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No one knows I'm doing this. It's funny, even though I don't qualify for regular insurance and even though I'm clearly obese no one would suspect that I, the quietly growing mushroom in the corner, would one day get on a flight to Mexico to have my stomach cut out. Maybe this is common for wealthy or extremely confident people. I read all the time about movie stars and other sparkly people jetting off to Rome or Cancun -- or what is it these days? Cabo San Lucas with only a bikini and a couple of syringes in a Prada bag but for me this is one gutsy, desperate, expensive, slightly terrifying thing I'm doing. I am not a good flyer. I am a bad flyer. When I get on an airplane I instantly begin to calculate the strength and the agility of the people around me to gauge whether they would be saveable or not if we rocketed into the ocean and it was up to me to get their infirm asses up to the surface and home to their yorkie, Funyons. I usually drink a lot on a flight but this will not be allowed eleven days from now because, as I mentioned, I will be having my stomach cut out the next day. I was just reading an article in the New York Times about the search for an incisionless solution to obesity. They're not having much luck. The fact is that even though twenty percent of people in the US would qualify for surgery, a number that's growing each year, no one's got much more of an answer than to cut your stomach out. I used to think there was some kind of special thing I was not personally doing and once I discovered it I would find myself in an instant size eight, but now I don't think so. I think consumer culture is trying to kill us. The problem is that as food gets cheaper to produce and there are more people on the planet, the quality of it all tanks. There are these places in the US called food deserts where you can't find a leaf of lettuce to save your life but Little Debbie, Hostess and Aunt Jemina are smiling from every shelf like spokesmodels for the apocalypse. I'm five ten and I weigh about 280. Seven years ago I went on the Atkins diet and lost all the weight: I zipped around in teen section jeans from Target and fell in love with a guy who didn't understand what it was taking me, what it had taken me to get to that point. He was a food nazi and a semi-vegetarian and he kept telling me everything I did was "unhealthy". I would work out an hour and a half a day, he told me I wasn't doing enough cardio. He would actually get redfaced over this stuff. His thing was, he was born naturally thin and he really paid very little attention to what he was supposed to be doing or eating, because being naturally thin, he was naturally healthy. I had to work at it. So he would go to work and graze from the Estrogen Bar set out by the office ladies and then come home and want to go out to eat. He loved restaurants.I would have to diet like crazy to keep up with this, and it finally got to the point where I would go off by myself, binge for a couple weeks, then spend the next couple weeks starving myself, and then reappear again, thin as ever. By the time we broke up I weighed about 240, up from a very happy 150 when we first met. During the breakup process, I put on forty more pounds. It was easy, it was instanteous. So for a while I gave up on the whole thing. I mean, how much heartbreak do you need to pack into an issue before you just check out and go for the pasta? I just kept buying bigger and bigger clothes. I didn't care, no one was ever going to love me again and I was now over 40. If I lived in the old country I could put on black robes and a veil and make everybody in the village dumplings every day. And then I realized something kind of odd. The reason we really broke up was because I was too fat for him already, when we met. I wasn't perfect then. I was a blank, doofus of an in-love slate to be improved upon, screamed and tantrummed at and *nothing* in the world would ever make me loveable enough for him. You really have to ask yourself in these moments if you want to live or die, because I had been almost intentionally, systematically destroying myself for a couple of years. But I didn't have the heart for another diet. Atkins wasn't working the way it had for one thing and my life and my body had changed in the past seven years. I had started smoking again. Seven years ago people were saying my god you're so thin how are you doing this you look like a different person just beautiful where is the rest of you? I'm ashamed I'm all the way back where I was then. I don't like to go out where people can see me and compare my old self to my new self. I hate the whole thing. For a while I just decided to be fat. I would walk around asking myself, am I loveable this way? Am I really disqualified from society because of a hundred pounds? It's still a good question, right? Then for a while I tried to do a Geneen Roth thing and "just eat normally". The problem is, for me, eating normally means I gain forty pounds in six months. It would take a year to get back there if I got there at all. I need help, that's just all there is to it. I am not going to count, measure, starve, obsess, and do all that, live on the edge of anxiety all the time worried that I'll somehow destroy my life if i have a piece of cake, only to gain it *all* back anyway in a moment of weakness. There has to be a better way. I really hope this is the way. I'm so sick of this now. It's enough already.

I had a conversation with my cousin last night and she said something very strange to me.... "Bren, don't change who you are when you are thin." I thought... what an odd thing to have someone say to you. So we discussed it and I understood what she meant more. She said, some people trade one addiction for another... Then she talked about a friend of her's whose sister would become indignant if someone mentioned how great she looked after losing weight. Then you have the ones who become better than everyone else And worse yet, the floozies, who don't know how to handle attention without doing it on their backs. And lasty, I read a post about someone who was sick of people asking how much weight they had lost, on this here weight loss forum... and all the comments that followed. And it made me think of the bigger picture. The truth is, we live in a world that is obsessed by a persons physical appearance, and the amount of pure hate and prejudice heaped on people who are fat is immeasurable. I myself live in a ridiculously prejudice part of the country. Cowboys with stickers on their trucks of a boy pissing on fat chicks. You name it. The ridicule is endless. Getting jobs, being taken seriously by doctors, even enjoying a night out with a meal has been difficult. I've endured so much hate in my life. But now as with then I prefer to take the high road. My surgery and my weight loss haven't been advertised. But if people notice and say something to me, I am certainly not going to take offense. Rather it is an opportunity to educate people in some fashion or another. To connect with people. If people notice and ask questions, you don't have to be a nasty person. Because the first person you should be doing this for is YOURSELF! It's not anyone's business if I lose or don't lose, but they will notice, and they will ask. Being honest with even strangers can change their way of thinking. How many times has someone asked you... "How are you?". How many times do you think they really meant it to hear the real answer? Many years ago I started giving people the TRUTH! And I never ask that question unless I am prepared for the real answer. I don't want to hear... "We're fine". I want to hear... how you REALLY are! Maybe it makes your life too personal to the world, but you cannot imagine the effects you can have on other people with your honesty. Most people are good natured and when they ask a question they may well be facing their own battle and want to connect. Our world has become far too seperate. We don't care about our own neighbors. We have to start caring again. I don't want to stand in the middle of a crowd and feel completely alone any longer. If you ask me about my weight loss, I am going to tell you, and I'm going to ask you a question about your life, and maybe... we'll help one another. Just be who you are... no matter what body fits around it. Bren

I've heard people say time and time again: Enjoy your 20s... Everything goes down hill from there (body wise). When people think of back when they were in their 20s most think of their smokin' hot bodies, stamina, and their joints not popping all the time. I'm 23 going on 85... I started off my 20s at 5'5" and 270 pounds with a fat rear, thunder thighs, and working on a triple chin. Every joint in my body screamed as I moved. I would hyperventilate when I tried to run. At the age of 22, I had my gallbladder removed. My life as a butterball was really starting to show massive signs of stress on my body. I have more stretch marks than Octomom and am really surprised/relieved that I didn't get diabetes. My life is beginning to change. I'm losing weight and I can breath. I can fit in a roller coaster and I don't have to touch anyone I sit next to involuntarily (ass spilling over to the next seat where someone else happens to be sitting). As I shrink, my skin refuses to join the crusade. As one blogger put it, I look great in clothes but horrible naked. I am one of those people that as they gained weight they gained it everywhere. My once thunder thighs have become empty potatoe sacks. My floppy/fatty boobies have become tube socks with a rock in them. My plump santa gut now looks like a melted and scarred up smiley face. Don't even get me started about my ass... To give you an idea of how many inches it took for me to look so pathetic here you go: Inches lost 6in off chest 7in off stomache 8.25in off ass 4in off each thigh Going back to where I started... They say the 20s are the best years of your life. I say screw it! I've never been much of a conformist anyway... I'm going to make my thirties the best years of my life. By my thirties, I'll lose all of the rest of my weight and get a nip/tuck or two.... or eight (we'll see what happens). By my thirties, I'll start popping out pups, have a stable career, and become less of a closet nudist and more of a streaker. Rawr... Until next time, Angrybaby signing out.