Psyched Out

So I've lost 31 pounds unintentionally after starting a medication that typically causes weight gain. Not so for me. Some of you are likely aware of the effect SSRIs for depression have on libido. Eradicate it. It's possible to have sex. It can feel nice when it happens. But there's not a shred of desire most of the time. Something that was a delight before, that you wanted and looked forward to and initiated at half a chance just isn't interesting anymore. There's no desire.

That's what happened to my totally moderate and intuition driven appetite for food. It's just gone - disappeared entirely. I am mildly hungry when I wake up. I get my cini minis and coke "breakfast of champions" and then I just don't get hungry. Around ten at night I get mildly hungry. I eat a frozen entree and go to bed. My shorts are literally falling off. I had to exchange them once for a smaller size, and a couple of weeks later THOSE are literally falling off. I can't exchange those, I've worn them. I had to buy safety pins (which incidentally they don't even pretend is a baby item anymore, it's shelved in the miscellaneous aisle)to pin them on my body.

Naturally the weight is all coming off my hips, proportionately small, instead of the SHELF OF FAT above my belly button. It's like the biggest muffin top ever. And it has never gone away. When I couldn't afford food other than rice for a year and got bronchitis and pneumonia and couldn't afford my asthma medicine and walked five miles each way to work and weighed 140? Still there. Nice big twin pregnancy belly? No cute preggo belly for me - still there. I completely accept my body and love a good many parts of it. Including an eraser sized mole on my left forearm, which sort of tells me that I'm ME - it's a little spot of uniqueness. Medical staff have offered to remove it because they could technically get away with a melanoma "biopsy" due to the size. I've always said no thanks.

Now, I'm nowhere near losing my supersize cred. I still weigh 275. I don't imagine that loss of appetite is going to take me out of my set point range. I have bunches of coworkers counting points and having a biggest loser type contest. And I think I've lost more weight than any of them. I just don't talk about it to them. Kind of like I can't join in the women's social ritual complaining about husbands. "Wow, my husband would never do that! You married an asshole." is not in the script. :)

I admit that I'm enjoying it. I can feel the difference in my dance-induced osteo-arthritic knee. I can fit into a pair of bright beach print capris I love again. If I lose another ten pounds I'll probably be able to shop for pants at Target. My shirt size is never going down due to my nice strong linebacker shoulders. I've never been the kind of fat activist who would pass up a legitimate and low side affect treatment. You know, one that doesn't cause weight gain like dieting does. Being fat is part of my identity, but if it were treatable I would happily take a pill, just like I take one for depression, which many consider "character building." Uh, yah, fuck that.

I don't see one coming down the pike in the next hundred years anyway. Phenotypes are had to medically hack. Look at Michael Jackson. Besides which, I am no more likely to be less at risk of high blood pressure because I'm a socially acceptable weight, than Michael J is as an African American, regardless of how much he has lightened his skin and changed his nose. Because cosmetic changes do not trump genotype. Attempts to increase and decrease height have mostly been failures, and when they work the side effects are usually grave problems themselves. Weight is as heritable as height, and runs in biological but not adoptive families. It's not about food intake, it's about the natural and healthy variation in body size. People can look at Danny DeVito and Kareem Abdul Jabar and accept that HUGE healthy variation. Tall people have more strokes. Short people die when airbags deploy and smother them. Life only ends in one way - death. And it is too short to obsess about appearance when there are people to love and good work to do and fun to be enjoyed.