FAIL so much, then you'd be just like us, the pretty ones.  The acceptable ones.  I just...I don't think that's true, not anymore.  Maybe I did at one time, I don't know.  Maybe I thought that I was fat because I was morally and mentally weak.  It's hard to feel good about yourself when you feel so inferior to people, and not just physically.  It's very hard to love a self that you're convinced no one else can love.  I know I've said this before, but I mean it even more vehemently now: I'm going to stop beating myself up about this stuff.  I have to.  I'm no longer convinced that if I were a better person I'd be skinny.  I'm no longer sure that other people in my situation would be strong enough to live through a lifetime of egg whites and broccoli.  And I'm not sure that there's much that would help me lose weight.  Even a life that left me hungry for real food, all the time, constantly.  Even a life that took up all the space in my brain, leaving me no time to think about anything except food.

There's no answers in this book, either, except for one: sometimes, you are who you are.  Sometimes all the effort in the world will produce very few changes.  And maybe, just maybe, that's ok.  The jury's still out, health-wise.  Maybe there's a glimmer of hope in that.  I don't know.  I don't think there's any sort of hope that society will start treating fat people better, and I don't think all the studies in the world showing it isn't about health will change things, either.  Prejudiced people cling to that myth so hard, so hard, because if it wasn't there, they'd have to admit that they just find it ugly.  And I'm not sure you can change that, not ever.  We've bred that repulsion into ourselves.  But me?  I find peace in the idea that there may be absolutely nothing wrong with me (and remember that doctor's appointment years ago where they couldn't believe that my ECG [EKG, can't remember which.  The heart one.] was so good?  Because I'm fat?  Yeah.  That.), and that I may just be this (beautiful) person forever and ever.  If you're the kind of person who looks at me and can't see that?  Well, I guess...look away.  And leave me alone.  And go read Rethinking Thin.