Bigger than I like to think

I’m wearing a pair of size 22W shorts and they’re uncomfortably tight. I know, just know, I’m not this big. I’m the one who didn’t order two summer dresses this week because the smallest size available was 1X.  Dang.

Of course, that’s one of the problems we chubby people have — we don’t recognize/acknowledge how large we are. If we look in a mirror, we look at our faces which generally look pretty and plump, not sere and haggard like those of our normal-weight friends the same age as we. We tend not to study anything lower.

The same amnesia strikes when it comes to what I eat.  Even though I go to livestrong.com several times a day to update my food diary, I frequently find something I’ve just enjoyed has totally left my consciousness. I have to walk back to the computer to add it. And then I remember some more calories.

During my many years being psychologically shrunk, my blessed doctor, the late Vascue O. Brown, MD, harped incessantly (I thought) on what I was trying to “get” by being overweight. The same things, it seemed, as I’d tried to get with smoking three packs a day of Marlboros: a screen/shield/buffer between the soft-shell crab of me and the big bad world.

Only now it turns out I was erecting the same Berlin Wall between that marshmallow at my core and my own awareness. Huh. Taking a good hard look is difficult when you’re looking through the fog of weight. I’m zeroing in on just what I’ve done to get where I am today — in all corners of my life — but it’s like looking at a welder’s flame without safety goggles. Tough.

While looking, a salad inspired by Lynn Rosetto Kasper’s “The Splendid Table” . Shiny bright tastes of mint and a freshly pulled red onion, feta cheese, peas and chicken breasts poached in wine, broth and sprinklings of tarragon and za’atar ( “The South in my Mouth”).

Everything’s better with food. Just make it food that actually has some value.