Feeling Guilty For No Reason

Aloha! I am currently in the midst of the very important A Level examinations. I am surviving the stress well, namely because I don't feel stressed at all. In fact, I always manage to find excuses not to study. My excuse now is that I haven't updated this page in almost a month, and I must, lest I forget the existence of this blog.

This post will be about fat people feeling guilty about the food they eat.

I bet every single one of you fat people have had this experience: You're having lunch with your skinny girl friend, and she chooses to order something that is much healthier than what you've just ordered. You immediately feel guilty, because you're fatter than her and should be eating less than she does.

In fact, one of my girl friends had the nerve to ask me "Why are you eating so much?" And I definitely felt guilty, even though I knew she genuinely meant it and wasn't trying to attack me.

But this is not a good reason to feel guilty! Every individual has the right to choose what she wants to eat, and what you eat should not be based on what other people eat, or what they think of what you're eating. However, it's just so hard to ignore those feelings of guilt, which come very naturally. We're humans and we "over-care" about what people think of us.

This is a Chinese dish commonly found in Singapore. It's called "San Chen Rou", otherwise known as "Three-Layered Pork". The reason why it's called three-layered pork, is because there are literally three layers. From bottom to top, the three layers are the meat, the fat, and the skin.

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the skin is the brown layer, and right below that is a layer of fats. Anyway, most of my friends (the few who dare to eat this dish) will cut their pork into the three distinct layers, and only eat the skin and meat while leaving the fats behind.

Now, I simply LOVE the fat part and even though my conscience tells me that I should not eat pure fats, I will end up eating the fats. Sometimes I cut away the fat and intend to leave it behind, but after I'm done with my meal, and the fats are left alone on my plate, I just cannot resist them. Then I start feeling all guilty about it because my skinnier friends are so disgusted by the fats, so I, a fat person, shouldn't be eating more fats!

I refuse to believe that they seriously DISLIKE the fats. They claim that they genuinely dislike the slimy texture of the fats. But to hell with that idea! If fats didn't taste awesome, nobody would buy them. I just think that they've been brainwashed into believing that they don't like fats, and instinctively shun the fats, because they don't want to be fat.

Back to the point: I will invariably feel guilty when I eat the fats and others don't. It's three-layered pork. I must eat all three layers. But if my friends eat the two healthier layers and ignore the nicest third layer, I will feel fat and disgusting and think they're judging me for it (even though they're not). Sigh.

Diets

This is a wonderful portrayal of the psychology behind diets. It's rather exaggerated, but there is definitely some truth in it. Jenna Marbles FTW! (... but actually, she's really skinny + she has a steady boyfriend, so she sure as hell does not need a diet).

As a fat person myself, of course I have tried dieting, and of course I have failed. They say that 95% of diets don't work, and most people gain back the weight they have lost. And if the diet does work, you'll probably end up on a hospital bed in a ward full of other miserable anorexic patients being force fed all kinds of fat junk food against their will. So, it seems that you will never win.

I always believe that the success of your diet is never a question of how strong your will power is, because the strength of your will power is dependent on how badly you actually want to lose weight. To elaborate further, I don't believe in stupid sweeping statements like "That girl has such a persevering character, she doesn't give up anything she sets her heart on". To me, that is a really stupid thing to say. Perseverance is not a trait! It is merely a result of an existing (strong) desire. And DUH, if you have set your heart on something, you won't give up, because... you have set your heart on it! If you seriously give up, it just means you did not set your heart on it.

But I digress. To bring things back to the diet issue, the stronger your desire to lose weight, the higher your chance at success. There are many other factors that affect your desire to lose weight, such as your love for food and your laziness, which may be so overpowering and overwhelming that your desire to lose weight takes a backseat and ends up fading into the background.

As for me, I am:

1. A major food-fanatic. For all you people who have never been to Singapore, you are seriously missing out on the food. I can safely say that 90% of the food we have here is so oily that your complexion will suffer for it, and after eating you will feel a mixture of disgust, and yet, great satisfaction. Argh, it makes me feel highly ambivalent. And, not to mention the abundance of fast food outlets we have here - I practically live next door to a McDonalds, KFC, and an ice-cream parlour.

2. A complete lazy-ass, and proud of it! P.E. has always been my least favourite lesson. In fact, PE ruins the entire day for me. I officially hate Mondays and Fridays because those are the days when I have PE. The games are not so bad, but when they make us RUN. Oh god. The other day I ran 1200 metres and I puked into the drain after that, right in front of my classmates. How embarrassing. Yeah, it isn't so hard to see that I'm not a fan of exercise.

3. And sometimes I have these random moments when I buy all that inspirational, self-empowering crap (as described in my previous post) and think to myself "Candice, you are a BEAUTIFUL person and you DON'T need to change a thing!" Of course, such moments are rare, but they still happen... ...

These three factors are probably the reason why my diets in the past have failed. Good luck to all my future endeavors. I embrace them with hearty enthusiasm.

P.S. this entry does not "go to show" that fat people are lazy people who eat a lot. I know there are plenty of fat people out there who watch what they eat and exercise, and I seriously admire them for it.

P.P.S. I will be taking my (extremely important) A Level exams in less than a month, and I am panicking the shit out of myself. So I have resorted to calming myself down with chocolate. Especially Kinder Bueno, the best chocolate ever. Isn't this a legit reason to pig out? :(

"Fat People Are Beautiful" Inspirational Stories - NOT!

A so-called inspirational story I chanced upon on Facebook a few months ago:

THE STORY OF THE FAT LADY

Hi! How are you?” The woman smiled as she took the seat beside me. She had to lower herself slowly, squeezing her ample bottom into the seat, filling all available space.

Positioning herself comfortably, she plopped her enormous arm on our common armrest. Her immensity saturated the space around us, shrinking me and my seat into insignificance.

I cringed and reclined towards the window.

She leaned towards me and repeated her greeting in an upbeat, friendly voice. Her face towered above my head, forcing me to turn to look at her. “Hi,” I replied with obvious loathing.

I turned away to stare out the cabin window, sulking silently about the long hours of discomfort I was going to experience with this monster beside me.

She nudged me with her meaty arm. “My name is Laura. I’m from Britain. How about you? Japan?”

“Malaysia,” I barked.

“I’m so sorry! Will you accept my heartfelt apology? Come, shake my hand. If we’re going to spend six hours side-by-side on this flight, we’d better be friends, don’t you think?” A palm waved in front of my face. I shook the hand reluctantly, still silent.

Laura started a conversation with me, taking no notice of my unfriendly reactions. She talked excitedly about herself and her trip to Hong Kong to see her frinds. She rattled off a list of things she was going to buy for her students in the boarding school where she was teaching.

I gave her one-word answers to her questions about me. Unperturbed by my coldness, she nodded as she made appreciative comments to my answers. Her voice was warm and caring. She was considerate and obliging when we were served drinks and meals, making sure that I had room to manoeuvre in my seat. “I don’t want to clobber you with my elephant size!” she said with utmost sincerity.

To my surprise, her face which repulsed me hours before, now opened into extraordinary smiles, lively and calm at the same time. I couldn’t help but let down my guard slowly.

Laura was an interesting conversationalist. She was well read in many subjects from philosophy to science. She turned a seemingly unimportant subject into something to explore and understand. Her comments were humorous and inspirational. When our topic turned to cultures, I was pleasantly surprised by her intelligent comments and well-thought-out analysis.

During our conversation, Laura managed to make every cabin crew who served us walk away laughing at her jokes.

When a flight attendant was clearing our plates, Laura cracked several jokes about her size. The flight attendant roared with laughter as she grabbed Laura’s hand, “You really make my day!”

For the next few minutes, Laura listened attentively and gave pointers to the flight attendant’s weight problem. The grateful attendant said before she rushed off, “I’ve got to work. I’ll come back later and talk to you about it.”

I asked Laura, “‘Have you ever thought about losing some weight?”

“No. I’ve worked hard to get this way. Why would I want to give it up?”

“You aren’t worried about cardiovascular diseases that come with being overweight?”

“Not at all. You only get the diseases if you’re worried about your weight all the time. You see advertisements from slimming centres that say, ‘Liberate yourself from your extra baggage so that you are free to be yourself.’ It’s rubbish! You’re liberated only if you’re comfortable about who you are, and what you look like any time of the day and anytime of the year! Why would I want to waste my time on slimming regimes when I have so many other important things to do and so many people to be friends with? I eat healthily and walk regularly; I’m this size because I am born to be big! There is more to life than worrying about weight all day long.”

She sipped at her wine. “Besides, God gives me so much happiness that I need a bigger body to hold all of it! Why would I lose weight to lose my happiness?” Taken aback by her reasoning, I chuckled.

Laura continued. “Folks often see me as a fat lady with big bosoms, big thighs and a big bottom that no man would even bother to cast a glance at. They see me as a slob. They think I’m lazy and have no willpower. They’re wrong.” She held up her glass to a passing flight attendant. “More of this magnificent wine, please.” She smiled sweetly at the attendant. “Great service from your crew. May God bless all of you.”

She turned to me, “I’m actually a slim person inside. I’m so full of energy that people won’t be able to keep up with me. This extra flesh is here to slow me down, otherwise I’ll be running everywhere chasing after men!”

“Do men chase after you?” I asked jokingly.

“Of course they do. I’m happily married but men still keep proposing to me.

“Most of them have relationship problems and they need someone to confide in. For some reason, they like to talk to me. I think I should have been a counsellor instead of a school teacher!”

Laura paused before she said thoughtfully, “You know, the relationship between men and women is so complicated. Women worship men and call them, ‘Honey’ until they find out they have been lied to, and then they turn into bitter gourds! Men love women so much that they see them as their soul mates until they look at their credit card bills, and then women become devils with tridents!”

Laura’s enthralling conversation had turned the flight into something thoroughly enjoyable. I was also fascinated by the way people were drawn to her. By the end of the flight, almost half the cabin crew was standing near the aisle by us, laughing and joking with Laura. The passengers around us joined in the merry-making too. Laura was the centre of attention, filling the cabin with delightful warmth.

When we waved goodbye to each other at the arrival lounge at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport, I watched her walking towards a big group of adoring adults and kids. Cheers sounded as the group hugged and kissed Laura. She turned around and winked at me.

I was stunned, as the realisation set in: Laura was the most beautiful woman I had ever met in my life.

Click 'LIKE and 'SHARE' if you love this story. :)


This was my very cynical response:
Yeah yeah nice stories like these are supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside and are meant to change people's perceptions of beauty. But in some strange way these stories just remind people that it's common to dislike fat people and that they deserve pity, which actually doesn't do any good for fat people's pride. The more you say stuff like "we must respect fat people" and "fat people are beautiful" and "size doesn't matter", it somehow just makes fat people feel worse about themselves because they are constantly reminded that they are generally looked down upon and need to feed off people's sympathy because they're soooo pitiful. Besides, it's damn easy for someone to say "fat people are beautiful", but, given a choice, nobody of average build would agree to become any fatter than they are now. AND most people are scared of being fat anyway, which shows that the disdain for fatness remains. I think the solution is to stop focusing on size altogether (which I do agree is impossible...), rather than focusing on big sizes and calling them beautiful. AT THE MOST, these stories will make people treat fat people better out of pity/morality, but it doesn't stop the psychological discrimination against them.

I know, I know. I'm being very cynical. I'm not being fair to the person who wrote the story; for all I know she may actually feel that way. I appear to be very pessimistic about life. But, in my opinion, I'm just being realistic, and all this "inspirational", unrealistic crap doesn't do any good for society. People just want to boost their own egos by thinking that they're becoming better people, because they are spreading the "cause" to start loving and respecting the pitiful fat people. It's sadly hilarious. Fat people are now seen as a group of sad, sad people who need the world's approval? Well, that's true. But reminding us of this sad, sad fact isn't going to do any good for us.

Weight Jokes

Many thanks to the person who posted a comment on an earlier post! I got an email notification about the comment and it reminded me about the existence of this blog, which is why I'm doing another post. I'm sincerely sorry to the (very few) readers out there for not updating this space for so long.

Anyway, today was the first P.E. (Physical Education aka sports) lesson that we had after the month-long June holidays, which meant... it was time for the teacher to take our height and weight (refer to my "Taking My Weight In School" post).

One of my friends (let's call her Q), in good fun, made a weight joke about her best friend (let's call her P). When P stepped on the weighing scale, Q immediately shouted "OH MY GOD, P! You're 70kg?! Ha Ha Ha!" Q didn't actually see P's weight, which was obviously not 70kg (more like 55-60kg); she only meant it as a joke.

Well, I'm above 70kg so how is that supposed to make me feel? 70kg is funny? In that case they should just laugh at me every day when they see me at school.

Fine, perhaps I don't LOOK 70kg, because I AM heavier than I look, God knows why. Still, it's not impossible for me to be above 70kg, so I would appreciate some sensitivity, and not to have a heavy weight treated as a huge joke, like being heavy is something considered funny; something to be laughed about.

Thank God this is the very last time I'll ever have my weight taken in school - I'm graduating at the end of this year. I will be spared of further humiliation.

The Maxi Dress

It's been forever since I updated this... but not like anybody reads this anyway.

My new obsession is the maxi dress. Why? Because it practically covers your entire body, so you don't really have to worry about your butt looking big or your calves looking fat. It's an awesome piece of clothing for fat people.

However, I've been browsing online for maxi dresses, and the bulk of them have no sleeves. I don't see the point in hiding my fat butt, thighs and legs, if my flabby arms are going to be boldly brandished in public. See? They never make good clothes for fat people. I might as well wear a nun's clothing.

They do have some maxi dresses with LONG sleeves... but I don't want to look like an old queen.

The few maxi dresses WITH sleeves that I found, which I actually like:

This one wasn't actually for sale. This was a tutorial on how to sew this dress. Well, I have no materials, no sewing machine, and no domestic skills whatsoever ): BUT THIS DRESS IS SO PRETTY and I want it.

The model is really skinny... so I doubt it'd look good on me. It is "free size", which is supposed to mean that the majority of people will be able to wear it. But I highly doubt it'd fit me.

I like this, but I heard that horizontal stripes make you look wider. Of course there isn't a single piece of clothing that could make this model look fat, except a fat suit. But for me?

Still, I love the concept of maxi dresses. They're loose and comfortable and extend to your ankles!

If I was skinny, I would wear this type of thing every day:

But I'm not. So it's sleeves for me! Provided I can actually find one of these dresses in Singapore, with the huge collections of wonderfully fashionable dresses that all come in minus-sizes -.-