So we talked about all the fantasies we’ve had about how much fun we’d have if we were thin.   You know, if the Fat Chick Fairy came and magically changed you to your “goal weight”.  Are you still waiting for that magic day to appear?  Are you waiting to interview for a new job, join the dating site online, buy new clothes and strut your stuff?

As I mentioned yesterday, if I waited to be thin to start living my life, I wouldn’t be going to a Hollywood Awards show in my hot new dress with my oh-so-handsome husband.  I’d just be in another holding pattern.  Which would pretty much suck.  And not be anywhere near as fun as the dress and the dude and the date.  Want to feel great right now?  Here’s what you do.  Start living your life as if you were already thin.

If you were at your “skinny” weight, what would you do?  Would you go dancing?  Would you learn to surf?  Would you buy a sleeveless dress?  Well what are you waiting for?  Go do that stuff!  Right now!  Pick something you always fantasized about doing when you were thin and just go do it!

When you do, something AMAZING will happen!  You’ll be living out your dreams every single day.  I can’t wait to see what that kind of change looks like on you.

Love,

The Fat Chick

This smart car is one of the lightest cars built.  It can even park perpendicular to the curb in a standard parallel parking spot.  But even this car weighs over 1600 lbs.

Conclusion: A smart car weighs more than me.

Object: 1 Cubic Yard of Concrete
Weight: 3300 lbs.
Conclusion: A Cubic Yard of Concrete weighs more than me.

I went shopping today, for a new dress.  But not just any new dress.  I was buying a cocktail dress for a formal Hollywood Awards Show I’m attending this weekend.  (The PGA Awards) Yes, I’m going to be hobnobbing with some of the Hollywood glitterati.  And I’m going to do it in a hot new dress that looks like the one pictured above.

As I was tooling around the mall today, and soliciting help from all of the sales associates I could find, I realized that this whole thing is pretty cool.  And I realized that releasing myself from the fantasy of a life as a skinny woman, allowed me to live some pretty fantastic moments in the real world.

After all, if I had decided to put everything on hold until after I lost weight, I might still be counting my carrot sticks and pedaling to nowhere on the stationary bike.  By living my life full and full-figured right now, I get to get duded up in some fancy new clothes and rub elbows with the richer and famouser. 

All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good choice.

So I’d recommend you stop waiting, and start living.  At the very least, the wardrobe is awesome! 

Love,
The Fat Chick

So this week, we’re going to talk about the second part of the Big Fat Cycle, the Fantasy part.

Okay, so if the Fat Chick Fairy came and visited you in the night, and waved her magic wand and granted your wish and poof you were as thin as you always wanted to be, what would happen?  We’ve all dreamed it, right?

Shopping for dresses sized in the single digits.  Giggling merrily from the dressing room as we call out to the shopkeeper, “can you bring me a smaller size?  Oh, you’re such a dear!”  Sliding into skinny jeans without any special assistance (you know, Crisco, laying on the bed, industrial strength girdles).  Oh the wonder of it all.

But after the buying clothes fantasy, what then?  Will handsome oil-baron princes sweep us off to their yachts where we can be photographed by paparazzi?  Will Victoria’s Secret supermodels call us and ask us to lunch?  Will we be discovered by Hollywood talent scouts and be cast in a movie by fall and receiving our first Oscar(TM) by spring?

Most of us have this sort of fantasy from time to time.  And it’s no wonder.  Dieting sucks.  It’s hard, it’s uncomfortable and it rarely works.  It takes a gargantuan type fantasy to keep that kind of effort in motion.

But I’m going to invite you for today, to really dig in the dark corners of your fantasy about being thin.  What does it entail?  Are Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie there?  Take a moment and jot down a few elements of your nonfat fantasy.  Don’t worry about how crazy or outlandish it seems for now, just write it down.  Part of how we’ll hop OFF the big fat cycle, it helps to understand your Nonfat Fantasy as completely as possible.  So fantasize away.

Sweet Dreams!

Love,
The Fat Chick

Although I sometimes think I could eat the biggest pizza in the world all by myself, the truth is, I probably couldn’t.

The largest pizza ever baked (according to The Guiness Book of World Records):

• Was made in South Africa on December 8, 1990.
• Measured 37.4 meters in diameter (over 120 feet).
• Contained  500 kg of flour (over 1100 pounds), 800 kg of cheese (over 1700 pounds) and 900 kg of tomato puree (over 1900 pounds).
•  Weighed over 5000 pounds.

Conclusion: The world’s largest pizza weighs more than me.

Object: Cargo of a Red Cross Plane bound for Haiti
Reason: Delivering food, medicines and supplies to an area ravaged by an earthquake
Cargo Weight: Over 40 tons

Conclusion: Sometimes being heavy can help a lot.

So you’ve been staring at  your to do list, right?  The one that you made to help you cope with panic.  And maybe your list had 47 things on it, like my “Stuff I gotta do before I go home for Christmas” list.  What’s next?  Pick one thing off of the list and do it.  Don’t worry about doing 20 things.  Don’t worry about doing everything.  Do ONE thing. 

Now, if you’re looking at your list, and you’re getting ready to do your one thing, and every one of your one things to choose from seems huge and overwhelming, then my dear you may need to divide before you conquer.  Like let’s say your list has just one thing on it like “get in shape”.  Well this is a pretty big goal.  It’s not something you can get done tonight or even this week.  So when all the stuff on your list is huge, you’ve got to divide these tasks into smaller tasks.

This may seem counter-productive.  After all the stupid list is getting longer, not shorter, right?  But until you get the tasks down into discrete pieces you can’t cross them off your list, and thus you can’t make the list shorter.

So if your goal is “get fit”, maybe you could break it into smaller tasks like, call gym around the corner and check out prices or buy really cute workout top or go to http://www.thefatchick.com and order a DVD to work out with.  (I’m shameless, what can I say?)

But when you’re in panic mode, there’s nothing like crossing something off your list, and I mean ANYTHING off your list, to help you calm down and find some control.

So go cross something off your list.  Go do it right now!  There, doesn’t that feel better?

Love,
The Fat Chick

There are more than 7,000 varieties of apples grown in the world.
The apples from one tree can fill 20 boxes every year.
Each box weighs an average 42 pounds.
So one tree can produce 840 pounds of apples
Conclusion: The apples from one tree may weigh more than me.

So, we recognized panic, took a mind clearing walk, stopped to engage our brains and we made a list.  Outside of eating that paper list out of sheer frustration, what’s next?  The next step I usually take in managing my panic is to take a look at my list and do a little sorting.  Chances are, after you take a deep breath, stuff on your to do list will start to fall into various categories like:

Order of Importance
1.  My Pants are On Fire!  I’ve got to do this stuff today or they are going to repossess my stuff, or take me to jail or put me on the Jerry Springer Show.
2.  Stuff I’ve really just got to do.  (But secretly I know, that nobody will die if I don’t do it today or even this week.
3.  Really important stuff that I really want done but isn’t completely necessary.  (And actually if I don’t get to it this month, nobody will probably know but me.)

Order of Difficulty
1.  I can finish this in the time it takes me to write this on my list.
2.  If I push I could finish this in 20 minutes to an hour.
3.  I’ve already been working on this for a decade and I think I’m making some headway.

Order of Proxmity: How easy and close are these items to one another.

After I stare at the list for a while patterns seem to emerge, and I start to prioritize.  I usually don’t have to actually rewrite or number my list based on priorities, but just thinking it through in my head helps me start to organize things.

I try to let the stuff that isn’t a high priority drop off the list when I’m in panic mode.  There are a lot of things I’d LIKE to do, but is it worth trying to do it all and having a panic attack or nervous breakdown?  Probably not.  Notice I said that I “try” to do this.  As my husband can easily attest, I don’t always succeed.

Actually, I will let a few lower priority things stay on my list if they are super easy, i.e. buy paper towels and they are close and convenient to something I absolutely need to do on my list, i.e. buy toilet paper.  My method of sorting and yours may be totally different.  Everybody prioritizes differently.  But prioritizing is crucial to managing panic.  The point is, take a deep breath, accept you can’t do everything on your list at once, and figure out what on the list is most important to you.

I promise, I won’t tell if you don’t dust this week.

Love,
The Fat Chick