i've been traveling a lot recently and as a woman of XXL proportions, airplane travel always make me a little nervous. fortunately, i have amazing girlfriends who know what the hell i'm talking about when i anxiously mention the dread of having to squeeze my voluptuous keister into an XL seat for three hours. one particular travel-savvy friend sent me the following advice, wrought from her own extensive traveling experiences:
The Fat Girls Guide to Flying
1) Airline seat sizes vary. Airplanes use a few different kinds of aircrafts. When you shop for flights, it will list the type of aircraft each flight uses. Check here to determine the width of the seat on that particular aircraft: www.seatguru.com You want the 18" width; it will be much better vs. the 17" width. Whenever possible I pick my flight times based on this.
2) Get in a loyalty program and fly that airline as much as possible. It is TOTALLY worth it. Get a credit card that gives you miles for that airline. This will let you get better seats (i.e. non middle!), board first, and upgrade to first with your miles.
3) Always aim for a window seat. It allows you to get into the row first (usually), get situated, and lean away from the middle seat. Because of carts and other traffic coming down the aisle, the aisle seat doesn't leave you with anywhere to lean.
4) Seat belt lengths vary. I tend to fly United where the seat belt is always roomy in coach, but strangely, not nearly as roomy in business class/first (even though the seat are.)
Here's how to handle a tight seat belt: immediately recline your seat, slide your ass back, and buckle the seat belt. Then un-recline. In crappier seats you may have to reach back and grab the side of the seat and yank it forward as you depress the button to move the seat back into the upright position. Do the whole recline thing really quickly and no one will notice, they're too busy getting situated themselves. In really small/older planes (i.e. europe), the seat belts are much shorter. Do not go through the drama of asking for an extender. Just bring a jacket with you and put it on your lap. Place the unbuckled seatbelt under the jacket. Put your headphones on and zone out. No one will notice. Flight attendants just want to get the plane off the ground, they are not looking to see if your seat belt is buckled.
this morning, my company treated its employees to a catered breakfast in honor of all the hard work we did last week. i queued up with other coworkers and patiently waited my turn to grab some eggs and bacon and fruit. i found myself across the buffet table from a temp who has been with the company for three or four months. the group around me was conversing about vegetarian preferences, the temp leading the banter.
"well what to do allow yourself to eat? all i see is carnivorous fare here," one of my coworkers said to the temp.
"well, i'll eat eggs, but definitely NO dairy... i'll eat fish and blah blah blah blah..." and she went on ad nauseum about her self imposed diet restrictions. when the temp got to the eggs, she took an abnormally small scoop and made some irritating remark about being starving.
"you know, i think scrambled eggs have milk in them," the guy next to her said. she paused, then very unceremoniously tilted her plate towards the egg pan and shook the offending fare back into the public domain. i think she started whimpering about never having anything to eat at "these" types of offerings...
it was at that point that i grabbed my juice and scurried away, trying to get as far away as possible from her incessant whining about food. frankly, although i found the whole exchange to be like nails on a chalkboard (seriously... HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO HEAR THE WOES OF THE VEGETARIAN?? KEEP IT TO YOURSELF, YOU FOOD MILITANTS!! yeah, yeah, yeah... you're so much better than the rest of us meat eaters... but you don't hear the rest of us preaching about how our lactose intolerance or our gluten issues or our plain old dieting problems should be cause for you to take alert, too!!) i digress... the thing i found interesting is that this was not the first time that i happened to be graced with the presence of this babbling veggie crusader.
i came across her a few weeks prior at an all-staff meeting. she was at the catering table, decrying the baseness of the pastries and muffins for their general unhealthiness and sugar content to anyone in line who would listen. (as a little bit of background, this gal is relatively young - maybe mid to late 20's, very thin, and very much a stereotypical l.a. hipster. in an office that demands business formal, she comes to work looking like she's wearing the same duds she went out in last night... lindsay-lohan-style leggings under an off the shoulder, ratty t-shirt and cowboy boots. god love l.a.) this girl already sticks out like a sore thumb in the office. what's worse is that she offends everyone around her with her holier-than-thou loud judgement of food at the catered meals.
this really bothered me at first. i chalked it up to her just being a loud, bitchy, attention-needing, angstful youth who was unaccustomed to a professional office environment. but after listening to her blather on about her herbivorous tendencies this morning, i realized that ohmygod, she's probably just as freaky about food as me! both times i've run into her, she's been milling around catered tables full of "inadequate fare". i imagine that a person with a normal relationship with food (whatever that is) would peek at the offerings, know instantly if there is anything appropriate for their diet and simply walk away if they don't see something that fits the bill... not get in line and very loudly bitch about the free food. that the temp falls in with the rest of the line and starts calling attention to her own eating habits screams "i have a problem with food. and if i talk loud enough and with enough judgement about what you're about to eat, you won't notice my issue with food."
yes. i know this one well... i know it well because i have been in that same boat... it was high school and college when i was so painfully aware of being seen having anything to do with food in public... i thought that all eyes were on me and the food i was about to eat. (which is really a very narcissistic thing if you think of it.) how painfully wrapped up with my own fragile self esteem and poor body image did i have to be to think that everyone would be waiting, watching to see what i ate, how i ate it, the technique i used to eat? seriously. thank you, therapy, for helping me pull my head out of my ass on that one. (i'm quite sure that my head is still very much securely lodged up my rear when it comes to a great many other things, but i don't fear eating in public anymore.)
i wish i could say that my negative feelings towards the trash talking temp have dissipated now that i've committed my thoughts to paper (or rather, the digital ether), but i'm not that noble. what i can say is that i do have a little more compassion for her now. it's gotta be tough to be young and impressionable in this whack-a-doodle town - where drug problems are completely acceptable and eating at all, especially in public, is frowned upon... i'm grateful that the suffocating pressure to be thin out here has not consumed my very being... ok, maybe just a little.
or i could be completely wrong about the temp... perhaps i am totally off base and she has a perfectly healthy relationship with food... in that case, her irritation factor stems from her constant and insipid whining about food... even better!
saturday morning i awoke to the sound of dripping water... and lots of it. a flurry of kitchen sink activity from the upstairs neighbors bubbled up through our sink due to a clog somewhere down the line. my guy and i are not early risers. our neighbors are. by the time we woke up, there was an inch of water covering the kitchen floor, and the counters were completely drenched.
needless to say it wasn't the best way to start the weekend. i admit that i was a little shellshocked from waking so abruptly. and from the aegean sea which manifested itself on my kitchen floor. but i was also undone by the size of the task at hand. call a plumber? call the landlord? turn the water off? where? for the building? talk to the neighbor? how do we even clean up this much water?? is this a hepatitis breeding ground??
fortunately, the overflow ceased shortly after our discovery. not only was there water EVERYWHERE, but since it was sink water, there were little bits of food and sink mung covering everything, too. SO FREAKING GROSS. i was paralyzed by the situation. i had all these questions and what-ifs crowding my mind. my guy only added to the swirling confusion in my head with his own questions, "should we go buy a mop? should we throw towels on this? does our lease cover this situation?" i was overwhelmed. the clean up task looked insurmountable.
i waded out of the kitchen and walked back to the office. i sat in front of the computer and just stared. my guy followed me in and asked what was going on. it was bad enough that the flood gates had released themselves in my kitchen, but now my internal river of emotions surged forth. i started whining about all my worries, all the questions that the kitchen situation brought forth. my voice sounded like a worried little kid as the concerns tumbled out of me. but here's the thing - as soon as they were out of me, as soon as i had released all the worry, i felt totally fine. describing the cloud of question and worry in my head seemed to deflate it. it dissipated and sanity started shining through.
i headed back to the kitchen to survey the situation. "you go get the mop. i'll stay here in case the sink starts overflowing again," i directed my guy. we took turns wading across the river to empty off the counter tops. we also cleared out the cupboard under the sink. once my guy left to find reinforcements, i tackled the standing water. i crafted a tool out of a 1 liter plastic bottle to help me bail the water out of the kitchen. it was slow going. scooping and dumping, scooping and dumping. as i sat there, in the middle of the drowned kitchen floor, something unexpected happened to me. i was overcome with peacefulness. i started thinking about how bailing out a flooded kitchen was an appropriate analogy to my weight loss journey. discovering the situation was just horrifying. in november of last year, when i finally hopped on the scale after so many years, i was dreading the little digital number. and yes, the reality was jarring. but once i committed myself to a newfound relationship with my body and weight loss, the situation didn't seem insurmountable. i recognized that there was a lot of hard, often 'yucky' work ahead of me, but it needed to happen. if for no other reason than for longevity of life and health reasons, it needed to happen. so here i am, in the midst of this weight loss journey, riding the highs and holding on through the lows. just bailing myself out. and for as much heartache as it can cause sometimes, i find that i am truly happy with the distance i've come thus far. i'm getting to know me. in the same way that i had to pull the fridge and the stove away from the wall to clean up the standing water (and the wet under-fridge-chud), i've had to pull metaphysical obstacles out of the path of my heart and mind. my first emotion this floody morning was shock, followed by dread. somewhere along the way i encountered grateful. i was actually grateful for an opportunity to so thoroughly clean my kitchen. i am grateful that i have an opportunity to clean out my body and mind.
by the time my guy got back with the mop, i not only scooped all the water off the kitchen floor, but i scrubbed down the bathroom, too... i was a woman on a mission! despite the day starting out in the shitter, it ended up quite nice.
it's nice to know that others are also appreciating similar journies, too.
today i was able to fasten a button that i haven't been able to close in a long time.
funny how the simple act of buttoning a button can color the whole day with magic, wonder, and delight.
i've also found that there is magic in these wise words over at fat as hell.
