Good To Be Fat: 25 Reasons Why

Newsflash: my body weight has increased by 12% in the last three months. That’s right. I’m not freaked out. In fact, it’s got me thinking and I’ve come to the conclusion that being tubby isn’t all that bad. There are many advantages to being tubby / chubby / plump / big-boned / fat / whatever. Here are 25 of them:

1. People make way when you’re lumbering towards them. When you’re skinny, they stay where they are and expect you to turn sideways and squeeze through.
2. You perspire more, which means you’re eliminating more toxins than skinny people.
3. You have many layers of blubber and therefore, can withstand cold weather better – great if you plan to migrate to a cold country.
4. You don’t have to worry about becoming some shriveled old prune when you turn 60. You’ll have enough blubber reserve to be what young folks like to call, “A jolly old lady”.
5. Babies like you more.
6. Dogs like you more.
7. Come to think of it, even your grandmother likes you more.
8. If you’re ever stuck on an island with no hope of ever being rescued, you’ll be the first to be killed and eaten – that’s a good thing because that way, at least you’ll be humanely killed by your friends (unless you have very evil friends who hate your guts). Your friends will later be ravaged by the mysterious, monstrous beasts that have been skulking around in the bushes waiting cunningly for their chance to attack and tear the heads off – wait, I’ve been watching too many castaway movies.
9. People think you’re jolly even when you’re scowling.
10.  People assume you’re healthy because of all those nutrients in the mountain loads of food you’ve been scoffing down.
11. You get to buy new clothes!
12. You have an excuse for wheezing your way up the hill; skinny people are frowned upon if they wheeze.
13. You have one extra thing to bitch about.
14. You can make fun of skinny people and accuse them of being anorexic.
15. You can wear shirts that say, “I may be fat but you’re stupid.”
16. You are bigger and therefore, more visually prominent (read: important), than everyone else.
17. Robbers will think twice about kidnapping you.
18. You can sit on people who annoy you.
19. You will actually have boobs and a butt.
20. You have more fun nicknames such as Tubs, Chubs and Pui-Pui, all of which are very, very endearing. Skinny people have nicknames like Skeleton, Matchstick, Beanpole and Praying Mantis.
21. You’re nicer to hug.
22. You can be BB (Big & Beautiful) as opposed to SW (Skinny & Whatever).
23. And if you’re one of those aimless, goal-less individuals who have no idea what to do their lives, being fat automatically gives you a life goal: to lose weight!
24. Your ass doesn’t hurt as bad when you sit for a long time.
25. I’ve run out of reasons and I’m too lazy to change the title of my post

There’s A Worm In My Stomach & His Name Is Harry

Why? Because he has hair all over his slimy body. Oh you mean why do I have a worm in my stomach? I have no idea. I just know that Harry quietly took residence last December and started full-on attack sometime in February. It’s been two months and he’s not letting up. He’s ferociously sucking every last calorie, inhaling every last trace of nutrient in my body … leaving me for dead.

While boasting the BMI similar to that of a pre-pubescent girl is the hungered-after beauty norm today, the Starving Bug-eyed Refugee Look has never been something I ever aspired to – at least not intentionally. What’s so sexy about gaunt, hollow cheeks? Sunken eyeballs? Protruding collarbone and painfully visible ribs? Pelvic bones sharp enough to poke somebody’s eye out? Bony, wrinkled fingers?

The aesthetic aspect of it is one thing, the shopping aspect of it is another. Having gone down one dress size in a couple of months has thrown my wardrobe into a bit of a tailspin. Clothes I’d purchased a mere month ago no longer fit me properly, which means I have to now go buy more stuff that will fit me. God, losing weight is tough on the purse strings.

To make matters worse, thanks to Harry’s relentless attacks, not only is the poundage melting off no matter what I eat, there are other miserable side-effects as well. My hair is drier and has lost its sheen, giving rise to what I count among the greatest banes of my existence: Bad Hair Days. My nails are weaker. Just the other day, my beautifully pedicured toenail broke off. That tiny nail cost me six bucks to have done. Damn, I wonder what else is going to fall off.

I don’t know what Harry wants with me and I don’t know if he’s ever going to stop. What I do know is that I’m going to have a huge plate of thick, gooey, cream-based pasta for lunch tomorrow and hope he’s not going to suck all that up too. He can’t. I’m running on empty as it is.

Skeletons, Sliced Ham, Grandma & Barbecued Chicken

My mother screwed me up the other day for missing breakfast, lunch and eating dinner right before midnight. She launches into mother mode and tells me I must have regular meals, otherwise I won’t have energy to work. I tell her, on the contrary, I feel absolutely fabulous and full of energy. And no, I am not being sarcastic. I wasn’t denying myself nourishment; I was just too busy to eat. She doesn’t buy it. I accuse her of not eating too. How is this different from fasting, I ask. It’s true: you fast for days, eating no food, sometimes not even drinking water. That’s different, she says. How so? That is ‘starvation’ with a purpose. Such double standards. So ‘starvation’ is okay only if you’re doing it in the name of world peace, an end to poverty and other ‘noble’ goody-goody causes? Well, I have a purpose too. It’s called meeting-my-deadlines-otherwise-I-get-screwed. She warns me to knock it off or I’ll wind up all shriveled and skeleton-looking and people don’t like skeletons.

Speaking of skeletons, my uncle came by for a visit the other day. His first comment when he sees me is, you’ve lost so much weight! (He makes it sound like I used to be a two-ton truck). Better eat more rice, he says. Too skinny, not nice. He pokes at my collarbone. So bony, he says. Um yeah, if I didn’t have bones, I’d collapse into the ground like a packet of sliced ham.

Speaking of sliced ham, my grandmother used to chide me for not eating enough rice. Her definition of “enough” was two full bowls. I could eat a truckload of vegetables, meat and lotus root but as long as I didn’t chug down two full bowls of rice, she’d wonder why I was ‘starving’ myself. She was really old and aneroxia hadn’t been invented yet, so she couldn’t accuse me of not eating to be thin. She just thought I was a crazy person who wouldn’t eat rice. She warned me that I was getting too thin on the face. She thought I should have a nice round face, like the moon. Look at her (she pointed to my fat cousin). See how nice and round her face is? You should look like that. Uh sure, grandma, whatever you say.

Speaking of grandma, I was talking to a friend the other day. She is really skinny and I’m talking really skinny (italics all mine) even by anorexic supermodel standards. She tells me to eat more cos I’m “very thin”. I look at her in disbelief and wonder if she’d looked at herself in a mirror lately. I wonder if all anorexics suffer from body dysmorphia. Meanwhile I’m shoveling barbecued chicken down my throat as she slices the two peas on her plate with a knife.

Speaking of barbecued chicken, I got myself weighed after completing the 10K at the Singapore Marathon. As I was standing there waiting for my turn to tip the scales, I wondered why the organisers decided to have a weighing station. It would be so de-motivating to discover that you’d gained weight or hadn’t lost an ounce despite all that hard work earlier. I spoke too soon. I had gained 2.5kg. Sure, I was wearing my running shoes which were caked in mud (could’ve contributed a hefty pound or two), I had guzzled five paper cups of water and 100PLUS (sugar is heavy) and I was still wearing my running bib (it wasn’t made of feathers, you know), so the numbers were probably inaccurate.

Speaking of feathers … um, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, skeletons, sliced ham, grandma and barbecued chicken. I did have a point somewhere. If only I can remember what it was.

Welcome, Belly Roll & Stretch Mark

History was made in the snobby fashion world. Look ma! A picture of a topless woman who hasn’t been totally airbrushed, weighs an elephantine 180 pounds, is a US size 14, has chubby thighs and (gasp!) a belly roll drooping over her thong. Even though it was teensy 3 x 3 inch pic buried in pg 194 of this month’s Glamour magazine, the response has been incredible. It’s the first time a Real Woman has appeared in a women’s mag, which just goes to show one thing …

I don’t know about you, but I’m goddamn sick of seeing all these heavily airbrushed Barbie dolls, 99 pounds, US size 0, sunken cheeks, sunken eyes, concave stomach, giant silicone boobs, every wrinkly cellulite bit conveniently photoshopped away. Seeing someone like this …

… being hailed as a great beauty (you kidding me or what??!!) and hot and sexy and babelicious and all those other Hollywood-esque adjectives they flippantly toss around makes me feel that there’s something seriously wrong with us.

I mean, I’m all for beauty but come on! I’m not pro-chubs but I’m certainly as hell not pro-ana. When you see all these ‘beauties’ – every one of whom could easily star in the human version of the Corpse Bride – how can any normal woman feel anything but put down, insecure and most of all, FAT? My waist measures more than 24 inches, omg, I’m like soooooo obese.

I know, I know … very convenient to blame the media, the media’s just giving women what they want to see, blah blah blah … whatever. I just know that when I saw the pic of Lizzi Miller, I felt a slight tinge of relief and a little bit of hope. We’re a generation of women with the most ludicrous body hang-ups. We must be perfect (physically perfect that is; nobody gives a damn what’s in that brain of yours, as long as your body’s hot and tight), no room for flaws. It’s a ridiculous standard but one that we pressure ourselves into following. Quite moronic, when you think about it. Oh, you got cellulite? Omg! You have jiggly arms? Omg!! You got a fat butt? Omggg!!! Eh, come on la. Nobody ever died from cellulite, jiggly arms or a fat butt okay.

I just hope that this – belly roll and stretch marks and all – marks the beginning of the death of Super Skinny. It’s been so long … maybe it’s time we realise that cellulite isn’t a Disease and will not lead to a horrific and untimely Death. And neither will stretch marks or a little roll of fat.

If I Am What I Eat, I Think I’m Screwed

They say keeping a food journal will help you lose weight. It will open up your eyes to understand why you’re so fat / skinny / ugly / emotionally unstable. It’s a pound-dropping, eye-opening, soul-baring exercise. I’m all for soul-baring, so I thought I’d give it a go. So here goes:

MONDAY

Morning: Have one coffee and one banana. For me, coffee comes from a 3-in-1 sachet. Oh well, what can I say? I’ve never been a coffee connoisseur. Get to office. First day of the week, lots of things to get in order. A meeting here, an impromptu discussion there, a minor ‘crisis’ which requires immediate intervention here … and very quickly, it’s past noon.

Afternoon: For lunch, I have meehoon soup with fresh fish chunks and four miserable leaves of green vegetables. I don’t understand why hawkers are so kiamsiap with their vegetables. They’re so cheap (the hawkers and the vegetables). I request for more, they give me two more leaves. I’m reminded how tough it is to get vegetables with your meals here in KL. For most, it’s hawker fare for a quick lunch and here, all dishes are either noodle-based or rice-based, come with meat and a few leaves of veggy. Oh well.

Night: I get home late, so I have dinner late. Dinner is economy rice (sans rice) with omelette, tofu, spinach and sweet sour pork. What can I say? I’m still nursing a fixation on pork.

Fried noodles in Phnom Penh, Cambodia plus a side dish of mozzie repellent

TUESDAY

Morning: Have one coffee and a pack of Anlene calcium concentrate. My friend introduced Anlene to me recently and I love it, not so much for the high calcium content but for the fact that it tastes like McDonald’s sundae in liquid form. Yum! I go for a short 30-minute run before heading to work.

Afternoon: It’s a bit mad at the office. Drafts are streaming in, proofs are streaming in, emails are streaming in. My eyes are going wonky. Clients are challenging our … sanity. Lunch time rolls round and I’m too lazy to go out. Besides, it’s scorching outside. I eat the mango yoghurt sitting on my desk. Half hour later, I make a Nestum cereal and Milo drink which fills me up for a while. Sometimes, to bulk it up, I add oats to pacify my brain that I’m not starving myself. At a discussion later, I polish off four sour gummies and a pack of prawn crackers.

Night: I get home by about 9pm and have ABC soup, which is simply a soup where anything goes. You can toss in whatever you want. For me, it’s chicken, potato, carrots, cabbage and a hard-boiled egg. It’s genius. Even lazy people devoid of even the slightest smidgen of talent in the kitchen can make it.

Organic fried rice in Bali in a restaurant on stilts in the middle of a rice field

WEDNESDAY

Morning: I worship at the altar of the great 3-in-1 coffee again this morning. I also have a banana and a cup of yoghurt while scanning the papers, reading silly stories about our silly ministers and the foolishness they’re up to. Feel sufficiently depressed at all the foolishness and head to work. There’s a photo shoot today.

Afternoon: It’s common at a shoot to forget to order lunch until late. The lunch menu comes to me and I scan it. Nothing looks particularly appetising, so I pick the hakka mee – dry noodles topped with minced pork bits. I choose it not because I like it, but because it’s quick and easy to eat. Last thing I want is to fumble with chicken rendang or some complicated kway teow soup.

Night: I go home to leftover ABC soup. I have two huge two bowls. That’s another great thing about soup – you can make one humongous cauldron that’s enough to last for a couple or more days! I then have two oranges, two chicken biscuits and two slices of Japanese sponge cake. Have you ever tried Japanese sponge cake? Me neither … until now and I tell you, it’s heaven.

Fried noodles in a restaurant overlooking the sea in Bali

THURSDAY

Morning: I have a coffee and an Anlene calcium concentrate. I’m going through an Anlene phase right now. I’ve been through many other phases – the Kellogg’s cornflakes addiction, the Marigold yoghurt fetish, the Gardenia Butterscotch fixation, the siew pau madness, the list is endless. So don’t worry; this Anlene thing will die soon enough. I do a quick 30-minute run before heading to work.

Afternoon: For lunch, I’m again too lazy to go out to eat. I make my Nestum cereal and Milo and get my colleague to tapau something for me. She asks me what to buy. I tell her to surprise me. I wind up with konlo panmee. Not bad. I’m a big fan of pan mee. I’m halfway through the noodles when I have to leave for a meeting. By the time I get back, the noodles are cold, dry and all clumped together. Yuk. So I toss them into the trash.

Night: For dinner, I have noodle soup with carrots, broccoli and egg. Later that night, I’m surfing the net and itching for something to eat. So I have pineapple rubbed with salt.

Udon in Tokyo, which - strangely - nearly killed me.

FRIDAY

Morning: I wake up late. Rush through two cups of coffee (haha, late but still have time for coffee). Today’s another photo shoot.

Afternoon: Like I said, photo shoots are always a license either for a delayed lunch or simply a horrendous one. For lunch today, it’s three slices of gooey cheesy pizza and two slices of garlic bread. When you work through lunch, you always eat mindlessly. Which is bad. And you almost always end up eating more than you usually do. It’s evening by the time I get back to office. I’m checking emails when my colleague offers me a small Shanghai mooncake. Of course I eat it.

Night: I go home to a bowl of noodle soup swimming with carrots, Chinese lettuce, broccoli and fish balls. Nice, light and hot. Have a big mug of coffee right before bed. I do that sometimes for fun. I sleep like a baby.

A delicious meal cooked by Slugabed - salute!

SATURDAY

Morning: I have a mango yoghurt and a banana. Can’t eat too much before working out or I’ll barf. I go for my run and after that, have two glasses of limau ais and a dosai. It’s practically a tradition.

Afternoon: I have a late lunch of dim sum. When it comes to dim sum, I’m a creature of habit. I rarely steer far away from century egg porridge, char siew chee cheong fun, stuffed green peppers, fried radish cake and fried char siew pastry. Yum. Later that afternoon, I make an error in judgement and purchase a pack of frozen mantous. I wind up eating three, just for fun.

Night: A small bowl of spaghetti with minced beef. Smaller than what I’d normally have cos I’m still stuffed from the mantous. I have a sick fondness of processed foods even though I know it tastes pretty lousy. I don’t seem to respect my poor stomach very much, do I?

Snack on Japan Airlines on the way home from Tokyo

SUNDAY

Morning: I have two packs of Anlene, no coffee. For some reason, coffee is a weekday work thing. I hardly do coffee in the weekends, which means technically, I’m not addicted to caffeine and working is hazardous to my health. I go for my run except that I swap the dosai with a full American breakfast. I even eat the toast – gasp.

Afternoon: Feeling gooey – and not in a good way – all day thanks to the heavy breakfast. Hate the feeling of having over-eaten. Yuk. So when lunch time comes, the last thing I want to do is eat. Wind up having ‘lunch’ at a late 4pm: sar hor fun. I don’t know how to translate this. It’s like kway teow soup with prawns and chicken shreds.

Night: It’s Thai tonight. I’m not terribly hungry, so I order a papaya salad. Should’ve paid attention to the chili icon cos the salad is freaking spicy. I nearly pass out. I go home and have three oranges and a few slices of jackfruit.

And that wraps up my food journal for the week. I wonder what good will come out of this?

It’s Good To Be Chubby, Says Study

It’s half-way to being official: being chubby has its benefits. Researchers did a study (read it here and here) on 11,000 people over a 12-year period and found that people with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 were less likely to die than those with a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9. One of the authors of this study said and I quote, “Overweight is protective.”

What?? Overweight is protective? Protect us from what, I wonder. Death, perhaps.

Last I checked, my BMI was 19. Of course, that was five years ago and I haven’t checked since. I don’t believe in BMIs (just like I don’t believe in weighing myself). But now, they’re saying the fats we try so hard to avoid are actually good for us and can help us live longer. Aiya, why early-early never say?

I don’t know about these researchers, but I’ve come up with a few reasons in support of chubbiness:

1. You look jollier
2. Your butt doesn’t hurt when you sit for a long time
3. You’re nicer to hug
4. You’re more likely to have headlights and a bumper (if you know what I mean)
5. You can eat donuts and cookie sandwiches
6. You live longer
7. You’ll make a nicer-looking granny

Okay, I’m sold. It’s time to chase the chubs! (Of course I’m aware that this isn’t the actual meaning of chubbychasing but hey, if the shoe fits). My first order of business is to up my donut allowance to three a week. Yippy

Confessions Of A Skinny Hypocrite

Read this and tell me if you agree or disagree.

1. If you aren’t thin, you aren’t attractive.
2. Being thin is more important than being healthy.
3. You must buy clothes, cut your hair, take laxatives, starve yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner.
4. Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty.
5. Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing oneself afterwards.
6. Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly.
7. What the scale says is the most important thing.
8. Losing weight is good; gaining weight is bad.
9. You can never be too thin.
10. Being thin and not eating are signs of true will power and success.

You know what’s scary? These are the ten commandments I found on a proana website. I know, I know, why am I even hanging around a proana website? Well, if you know me well enough, you’ll know that I often develop sudden bouts of fascination with certain topics and I’ll spend days googling them out of morbid curiosity. Recently, it has been anorexia (at one time, it was obesity – yeah, call me crazy). While I can be all horrified and spew righteous indignation at the proana culture, in the spirit of candour, I will now confess that some of these ‘commandments’, I myself hold to: namely number 1, 8 and in a sick and twisted way, number 10. Yes, I am a hypocrite.

I see pictures of anorexic girls and I’m suitably horrified … as all we regular folk are duty-bound to be.

Eeeeww!

Holy hell!!

What the ****?!

Why would anyone do that to herself??!! Well, we all know why – warped minds, the desperate need for self-control, low self-esteem, self-loathing, body dysmorphic disorder, etc – but this, we may not readily admit to: that many of us are not all that different from these girls. Which girl hasn’t complained about her weight? Even the skinny ones? (In fact, especially the skinny ones). Which girl doesn’t think she’ll look better and life will be better if she could just lose a few pounds? Which girl hasn’t mourned about the fat on her thighs / belly / arms / butt / hips / neck / ankles / calves? Which girl hasn’t complained about her face being “too chubby”? Which girl hasn’t envied somebody who’s skinnier?

Recently, I saw a before-after ad in the local paper – the girl was “fat” before (49kg) and “thin” after (44kg). I don’t care what height you are, an adult woman who’s 49kg does NOT need to lose weight. Good grief.

Despite all my righteous indignation however, I am a bit of a hypocrite. I myself am sort of a “skinny” person. I don’t think that I’m skinny but people seem to think so. And what’s worse, they say it with admiration. And what’s even worse, I like hearing it. *Horror*. As an allegedly intelligent person, I’d like to think myself above all these trivialities, too smart to fall for all that inane Hollywood skinny celebrity crap … but I’m not. Just like everyone else, I’ve gotten swept up in the waif wave. With all the skills, talents and passion that I have, does it really matter whether I look skinny? The answer is still a big fat YES.

I am, by no means, anorexic or bulimic. I find resembling a 2,000-year-old corpse a tad unattractive and while I’m still alive, I would still very much like to look human. But like all these sick ana girls, I do want to be (and stay) skinny, and while I may not subsist on a cracker a day, I do avoid rice. So who am I to judge them? Who am I to be repulsed by them? In some ways, I’m just as bad as they are.

Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Skinny

Um, this is the new Miss Australia Universe? I know la today’s standards of beauty are skinny, skinny and skinny but even this is pushing it. You’re telling me, of all the gorgeous girls in Australia, this one is the fairest of them all? This is a joke right? You people are kidding right?

You can include her in the HBO documentary Thin’s cast of sad little malnourished matchstick lookalikes and she’d fit right in (I don’t know about you, but the Miss Universe girl looks even more emaciated than the girl on the documentary poster). She’s gotta be the skinniest Miss Universe contender I’ve ever seen – at 5 feet 11 inches (5 feet 11 inches?!), 49kg (49kg?!) and a BMI of 15 (when 18 is the bare-bones minimum!), she looks like she just crawled off the Amistad. I mean, I’m all for that jazz about beauty coming in every shape and size but hello-o-o-o-o???

But then again, beauty pageants aren’t just about looks ma. It’s also about talent and poise and intelligence (big fat snort), so maybe I’m being a little unfair to this bag of bones. She probably wowed the judges with some amazing talent like flute-playing or hair-twirling or something. I’m sure she deserved the title … and I guess this is the standard we mere mortals have to aspire to now, huh? I guess I can forget about the five alfalfa sprouts I was gonna have for lunch.