I am forced to admit now that I have a problem. I’m a grab and go girl; I like the grab and get the heck out of dodge. Most of my clothes look exactly the same because I want to grab a shirt and a pair of jeans and not worry if it matches. I only wear white socks for this reason. My shoes (all running shoes, some variation of black, silver and white) and my keys are by the door so I can grab them on the way out.

And this seems to be the case with food. I’m all about convenience. If I have to cook at any point between Monday and Friday, then I won’t be eating. I don’t have the time, patience or will to stand there cook something in the small allotment of free time I have after I get off work and before I go to bed. I want to walk into the kitchen and grab something and eat it. No hassle and fuss. I’m a snacker; usually nibbling on something every couple of hours or so. So I shop this way, buying crackers and cereal and bagged salad and grilling chicken on the weekend so that it’s cooked for the entire week and canned fruit because it last longer. 

But then I also bought popcorn and candy and I made a batch of cookies. I should have known better, but they were all on sale! And all totally grab and go. And then this freaky thing started happening; I’m sitting on the floor reading some assigned chapters and I look over and there are like five empty candy wrappers right next to me. I don’t remember eating them. I don’t even remember getting up to go to the kitchen to get them, but there they were. I’m ashamed to say that my second thought; after I realized I had ate them, was maybe there is a Milky Way loving ghost in my apartment.

But then the cookies in the cookie bowl—because I’m too cool (read: cheap) for a jar—started depleting and I had melted chocolate on my fingers. And I found an empty box of popcorn in the cabinet. That’s when I had to admit it: I’m starting to just pick up food and not even notice that I’m eating it. Of course those calories are flying under the radar. No wonder why I’m stuck on this darn plateau.

And possibly a caffeine drip. I haven’t stepped foot on my treadmill in a week. It’s looking lonely over there, having collected a weeks worth of dust. It taunts me every time I walk in the door after another long day of work. It says my name and reminds me of my calorie intake for the day and reminds me of how much I really need some cardio. But I don’t have the time or the energy to spare. I have to walk passed it and straight to my school books and spend the next several hours being frustrated by rational expressions and logarithmic functions. College Algebra is a Beeyotch!!!

So, I’m just now getting back into my workout groove after a rather icky bout of Pneumonia. The short of it was I got sick early one week in the middle of June. I’m never sick. Like literally, never. So I didn’t think anything of it. Even the fever didn’t faze me. I just took a day off and thought I would get better. I didn’t. Had to go to Emergency by the end of that week. Had a chest x-ray. Had the doctor from FAT GIRL HELL. So she comes back in the room and I ask, “Well, how was the x-ray?” She waves her hand dismissively and says, “It’s clear, now let’s talk about your weight…” As if my weight was the reason why I was running a fever and I having those damn coughing fits. But I suppose most medical professionals want to blame everything on obesity.

I digress.

Let’s keep in mind that this emergency room doctor doesn’t know me from a can of paint, but she goes on to tell me that I need to ‘control’ myself and ‘be more active’ and ‘practice restraint’. At no point did she ask about my eating habits or my exercise habits. So I felt the need to tell her that I have lost 50lbs and I exercise at least 6 days a week and I eat right every day. She looks me up and down real obvious like with this ‘yeah right’ look on her face and then looks me back in the face and says, “You’re delusional if you think you’re healthy at that weight.” For the record, I never said that I was healthy, but I would think that she could be a bit more positive about my effort rather than telling me that I’m not healthy. I mean seriously, what more can I do besides eat right and exercise? I can’t snap my fingers and be the 100lbs the BMI says I should be. Don’t really want to be.

Eventually we got tired of arguing with each other, I got my discharge papers and was out. According to her, I had a viral infection and it would clear up in a couple of days. Yeah, that so didn’t happen. I missed a week of work waiting for this pesky viral infection to clear up. I couldn’t breath, my fever was going past 103 and those darn coughing fits were bringing me to tears. When I couldn’t walk from my room to the bathroom without nearly collapsing, I decided to go back to emergency. I just wanted to get hooked up with some alcohol laced cough medicine so I could sleep. At that point, I hadn’t slept in a week. I see another ER doctor who asked if I had a chest x-ray the week before. I say, “Yes, it was clear.” But she decides to take another look at it. She comes back in the room looking apologetic and says that the pneumonia was on the x-ray the week before.

I think doctor from the week before missed it since she was so preoccupied with my 240 some odd pounds. The other doctor was saying how some doctors like to see if young, healthy people like myself can fight off the infection without meds. But according to the doctor from the week before, I’m unhealthy and delusional, so that explanation didn’t really fly with me.

So it’s been a month since I was sick and my lungs are still recovering. Stairs are still a pain. And I’m asthmatic for the first time since I was 12. Funny thing is, a symptom of pneumonia is low/poor appetite, and I lost like 12lbs over those two weeks. Was it just a sinister plot to make me lose weight since my eating habits are sooooo out of control?

This isn’t the first time a doctor that doesn’t know me has gone on and on about my weight without actually asking me about my habits. They just assume. And that upsets me the most. Do other big folk like me go through this every single time they see a medical professional? Or am I just special?

It’s about half past 2 in the morning, and I’m fighting the urge to fix something to eat. At least a bowl of cereal. But I’m guessing that if I’m not supposed to eat past 7pm, 2am may be a little too late. Or early…

The fact that I’m like near starving isn’t that big of a surprise to me. I mean, I’m watching Good Eats on the Food Network and he’s making Gumbo and Jambalaya. And then I haven’t eaten anything since 3pm. Seriously, I’m not trying to starve myself regardless of what people may think. But if I eat right now, I’ll feel mad guilty in the morning.

I am in essence an under-eating overeater. I look like I eat a ton but I don’t eat enough. And the only people who believe that I don’t eat enough are the people who witness me eating. Medical professionals think I’m lying but that is a rant post for another day. When I go out to eat, I can’t order a salad without looks. And when I say I’m not hungry, I get eye rolls and when I don’t finish my food, I get the “You know you still hungry,” look. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. If I go out and eat like a regular person, I’m being a pig and if I eat like I want; salad (no dressing) and a piece of bread, they think I’m starving myself. What is a big girl to do?