The Fat Girl Running – Kristann Monaghan

As you may well know, I am a huge fan of reality TV so when I discovered many years ago a reality show about fat people trying to lose weight, The Biggest Loser and I became best friends.  I adore this show and all the inspiration it gives me to try to actually lose weight.  I have even bought cookbooks, diet plans and work out videos from the show (not that I actually use them but I have bought them mind you).   Of course I usually end up watching the show while eating something…which might defeat the purpose but is in true Fat Girl form.  I really do find the show inspiring that people can lose weight with lots of hard work and exercise and NOT with surgery.  Means I have some hope.  So this week was the season finale and as I sat here watching all these amazing transformations, I decided to inspire you…Fat Girl style.  So here you go:

Fat Girl’s Top 5 Ways To Gain Weight

1. Join a gym and try NOT to work out as much as possible.  I mean, come on, who wants to get sweaty and look like a raccoon dipped in grease?  Or have to wonder if the person before them actually wiped off the gym equipment.  Then there is the scarring incident of falling off the equipment in front of a gym full of people (yes sadly this REALLY did happen to me).  You don’t wanna be the Fat Girl who collides with the floor and creates a sonic boom loud enough for people to actually look around and see your fat ass face first on the floor with the machine still going.  Oh the humiliation.  As for working out at home, well, that is good and all but really do you want your neighbors to wonder if there is an elephant running through the neighborhood or wonder if your flooring is going to hold up to your bouncing around?  Pretty sure mine makes some scary noises when I attempt and seeing how I do not want to make the evening news as the Fat Girl stuck in her floor like Tom Hanks on The Money Pit, I shall also avoid this option.  So those exercise DVDs you have lying around?  Find another use for them such as door stops or coasters. They will be much more useful there.
2. Go shopping when you are hungry.  Somehow all of your favorite non-diet foods end up in your cart.  I think they just jump in there when you aren’t looking and you are so dazed by your hunger that you don’t notice them till the next day.  Then I open up my cabinets and wonder when the Skittles Fairy came by and left me a bag of those delicious little round fruity bites of happiness (Ok let’s not discuss the new addition of green apple to the bag…THAT my friends is a travesty and a rant for another time).  Or how did the Cheetos bag magically get refilled and sealed?  Pretty sure I got rid of the mostly empty bag on my attempt to diet.  It’s like my pantry is MAGIC!  Then I find the receipt from Target in my purse and my dreams of the Skittles Fairy goes out the window….sigh.  A girl can dream, right?
3. Take steroids when you have an allergic reaction or a really bad asthma attack.  Seriously.  That damn drug will eff you up in many ways including encouraging you to become a professional competitive eater.  Have you seen these people?  They actually time themselves to see how many hot dogs they can eat in one minute.  Ummmm….gross.  First off, I don’t eat tubular meat.  Wait…that sounded so wrong.  I don’t eat meat tubes?  Nope.  Still wrong.  Anyways….pretty sure when I take steroids I could out eat one of those competitive eater if I didn’t have to eat hot dogs.  Because hot dogs are gross.
4. Get rid of all your Fat Girl jeans.  This ensures you will gain weight and NONE of your new jeans will fit leaving you to only wear sweat pants and work out clothing or clothes you wore in the 80’s.  And yes, I did belong to the big hair club in the 80’s and my glasses were so huge they ate my face.  Pretty sure.  We all had big hair back then.  And we rocked the clothing back then.   Hey….big shirts that hang off your shoulder and leggings are back in style, right?  Now if only I could find my teasing comb and Aqua Net….
5. Have a REALLY comfy couch and sit down and watch A LOT of reality TV…including The Biggest Loser.  I swear my couch has invisible ties that it uses to keep me there as I watch everything on my DVR in one sitting.  This requires that bag of Skittles, Cheetos,  a LARGE soda and anything else I can eat to come and keep me company.  I mean you must have snacks, right?  Otherwise you will get so distracted by the rumbling in your tumbly that you won’t be able to concentrate on the reality TV you are trying to catch up on and then will have to repeat the pattern as you watch it again.  Trust me on this one.  Or you will wonder what to do with our hands the whole time you are watching….it is a vicious cycle I tell you so just have the snacks handy.  It will make watching Biggest Loser more fun as you shove Skittles down your throat.

In all seriousness, I am making a new commitment to myself to lose the weight I have recently put on because I have been sick and now just lazy.  It is way too easy to drive through Arby’s and get an apple turnover with my beef and cheddar meal than it is to eat healthy.  I like eating fast food as evidenced by the straw wrappers that paper the floor of my backseat of my car, but I just need to make better choices and not follow my own advice…this time.

Oh yeah.  I didn’t die today.  I instead realized as I watched reality TV with a bag of Skittles that I wanted to recommit myself to this journey and not follow my own footsteps.  I am fat girl who still will dream of a Skittles Fairy while trying to lose weight (because that would be plain AWESOME) running.  The experiment continues….