Fat Woman is FitFluential

Fat Woman is on Twitter. Fat Woman follows FitFluential. On 28th August FitFluential tweeted the following questions:

Q1: Did you set any fitness or health goals for 2012? What? How did it go?
Q2: Do you have a fitness-related goal for the rest of the year? What is it?
Q3: Who has goals related to healthy eating?
Q4: Long term goals? What’s on your #FitnessBucketList?
Q5: Do you share your goals with others for accountability?
Q6: How often do you set / evaluate your goals?
Q7: How do you reward yourself for meeting specific goals (short term or long term)?
Q8: What sorts of obstacles have been thrown in your way?
Q9: How do you overcome the challenges that arise during your pursuit of goals?
Q10: What is your proudest fitness-related achievement so far this year?

As is often the case with the US-dominated Twitter, Fat Woman was in bed during most of the tweeting around these questions. Fat Woman liked the answers to these questions. The answers were thought-provoking and Fat Woman is considering these questions herself.

Fat Woman is grateful to FitFluential for posting these questions. Fat Woman would not have thought about these things if FitFluential hadn't shared.

Fat Woman is fit (apparently)

Fat Woman went and trained with Personal Trainer. This was Fat Woman's first training session since the post-workout throwing up. Fat Woman had requested more workouts of similar intensity.

Fat Woman got an intense workout, but actually really enjoyed it. At no time did Fat Woman flag or beg for mercy or even whine. There was boxing and there were skull crushers with a 5kg weight and there was some mat work and TRX work. Fat Woman can't claim she didn't break a sweat but she did break into the odd smile as well.

Fat Woman was so fit that Personal Trainer was reduced to putting her on the stationary bike and making her pedal at +70rpm on level 10.

Fat Woman and the new low (or high)

1. Fat Woman trained with Personal Trainer. 
2. Fat Woman threw up.
3. Fat Woman took a cold shower.
4. Fat Woman was still sweating half an hour later.
5. Fat Woman texted Personal Trainer and requested the same again next session.

Fat Woman is fairly certain that the throwing up was because she trained ninety minutes after lunch instead of two hours after breakfast.

Personal Trainer says that all his clients throw up sooner or later. Fat Woman nearly threw up again at his smugness.

Fat Woman takes First Friend to the gym

Fat Woman's First Friend came to visit. Fat Woman would say that First Friend is her oldest friend, but that makes First Friend sound ancient. First Friend is actually Fat Woman's longest-standing friend. First Friend is an amazing PE teacher, dancer and sportswoman. First Friend and Fat Woman had PE together for a year of primary school and five years of secondary school. First Friend talks about Fat Girl to her students, who love to hear stories of First Friend and Fat Girl together in class.

Fat Woman hasn't seen First Friend since the day they discussed whether Fat Woman should get a personal trainer. Fat Woman remembers the discussion of the difference between intrinsic motivation, rewards and external motivation. Fat Woman is a very externally motivated person, although her intrinsic motivation regarding exercise is growing. It was the conversation with First Friend that Fat Woman decided that she would invest in herself and pay for someone to give her the support she needs.

During her visit First Friend confided that if she lived closer to Fat Woman she would have trained Fat Woman herself. Fat Woman was touched by this thought, but thinks that things probably worked out better the way they are.

Fat Woman had been really looking forward to surprising First Friend with her progress. First Friend did not disappoint. First Friend was as proud of Fat Woman and as pleased for Fat Woman as anyone could have hoped. Fat Woman really needed someone who loved her to tell her how well she had done and exclaim with surprise and pleasure. Fat Woman knows that First Friend understands how hard things have been for Fat Woman. First Friend was overjoyed to see the difference in Fat Woman, and Fat Woman loved having someone give her the acclaim and credit she tries not to need but really she desperately wants.

In the afternoon Fat Woman and First Friend went to the gym. Fat Woman wanted to show First Friend where she spends the majority of her time. First Friend is recovering from a hamstring injury and was keen to test out going to a gym again before she starts her new membership next week. Fat Woman and First Friend did a warm up on the stationary bikes and found they were fairly evenly matched. After that, First Friend took to the epilepticals and Fat Woman rowed for a while. Then Fat Woman introduced First Friend to pad work.

First Friend had never done any boxing pad work before. Fat Woman loved being able to introduce her super sporty friend to a new sport, and First Friend loved pad work. Fat Woman and First Friend had an amazing time doing pad work, laughing and having fun in a way that Fat Woman didn't think was possible in the gym.

Fat Woman had said to both Personal Trainer and First Friend that she would like to introduce them. Fat Woman would have liked the introduction to have happened in a social setting when Personal Trainer and First Friend would have had the chance to discover they had several things in common, but in the gym there wasn't time to discuss anything except Fat Woman and how well she had done. Personal Trainer was actually heard to say that yes, Fat Woman had done really well.

The highlight of First Friend's visit for Fat Woman was when First Friend watched Fat Woman do pad work with Personal Trainer. This was nice of Personal Trainer as he was in the middle of his own workout with Buddy. Fat Woman considers no-talking pad work with Personal Trainer a party piece. Fat Woman loves when they work in silence except for Personal Trainer occassionally quietly sayin numbers, with the gloves and the pads slamming together and the sound bouncing back from the high walls of the gym. First Friend found the display even more impressive than Fat Woman had hoped. First Friend said so many nice things including that Fat Woman looked fit and slim and athletic moving around, ducking and punching. First Friend confessed that she had thought: "God, I don't think I could do that!" First Friend even said that when she watched Buddy and Personal Trainer do pads that Buddy had a better guard, but other than that there wasn't much between him and Fat Woman.

Fat Woman explained the short-arms-big-breasts problem.

Then First Friend and Fat Woman did mat work, and First Friend was amazed at Fat Woman's ability to do sit ups. After all the compliments Fat Woman thought First Friend deserved a rest so they spent the next ninety minutes in the hot tub and steam room, talking non stop.

Fat Woman adored being able to share what is a huge part of her life with someone who could understood both her life before she started working out and how life actually is now she is committed to exercise.  It was an incredible feeling for Fat Woman to find that she is as fit as her fit friend, keeping up with her and even doing better than her in some areas.

Fat Woman wishes that she had a friend she could work out with in the same way she can with First Friend. Fat Woman would give an awful lot to find someone with a similar level of  ability and need, and also dedication. As such people are apparently extremely rare, Fat Woman is once again glad for Personal Trainer.

Fat Woman is in lust

Personal Trainer has been skating on thin ice recently. As well as deciding to up and leave the gym, and refusing to let the subject of Swimming Coach drop, Personal Trainer was caught retweeting a fat joke and when Fat Woman repeated the joke to clarify which tweet she was talking about Personal Trainer laughed his little head off again.

The something happened which made Fat Woman fall in lust and forget all of Personal Trainer's failings. Personal Trainer let Fat Woman use his shotgun. Not just any shotgun, oh no! Personal Trainer is the proud owner of a Beretta D10 Titan.

Fat Woman fell for the D10 Titan the moment she first saw its walnut stock. It sang to Fat Woman. It whispered to her as she cradled it in her arms.

Not only did Personal Trainer let Fat Woman shoot his beloved gun, Personal Trainer also provided very helpful shooting coaching. Fat Woman killed 11 out of 25 birds on a round of skeet, which isn't bad at all for someone's first time out and using a gun which is really far too long. To top it all off, Personal Trainer suggested they go shooting again.

Fat Woman has forgiven Personal Trainer everything and has even made him zero carb linseed bread.

Fat Woman fears that this gun has spoiled her for other guns.

Personal Trainer says he has the same effect on women.

Fat Woman is over-medicated

Fat Woman has an under-active thyroid. It's a big part of how Fat Woman got to be so fat. Fat Woman got the hang of taking the pills fairly early on but found it incredibly hard to get the right dose. Fat Woman waited three months to see a consultant - plus four hours on the day itself - and the consultant told her to cut her pills in half.

Fat Woman has discovered that being over-medicated is worst than being under-medicated. What Fat Woman is over-medicated part of her brain simply freezes. Fat Woman can't concentrate on creative work.

Fat Woman realised she was over-medicated and cut her dose drastically last night. This meant that tonight Fat Woman could stay up until 3am finishing the work she had been staring blankly at for five days.

Fat Woman finds it frustrating that the doctors' surgery is so unresponsive. Fat Woman has to change her thyroxine dose because she is losing weight. The doctors' surgery can take blood and get it sent away but are apparently unable to telephone Fat Woman with the results or even have the results available online, and they certainly seem incapable of understanding that Fat Woman's person health requirements are not the same as the standard procedure. Fat Woman has spent years working out how her Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) correlates to her well being. Fat Woman knows the following:

• TSH 0.8+ - Fat Woman is sleeping 14 hours a day and is effectively unmedicated
• TSH 0.6-0.7 - Fat Woman knows something is wrong
• TSH 0.3-0.5 -Fat Woman is a happy, energetic bunny, eating healthily, exercising, achieving and losing weight
• TSH 0.2-0.0 - Fat Woman is over-medicated and suffers brain fog.

When Fat Woman goes to the doctor for a blood test because she suspects she is over-medicated she doesn't want a letter in seven days telling her that the surgery are monitoring her. Fat Woman wants someone to call her up and tell her what her TSH levels are.

Fat Woman and the fat jokes

Fat Woman isn't averse to a good joke. Fat Woman hasn't found that many fat jokes to be good jokes. Usually a fat joke relies on the punchline being that someone is fat, large or heavy. Sometimes fat jokes use the idea that fat people are round like balls and are therefore bouncy, but these aren't even funny.

Fat Woman did hear one funny fat joke, once. Fat Woman said: "Are you suggesting I should raise money by selling my body?" The joke was: "You'd make more money selling it by the pound." Fat Woman was tickled by this and laughed. Fat Woman understands others might not find this amusing, but context was important.

Fat Woman has had to put up with a couple of fat jokes this week. The first was a birthday card Fat Woman's cousin sent his mother. It featured two fat men in workout gear with a caption about how no one had much hope for the British Olympic sprint team. Auntie found it terribly funny. Fat Woman didn't find it amusing. Fat Woman was actually rather unimpressed by the utter dimness of her relatives. Surely they would twig the joke was offensive to a fat person?

The second fat joke was on Personal Trainer's Twitter feed. Having been given the whole "friends" issue some thought Fat Woman was about to follow Personal Trainer on Twitter. The top post was a retweet of a fairly rubbish joke - "I saw a fat girl in the gym today. She had an iPad strapped to her arm."

Fat Woman has de-constructed this joke and reasons that it must be funny because an iPod is so small against a fat arm but an iPad is larger and would therefore be considered to scale. Perhaps the humour is that the size of the iPad shows just how large the arm is.

If Fat Woman had an iPad she would be wearing it strapped to her arm tomorrow.

Fat Woman is now feeling very self concious about her size in the gym. Fat Woman has an arm band for her iPod which she wears in the gym. Fat Woman is now wondering if people look at her and see the flesh bulging around the strap and think that she is revolting.

Fat Woman is wondering how Personal Trainer sees her. Fat Woman had already made it clear that if she heard Personal Trainer talking about how disgusting anyone's at was she would fire him. Fat Woman has blocked Personal Trainer on Twitter. Fat Woman doesn't feel she can say anything as it was a personal feed that she was not yet subscribed to.

Fat Woman is struggling with the idea that someone can like her as a person but find people like her risible. Fat Woman wonders if it is a similar issue to a person of Asian descent being friends with a racist. The racist might say: "They're all dirty scroungers - except for you, of course." All fat people are fat and lazy, except for the ones you know as a person ,of course. Fat Woman doesn't want to fire Personal Trainer over this, but it has rather hurt her feelings. Fat Woman thought Personal Trainer saw her as a person who happened to be fat and assumed that extended to other fat people. Yet when her family who love her can hold the same view it makes Fat Woman think that perhaps she is laughable. Or possibly revolting, disgusting and vile.

Fat Woman hasn't doubted herself this much in a long time.

Fat Woman and her Auntie

Fat Woman took a holiday and went to stay with her Auntie. Fat Woman is extremely fond of Auntie. Since Fat Woman's mother died Auntie is the closest female family member Fat Woman has.

Fat Woman took Auntie to the supermarket. Fat Woman picked up some Nairn's chocolate oatcakes because they aren't on sale in her home supermarket. Here is a picture: 
Fat Woman likes these oat cakes because she can eat them plain. At 45 calories each Fat Woman can eat one or two, enjoy them, feel full because of the oats and not be hungry any more.

Auntie glanced at the packet and said: "You shouldn't be eating those!"

Fat Woman was shocked. Since her mother's death Fat Woman has considered Auntie to be practically the next best thing. Fat Woman's mother was never, ever judgemental about what Fat Woman ate. For Auntie to criticise Fat Woman in such a judgemental tone surprised Fat Woman greatly.

It took Fat Woman a while to get her thoughts together in order to respond. Fat Woman realised that actually Auntie was completely ignorant about exactly what Fat Woman was holding. Fat Woman pointed out politely that at 45 calories each, when a digestive biscuit is 70 calories and one of the Leibniz which Auntie was saying earlier she liked was 140 calories, was actually pretty healthy.

Auntie said she wouldn't have thought Fat Woman would be eating "that sort of thing". This is where Fat Woman excelled herself.
Fat Woman didn't justify.
Fat Woman didn't argue.
Fat Woman didn't deny.
Fat Woman didn't explain.

Fat Woman simply said mildly: "I have lost 75 pounds. I am reasonably competent at knowing what I need to eat."

Auntie backed off.

Thinking about this later Fat Woman realised it had made her just how ignorant and prejudiced people are about weight loss. Fat Woman is very glad that after her initial surprise she was able to see this. Once upon a time Fat Woman would have felt every possible negative inference around that comment. Now Fat Woman is calm and disassociated. Fat Woman felt like Sarah in the last scene with the Goblin King in the movie Labyrinth when she says in amazement: "You have no power over me!"


Fat Woman finds it almost funny now that Auntie is so disconnected from Fat Woman's reality. Auntie serves  biscuits and cake in the afternoon, and holds dinner so late that everyone has eaten handfuls of nuts, crisps and olives to stave off hunger. If Auntie was that bothered about what Fat Woman shouldn't be eating then surely Auntie wouldn't serve it?

Fat Woman is the butt of the joke.

Fat Woman is staying with an Aunt. Today the Aunt received a birthday card from Fat Woman's cousin. The birthday card featured the caption "the spectators' hearts sank when they saw Britain's Olympic 100 metre hopefuls" under a picture of two very fat men in workout gear. The Aunt laughed very hard.

Fat Woman is hurt to have seen such obvious evidence that her Aunt finds fat people hilarious. Fat Woman finds the card incredibly offensive and hates that it is on obvious display.  The only 'funny' part of this is that the people on the card are fat.

Personal Trainer needs reassurance

Personal Trainer is leaving Fat Woman's gym. Fat Woman knew something was going on when Personal Trainer texted: "We need to talk." Even though Fat Woman was fairly sure she hadn't done anything wrong at that point her stomach still tied itself in a neat reef knot. 

When it turned out that Personal Trainer was simply changing gyms Fat Woman was so relieved that he wasn't taking a job in Dubai she volunteered to see him at his new location. Fat Woman has calculated that it is an extra seven minutes to Personal Trainer's new location, although that is driving at 60mph instead of the current 30mph through town and is therefore more petrol. Fat Woman considers this a small price worth paying to unravel her anxious stomach. 

Since this initial meeting Personal Trainer has been ill, Personal Trainer and Fat Woman have had a little misunderstanding, and Personal Trainer has been on holiday. This meant that Fat Woman trained with Swimming Coach four times. This has apparently made Personal Trainer insecure. Personal Trainer keeps suggesting that Fat Woman might want to train with Swimming Coach. Fat Woman knows exactly what Personal Trainer thinks of Swimming Coach, and it isn't flattering. Fat Woman could understand this suggestion when she and Personal Trainer were having a misunderstanding, but found Personal Trainer's suggestion, vouched as a question, that she might train once a week with him at his new gym and once a week with Swimming Coach at the current gym to be gobsmackingly out of the blue. 

Fat Woman is getting a little annoyed at the testing and the digs. Fat Woman is fairly sure that they are coming from insecurity. Personal Trainer is, after all, very young and extremely sensitive. Fat Woman is wondering if she should prepare a statement and get everything out in the open. 

1. Fat Woman has one personal trainer. This is Personal Trainer. 

2, If Fat Woman trains with a another person who happens to be a personal trainer it does not make them Fat Woman's personal trainer.

3. Fat Woman will not pay other personal trainers for training when Personal Trainer is available.

4. Fat Woman has no plans to change her personal trainer. In fact the only reason Fat Woman can see for getting a new personal trainer is that Personal Trainer switches gyms to somewhere impossibly far away. 

5. Fat Woman will never train with Swimming Coach full time. [Fat Woman wouldn't say this last bit to Personal Trainer, but as well as being good looking Swimming Coach flirts far too hard with Fat Woman. In fairness Swimming Coach did stop the flirting when Fat Woman asked him too, but Fat Woman does not want to be a middle aged woman with an embarrassing crush on her personal trainer.] 

Fat Woman is  if she should print and sign this statement for Monday. 

Fat Woman the addict

Fat Woman started smoking in self-defence. Tired of being goody-goody and sick of breathing second hand smoke on the bus to college she found that holding your own cigarette was much more pleasant. There was also the possibility that smoking was good for weight loss. Certainly there was an appetite suppressant effect. During her first year at university Fat Woman lost some weight from smoking lots and not eating much.

By the time Fat Woman was 25 years old she was 25 stone in weight. Cigarettes were part of Fat Woman's self-medication routine as she tried to cope with life with an undiagnosed thyroid condition. Walking became harder for Fat Woman as cigarettes started damaging her ability to breathe. The appetite suppressant effect was not enough to compensate for the reduced mobility. 

Fat Woman stopped smoking the day she realised she was an addict. Thin Husband looked at the three packets remaining of the 400 duty free cigarettes he had brought home and said: "Have you smoked all these already?" Thin Husband never comments so Fat Woman was shocked into looking. Fat Woman was even more shocked when she realised she was smoking 30 cigarettes each day. 

Fat Woman quit smoking when she realised she was an addict. Fat Woman knew that she was no better than an alcoholic or a drug addict. The fact was that she spent time thinking about cigarettes, planning when to get cigarettes and when to smoke them. 

Fat Woman went cold turkey at 02.30am on 2nd August 2003 and hasn't smoked a cigarette since. Fat Woman credits a large part of this effort to the people of the alt.stop-smoking.support news group. The collection of wisdom called  "Junkie Thinking" opened Fat Woman's eyes and removed many of the mental hurdles that had previously tripped her up. The most important lesson was that Fat Woman was never going to be able to have a cigarette again. Thinking of herself as an addict - or rather, understanding that she was an addict - gave Fat Woman the freedom to take the protective measures she needed to stay away from cigarettes. 

The most motivational tool for Fat Woman was the Quit Meter. Fat Woman would join the members of alt.quit.smoking.support of posting her statistics every Sunday. Fat Woman was also registered on the alt.stop-smoking.support (AS3) "Quit List". Fat Woman is still on the AS3 quit list and is extremely proud of her place there. Fat Woman had dreams where she smoked again and was devastated to have to share the news with the community and reset her meter.

This is Fat Woman's meter today:

I stopped smoking on Sat, 02 Aug 2003 01:30:00 GMT. It has been 469 weeks, 5 days, 8 hours, 57 minutes and 19 seconds since I quit. I have saved £19730.24 by choosing not to smoke 98651 cigarettes. More importantly, I saved 107 weeks, 4 days 14 hours 3 minutes of my life!


Actually, Fat Woman has probably saved £30,000. The lower figure was calculated on £4 per pack of £20 and the price now is £7.50.

Whatever happens in Fat Woman's life, whatever she does or doesn't do, however bad things get Fat Woman is able to say: "I did not start smoking again".

Fat Woman is so proud of her quit, in a way that she would be embarrassed to share with people face to face. Unlike weight loss, which always seems something of a duty to make up for her moral failings, Fat Woman still gets a fierce glow of achievement from remaining an ex-smoker.

Fat Woman is thinking that it's a jolly good job she gave up smoking because now she has a personal trainer habit and that is even more expensive than cigarettes.

Fat Woman is on the lookout for exercise addiction, but doesn't seem in any danger.