The Fat Girl's Guide to Living

Charlie’s pre-op glamor shot

As an adult, I’ve never been overly concerned about what I put into my body. For one thing, I was a fall-down drunk for 15 years—which meant that my four food groups were beer, whiskey, potato chips, and Alka-Seltzer. I did not eat breakfast from 1981 to 1996, unless you count the daily ritual of Coca-Cola, aspirin, Tums, and a multivitamin. In those days, my weight fluctuations depended more on the type of job I had (or didn’t have) than on my eating habits.

Even when I got sober, I didn’t really watch what I ate, figuring that giving up alcohol was my lifetime deposit in the Karma Bank. (I also believed life owed me a pass on the felony of my choice.) So if you held up a food item and asked me how many grams of fat it contained, I’d shrug and ask, “Why should I care?”

Then, last March, I had a stomach pain unlike any I’d experienced before. And considering I’d been a blood-puking drunk 14 years earlier, that’s saying something. There was no nausea, just pain. Lots of pain. I tried conventional therapies: antacids, acid-reducers, and anti-gas pills. Nothing worked. I lay down, stood up, curled into a ball. Still nothing. I even drove myself to the nearest emergency room, but it was a busy night for automotive stupidity, so I decided not to wait and drove home. Then, about 3 hours after the pain had started, it subsided.

Believing it to be an isolated incident, I made no dietary changes and went on as before: take-out, fast food, etc. Then, 3 weeks later, the pain returned. This time, I decided to ignore it, and went out for tacos. That attack lasted 5 hours. Fast forward 3 weeks to yet another attack. Then, on the night following my wife’s birthday cook-out, I awoke with a knifing pain so bad I had to consider for a moment whether I was having a heart attack. After an hour the pain stopped, and I wasn’t dead. So I ruled out a coronary.

I decided to consult that bastion of medical information—the Internet. After wading through miscellaneous anecdotal reports and discounting the extra-horrible diagnoses, I arrived at “biliary colic,” a condition resulting from a gallstone, blocked duct, or otherwise faulty gallbladder. “Hmmm,” I thought. “I should see a doctor.”

My doc examined me and ordered an ultrasound, which showed a stubborn gallstone lodged in the neck of the gallbladder, which (appropriately for me) is shaped like a wine skin. So, it was off to a surgical consult. As you may have guessed, the surgeon recommended surgery, sort of the way mechanics recommend brake jobs. Being a coward, I asked about alternatives. Being a surgeon at heart, he said there were none. The only problem was, the next available slot for elective cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal) was 6 months away, in October. I asked what I should do in the meantime to prevent further attacks. “Eat low fat,” he said.

Fear of excruciating pain is a great motivator. And in this case it served as a wake-up call that I was no longer 22 years old, and that I had to pay at least some attention to what my body was telling me. So I was faced with the choice of counting fat grams or risking another 5-hour attack of stabbing gut pain. Since I had no idea what my daily fat intake was, given a totally unrestricted diet, I figured I should find out. Short answer: 110 grams. I had (and still have) no idea if that’s high or low. But, to be safe, I figured I’d cut that number in half.

I eliminated all fast food and take-out (except for Vietnamese and Indian food) and then took a whack at my home eating habits. No more peanut butter. Peanut butter, when it comes to fat calories, is Satan in a candy-apple red Caddy. And Satan’s girlfriend is mayonnaise. So out they went. Then I just substituted low-fat versions of everything else I ate: low-fat sausage, low-fat waffles, light bread, 2% cheese, pretzels instead of potato chips, Fig Newtons instead of Chips Ahoy, etc. Then I took a recount: 45 grams. I’d actually cut my intake by 60%.

Best of all: it worked. The 45 g/day low(er) fat diet kept me attack-free for 6 months, right until my surgery date in October. As a bonus, I lost 23 pounds, going from about 208 to about 185 lbs, and I dropped a pants size.

The surgery itself was done laparoscopically at an outpatient surgical center. I was in by 1pm and out by 7pm, and my recovery was swift and uneventful. I was off painkillers 4 days post-surgery and was able to eat normally within 2 weeks. Having lost the luxury of willful ignorance, I remain at least partially aware of my fat intake, even if I allow myself the occasional éclair, and I’ve managed to keep 20 of the 23 pounds off. And while it certainly worked for me, I don’t recommend a stubborn gallstone as a weight-loss program.

Charlie O’Hay is a poet whose work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines, including Gargoyle, The New York Quarterly, and West Branch. He currently works as a freelance advertising copywriter and manuscript editor, and blogs at It Ain’t All Pizzas and Cream.

He wasn’t kidding about ’70s fashion for boys

We’re excited to announce the debut of “It’s a Guy Thing,” featuring our new columnist, Charlie O’Hay. Each month, Charlie will address everything from how guys perceive the feminine form to the weight-related struggles many men face to raising confident daughters. Please give him a warm welcome!

Until I was 10 years old, words like “diet” or “calorie” were rarely if ever heard in our house. Then my dad had a heart attack. At the age of 39. And everything changed. There were strict rules and forbidden foods, plus calorie-wheels, and bookmarked low-cal recipes everywhere. It was the 1970s, so there was no shortage of self-help or health-guru books. And my parents used them, liberally.

I watched as my dad struggled, truly struggled, to drop the weight. After all, he was a man for whom food was his only excess. He worked at a bank, didn’t drink, didn’t gamble, and he and my mom had slept separately since I could remember. Yes, he smoked. But it was the 1970s. Even the cat smoked. But food was his pleasure, his refuge, his sex, his toy, his love.

My dad and I were a lot alike. Looking back at the curled, sepia-toned photos of his teen years, it was easy to see myself in him. I was chubby, what they then called “husky” (a term that still brings a twinge of shame and a sprinkling of rage when I see it in the context of body size). I was also hopelessly un-athletic, owing in part to a severe birth injury to my right arm, suffered when my mom’s obstetrician attempted to deliver me using hot dog tongs. Being both un-athletic and unpopular at school, the focus of pleasure for me was food. The after-school box of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups was something of a standard. Back in the day (mid-1970s), Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups came 24 to a box, 12 to a layer, and separated by a sheet of brown cardboard. Making it to level 2 meant I’d eaten over a dozen. If I stopped halfway through the box, my mom thought I was coming down with the flu.

So while my dad shrank, I grew. And for those of you who may not remember the fashions of the 1970s, it was NOT a good decade to be either a teenager or chubby. Someone decided that loud plaids, corduroy pants, and broad collars were the epitome of beauty. Going to a department store was an exercise in hopelessness. The clerk would grin, and gently nudge me toward the “Husky” section where the loudest plaids and most deeply ridged corduroys awaited. Someone clearly thought that nobody would notice I was fat if they were blinded by an orange and yellow plaid shirt hovering ominously above brown cords.

So somewhere between the pages of Dad’s diet books, the “Husky” department at Wanamaker’s, and the Hall of Shame that was phys-ed class, my body image was forged.  In 1979, my dad had another heart attack and died. That same year, I sprouted and discovered I liked whiskey better than food. In my adult life, despite a bit of middle-aged dough around the middle, I’ve been what some would even call thin. I’ve been blessed to have loved (and been loved by) some exceptional women in my life, each of whom in her own way assured me that the lions and tigers they’ve faced in the arena of body self-image would make my demons look like the Easter Bunny.

I’m honored that Tee and Toni have asked me to write a regular column for TFGGL and hope it will be a long and mutually beneficial relationship.

Charlie O’Hay is a published poet whose work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines, including Gargoyle, The New York Quarterly, and West Branch. He was awarded a fellowship in poetry and literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 1995. He currently works as a freelance advertising copywriter and manuscript editor. He is married to Cecily Kellogg of Uppercasewoman.com and they are parents to a dynamic and beautiful daughter.

Tuesdays have typically been quiet around here, but that’s a-changin. Beginning next week we’ll feature Ask FGG every Tuesday — wherein Toni and I will don our bright red 2x SuperGirl capes and answer your tough questions. What’s the best sports bra for large chests? How do I balance my body on a surfboard? How do I shave *down there* if I can’t even see down there?

If your question is food or cooking related, we’ll pass it on to our resident foodie, Michelle, for her input. And if your question stumps all of us, we’ll turn to the experts and interview people in the know so that we all can be, too.

So let us have it: what’s your question? Send them on over to letters@fatgirlsguidetoliving.com (worry not: all questions will be anonymous) and we’ll be back next Tuesday with our first official edition of Ask FGG.

PS: Know someone who’d love The Fat Girl’s Guide to Living? We’d love it if you’d spread the word and help us continue to build a great community! Share us on Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, or email a shout-out to your girls.