Read Online Half-Assed by Jennette Fulda - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jennette Fulda
Ads: Link
their immune systems. 7 I sometimes asked strangers not to smoke around me, but it wasn’t because I cared about their future visits to the oncology ward. I just didn’t like inhaling the fog of someone’s cigarette smoke. I doubt everyone who told me
fat was unhealthy genuinely cared about my risk for heart disease. If people wanted a better view than what I was providing, they could buy a house in the Hamptons.
I was hesitant to try Jim’s plan, though. My diet prejudice was still in full effect. I believed you could eat healthily, but I was suspicious of anything that came packaged in a book or could be labeled a “fad.” It was the end of 2004 and we were at the peak of the low-carb craze, a time when you could order a double cheeseburger without the bun and the cashier wouldn’t blink. But I didn’t have much left to lose. Actually, I had a lot to lose. That was the problem. I was willing to consider extreme options like dieting.
Yet I was still afraid of being gullible or wrong. I hated being wrong. I didn’t want to try something that would later be shown to be absurd and ineffective. I didn’t want to hear, “You tried the Tapeworm Diet? Did you replace all your brain cells with fat cells?” I was already fat. I didn’t want to be stupid too. I didn’t want to endanger my health either. Ironic, yes, but I didn’t want to trade my obesity problems for crazy dieting problems.
But Jim was thinner and not crazy as far as I knew. He wasn’t eating raw leeches for breakfast. He didn’t consume only blue foods on Fridays. He wasn’t drinking raw eggs in the morning and running fifty miles a day. But as a twenty-year-old he had read that a human male reached his physical peak at twenty-one and muttered, “Oh, crap.” Then he did something about it.
The diet book sat on my desk for a couple of weeks near the end of the year. I decided it would be as pointless to start a diet during the holiday bingeing season as it was to shovel the driveway while it was snowing. Even though I devoured chocolate-covered cherries and sugar cookies during Christmas, I amazingly weighed the same 372 pounds as I had before Thanksgiving. I hadn’t even been exercising.
I read the book before the end of the year. It didn’t tell me exactly what carbohydrates were, but I had a much better picture of how my body processed them. I finally learned why diabetes made you blind and caused your toes to fall off. Mostly I learned about the intricacies of the dance between my food and my body, steps I should have learned years ago but that were never covered in health class.
The new year came. Noisemakers officially sounding off the beginning of the dieting season. On my blog I posted this on January 13, 2005.
Enough.
Oh really, let’s just fucking do this already! Here. Now. No more waiting.
Another in a long line of bold statements. It had many older sisters and cousins. This time it even included profanity. It was different only because this time it was true.
T here are lots of ways to measure weight-loss progress. I took my measurements, but I didn’t know how accurate they were since I never seemed to get the same number twice. My sixty-inch tape measure couldn’t fit all the way around my hips anyway. In high school gym class my coach had demonstrated a method of measuring body fat by using calipers to measure several points on the body. I didn’t know where I could find someone to do that nor did I want a stranger fondling my underarm fat. There are some scales that will estimate your body weight by sending an undetectable electrical pulse through your feet. I couldn’t find one that would weigh people of more than 330 pounds.
I had heard one of the most accurate ways to determine someone’s body fat was to weigh him or her underwater. Fat was buoyant, so you
could calculate your body composition based on the measurements. I was offered the opportunity to be weighed this way as extra credit for a
fat was unhealthy genuinely cared about my risk for heart disease. If people wanted a better view than what I was providing, they could buy a house in the Hamptons.
I was hesitant to try Jim’s plan, though. My diet prejudice was still in full effect. I believed you could eat healthily, but I was suspicious of anything that came packaged in a book or could be labeled a “fad.” It was the end of 2004 and we were at the peak of the low-carb craze, a time when you could order a double cheeseburger without the bun and the cashier wouldn’t blink. But I didn’t have much left to lose. Actually, I had a lot to lose. That was the problem. I was willing to consider extreme options like dieting.
Yet I was still afraid of being gullible or wrong. I hated being wrong. I didn’t want to try something that would later be shown to be absurd and ineffective. I didn’t want to hear, “You tried the Tapeworm Diet? Did you replace all your brain cells with fat cells?” I was already fat. I didn’t want to be stupid too. I didn’t want to endanger my health either. Ironic, yes, but I didn’t want to trade my obesity problems for crazy dieting problems.
But Jim was thinner and not crazy as far as I knew. He wasn’t eating raw leeches for breakfast. He didn’t consume only blue foods on Fridays. He wasn’t drinking raw eggs in the morning and running fifty miles a day. But as a twenty-year-old he had read that a human male reached his physical peak at twenty-one and muttered, “Oh, crap.” Then he did something about it.
The diet book sat on my desk for a couple of weeks near the end of the year. I decided it would be as pointless to start a diet during the holiday bingeing season as it was to shovel the driveway while it was snowing. Even though I devoured chocolate-covered cherries and sugar cookies during Christmas, I amazingly weighed the same 372 pounds as I had before Thanksgiving. I hadn’t even been exercising.
I read the book before the end of the year. It didn’t tell me exactly what carbohydrates were, but I had a much better picture of how my body processed them. I finally learned why diabetes made you blind and caused your toes to fall off. Mostly I learned about the intricacies of the dance between my food and my body, steps I should have learned years ago but that were never covered in health class.
The new year came. Noisemakers officially sounding off the beginning of the dieting season. On my blog I posted this on January 13, 2005.
Enough.
Oh really, let’s just fucking do this already! Here. Now. No more waiting.
Another in a long line of bold statements. It had many older sisters and cousins. This time it even included profanity. It was different only because this time it was true.
T here are lots of ways to measure weight-loss progress. I took my measurements, but I didn’t know how accurate they were since I never seemed to get the same number twice. My sixty-inch tape measure couldn’t fit all the way around my hips anyway. In high school gym class my coach had demonstrated a method of measuring body fat by using calipers to measure several points on the body. I didn’t know where I could find someone to do that nor did I want a stranger fondling my underarm fat. There are some scales that will estimate your body weight by sending an undetectable electrical pulse through your feet. I couldn’t find one that would weigh people of more than 330 pounds.
I had heard one of the most accurate ways to determine someone’s body fat was to weigh him or her underwater. Fat was buoyant, so you
could calculate your body composition based on the measurements. I was offered the opportunity to be weighed this way as extra credit for a
Similar Books
