Laser Rocket Arm

So I’m in my local “health food” grocery store on my weekly trip. I get in line at the checkout and watch as the woman ahead of me–maybe late thirties, pretty, slim, well-groomed, twin set over khakis–unloads her cart. Organic cereal, organic skim milk, organic frozen dinners, organic potato chips, and various faux-meat soy products. As the conveyor belt clears I begin unloading my own cart. A whole Bell and Evans chicken, a couple of packs of grassfed oxtails, a small Niman Ranch pork roast, Bell and Evans boneless skinless chicken thighs, a packet of dried organic porcini mushrooms, and a pack of Organic Valley pastured butter. The woman ahead of me looks at my stuff, looks at me, and wrinkles her nose. I can almost hear her thinking.

Well, no wonder you’re fat, eating all that meat.

It’s a rare week where I don’t encounter that stare at this store. While I’m happy that this store actually has a decent if small meat section–the other “health food” grocery around here has one small cooler with a pathetic meat selection–it’s not lost on me that the majority of it is devoted to the Healthy Vegetarian Lifestyle^TM. It’s also not lost on me that when I’m in the store it’s populated by healthy-looking thin yupsters and young hard-bodied crunchies (Richmond is a college town after all). And then there’s me, the fat chick with all the meat in her cart, and the “fat and meat are BAD and EVIL” mantra that’s been drilled into our heads for almost four decades comes into play, resulting in said nose-wrinkling and pitying glances.

In short, it’s hard to convince someone that paleo/primal is the way to go when you look like me. I am fat, therefore I must be unhealthy. Never mind that my thinner colleagues were getting felled left and right by the various permutations of the flu (sad to report that one of my co-workers actually died from H1N1) while I stayed healthy. Never mind that I feel great when I eat meat and eggs and fat. As Andre Agassi once said, image is everything, and … well, I’m fucking fat. Not because of what I eat, but what I drink. Livers Gone Wild. I’m trying, but the beast right now is stronger than me and I’m trying to deal with it. I try to minimize the damage with my diet, but I stand as living proof that the Drunkard’s Diet doesn’t always work.

To be fair, I’ve never had anyone make a remark to me. If they did, I’d give them my best “fuck you” eyeroll. But it’s hard to play for the other side when your opponent looks like the picture of health as she places her box of Tofutti Cuties on the conveyor belt.

I have never been thin. Until recently, I was never hugely fat, either. Being sedentary since earliest memory probably never helped. After roughly 33 years of various self-destructive behavior, my five-foot-four-inch self stepped on a scale one day and almost had my head explode. 211 pounds? WTF?

Around that time (1999) the Mayo Diet thing was making its rounds. I also had a co-worker who swore by Protein Power. I bought the PP book and a gym membership, but fell prey to the low-fat mantra and started following that instead. I did lose weight–about sixty pounds, to be exact. I was working out six days a week, but I was also starving hungry pretty much all the time and found myself practicing bulimia if I ate something I deemed “bad.” We, meaning Mr. Laser Rocket Arm and I, moved to Virginia, and in the midst of setting up our new lives I drifted back to my whatever/whenever eating plan combined with a charming alcohol habit.

Flash forward seven years. I got sick and needed to go to urgent care to get a note to go back to work (I tend to avoid doctors). The nurse took my blood pressure, and her eyebrows raised. Another nurse came in, did the same thing. Another nurse … well, you get the idea. My BP was through the roof. I got weighed (I don’t own a scale so I won’t be a slave to it).

211? I wish. Try 240.

I am a huge NFL fan (as if the name of the blog wasn’t a huge obvious clue). The first thought that went through my head when I saw the scale was “OMG, I weigh the same as Ben Roethlisberger.” Yeah, Big Ben–who is thirteen inches taller than me. I can definitely drink like a Roethlisberger today, but apparently eating like him isn’t a good idea. Oh–and don’t forget the high blood pressure! Armed with a prescription, I went home and really looked at myself. My family always remarks on my resemblance to my mother. That day, I saw it. The round, red face. The bloated body.

And I remembered my last sight of her–in her casket, dead at 43, no doubt of obesity-related causes. And I had just turned 40 in the autumn.

I knew that I needed to do something.

I fell back into reading and participating on low-carb forums, but found myself getting increasingly annoyed with the stay-at-home mommies who passed around Oprah sayings and Bible verses and posted about eight gazillion recipes for low-carb cheesecake–with none of them losing weight. Then I started hearing about Paleo and the Bear and became intrigued by the ideas expressed. I did get caught up with the zero-carb extremists (*cough*charleswashington*cough*) for a while but quickly got bored. I like food. I like to cook, I like to eat. Red meat is awesome but dammit, I like veggies and sauces too. I have seen that I can and do lose weight when sticking to whole foods. In the past year I’ve made a conscious effort to buy sustainably raised meats or at the worst Bell and Evans chicken, and I’ve found a couple of sites run by fellow foodies that let me know going Paleo/primal/whatever doesn’t mean boredom. I realize that if I truly want to succeed the booze needs to go, but I’m having a hard time letting go. My resolve is building though. I quit smoking over ten years ago by deciding I didn’t want to smoke anymore. That same idea as applied to drinking is starting to gain hold.

So that’s me in a nutshell. I may also talk about football and post YouTube Peyton Manning commercials since I do sort of have to honor the guy who uttered the words that became the title for this blog. Just so you’re warned.