Gestational Diabetes

I had my one-hour glucose test a few weeks ago. (I am… wait, I can’t be 31 weeks today… can I? Well, it was at week 26.) In the days leading up to the test, I was convinced that I was likely to fail it. (A lot of people fail the one-hour test even if they don’t end up with gestational diabetes.) Why was I so convinced? I guess I assumed that since I’m fat, I would probably end up having gestational diabetes. I am also very thirsty all the time and drink water constantly, which is a normal pregnancy symptom, but again, I jumped to the diabetes conclusion. And finally, I’ve been eating way more sugar than usual since I’ve been pregnant. I crave carbs of all kinds: fruits, breads, chocolate, donuts, pop tarts.

[As an aside, I used to envision that I would be a beatific model of healthy eating when I was pregnant. But I'm here to tell you, physically speaking, pregnancy sucks, and you do what you have to do to get through it. I spent a lot of time so nauseous that only a specific, limited number of foods appealed to me at all. A lot of my healthy staples (notably turkey sandwiches and tuna fish) are on the Do Not Eat or Eat More Rarely list. And most importantly, it's a tossup as to what I can stomach at any given moment. It's actually been very liberating, because if someone sees me eating a donut or whatever, whereas I might have gotten slightly defensive about it in the past, these days it's like eff you, I'm pregnant, I can do what I want. It's been the key to helping me really let go of food guilt. I haven't felt guilty about food for months.]

Anyway, I’m sure you can see where this is going: I passed the one-hour glucose test, no problem. And then I felt really dumb for all my dumb assumptions. Of course, if I had developed gestational diabetes, would I have blamed genetics, or blamed myself? Clearly, I should have read this first. The bottom line is that there is an increased risk for gestational diabetes in obese mothers, but the overall risk is still fairly low.

Weight Loss In Pregnancy

The next pregnancy hurdle was my last OB appointment, where I discovered I’d lost 10 pounds between appointments. In fact, so far at seven+ months of pregnancy, I’m down 15 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. My doctor did some measurements and was very reassuring, but sent me for an ultrasound just to double check. At the ultrasound, we discovered that the baby is measuring right on schedule and is in fact in the 50th percentile for weight. Exactly, perfectly average and normal and lovely. So as long as I keep taking my prenatal vitamin and eating a varied diet (yes, I swear there are veggies and protein in there) things seem to be on the right track. Yay and yay!

Baby Bump Question

Even though I’m 31 (???!?) weeks pregnant, I don’t have an obvious baby bump. I mean I do have a bigger stomach and am waddling around, but the average person on the street is unlikely to assume that I’m pregnant, and certainly nobody has asked about or commented on it. I had to announce my pregnancy to my classes at the beginning of the semester, since I didn’t want them to awkwardly wonder all semester if I was pregnant. Many of my thinner friends have obvious little baby bumps; I just have a general westward expansion.

This has actually saved me from one thing, which is people touching my stomach. I wasn’t big on people touching my stomach before I got pregnant, and I’m certainly no more enthusiastic about it now. But this weekend I’m going to a couple of baby showers with people who know I’m pregnant and may want to touch my stomach. I really don’t want them to; in fact, I was up last night worrying about handsy relatives or my over-enthusiastic parents, and how to set appropriate boundaries with crazy Dutch people.

I’m guessing this isn’t just a fat person thing, but curious to know what you guys think: did you mind people touching your belly while you were pregnant? And if you did, how did you handle it?

Dear BFD folks,

I have been a reading your blog for awhile and need some advice from you (and the readers) on something. I really hope you can take the time to help me out.

I’ll try to keep a long story short, but here’s some background: I’ve been fat since puberty (I’m in my early 30s now, topped out at about 280 lbs. and a size 22/24). I was teased all through school for my weight, and made the mistake of reading magazines like Cosmo (which just kept telling me that I wasn’t thin or pretty enough) so I had no self-esteem until I found the FA movement in my 20s. I have been a happy fat girl with rockin’ self-esteem ever since.

Last year I moved to a new town and began to work from home. I love working from home, but my workaholic tendencies (coupled with the fact that my commute is now ten feet from my bedroom) meant that I would be at home all day and often didn’t go outside or see another person except for my boyfriend. I was not happy with this. In an effort to take a break from work and go out into the world and see actual people, I began to swim laps every day at a nearby pool. I love it! The physical activity feels great, I’m out in the world, and I have a couple of hours a day where I don’t have to read emails and deal with work.

In starting this new physical activity, weight loss was not my goal. I just wanted to get out and do more with my body than click a mouse. But, as can happen with exercise and healthful eating (I was already a veggie-lover), I am starting to lose weight. My friends and family have been noticing and making the positive comments that everyone makes in these situations. Namely: “You look great – have you lost weight?”

So here’s my problem: How do I deal with these comments? I don’t want to tell them that I have lost weight, because I feel like that’s leading them to believe that I buy into the Western Beauty Standard BS that being thin is the ideal and if you’re fat you automatically wish you were thin and diet all the time. But I also don’t want to shame them for giving me a compliment because, after all, they are my family and friends and they only mean well.

I thought about saying something like, “Thank you for noticing I have changed, but I prefer not to discuss my body,” but that sounds a little…standoffish and like something you’d say to a stranger and not your mom or your best girlfriend. If it’s possible, I’d actually like to steer the praise to the fact that I’m dropping 60+ laps a day at the pool. That is such an amazing thing to me that I did not know I could achieve and that means way more to me than what size dress I’m wearing these days. And, if I’m swimming that far at 280 lbs., every day, the haters who think us fatties just sit on the couch and eat cupcakes all day have to suck it hard now, right? :)

Thanks in advance,
cubicalgirl

Here is an old Shapely Prose post answering this very question!

Aunt Fattie’s recommendation: variations on the theme of “really? I hadn’t noticed.” For people who are keenly attuned to others’ weight fluctuations, this is guaranteed to blow their minds. It is not rude or dismissive, but the genuine indifference not to the weight loss compliment but to weight loss itself alerts people that something unusual is going on here.

I’m sure poking around in the comments of that thread will yield some other good advice. BFD readers, what do you think?

Curious, I did a couple of searches myself. I found out weight loss can make you happier if you have hot flashes, and I found stories about how you will be less fat and thus more happy if you eat eggs and get surgery and drink apple cider vinegar and go to the mountains (even though you’ll gain the weight back in a month, of course—yes, the article really admits that). There’s even an article about how weight-loss patches “really work.” I’m not kidding.

I did not find any stories that could be remotely classified as fat positive, with one exception. The link our tipster sent in was this one, an article that contained the tidbit that low social interaction is “twice as harmful as obesity.” Of course this isn’t fat positive on the surface, but I could make a happy headline for that, which would read: Your Friends Are Twice As Important As Your Fat. That’s pretty happy, right?

“Try an almond stacked on top of a dried apricot — it tastes like a cookie. Really.”

Um… no. I’m not exactly a foodologist, but I’m pretty sure that this snack would taste like a nut on top of a dried piece of fruit.

Sometimes we get so inundated with this kind of ridiculous advice that we need a reality check. Yes, it’s ridiculous to drink hot lemon water instead of eating. I mean, come on! What are we, Cheerios?

“Sometimes I add a teaspoon of sand.”

His diet entails “whatever I can eat” on NutriSystem, which is also favored by Tori Spelling, Marie Osmond and Boy Meet’s World Danielle Fishel. “Corn Flakes, Cheerios, Rasin Brand, they have nutrition bars that are delicious,” he says. “I have them in my house.”

It would make sense if we found out he was being paid, as one columnist speculated, since A) a celebrity can afford way better prepackaged food, if not a personal chef; and B) why would a savvy celebrity be a free spokesperson for a product that so many other celebrities have cashed in on?

But I wasn’t going to post about that, as it seems only marginally shady. However, this article, sent in by Ilse, tells a NutriSystem story that is way shady.

Talkmaster Dan Patrick explained why he left ESPN during his XM Radio show Friday.

According to Patrick, the network honchos wanted him to go on NutriSystem and lose weight with other talking heads like Mike Golic and Chris Berman. When the 6-3 Patrick protested he was happy with his weight of 205 pounds, a bigwig pulled him aside and said, ”We want you to gain 25 pounds, then lose it on NutriSystem.”

Patrick said thanks but no thanks, and walked away from the network.

One of the other ESPN talking heads, Mike Golic, apparently took the deal, since he has lost 51 pounds so far on NutriSystem. However, he admitted some of the food is “awful” and the portions are small.

TMZ: What’s the worst?
Golic: Some of the dinners.
TMZ: Is it all microwavable?
Golic: Yeah, it’s all like that.
TMZ: You can’t survive on that. No wonder you lose weight.
Golic: Yeah, and you know what, the portions are small.

I’m not suggesting a link to Tracy Morgan because I have no idea what’s going on there, but in the case of these ESPN anchors, they were apparently pressured to gain weight (probably moving them artificially above their natural set points) and then lose it by eating “awful” food and pretending NutriSystem is an awesome diet. Ilse points out it’s also setting these guys up “for a lifetime of yo-yo dieting.”

What a scam.

I’ve already “hidden” posts on my news feed from folks who seem to think that a running litany of everything they ate/didn’t eat wanted to eat/didn’t want to eat or weight they lost/gained inexplicably was the utmost in fascinating conversation… Yesterday this… was not possible when a woman actively messaged me to ask why I hadn’t joined (or “liked”? I’m not sure which) the page she’d set up to log all her Weight Loss Adventures.

2. Do plus-sized women need a separate social networking site? (And if so, why is it not called Fatbook?) Via Jenfu.

Women who are a size 12 or above make up 60% of the population. It seems odd to treat them as though they’re an odd minority who need their own special site when they’re pretty clearly the majority. I just kind of feel like there should be enough of a place for plus sized women in the mainsteam discussion that this sould be unecessary – but maybe that’s not the case. And if it’s not, then the mainstream discussion is really failing.

3. Feminist Does Not Mean “Strong Woman” by my new girlcrush Tasha Fierce. If Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, and Sarah Palin unsettle you, you aren’t alone.

These women are part of a new wave of conservative feminism, which apparently views women’s advancement in the workplace and politics to be the most important tenet of actual feminism. Basically, these conservative feminist leaders have decided that the advancement of women to the upper echelons of business — something they have already achieved — is what feminism should really be about… By opposing ideas like subsidized child care, access to birth control, and legal abortion, these women will actually make things worse for any homemaker not privileged by race and wealth.

4. You can buy your own airline seatbelt extender if you would rather not ask for one. Via the Fatcast podcast! Featuring Marianne Kirby and Leslie Kinzel!

5. And finally, from @TweetsOfOld, an excerpt from a Missouri newspaper in 1878:

A 13 months-old boy tips the scales at 100 pounds. The parents intend to exhibit him to the public.

As you do. Happy Thursday, everyone!

1. Fat Female Celebrities vs. Fat Male Celebrities

The fat male group is more loved, less judged for their body size and more contemporary ; the fat female group has many members framed as being “bitchy” and “too opinionated,” is judged endlessly in relation to body size and is much less current in the zeitgeist (Gossip singer Beth Ditto is arguably a contemporary fat female icon, but hardly as well-known as the likes of [Jack] Black).

2. On Airbrushing Skinny Models to Look Healthy

It’s been dubbed ‘reverse retouching’ and involves using models who are cadaverously thin and then adding fake curves so they look bigger and healthier.

This deranged but increasingly common process recently hit the headlines when Jane Druker, the editor of Healthy magazine – which is sold in health food stores – admitted retouching a cover girl who pitched up at a shoot looking ‘really thin and unwell’.

It sounds crazy, but the truth is Druker is not alone. The editor of the top-selling health and fitness magazine in the U.S., Self, has admitted: ‘We retouch to make the models look bigger and healthier.’

3. Miss USA admits to strict dieting, exercise, and dehydrating to look “good on TV”.

Remember, the BFD Twitter feed is here. Happy Tweeting!

Please do not take this the wrong way, I am just concerned for your health. Have you considered Weight Watchers?

This was sent to a coworker. A pregnant coworker, no less. And the note-sender clearly did not realize this woman was pregnant. Things that are wrong about this include: using the phrase “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” lecturing a coworker about her weight as if it’s any of your business what she weighs or why she’s gained weight, doing so anonymously, and doing so via Post-It note, which any viewer of Sex and the City could tell you is NOT THE WAY TO GO.

Passive Aggressive Notes boiled it down to: mind your own business. And amen to that.

Thanks to Nonk for the link!

The diet involves eating 14 servings of baby food a day followed by a healthy adult dinner, and Jen has reportedly lost 7 pounds in the past week.

Yeah, that sounds healthy.

The Baby Food Diet (and the famous people who love it) is a plot point in the young adult novel I just wrote! (Pear and pineapple, which I tasted for research purposes thanks to my friend Aych, makes an appearance.) So I’d better finish editing my novel so I can sell it and become rich and famous on Jennifer Aniston’s coattails while the Baby Food Diet is still making headlines.

“I think fat people are sold a fantasy, and then get no support in the reality, because we’re simply supposed to be grateful that we’re no longer fat,” [Jen] Larsen says… But weight loss chat rooms, forums and blogs are filled with people who are wondering why their newfound svelte selves and stellar metabolic profiles are leaving them ever-so-slightly disappointed.

And who can blame them? Reality shows, weight loss books, movies, TV shows and advertisements all tell tales of people dropping major poundage and gaining seemingly perfect lives. They find their true selves and their true loves. They go back to school or get promotions. They become social butterflies, the life of the party.

Anyone who’s read Kate’s piece knows that’s a bunch of BS. And if you haven’t read it in a while, or ever, go and enjoy.

Accepting my fat really wasn’t the hard part. Accepting my personality — and my many limitations that have jack shit to do with my thighs — was. But oddly enough, once I started to do that, my life became about a zillion times more satisfying… The thin person inside me finally got out — it just turned out she was actually a fat person. A reasonably attractive, semi-outgoing fat person who has an open mind and an active imagination but also happens to really like routine and familiarity and quiet time alone.

That was never who I expected to be — it was just always who I was.