Since complaining in an earlier post about the multitude of people suggesting I meet men in grocery stores, the mother of a very good friend of mine has suggested a slight variation on this theme.
Forget grocery stores, my friend and I should be trying to pick up men at Costco. I can almost see the logic - everything is bigger at Costco and perhaps this applies to men who shop there.
I do like a man who's practical and good under pressure, and it's comforting to see a guy purchasing 72 rolls of toilet paper at a time. One just never knows when a disaster may occur requiring that level of absorbency.
Sadly, my friend and I are far more likely to be forcibly removed from Costco for ramming people in the back of the legs with our carts, or taking too many free samples of cheese than we are to be meeting the men of our dreams.
However, Costco has not been the worst recommendation for meeting eligible men so far. That dubious distinction goes to the suggestion I should be meeting men in my Weight Watchers meetings. (Hi John!) A recommendation I've heard twice now. (Hi John again!)
If I hear it a third time, John will be dragged to meetings with me. (Love you John!)
God knows, Weight Watchers meetings have long been a popular destination for hot men in any city, and it's certainly true for the meetings I attend every week. The two grandfatherly men who attend with their wives are positively radiating heat due to their high blood pressure, obesity and the climb up the stairs to get to the meeting.
It's not that I'm shallow (I'm totally shallow), but I think I've been relatively spoiled with the men I've chosen to partner with in completely dysfunctional relationships/arrangements these last few years. The firefighter I see on occasion complains he's gained weight because only some of his abs are visible, as opposed to all of them like they normally are.
To be honest, I was not aware there are enough ab muscles to have some showing and some not, as I consider my own abdominal muscles to be an urban legend. It's true that I'm able to walk upright, but I think this is more due to the fact that my bones keep me balanced on top of my heavier bottom half, rather like a Weeble.
Alex is equally...well...beautiful. He doesn't go to the gym so somehow the combination of playing hockey, sexing everything with the appearance of a vagina west of Alberta and selling cars really, really works for him. And it worked for me, just as well as I'm sure it works for his new girlfriend.
That bitch.
The point is, I've done a lot of fooling around above my station. While I've always been able to see my feet, there has been a lot of extra between my feet and my head. It's a good thing I'm very tall, because if I were any shorter during my heavier days I would measure to 3.14 pi.
Men don't seem to struggle with their weight in the same way women do, even if they're bigger. I don't mean struggle physically, as they may perhaps face similar health risks or difficulty finding pants, but emotionally it's not the same experience.
For women, there are only a few ways to describe ourselves if we're overweight that can be considered flattering. There's curvy, but that could also mean a stick insect with boobs. Voluptuous seems to denote nice ass and boobs, and small everything else. Finally, there's BBW - big beautiful woman, but that's really about it.
If you're a woman using these words as part an online dating profile for example, these words won't get much interest. The BBW acronym seems like it's trying a little too hard, and curvy is deliberately vague.
For all the true gentlemen who follow up their online wish-list with the words, "no fatties," there's not many ways for let's face it - an average size woman to feel good about her appearance.
Meanwhile, men who could stand to lose a few have a virtual thesaurus available to describe their physiques, and all of the words come with positive connotations. Stocky, solidly built, football player build, big guy and my favorite, the big teddy bear.
What's the equivalent to any of these words for women? I'm just a big Cabbage Patch - you should see where else I have dimples!
Men aren't labeled simply as fat the way women are, and if they ever reach that point they're usually wearing mumus and needing the fire department to hack through the walls of their homes because they stopped fitting through the doorways a decade earlier.
Women achieve fat much, much sooner. A man could be using his belt buckle as a shelf for his gut, but he's got a football player build. He's not fat - he's an athlete! Show a little muffin top as a woman and nobody's going to suggest she's simply built like a shot-putter.
Which brings me back to why meeting a man I'm attracted to at a Weight Watchers meeting is only slightly more likely than me meeting the pope. By the time a man decides he's fat and needs to do something about it, he's already gone five years without seeing his genitals and is well on his way to not being able to reach them.
I can see mine, I can reach them should I want to and while this may seem superficial, not being able to do so is a deal-breaker for me in a partner.
(Also, if he can't reach my genitals we have a serious problem too.)
I've been thinking about weight a lot lately, largely because I'm having unprecedented success losing mine. I'm down 43.6 pounds so far, with still more to go. People are noticing, and stopping me in the halls of my office to tell me how good I look and ask me just what in the hell I've been doing.
(I tell people it's an aggressive tapeworm. I call him Julio.)
Today I'm wearing a pair of jeans I purchased deliberately too small more than a year and a half ago, thinking it would be good incentive to loose a couple of pounds. They remained in my closet with the tags still on for this long, as an insidious reminder of how far I'd fallen.
While they're still a little snug, today I could put them on no problem and I am wearing the shit out of them right now.
Obviously something is working right, but despite all of these positive signs, I don't see it. I mean that literally - I don't see it. I see myself every day, and I perceive my body the same as always. Too pudgy there, too thick here, how did I forget to shave there, and jiggly here there and everywhere.
I don't think I look different, so I went looking for a picture of me from before June when I started this journey. It had been a long time since I would agree to have my picture taken unless I was hiding behind somebody, so the odds were about the same I'd find the Holy Grail.
The Holy Grail remains a mystery, but buried in our photo archives is a shot of me taken as part of a crowd scene at a work event in May of this year. Sweet Cheesus on a cracker I'm huge.
I seriously never knew I looked like that. I knew I was heavier than I'd ever been but I had no idea this meant I was an aircraft carrier in a skirt.
First I was horrified and embarrassed and now I'm alarmed. If I didn't know what I looked like at my heaviest, I truly don't know how I look now.
This scares me, because for the first time it's hitting me that losing a lot of weight is not going to make me a different person. I'll be the same person with the same issues and the same hang-ups only in smaller pants.
What if I never see any difference and nothing else changes at all? I was kind of hoping that as my clothing size decreased, happiness and confidence would increase.
Somehow, a significantly lower number on the scale would bring about anything I think I'm missing, along with hot men in uniform who in no way resemble teddy bears.
It doesn't look like it's going to, but I'll still take the smaller pants.
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