Friday, December 2, 2011

Don't you know this girl?

If you want to read my words of wisdom on Weight Watchers--you need more help than you realize. But you can find it here.  Yours truly appeared in the September/October issue of Weight Watchers magazine, wearing a dress I truly hated. 

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Stick It

It occurred to me last week, as I was lying on a massage table in Chinatown with no less than 30 needles stuck in my abdomen and feet, that I am a searcher. I am always looking for some kind of self improvement. And, in that special way of mine, I've become addicted to it.

I haven't always been like  that. I spent most of my teens trying to be someone else and my twenties were spent searching for nothing but a snack and a drink and, when motivation stuck me, a boyfriend. But somewhere before I hit 30, suddenly I realized I wasn't at all who I wanted to be, and I started to search for myself. And suddenly I find that I can't stop.

This time, I am searching for relief. For the last four years, I've had bad anxiety. I always had anxiety, but I hit some kind of crossroads wherein the end of my drinking (which had always numbed my fears with a blurry haze of hilarity and horror) combined with  one traumatic experience (bed bugs-- truly awful) followed by another (the death of my beloved friend Maggie) just brought me to some sort of breaking point. I broke down under the weight of it.

You're such a pinhead.
So, barely able to function, I went on meds. I regret it. I am sure not everyone does, but I was too out of touch with my health to recognize the side effects as they built up-- the nightsweats, the weight gain, the other things I won't get into. I wasn't educated about my health, and I just think that you are your own advocate for health-- so do the research. If you take the meds, take them-- but do the research first.

Let's be honest though- what bugged me most was the weight gain. 20 stubborn pounds that, nine months after coming off the meds, won't come off, no matter how I diet, exercise and yes, even starve myself (in one misguided exercise of futility).

So here I am, in Chinatown. Pledging to drink herbal tea (that tastes like poo) every night, with the promise that the blockages will be removed and I will, in fact, find the calm I am searching for. I might even lose the weight, my herbalist said, as my endocrine system gets righted. For that, lady, you can stick whatever you like wherever you like.

And here I go, continuing to search. I never could have predicted the way my life has turned out, so who knows-- you never know what I might find.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Delectable Horror

Here it is, the place where my two inner selves do battle. The Germaphobe vs. the Chubby Kid. The squeamish fighting the indulgent.

Ground zero: the streets of New York City.

The Battle Royale: Donahue vs. Street Meat. 

I have a weakness for New York's various forms of cart food. I walk past the Halal meat guy every night after work, his twinkling lights mesmerizing me as he calls out like an old carnival barker: "Kabob! Kabob! Schwarma!" I watch as tourists in Times Square indulge in dirty water dogs, their indigestion a souvenir they subject themselves to for the "experience." Further on, the guy at the baked potato cart piles pillows of sour cream and mounds of bacon-- street bacon--onto my favorite type of carb. Is there anything better?

"I'm like a salad bar on steroids."
 I can usually avoid the pitfalls of these temptations by reminding myself of how germy they must be. I strut past the schwarma guy and think of E-coli, I avoid street bacon by reminding myself it's probably got bird crap somewhere in it. When I really want to be grossed out,  I look at the sniffling humanoids picking at the glistening buffalo wings at the local deli buffet. No sneeze guard known to man can protect against the horror of a Times Square lunch hour.

Fuck the Man. Give us your money.
That's all changing now, as more and more haute cuisine carts pop up in New York. I noticed it about four years ago, when I stumbled upon a Mud Truck on St.Mark's place, parked outside of Starbucks. I generally dislike Starbucks because I find it infuriating that they charge so much for coffee, so I headed towards the Mud Truck. The coffee, I should say, was delicious. The Mud Truck describes itself as "anti-establishment coffee," so I was shocked by the sticker price. But still-- it was good, and not Starbucks. Somehow getting ripped off by an independent vendor was more appealing.

Gourmet ice cream, because in SoHo regular ice cream isn't good enough.
Since then, new trucks are seemingly on every street. Forget Sal, the vendor from my where I grew up in Brooklyn, who was rumored to sell you pot if you asked for a pretzel with no salt (I was always to fixated on a Chocolate Eclair ice cream to try him). Now dessert trucks run by famed pastry chefs drive around the city, gourmet ice cream vendors are everywhere, and even tapas trucks roam the streets. They're basically restaurants on wheels. They're chic and cost effective-- they're a culinary craze.

And worse... they're clean. They're retro on the outside and spotless on the inside, breaking down my usual resistance. Suddenly I am defenseless. I walk by and eye them, while the vendors inside call to me, offering me a sample or a free soda with whatever I buy. The mean streets have become a very unsafe place for me.

I am kind of at a loss for how to deal with this development. So for now, I am relying on word association:
Street food= food truck= eating at food truck= body like Martha Dumptruck. 

Sorry, Martha, I feel your pain but I want to be a Heather!
I'll let you know how it goes.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Sleep with the Fishes

Earlier this week I had one of my more ridiculous meltdowns.

First, a little justification. I had been up since 5am when John and I drove home from my brother's place on the Jersey Shore, battled a ridiculous subway commute to work, and then had a harrowing day wherein everyone needed everything now-- kind of par for the course at work except for the 5am thing. I was exhausted after a weekend of travel to DC/Virginia, and worked until 6:45pm (also the norm) before meeting my Beloved.


He had spent the day doing awesome things to make life easier. We had been away all weekend so he braved Costco alone to pick up some giant sized groceries for our tiny fridge. I kind of imagine him strolling through the empty aisles, tasting samples and exchanging pleasantries with the sample-givers, but when I am at work I always think everyone out there is having more fun than me, no matter what they're doing.

I met him after work at an appointment in our neighborhood, and by the time I saw him I looked and felt like a zombie. I asked what he had bought at Costco, and he told me about these fish patties he had gotten. "Like filets?" I asked. "No, you know, breaded fish patties. They're good."
Up yours, Gordan's Fisherman!

I started to cry.

Now, in truth, John had bought all sorts of things. Paper towels, for one, and I know it's strange but I do feel more secure with a closet stocked with paper towels. I think it's the germaphobe in me. He had also gotten chicken, vegetables, gigantic condiments that we were in need of-- you know, the things you get at Costco.

But when I heard fish patties, my inner nutjob railed. "Fish! Dipped in batter! Fried! Then frozen! Like a McFish or whatever they call it! That's like eating a stick of butter!" And it wasn't the fish-- my hungry, overtired brain imagined a refrigerator filled with things I really can't eat.

When we decided to live together, and even before, I often thought that when we struck it rich John and I would have the luxury of separate fridges. His would be stocked with the things I often buy for him because I know he loves them (and, in truth, because I want to eat them and indulge vicariously through him): ready-to-eat pizza, fresh mozzarella wrapped in thinly sliced prosciutto, frozen Buffalo wings, knishes, blocks of various cheeses, bacon, sausages, bottles of hot sauce, multiple pints of ice cream--all Haagen Daz, all full-fat; his cabinets would be bursting with Corn Pops, crusty rolls, Mac and Cheese, and the Costco apple muffins he loves that make up my caloric intake for two days in just one muffin.

Mine would have my standard fare: leaf spinach for salad, apples, pears, baby carrots, hummus for nights I got crazy (and the carrots to eat it with-- you think I could mess with bread? No.), avocado, grilled chicken, frozen shrimp, olive oil and lemon juice for my homemade salad dressing. Dried apricots and almond milk for the nights I really needed dessert.

I must think at least once a day about how I envy John and his casual approach to eating. If he wants it, he eats it, and he is still fit and trim. I've even gone so far as to keep a Facebook album of his more jealousy-inducing meals. If he feels like he's not in his best shape, he works out for a week and is back to exactly where he wants to be. Last week, I counted my calories with meticulous precision, worked out nearly every day-- hard-- and then indulged in ice cream one night. I gained 2+ pounds at my Weight Watchers weigh in.

He, rightfully so, thinks I am a bit insane. I mean, I wept over fish. He doesn't see a freezer full of fish cakes as a slow death march back to my highest weight--the Number That Cannot Be Named-- he sees them as dinner. Sometimes lunch.  But he's never been a fat kid. In fact, though I've never confirmed it, I suspect he was the kid who made fun of the fat kids. I mean, he was the kid who made fun of everyone, he grew up to be a comic-- that's what they do. I often look at his cute little first-grader face framed on our wall and think, "Oh, he is so painfully adorable-- all red hair and sweetness. I wish I knew him then." Then I realize that if we had met, perhaps in our preteen years, his wicked humor would have made me, my humongous Miami Mice t-shirt, overbite and zaftig physique an easy target. And I would still be resentful.

When I go grocery shopping alone, my cart is divided into two parts: the food I want to eat, which goes to John. Then there's the food I do eat. It's still delicious, but it's fuel, meant to keep me from collapsing, not induce a cathartic experience. My cart is both aspirational and practical.


As kooky as I am, I have finally found the person who-- while he doesn't quite get my insanity-- accepts it. When we got home that night, he dropped my crazy, crying, spinning self off and went out to the fruit stand to get me some apples to shut me up. When I got upstairs, I saw through my ridiculous tears that he had cut the nutritional information off of the box of fish so that I could figure out how many Weight Watchers PointsPlus were in it. Through my sobs I whipped out my calculator, which I always keep on hand.


They were low fat, high protein and high fiber. Turns out that of the two of us, me and the fish, the only remotely unhealthy thing in that room was me. If insanity did burn calories, I would have had ice cream with mine.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Dropping lbs for Jesus

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and my Facebook feed read like a live-action roll call for the Catholics in my life. The topic was, of course, what to give up for Lent.

While many used the occasion to sign off of Facebook, swearing 40 days of social network exile, I found with some degree of predictability that the most common Lenten observances seemed to pull double duty as diet measures.

"Giving up sweets for Lent!"

"No more bread 'til Easter!"

"Gym everyday and NO dessert!"

With each post I realized: I am a bad Catholic AND a bad dieter.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that for many of us, Lent is less about Jesus' isolation in the desert, about sacrificing and offering it up for the souls in purgatory, and more about shedding excess winter weight before putting on our decidedly less bulky and forgiving spring clothes. Well, maybe I should just speak for myself. For years, mostly when I was at my heaviest, I would give up chocolate or dessert, imagining that 40 days sweet-free would be the kick start I needed to finally lose weight, catapulting me into a slinky dress in time for Easter. Who wears slinky dresses on Easter, you ask? Those who have perfectly observed their no-sugar rule and earned the body for it, I say.
Can you tell I've starved myself for 40 days?

I can't recall if I ever actually made it through a season of Lent without messing up. It wasn't that I'd cave-- I generally have good will power when I try-- but I'd forget, my dessert ritual being such a devoted ceremony. I'd be scraping at the bottom of the bowl of ice cream before I remembered my promise, and with some degree of resignation I'd think, "Well, there's always next year."

This year, like the last few years, I am not giving up anything. For me, making Lent a part of my diet plan seems disingenuous. Not that I judge others who do it-- but for me it would be less about God and more about losing the ten pounds that are currently making me a mental case.

And, let me be honest...I have given up a lot in the past few years, including: alcohol, buffalo wings, diet coke, credit cards... did I say alcohol? The choices are getting slim.

So, I am attempting to do a good deed every day. Today, my plan was to give up a seat to an old lady on the train. Because neither of us had a seat, I had to first attempt to get one and then give it to her. Of course, when a seat opened up, she beat me to it, and my plan was foiled.

Oh well. There's always next year.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Fat Tuesday, Indeed.

It seems serendipitous to start my new blog off on this day, the high holiday of chubbiness, Fat Tuesday. It's a day that is tailor-made to my true nature: I am an indulgent creature, knowing moderation in no thing. I've wracked up insane debts (and have since paid them off), grown to immense proportions (and have since whittled down), and spent the ages from 13-30 drinking like a longshoreman (and have since pledged my abstinence).

It's the day before Ash Wednesday, when the fasting of Lent begins. Traditionally, we're supposed to rid our homes of fatty foods, eat them while we can-- enjoy, live it up, because tomorrow we'll start 40 days of wandering through the deserts of our deprivations.

To celebrate the day of indulgence, I treated myself like a queen, Molly Bloom rolling around on her duvet, chin soaked with butter and crumbs from her biscuit clinging to her sheets.

I did: I actually allowed myself to eat a Weight Watchers 2 Points Plus bar.

Did you think I'd actually eat something delicious? Did you think I'd head down to the cafeteria at work, mindlessly pick up some of the King Cake they were serving especially for the occasion, and have one last fling at the stir-fry station? Oh, you don't know me. We must not have met.

Nope, not me. For me, Fat Tuesday was very fat indeed. It was the day I weighed in at Weight Watchers with a whopping 2.8lb gain-- undoing the hard work of the three weeks preceding it. It was the day I swore revenge on the Sinister Scale, the evil entity that had ignored the runs I had gone on, the workouts I had endured, the sweets I politely declined for the past seven days. Fat Tuesday was the day I wandered into the cafeteria to get ice water to enjoy with my home-packed, calorie-counted salad lunch, only to see the King Cake on display and be brought back to my days in the dark basement of Camalier Hall, smoking weed with my friend from New Orleans.  Her mother sent her a King Cake every year at the start of Mardi Gras, as was the tradition, and in a pot-fuzzy haze we'd eat piece after piece until we found the plastic baby buried inside its sugary tomb. Whoever found the baby was lucky, they said. I really just wanted the cake.

This year, as I steeled myself against the onslaught of Fat Tuesday festivities, I thought about how Fat Tuesday embodied everything I was-- hedonistic, indulgent, uncaring, uncontrollable. And here I am, this year, like the six years preceding it that have followed my radical weight loss, wondering-- how did I end up this completely different person?

I can't shake it: yes, I'd like a Hurricane. I'd like crepes, I'd like buttery cake, sure-- I wanted to eat my way through Fat Tuesday. But instead, I counted my Points for my homemade salad and wondered if I should count my grilled shrimp as 3 PointsPlus or 4. In the end, I counted 4. There's one thing that hasn't changed, I still always go for more.  

Every day is Fat Tuesday.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Julia Donahue's Opus

Me on my first day of school--happy.
(originally posted 1/29/11 on funemployedblog.blogspot.com)
A week ago was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and it got me thinking: In history, leaders, heroes and trailblazers have earned their place by facing challenges, overcoming obstacles and declaring victory over lifelong struggles. They had something to overcome, and that task became their life's work. So I wondered, what was mine?

What was the one thing I had been trying to overcome my whole life, the area in which I exerted the greatest effort in the face of probable failure?

I realized, with some degree of horror and hilarity that my life's work has been to achieve my goal weight.

Laugh if you will, roll your eyes... but it's true.

In recent years it hasn't been just my focus, it's been my obsession. You see, I have seen the mountaintop. I have been there. And now I can't get it out of my head. Healthy or not, I want to go back.

I was always a fat kid. If I wasn't fat, as some pictures attest, I thought I was. It wasn't like my parents ever pressured me to lose weight, in fact, my mother always insisted I was "perfect," which would upset me because I felt it was so far from the truth. I was always bigger than the kids around me, or at least I felt that way. Where other little girls were ballerinas, I felt like the bull in a china shop.

And while I longed to be skinny, delicate like the other girls, and pretty instead of "jolly," I couldn't want it enough to put down the sweets or stick to a diet. Eventually, what you perceive becomes a reality, and I became the fat kid I always thought I was. And I hated myself for it.

The first time I joined Weight Watchers, in the sixth grade, I weighed in at over 160lbs. That's honesty right there, folks. But I joined because wanted to lose weight. I was motivated. In fact, I always believed that eventually one day I would be thin. So I asked my mom to help me, and knowing that Weight Watchers was a healthy, reliable plan, she sent me along with my dad. He had just had his first of several heart attacks, and had been ordered by his doctors to lose weight. I dedicated myself. I lost 30lbs that first time. In subsequent years, I would join again, lose weight, and quit, only to gain again.

My desire to lose weight wasn't because of the taunting I was getting from other kids, but the taunts certainly added to my motivation. Everyone has horror stories, here are some of mine: One day, on the bus home, an older kid named Seth Benkel and his friend Albert (whose last name escapes me, so let's just call him "Albert Fuckface") stopped me in the aisle on my way to my seat.

"You should be a model," Seth Benkel said. I was cautiously flattered... a boy had never complimented me before.

"For Porky Ham!" Albert Fuckface finished, and they laughed uproariously. For the remainder of the year, they taunted me, calling me Porky Pig and chanting while I kept my head down and said nothing, praying my stop would come sooner. The stress and anxiety of boarding the bus was pure torment. Eventually, my friend Corinne and I began walking home. To this day I can't look at one of those Porky Ham 18 Wheelers that drive around New York without thinking of those two sadistic seventh grade fucks.

I can see the resemblance.


It should be said, neither of them were thin. In fact, Albert was actually fat. So maybe we could say it was his own insecurity that caused him to reduce me to tears every day, but frankly, I don't go for that. My insecurity didn't see me picking on the kid the next size up. Some people are just born assholes.

I could go on. For example, I could tell you how, during my Confirmation in the seventh grade, the boys in the pew behind me, Vinny Mancino, Paul Rabaste and some weirdly Nordic kid I can only remember as "Eric" sat and hissed into my ears that I was fat, a whale, blubber and finally dubbed me "The White Whale," chanting it throughout the mercilessly long rehearsals and the ceremony itself. Models of Christianity.

It's helpful to note that Paul grew into one of the most horrifyingly ugly adolescents you could ever imagine- a combination of Rocky Dennis and Dr. Frank-n-Furter- all distorted features and hormone-frizzed hair. In high school people--even his friends--viciously called him by his new nickname, "Handsome." Karma, my friends, will get you every time.

If you blink real fast, you see Paul "Handsome" Rabaste.


I never told my parents about any of it. I was too ashamed-- like those boys and their cruelty were somehow my fault.

In high school a growth spurt gave me a few brief months of thinness. The summer of 1991 was a perfect storm: I was 16, I hit puberty late but hard, skintight bodysuits were in vogue, and it seemed that my diet of potato salad and beer went straight to my chest. It was an amazing few months. In later years, once the weight had redistributed itself to my midsection and upper thighs, I would try again to recreate this diet and it's wondrous effects, and fail-- miserably.

Throughout all of these years, the brief moments of manageability and the longer periods of self hatred and shame, I never once was able to freely enjoy a morsel of food. Unless it was a salad or something extremely dietetic that could convince me I was on the road to Skinnyville, Population Me, I would feel guilty as soon as I swallowed.
Not one bite of even my own birthday cake-ever- has passed my lips without a chaser of remorse.


In June 2004, when I was 28, I decided that the day I always told myself was coming-- the day I'd be thin-- wasn't going to come to me. I had to set the date, and make it happen. Again, I joined Weight Watchers and, determined to do everything differently this time, I took off 40lbs in 10 months. In the years that followed, another 20lbs came off.
I began to exercise, to run, and to treat my body like the machine I was realizing it could be. I was amazed at what it could do. It was like it had been waiting my whole life for this. It was let out of its cage.


In the fall of 2008, I was at my lowest weight. Maybe not my best weight- in fact, people liked to tell me that I was too thin, but when you're a fat kid in your head and in your heart, that still sounds like a compliment. I wasn't too thin, but an extra 5-10lbs wouldn't have hurt me. It was at that time that a friend told me she had stood up for me when gossips started saying I had an eating disorder. I was thrilled. It meant people were talking about me being thin--not fat.

It wasn't just being thin that I loved, it was the confidence I got from losing weight. If I could do this, really- what couldn't I do? I applied myself at work and received professional kudos and bonuses. I went on dates, socialized, and approached anything and everything with an absolute expectation of success. I interviewed for jobs and got them. I flirted with guys, they flirted back.

I wanted everyone to feel what I felt. When friends asked me how I lost weight, or said they wanted to try, I sincerely wanted to help. The concept that you have to "give it away to keep it" is a philosophy that Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson, and the principal of passing it on was something I wholeheartedly embraced. I don't preach, I don't bring it up-- but if people want to talk, hey-- pull up a chair. Need someone to go to a Weight Watchers meeting with you? I am there. Want to cook a healthy dinner? I am in.

But the truth is, right now I am struggling. And my physical challenges have taken a tremendous mental toll- after all this time, I just can't separate the two. In 2008, after a series of unsettling experiences, I went on antidepressants and in the course of two years gained 20lbs. To anyone else, 20lbs is nothing to freak out about. Not great, but not life-altering, especially when you could have stood to gain 5-10 anyway. However to Ms.Porky Ham 1987, it's cause for panic. After experiencing other troubling side effects that only manifested over time, I came off the meds.

It's been five months, and the weight won't budge. My copious research on the choice tool of obsessives, the internet, has told me that most people have a very hard time losing the weight gained from SSRIs. It takes months-- even years-- to see results. And there are no guarantees.

Not willing to accept time and persistence as a solution, I went on a cleanse and then, once I finished, decided to do my "own" diet, which meant a desperate and unhealthy cutting of calories that resulted in a severe nutrient deficiency and corresponding side effects. In other words, I just made matters worse. Instead of seeing the 40lbs that were still off of me, the weight loss I had maintained, I saw the 10 I needed to lose to be "happy," the 15 that would leave me "without a problem in the world."

When I am feeling rational, I just need time, body acceptance, healthy eating and exercise--not to whittle away my body but to make it as happy as it once was. When I am not, every tight piece of clothing feels like failure, every too-short skirt just reinforces my helplessness. My boyfriend tells me I am beautiful, and I wish I could believe him, the same way I wish I had believed my mom when she said I was perfect.

I look at the pictures from when I was a kid, and I know that what I felt like I looked like and what I actually looked like don't match up. I always thought I was fat, even when I wasn't. My perspective was wrong from the get go.

What I've realized in writing this is that even though I've been working towards it for my entire life, I don't actually have a goal weight. I never had a number, I've just been struggling towards this blurry ideal for 30 years. It's almost laughable, if it wasn't so sad. My goal weight has always just been categorized as "less than what I am now," and yet I've let it determine my moods, my self worth, and in some cases my success. I've let it push me into unhealthy behaviors, and
I have actually physically harmed myself in my unrelenting zeal to get "good enough." A lack of a clear definition of what it is I am striving for has rendered it completely unattainable. 
And yet, how do you give up fighting when you've been in battle your entire life? I don't know. I guess you do the next right thing: you take care of yourself, and exercise and eat right, but you don't obsess. You ask God to fix your perspective because frankly, it's pretty fucked. You blog about it, and hope that some people won't read and the ones that do will identify or share something with you. And eventually, hopefully, it sinks in that real success and real self worth can't be measured by the pound.