acho que não

Clemie is a real inspiration with her reasons why. And if she can get her ass to the gym every day and lose a bunch of weight, so can I.

As I contemplated whether I wanted to bother going to the new gym today, I really wasn't going to go. But then I thought of all the things that Clemie has written, all the reasons of hers that are also mine and I went. Because Clemie would go.

If Clemie jumped off a cliff, I probably wouldn't (unless we were celebrating our tremendous weightloss by going bungie jumping or parasailing or one of those other sports with a weight limit), but this seems like a good place to be a follower.

When I drive. When I sleep. When I sit in a chair. Most especially when I walk up or down stairs, my right hip screams in pain. It has for months.

I am 29 years old. I am not due to disintegrate into a pile of artificial hips and replacement organs for a few years yet. I know that being fat is a big part of the problem.

I hate doing laundry, even now that I have it easy (there's a washer and dryer upstairs, as opposed to several blocks away at the laundromat). Because my clothes are so huge, I have to do a lot more loads of laundry than the average person.

Plus, while I'm folding the laundry, every item I look at something it reminds me how huge and fat I am. Because a pair of unfilled size 26 pants is monstrously unattractive.

I work a very sedentary job. I sit at a computer pretty much all day, every day. Even moreso now that I work from home and don't have the occasioanl trip to the cafeteria to break up the monotony of sitting in my chair.

This is both a reason why I am fat (I gained a lot of weight when I started working full time) and a reason why I need to not be fat. Because by the end of the day, my ass gets numb. And when your ass is as large as mine, that's a lot of numb.

I would like to own a pretty bra.

Pretty bras do not come in 46E.

I tend to be self-conscious when I eat amongst other people. 'Am I taking too much?' 'Is anyone else going to order dessert?' 'Do I look like a pig eating this?' All are common questions whenever I eat with other people - even though eating with other people is basically a hobby for me.

I believe that if I were thin, I wouldn't feel so self-conscious about what I chose to eat in public, and thus would enjoy it more.

I've been filling out health forms lately - for switching gyms and insurance policies and such. Writing 310 in the weight field on an application form is embarassing. You just know somebody's going to have to type that in somewhere and think 'fatty' while they do it.

Last night's dinner with the meetup group was okayish. I ate waaaay too much at dinner, but did opt for some of the more vegetably items on the buffet (I didn't know it was going to be a buffet or I wouldn't have RSVPed yes).

My diet victory yesterday, though, was cannoli. My landlady gave me a whole thing of fresh Italian cannoli that her kids had left behind. Instead of keeping it or eating it, I took it to the meetup and gave them away to the people there. I don't love cannoli, really. I eat them because they look good, and because eating things is what I do, but I'm never all that impressed. Better for someone else to have the calories.

It's been over a year since we were robbed, and I'm still nervous and antsy about unexpected noises in the house (like, oh, say, the homecare worker showing up at 6:30AM this morning). I'd like to be fit so that when the burglars come again, I can beat them. Or run away. Whichever of the two seems wiser at the time.

I bought a dress for my brother's wedding on the weekend.

The I bought a coverup to go over the dress I bought for my brother's weekend.

Because it was either that, or have some serious alterations made to the dress, because my hips are two sizes larger than my boobs.

I would like to be thin so that my massively oversized thighs don't throw my whole body out of proportion, rendering it difficult to ever buy dresses that actually fit.

I read MetaFilter pretty much religiously (ie: I pick and choose the parts that interest and/or outrage me the most) and one of the hot button issues over there is always fat. Whenever a thread comes up related to fat or weightloss, people go crazy. There's this contingent of former and never fat people who smugly insist that all the fat people need to do is stop being lazy and everything will solve itself.

I would like to be thin, so that I, too, can be a former fat person on MetaFilter, and so that I can prove that it is possible to be a former fat person, and still not be a shrill, sanctimonious asshole.

I have ... daymares? ... about falling down stairs. If I arrive at the top of a particularly steep set of stairs, I mentally picture myself falling down it, fat thumping on every third step, slowly rolling to a heaping blob at the bottom.

If I'm going to die falling down a flight of stairs, I'd prefer to do it quickly and with grace - like in an action movie. I'm definitely going to need to be thin for that.

Despite evidence to the contrary, not every place in this world has escalators, elevators, movators or other mechanical elevating devices installed. Some places - any property belonging to the TTC comes to mind - have those things but keep them in a near perpetual state of disrepair.

I get winded half way up a flight of stairs.

That sucks.

The vast majority of my evenings out involve concerts.

The vast majority of these concerts take place in rather skeevy sorts of bars.

The vast majority of skeevy sorts of bars have rather limited seating.

Thus, the vast majority of my evenings out are spent standing up for several straight hours in order to see concerts in skeevy sorts of bars.

While my ass sometimes gets numb when asked to support 300lbs for hours at a time, that's nothing on what my knees do. Numb would be a blessing. Numb would not involve sharp, shooting pain.

There are a few places in town where I see shows that do have seats - Massey Hall, the Royal Alex (for theatre), etc. In many of those places, I barely fit in the seats, and I know I take up more than my fair share of the armrests.

It's 22 degrees out at 9AM. It's supposed to hit 30 by noon. It's not even June yet.

I'd like to wear shorts during Toronto summers, but there are 2 problems with that. 1) My thighs are so fat that shorts bunch up, unattractively, regardless of how they fit, or what they're made of. 2) My knees are so fat that, well, they're just so fat. Fat knees are truly one of the least attractive body parts imaginable.

That's right, you get a bonus reason today. Aren't you lucky?

On the way to the gym today (late, because I was seriously not wanting to drive in traffic today given the TTC strike), I saw a car with the licence plate 'CHUBBYY'.

I'm a fat chick, but I don't want to be just a fat chick. I don't want to identify with being fat so much that it'd be something I'd put on my licence plate.

I'm fortunate enough to carry relatively little of my fat on my face, but if I look down, I still end up with rather more chins than are required. Wandering around with your nose in the air all the time is both snobby and exhausting.

Just before the turn of the millenium (the fake one, between 1999 and 2000, for all you calendar geeks out there), I bought a beautiful wool dress coat. Specifically, I bought it to wear over my new dress, which I bought for the geekiest New Year's Eve party ever. (Almost all of the attendees worked in IT, so the countdown consisted of '5-4-3-2-1 Check you pager!')

I happen to like this coat quite a lot, I think it's elegant and stylish, and also warm enough for Toronto winters. The problem it has is this:

When I wear it on public transit, people get up to offer me their seats.

I want to be thin so I can wear my favourite coat without people thinking I'm pregnant.

That once I'm thin, my favourite coat will no longer fit is not lost on me, but when it comes to motivation, I work with what I have.

Airplane seatbelts are a tricky thing. They're often not big enough for me, at which point, I have to ask for a seatbelt extension. During the busy boarding period, this isn't a request that flight attendants are ever thrilled with or gracious about.

Most airplanes these days, I'm not having a problem with the seatbelts, but with older planes, it's still an issue. It's an issue I'd never like to have again.

There's a fully mirrored closet in the bathroom of the Villa here in Maui. (Feegs, do as I say, not as I do when it comes to stringing together prepositional phrases.)

It is located immediately across from the toilet.

While watching myself go to the bathroom is always something I find at least moderately disturbing, the site of my monstrous thighs in that mirror was utterly revolting.

We're going snorkeling in Napili this morning before the wedding. Floating through the water, face down in my oh so attractive swimsuit, I tend to imagine I look like an albino manatee to anyone nearby.

I'd just like to look at the fishes, instead of look like the fishes.

Whenever I wear a skirt or dress, I wear shorts underneath it to keep my thighs from rubbing together and causing me intense discomfort. I would like to be thin so that my thighs aren't programmed to self-destruct if they get too near each other.

Yesterday, I was stressed out. My luggage hadn't arrived, yet I had a courier notice, which turned out to be not for my luggage but for something else entirely when I shlepped to Purolator to pick it up. So on my way home, I stopped and picked up a wickedly large dinner from a restaurant I've been meaning to try as a way of making myself feel better.

Food is not an adequate response to stress. I'd like to really absorb that, but thus far in my life it doesn't seem to have happened. I suppose I can consider it a minor victory that I didn't also get dairy queen to go with dinner.

Fat stores hormones. As you gain and lose weight it messes with your hormone levels.

A couple of years ago, right before I went on the big diet, my hormones were so entirely whacked that I had a period that lasted 109 days.

I'm not even going to bother explaining why that was bad.

When I started this diet the first time, I had to spend a great deal of time searching for a new scale. I needed one that went over 280 or 300 lbs, and they were few and far between. My first goal weight was 300, not because it was a nice round number, but because that's when the dial stops wrapping around.

When even inanimate objects know you're too fat, you're too fat.

When I travel, I'm always one of those people who has to stand around for half an hour after their plane lands waiting for luggage to arrive, instead of one of those people who just hop off the plane and into their waiting limousine and get whisked off to their final destination.

I'd like to do the carry on only thing, but when your clothing is as large as mine, it takes up a lot more space in a suitcase, and there's just not room for more than a weekend's worth of clothing in a carry on bag.

I'd like to be able to gain a few pounds and not have it make me feel like a total loser. If I was thinner, and closer to a good weight, putting on a pound or seven because I had a totally fantastic week of eating with one of the world's great eaters wouldn't feel so bad.

The nails on my toes need to be clipped. But clipping my toenails is a rather laborious process that involves much heavy breathing and physical exertion because my stomache gets in the way of any attempt to simply lean forward and reach my toes.

I spend a lot of time at indie rock concerts and such. Sometimes I'm guest listed in. Sometimes, I even party with the bands afterwards. But no one ever believes the fat chick is with the band.

I want to be thin, so that when I say I'm with the band, people will believe me.

Or at least think the band is likely to think I'm hot, so they let me in anyway.

There's an image I have in my head of a quintessentially cool woman. She's elegantly dressed, with sleak hair, subtle make-up and discrete jewellery. She walks into a bar and slides nonchalently onto a stool and orders her Scotch neat.

Getting onto a bar stool is, for me, a rather energetic process with much dragging and holding and shifting required. Once there, I perch, not elegantly or even calmly, but precariously with the constant threat that I will simply slide off the thing always in mind. This, sadly, is not the epitome of cool.