A friend referred me to another blog today – PrincessKnowItAll.com. All I can say is – she stole my title! I aspire to be all things her blog is. And that title. Just ask my family, they’ll say she stole it from me too. I just hadn’t thought of it yet. I’m still trying to come up with something appropriate to replace “Beach Journal,” as lovely as that is.
As a blogging neophyte, I’m still developing exactly what direction my blog will take. It’s easy enough to share one’s thoughts and observations as they bubble up, however, most people look for focus when deciding to whom to give their valuable online time. My forte is the observation of life’s ironies. As PrincessKnowItAll says, life takes it toll and we find out that we indeed don’t know it all after all.
I was talking with my sister today who has in the last year had shed most of the unwanted weight she held for many, many years. She did it all by herself in a way that none of us would ever believed. She ate right and exercised. Her refrigerator and pantry look like a Whole Foods aisle.
A number of years ago when her daughter was trying to lose weight, and also doing it the right way, my sister was beside herself that her daughter might be anorexic. “She doesn’t even put salad dressing on her salad! And she won’t even touch a french fry!” she lamented. Well, yeah. She was not then and hasn’t ever been anorexic. She was just doing what her mother didn’t know how to help her do.
So I was talking to my sister today about possibly getting a gastric band – you know those bands they put on your stomach that simply limit how much can go in. Her first remark was, “Well don’t tell anyone if you do it because that’s all anyone will talk about, that you got a band.” Before, I would have agreed with her wholeheartedly, but today – who cares. It’s not like no one knows I’m fat. They probably know it more than I do. I feel one way and then look at photos and think, “Holy moly, who is that woman?” It’s like I felt when I finally succumbed this year to a babydoll bathing suit, with the empire waisted skirt. I spent all those years with sarongs and swim shorts trying to hide life’s insults. I went with my babydoll suit this year and I feel free for the first time in years. This is me and I’m representing.
My sister echoed the feeling many people still have – that losing weight with any “assistance” is paramount to admitting defeat. Well let me make this loud, clear and simply – I have been defeated. After 45 years of dieting, I am willing to admit defeat.
I was always a big girl and looked older than my sister who is 18 months older. It was when I was 8 years old and my mother died that I first acquired a real weight problem. It wasn’t eating from depression; it was from having no one watching what I was eating. We had a morning maid and an afternoon maid. While they went about their business, I was collecting Coke bottles with friends to cash in during multiple trips to the neighorhood 7-Eleven for all sorts of pure sugar sweets. I was addicted, to be sure. And it showed.
I had a decent figure as the years went on, but was alway just a bit bigger than all my willowy friends. When I went into the Marine Corps in 1974, I was

Circa 1975 and at my maximum weight allowed by the USMC
5’8″ and 150 lbs. And I was over my maximum weight allowed of 144. The drill instructor threatened us with being held back if we didn’t drop the weight. We were put on the “diet line” in the mess hall and had no choices over the food we ate.
What was interesting, however, is that the drill instructors would let me off the diet line when I hit my maximum weight, but they made all the other women get ten pounds below their maximums. As soon as I went back on the regular line — boom, I’d gain a couple of pounds. All sixty of my fellow women marines were eating the same quantities of food and doing the same exercise and drills every day. And while little tiny girls lost weight, I would gain weight.
This was one of those life defeating moments when I realized that life was certainly not fair.
About eight years ago, I lost 80 lbs all on my own, the very same way my sister did. I’m not one to follow plans and measurements. I’m more of a concept girl, and then just get on with life and pay attention. I read Dr. Bob Arnot’s Revolutionary Weight Control Program (which I highly recommend) and applied all the principles in it to my food choices. And I walked on the beach at least five times a week for an hour. Within nine months it came off. And I kept it off for more than a year. My cholesterol went from 270 to 195 without drugs.
But when my children both became very ill, and my life became chaotic times ten, it all went out the window. It started with a medication a physician gave me that put on 30-40 pounds, and then it was Katie bar the door.
My cholesterol is back up to 270. My physician recommended statins to me, and I told her definitely not because they put weight on you. I said that I would rather be dead than be any fatter than I am now. And that’s the truth.
Today I met a bariatric physician while doing a cover photo shoot for MD News Magazine. Michael Baptista, MD, has the sultry voice of Antonio Banderas mixed with all the adorable charm of Hugh Jackman. What he told me was: “You don’t need me to lose weight; you need me to help you keep the weight off.” Bingo. That’s what every woman knows who has ever felt victorious over her weight battle only to see it creep back on. Keeping it off is often harder than losing it.
What we also know is that once we’ve been defeated by weight for a period of time, we’ve got the fat cells that always want us to be that weight. We’ve also got the leptin levels that scream at our bodies like drill instructors, “You’re hungry maggot. Dammit do something about it. Eat. EAT NOW!”
All the corn syrup is gone from my house, I don’t often eat meat, except fish, few dairy products, yada, yada, yada. I know how to do it because I’ve done it. And I have managed to lose 25 lbs after finally recovering from a broken ankle followed by knee surgery. At least I’m walking now. I can’t, however, exercise like I used to. The pain in my legs and hips makes it difficult sometimes to simply walk the dog. I try to get in the pool when I can and ride the recumbant bike in the gym.
So this Princess Fat Butt – hey there’s a name — continues on so that she doesn’t give up, as they say, before the miracle happens.
Princess Fat Butt has a plan.
Tags: Dieting, USMC, Weight loss, women marines