Saturday I went to a playoffs party to root for my beloved Colts (and they were victorious thankyouverymuch!!!). Big party, tons of food ... steak, shrimp, fresh crab, crab cakes, shallots, stuffed mushrooms, meat and cheese trays, you name it. (I made a fruit tray and low fat cupcakes baked with sugar free applesauce and egg whites instead of oil and whole eggs, in case you were wondering.) Food was no problem. I ate well, walked away from the table before I overindulged, and drank water instead of beer. I ate wonderful food and still remained well within my caloric goals for the day. (Like a seasoned pro, baby!!)

I was practically bombarded with questions about my weight loss when I wondered into the kitchen mid-game to fetch yet another bottle of water from the fridge. "Wow, how much weight have you lost? What diet are you one? What do you eat? Give me an example of what you have for lunch. What about dinner? Do you actually get FULL on fruits and vegetables?" Of course I got the usual unsatisfied grunts when I explained that I am not on a diet and that I'm simply focusing on healthy eating and exercise. People just can't stand it that I don't lay out some restrictive ground rules or throw in a fancy diet name. They don't want to hear about moderation, they want to hear "Atkins-Cabbage-Slim-Beach-Met
abo-Skinny Diet." When I don't dish on some fabulous magic pill or potion, they act as if I'm keeping secrets.

Ah, but here's my favorite part of the entire evening. (Okay not really.) Let me give you some background. My aunt, by marriage, is one of the many people who completely and utterly ignored me when I was at my heaviest. Actually, plenty of people in the house on Saturday are among the fat phobic who never saw fit to associate with me when I was nearly 400 pounds. It's as if they thought fat was contagious. These people greeted me with hugs and compliments this weekend. I'm socially acceptable.

Anyway, about the aunt. She was so outrageously blunt about my former weight that I was silently stunned. She actually said to me, "You were HUGE! I mean HUGE. God, you were SO big at your wedding. And you got pregnant with your daughter at that size? Could you even TELL that you were pregnant? You wouldn't have even fit in that chair you're sitting in now before you lost weight. You were so BIG!"

WHAT the HELL?? Do people think that I am not IN HERE? Hello! I am the SAME person I was when I was fat(ter). Do people not realize that the "huge person" is ME? Duh!

And she followed the "you were huge" thing with the familiar, "you could be pretty" speech. "Can you imagine what you're going to look like when you get really skinny? When you lose the rest of your weight, you are going to be gorgeous! You will be the woman that all the guys chase. You have the face and the hair, just keep losing weight and you will be SO pretty!"

Boy, I'm sure glad she was there to enlighten me, because I was erroneously thinking that I'm mildly attractive. Little did I know I still have to get "really skinny" in order to be pretty, for cripe's sake.

You're probably wondering if I got hella-pissed and went off on this woman.

No.

I am a gracious lady. I answered her blatantly stupid questions with dignity. I listened to her go on about how "huge" I was with composure. After all, I am the bigger person ... pun intended. I knew I would come home and journal about it later. I was making mental notes as she rambled on, obviously under the impression that I'm a completely different person simply because my size has changed. (And in ways I am different, happier, but I'm still me at the core.)

I found myself wondering what it's like to have been thin all your life, and clueless as to the feelings of others. What's it like to be one of the beautiful people who get to sit upon the high horse of vanity and judge those who are unlucky enough to wear our afflictions and addictions on our sleeves? (Because everybody has something, right? But you can't hide fat, so everyone knows your issue at at glance. It's there for all the world to see.)

Mostly I just marveled at how LUCKY I am to have reached a "socially acceptable" size because, wow, now FASCINATING people like her see fit to speak to me.

(In case you're wondering ... yes, that last bit was sarcasm.)