So often what happens in the surrender portion of the Big Fat Cycle is that we believe small setbacks are automatic precursors to catastrophic failures.  I promised myself I’d blog six days this week.  I didn’t get a blog in before midnight on Thursday.  Oh well.

It’s so easy to say well i missed one day, I might as well blow off the week.  This whole blogging thing isn’t really working out that well anyways.  That chipped paint on the bridge really masks a hairline crack on the bridge which is really the sign the whole bridge will come down.

Now chipped paint on a bridge is not something to go unnoticed.  Small problems in maintenance can lead to catastrophic failures if ignored long enough.  But small problems are, well, small.  Chipped paint may mean that area of the bridge needs attention.  It may mean nothing.  It probably does NOT mean it’s time to blow up the bridge.

It’s so easy to fall into all or nothing, black and white thinking.  But life doesn’t work that way.  And if the only way to succeed is to be perfect every day forever, guess what.  None of us will ever, ever succeed.  Thankfully, setbacks, minor issues and bumps in the road are a normal and natural part of any endeavor whether successful or not. 

The difference between success and failure is not whether or not you fall.  It’s whether you (like a cat) get up, shake the dirt out of your fur and tell the world, “I meant to do that”.  So I hope you’ll forgive me for not blogging yesterday.  I forgave me.

Love,
TFC

The Spirit of Troy, also known as the University of Southern California Trojan Marching Band (TMB), has over 300 members.

Given a variety of instruments ranging from a piccolo (1.5 pounds) to a Tuba (25 pounds)
Estimated instrument weight: 3900 lbs.
Estimated instrumentalist weight: 45,000 lbs.

Estimated Combined Weight (excluding cases and tour busses): 48,900

Conclusion: The TMB weighs more than me.

My sister sent me a link to this amazing video today:

Why not take a few minutes to take a look.  I promise it will be worth your while.  Bring Kleenex.

In no way do I wish to compare one person’s pain with another.  I  can’t compare my life pains with Patrick’s or yours.  I do know that life gives you curve balls and life gives  you choices.

As the serenity prayer says, Lord give me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change.  This is the hand you’re dealt.  This is the stuff you have to live with.  This is the part that requires surrender.

Lord, give me the STRENGTH to change the things I can.  This is the part where you make the best you can from your life.  Or as my dear friend Kristie Agee says in one of my favorite songs “As long as you know how to use what you got.”   This is where you take what life gives you and you work it.

And give me the WISDOM to know the difference.  Isn’t this the hard part?  For so long I thought that my weight was the thing I needed strength to change and the fact that I couldn’t be beautiful or find a husband, or get a great job or do really anything I wanted to until I got thin was the part I was supposed to be serene about.  But that’s the thing about wisdom.  If you pray, if you are open, if you listen–sometimes wisdom means changing your mind.

Wisdom takes time.  We are not born wise.  We become so after life beats the tarnation out of us.  Maybe it’s time to review your current wisdom about what your capabilities really are.  What have you “got”?  And are you using it to the very limits of your abilities?  Are you waiting around to get something else?  Or are you out there, making things happen?

Don’t put your light under a bushel baby.  Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

With apologies for a blog post burdened with more platitudes than I thought possible, I’m asking you to go out there and work it.  Let the world see all you got.

Love,
TFC

Weights of Typical American Tanks:

1. 6 tons WW1 M1917 Renault Tank
2. 30 tons WW2 M-4 Sherman Tank
3. 52 tons Vietnam War M-48 Patton Tank (Vietnam War: 17 tons M-551 Sheridan Light Tank)
4. 67 tons M-1 Abrams Tank

Conclusion: Even a Renault Tank weighs more than me.

So all the month of January, we’ve been travelling around the Big Fat Cycle.  So far we’ve discussed  

Step One: Panic–(“Oh my gosh, I got fat over the holiday–I need to lose 50 pounds by Valentines day”)

and

Step Two: Fantasy–(“When I lose 50 pounds by Valentine’s day, an Arabian Prince/Oil Billionaire is going to sweep me up on his horse by the seaside and take me to his yacht and introduce me to a casting agent who’s going to put me in a major movie in time to walk the red carpet at the Oscars.”) This leads us to the major downswing that appears next in the cycle–Step Three: Surrender. 

The act of surrender can mean a lot of different things.  Usually surrender starts when we’ve given up everything we ever wanted to eat at the start of another stupid deprivation diet.  And continues when we get hungry, and I mean really really hungry for something “bad”.  And since we’re really, really hungry and we’ve given up something we love–like ice cream, when we finally give in to eating ice cream we don’t eat just one scoop.  Oh, no.  We eat a pint, or a gallon or all 123 flavors at the local ice cream shop.  And at that point, since we’ve already been bad, totally give in.  What the heck?  The diet is blown anyways.  We’ve already RUINED the day.  Might as well EAT EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T NAILED DOWN.

We eat things we aren’t even hungry for.  We eat way more than we really want.  We eat waaaayyyyy past full.  Because we know that tomorrow, we might have to be “good” again.  We may never get to eat ice cream again as long as we live.  Better tank up now so we don’t ever forget what it tastes like.

I used to call Sunday, “stuffday”, because that’s the day I’d overeat in anticipation of the Monday diet.

But nowadays, I participate in a different kind of surrender.  I surrender the idea that I can precisely control every morsel of food I put in my mouth.  I surrender the idea that everything in my life, including what my friends think about me and if whether my colleagues approve of me and what my weight is (in ounces) is completely under my control.  I try to do what I can and release the rest.  I say “try” because, this whole “Zen State of Surrender” thing is also an aspiration I can’t always control.  Sometimes I even have to surrender the idea that I can successfully surrender.  I just do my best and take it as it comes.

If I want a donut, I have a donut.  I don’t freak out about it.  And you know what?  I can almost always stop at one donut.  Sometimes I only want HALF a donut.  Because I know, if I want a donut tomorrow, I can have another one.  And you know what else?  Forbidden donuts taste WAY better than allowed ones.  Now that I can have a donut any time I want, I don’t really want them that often.  They just don’t taste that great.  I sometimes go MONTHS without eating one.

And since eating a donut isn’t a sign of great weakness or total failure, it isn’t a signal to eat more.  The donut hasn’t blown my diet, because I’m not on one.  There’s no deep sense of accompishment, failure, joy, fear or sorrow attached to the dumb donut.  It’s just a round, fried bakery product that once in a while I like to eat.

So yes, I’m going to recommend surrender.  Give up on the idea that you can weigh, categorize, catalog, ascribe emotions to and success to food.  You can beat an egg, but you can’t beat your need to eat food.  Surrender all the emotional baggage you currently swallow with every stupid potato chip or truffle.  Start to get used to the idea that food is just, well, food.

Easy to say, but hard to do.  But that’s okay.  We don’t have to get it all done today.  Let’s give up on the notion of instant fixes too.  We’ll just take our time and get there eventually.

Love,
The Fat Chick

The rain has finally stopped and we got some of that glorious CA sunshine this morning.  It got me thinking about the size of that bad boy…

Specs:

Diameter: about 865,000 miles (about 109 x earth)

Mass: (equal to 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System)

1.9891×1030 kg or 332,900 × Earth

Conclusion: The sun weighs more than me.

At this time of year it seems you can’t flip on the TV or open a newspaper or magazine without being inundated by those weight loss ads with “before” and “after” shots.  You know the ones.  All my life, these ads really bugged me, but it’s really only recently that I understood why.

Aside from the obvious manipulations–the before shot is taken 2 days after a woman gives birth (ever notice how often women’s before shots include a baby?), the guy is slumping and sticking his gut out, the before shot is badly lit and the subject is wearing ugly clothes, no makeup and hasn’t seen the sun in 3 or 4 years, and after shots sporting newly spray-tanned, glistening bodies with perfect hair and makeup, flattering clothes and a big grin.

Aside from that obvious manipulation, one thing that always bugged me was the clear implication that the “before” was NO GOOD.  The “before” person was ugly and sad and pathetic and the after person is awesome and cool.  And given how often, in my personal experience, the “after” person goes back to looking like the “before” person for some or most of their life, it always struck me as kind of destructive.

I mean, before and after feeds into our fantasy, right?  Before, my life sucked, but After I lost weight, my life became perfect.

Except, it never does.  Life never becomes perfect.

And here’s another piece of news.  Every picture of you is an “After” picture.  Since  you were a glint in your Daddy’s eye everything that happened to you,  happened after something else.  You are constantly in the process of becoming.  And all versions of you are pretty darn great!

So I just decided to label every picture of me in the world an “after” picture.  It’s the new me, the triumphant me, the fantasy me.

Why?  Because I say so.

Why not do the same for yourself?  You earned your awesomeness at every stage of your life.  Decide all “yous” are “afters”.  Then, you’ve always been and will always be, a winner.

Ta Daaaa!

Love,
The Fat Chick

Growing up, we always heated our house in Wisconsin with firewood.  We often gathered the wood from trees that were knocked over anyways during construction of new housing projects.  It takes a lot of wood to heat a house in the northern midwest in January.

A “cord” of firewood is 8 ft. long, 4 ft. wide and 4 ft. high.
It takes the young teenager equivalent of “forever” to cut, split and stack that much wood.
A cord of dried white oak weighs 4890 – 6290 pounds wet, but will dry to 2880 – 3710 pounds

Conclusion: wet or dry a cord of oak weighs more than me.

We are getting dumped on here in usually sunny California.  So much so, I thought about getting one of these rain barrels.

Capacity: 50 Gallons
Weight of Barrel: 16 pounds
Weight 1 Gallon of Water: 8.35 pounds
Weight of Barrel full of Rain: 433.5 pounds
Conclusion: A Barrel full of Rain Weighs More Than Me