"Ever heard of Slim Fast?"

The past weeks have been, for lack of a better word, annoying. But somehow inspiring and still somehow motivating.

After Colorado, I went to Georgia, and it was a grand trip, full of barbeque and hotels and walking and supposed-ghosts, and heat and car rides, and best friends. It was also full of goodbyes, which made it bittersweet, of course, those damn goodbyes.

I took Jenny to Wisconsin two days later, met Mark's side of the family--the full side, and was welcomed to Camp Susan. But then I left the next morning, drove home, slept and slept and slept. It was about three weeks straight of intense travel, and my body was tired. That night, I met Jessica at the pizza Luce block party. We ate pizza, I wore jeans and a tank top. That night, we walked around uptown, drank beer, pushed sweaty bodies out of the way to get to the beer.

I went home early. Walked to my car from Drink, walked past people in the drunken, post-haze of the block party, walked past a white, trashy man who said to me and only me ever heard of Slim Fast?

And I kept walking. I pretended I didn't hear him. Because, fact is, I have heard of Slim Fast. I heard of it in 1985 when it was popular, and I heard of it when I was in junior high school in 1995 and it was starting to lose popularity, but people were still using it to make insulting comments to the fat girl waddling around the hallways with her tight ponytail and tapered jeans--emphasizing the fatness--and her Timberwolves Starter jacket and her black Fila tennis shoes, the exact same ones her brother had.

I wanted to say to this man: every heard of not being a douche, ever heard of a shower, ever heard of not being white trash, ever heard of education. Really? Tommy fucking LaSorda, huh?

But I swallowed it and walked to my car. On the way, other memories. The time I was walking home from school in 4th or 5th or 6th grade, when the teenagers on the other side of the street said look at her! She waddles! She can't even walk straight, she waddles.

Craig's friends, whatever it was they said. The rumor that was started about me at STMA for being a lesbian, but really, it was just because I was fat and that was how they decided I couldn't fit in. Gym class. Gym class.

I guess most of the memories about it are vague, save for the waddling 4th grade Jean, and the rest are just the reprecussions of fatness.

Whatever. Where I'm going with this is that my self-esteem is a big pile of shit. It's shitty because the trashy guy verbalized what I've been thinking since grad school ended 4 years ago. I've let myself go--go where, I'm not fucking sure--but I've put on weight when I promised myself I wouldn't goddamned do it. 30 pounds since Mankato. Now, 30 pounds in 4 years isn't the worst thing in the world--I guess that's less than 10 pounds a year. But it's added up, and I'm not happy, and I want my Mankato clothes back. I want the Jean in the Mankato pictures, I want the runner, I want the feeling that I've accomplished weight loss, I want to feel lighter.

Thursday, I went ahead and ate a bunch of gross food at the fair, and then I got sick for the rest of the day, and I sat on the couch and felt sorry for myself some more and thought about how good it used to feel when I put on pants and they were too big and how I'd just stare at my smaller-self in the mirror and say Jean, this is you, you did this, this is really you, you lost this weight, and you look good. And I would stare and stare. In awe of myself. And when I put weight back on, I stopped taking pictures--you can see the big fucking gap in my files, and I'd get mean at the mirror and say what the fuck are you doing? You are so fat. You are a cow. You promised this would never be you again. And then, I'd forget all about it and sleep and sleep and lesson plan instead of run.

At the same time, I don't think I eat crazy ridiculous bad food. A lot of candy, sure. Big portions, sure. But my body isn't jiving with it. I think it's mostly the inactivity. I have to run. I can't be consistent at the gym. The good thing about wanting to lose weight is that I've done it before, which lessens the pressure of can my body actually do this? Because I know it can. It did it two times before, and I just had to run two miles a day and then pick it up so I wouldn't plateau. But something made me not run two miles a day anymore. That thing was teaching.

Fuck you, teaching, you made me fat.
Last week, I went on a date with a guy named Tommy. I keep my profile on OKCupid, and I wait for people to email me if they don't think I'm too weird, or too fat, or obviously only funny because it's my fat/formerly super-fat defense mechanism. I pursue nobody, that would involve confidence. So, Tommy found me. We quipped for a week, set up a time to meet.

Great conversation, a great guy. His story is that he lost 130 pounds, so he talked about it a little while I kept my fat mouth shut. He mentioned that he'd done it with Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers, I thought. That's what mom asked if I wanted to try last week. Two days later, I wrote him a message, four days after that, he wrote back and told me that he had gone on three dates with this other girl, they were three great dates, and our great one date couldn't trump the three. This is the same line that Ben guy who I went on a date with while living in Hutchinson gave me, the last date that I'd ever gone on before this one. I'm pretty sure the Ben guy was giving me a line, but I don't know about Tommy.

Still in my head, this translates too, if I could be attracted to you--if you were thinner--this probably could've happened. And that's the truth of it, and that's how it is. I'm not going to pretend it's not, because then I'd be denying what I owe myself--and denying what I think about people most of the time. I mean, if Tommy still weighed 130 pounds more than he does, would I be attracted to him? Probably not. Fat people, mostly, are not attractive. I'm not super fat, but I'm fat enough to notice. That's what it is.

So, I decided it was some stupid sign to start Weight Watchers. Why the fuck not. It's $60 for three months, and I don't have to go to meetings--I just track everything online. My excuse for not joining in the past was that I thought it'd be expensive (I have a salary now, we're fine); that I thought it was just for really fat people (that's how I've felt for the last three years); that I thought it was for old people (hi, I'm almost fucking 30 years old). Why the fuck not.

I also used to think that a weight loss program would force me to obsess about food, which I don't want to do. I don't want food to run my life. I don't want to count calories and question what I shove in my face. It's time consuming, and obsessive, and annoying. But I guess I have to. Right? I mean, I already am fucking obsessed with food, just after I eat it and feel guilty. And how will I know what I'm really doing wrong unless I track it? We'll just do this for three months and see what happens. I really just need to find some new habits. To find some healthy recipes (and to cook, yikes) and know that they're fine to shove in my face. To be careful when I go out to eat. To exercise more.

Whenever I run three miles, I earn 9 activity points. I like this. I like that I can calculate all of these extra points and watch them grow in my food cue. If Weight Watchers doesn't make me eat better, maybe it will make me run more.

I don't like that I have to think about how this will all work when I'm out to eat, out with friends, when I don't know nutritional information.

Today, I went to Target, and I bought a scale. A scale. I promised myself I would never own a scale, because then I would get obsessed with weight. But I am obsessed with weight, just after I gain it. So, now I have a scale. It will probably make me really depressed. I will probably realize that I am not losing weight and want to quit. If I didn't weigh myself, I wouldn't realize I wasn't losing weight and then I wouldn't want to quit. But Weight Watchers requires I weigh myself every week. Those motherfuckers.

Right now, I weigh 231 pounds. That's pretty gross. And I'm publishing it on my blog, because, well, I think it's better to just say it. I think my driver's license still says 200. And when I say still, I mean that I totally fucking lied 2 months ago in June when I renewed it.

Plus, if everybody knows I'm just all about this, it will be easier. When you secretly try to lose weight, it's easier to cheat, or give up, or not care. I emailed Shannon, I said help. She's lost like 60 pounds. I think she only ate 1200 calories a day, which I probably can't do. I'll just lose slower.

I went grocery shopping. I bought a bunch of produce. Fruit and vegetables are no points on the plan, so I can eat as much fresh fruit and vegetables as I want. A tablespoon of Olive Oil is 1 point. A fruit cereal bar is 4 points. Usually when I buy produce, it just goes bad. Some of it might go bad. We'll see.

One of the tricks is fat free cool whip. I'll just put that shit all over my fruit. It's not that many points.

I bought some stir fry kits. A couple of weeks ago I bought a Foreman grill, so I can just grill meat, easy, without having to use a real pan, which would involve real cooking, which I mostly suck at. I am going to be chicken's worst enemy. I'll eat so much chicken, chickens will fear me.

The healthy recipes at All Recipes all have nutritional information, so I don't have to do much second guessing. The portions seem small. I'll just have fruit and cool whip on the side.

Or maybe just cool whip.