Saturday, 15 June 2013

Fat Woman and the social meeja

Fat Woman had coffee with a friend after training. Fat Woman hadn't planned on staying around but ate a protein shake and a banana to keep her going. After coffee Fat Woman really needed food so she stopped at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and ordered two pieces of chicken. Fat Woman always loved KFC as a child and only gets it once every year or so.

Fat Woman was very pleased to find two dark pieces of chicken, a drumstick and a thigh, in her bag. Fat Woman find KFC breast meat to be dry and rather pointless. Fat Woman didn't know you could have two dark pieces and will in future ask for them.

Fat Woman found that the two pieces of chicken combined with what she had already eaten filled her up and met her calorie allowance. Looking it up later Fat Woman saw that the drumstick had approximately 120 calories and the thigh had 290 calories. With 29g of protein and only 11g of carbohydrates this was a suitable post-workout meal for Fat Woman, even if it wasn't the quality of meat Fat Woman usually prefers. Fat Woman found it rather salty, but as she rarely eats any salt at all this isn't something to worry about. Fat Woman tweeted that she was rather over KFC. Fat Woman only wants KFC once a year anyway, and might in fact skip a year or two.

The next day a Facebook friend of Fat Woman posted about having KFC. Fat Woman commented that her tweet the previous day had obviously inspired them. Fat Woman forgot about KFC and went about eating healthy food.

The following day Fat Woman was surprised to receive a tweet from Personal Trainer. Fat Woman doesn't follow Personal Trainer on Twitter because he has been known to retweet things that he would not say in front of Fat Woman. Fat Woman feels that whilst people shouldn't say racist, sexist or homophobic things or even tell fat jokes, she is in danger of being the political correctness police and that she will not judge someone on direct conversation with others that she accidentally becomes privy to via social media. This is lucky because another Coach is a gazillion times worse than Personal Trainer, who retweeted one fat joke once and was suitably abashed when Fat Woman called him on it.

Fat Woman and Personal Trainer compromised by becoming friends on Facebook, where Fat Woman is also friends with Personal Trainer's mother, and by Fat Woman following Personal Trainer's professional twitter account. Personal Trainer never uses his professional twitter account apart from once to say thank you to Fat Woman for his housewarming gift. It took a whole month for Personal Trainer to reply to Fat Woman's only other tweet to him, and as that was two days before Fat Woman wasn't expecting to hear from Personal Trainer through Twitter again, possibly not ever so. Then she received a tweet saying "No post workout KFC for you today!" Personal Trainer had seen Fat Woman's posting and gone to Twitter to track down what she had said about eating KFC. Fat Woman was impressed by the ingenuity, and amused that Personal Trainer had bothered.

Fat Woman was surprised by the tweet, but not half as surprised as she was when back in the gym Personal Trainer launched into an attack on Fat Woman's bread eating habits. Fat Woman once gave up bread on Personal Trainer's recommendation, but after three months Fat Woman hadn't increased her weight loss and had in fact slowed progress a little because it was harder to find calorie controlled meals on the go. Personal Trainer insisted that Fat Woman was eating too much bread and had eaten bread every day over the last week and implied that somehow that was terribly awfully bad. Fat Woman was puzzled by the outburst and also about how Personal Trainer got his information as she hadn't eaten bread at the weekend. Fat Woman wonders if perhaps Personal Trainer was having a massive craving for bread and was projecting a little.

Fat Woman felt rather attacked. When Personal Trainer says things like that it leaves Fat Woman feeling that every good choice she made was simply not good enough and that she is trapped in a game she cannot win. Fat Woman doesn't let Personal Trainer manage her nutrition, partly because she is very well informed herself, partly because Personal Trainer takes a very drastic approach to nutrition that Fat Woman simply can't sustain for the rest of her life. Fat Woman has to rely on calorie counting so she knows if her metabolism is faster or slower than it should be. This happens quite a lot with her thyroid replacement hormone, which causes weight gain when the dose is both too high and too low. There is a sweet spot in the middle when Fat Woman is essentially on speed, but it comes with unpleasant side effects and a large crash afterwards. Personal Trainer lives with a lack of control in this state of affairs but was obviously having a moment. Fat Woman doesn't have much sympathy for Personal Trainer's frustration because it only bothers him for three hours each week. Fat Woman gets it 24/7

The irony of the whole thing was that Fat Woman went to KFC because she knows Personal Trainer thinks she eats too much bread and she didn't want to buy a sandwich for lunch. Next time, Fat Woman will go to McDonalds and she won't mention it on social media.

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