"Shrink! Shrink!" Instant weight loss miracles

I want to subtitle this, "When I came, my brain was loose. . . "

There are some truly strange phenomena in religion. This is right up there with Mormon magic underwear: the belief that a simple prayer will instantly peel 20 or 30 pounds off your body, so that suddenly your skirt is literally falling off. Even the needle on the scale is shown edging down and down, right on camera. It seems ludicrous, and it IS ludicrous, and I can't help but be sad, because people who believe this will believe anything. They will believe anything because they make the evidence fit. Either it's a downright hoax and they're sucking in their gut or have a hidden tuck in their waistband, or they're trying so hard to believe in the miracle that they delude themselves into actually SEEING results on their own body.

Part of it is just - may I say laziness? Losing weight is hard work, it takes effort, commitment, and an endless dedication to keeping the weight off even when your body insists on putting it back on. But what if God was willing to do all this for you - no effort - no energy - and in only seconds?

It scares me because this guy, this evangelist, is very slick. He's one of these charismatics, and he's there to fill the holes in people's lives. Most of this audience (and I believe the church is in Zimbabwe) are poor and black, and most are middle-aged or older women. No doubt this instant weight loss has another kind of cost, a more literal cost, in having to pony up big bucks to line the preacher's pockets.

It's what used to be called cheap grace. Jesus will do it all for you. Just believe in him, surrender to him! It seems like another lifetime that I not only belonged to the United Church, but was a lay minister for years and years. It wasn't so much waking up one morning realizing it had all been a sham. It was a slow crumbling, an eroding, a gradual realization that this just couldn't be true. What was I having "faith" in? Was there a God, a separable force from brute nature, that cared about us? After a while, it just didn't make sense any more. In the eyes of the church, it had to be something benevolent that was kind of hanging above us, watching over us, counting the hairs on our head, etc. If I doubted, people would try to hook me back by saying, "Oh, but it's just something that lives in your heart." But that's not it. An atheist could (and many do) embrace this idea. I could believe in human goodness without believing in a separable, personal, unconditionally loving God. 

That time I thought I caught a dazzling glimpse of the power of the universe, that dizzying force was completely indifferent. Quite simply, it didn't care about us. This was the raw force of nature, and of all that is. If there's something more personal going on, then we must provide it for each other.

So where is God in all this?

Videos like this one, in which trusting people are duped and bled dry of money they can't spare, only erodes my sense of the Big Guy in the Sky even more. How many crusades were fought in the name of God, how many people tortured and executed - and on a more intimate level, how many people were shamed and blamed, how many innocent, trusting children sexually abused and emotionally destroyed by priests who were God's representatives on earth?

It's a grim scene. I had to learn to do without God, and it was a loss, and still is, now that I am grieving the loss of my best friend. He was a believer for years, but I am not sure what happened at the end, because it looks like his former church is not going to do a memorial for him. So much for the graciousness of God and his followers! When it comes right down to it, Christian forgiveness is practically never followed, though an awful lot of people play at it. So I am left pretty much alone with my grief, and it's bloody painful. Sometimes I feel him on the other side, sometimes I even hear his voice, but if  I made the mistake of telling a psychiatrist, I'd be given medication for it and have a note written on my chart: delusional. And it would be on my record forever. Don't start that God business, whatever you do, or it will follow you around forever.

POST-BLOG GLOB! Predictably, I just found a news article from a Zimbabwe paper about  this Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa, claiming that his church will soon be shut down (though I am sure that, like a poison mushroom, it will pop up somewhere else in short order. As P. T. Barnum famously said, there's one born every minute.) 

The fortunes and survival of UFIC leader, prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa, is hanging by a thread, with the prospect of an ultimate shutdown of his tricky church, after the already talked about Ghanaian pastors have sent an explosive letter to President Robert Mugabe, to be hand delivered by a local delegation of clerics representing them in Harare next week, the Telescope News reported.

Makandiwa had appeared to take the gospel in Zimbabwe by storm five years ago, with sugarcoated teachings bordering on a heap of what his critics say are "lying miracles", such as penis enlargements, miracle money, miracle babies, weight loss on live television, and dubious financial summits to empower men right in the House of The Lord, they charge. However, the letter sent last night to Zimbabwe, calls on Mugabe to immediately arrest Makandiwa without hesitation when Grace passes away, as evidence that he is a fake prophet, thus God has hidden this sad prophecy just to expose his wickedness, and alleged ties with the occult and voodoo magic, the pastors lead by Lawrence Ajoba, said.

The Telescope News claims that it has a copy of the letter, which is embargoed until 6 April 2014, thus we shall be publishing the full text of the letter on Monday, the 7th of April, as part 2 to this interesting saga fast approaching "Judgement Day".

Ironically, Makandiwa is preparing for a much hyped "Judgement Night" on April 19, at the National Sports Stadium in the capital. Some 150 000 people are expected to attend his meeting, including foreigners, which could be his very last shot at fame and crowd pulling. The Ghanaian pastors, as will be read next week also want Mugabe "to set bulldozers" on the UFIC Chitungwiza church.

(I'm afraid they lost me at the penis enlargements.)

My 600 lb. slide

I can't bring myself to write about this video, although I suppose I should, to put it in context. It looks mean, on the surface of it, to post a video of a massively-obese man falling off a golf cart. But this isn't just any man. (In fact, we're still trying to figure out if it's a man at all.) This is Steven Assanti, self-proclaimed superstar of My 600-lb. Life, and the biggest loser as far as compliance with the weight loss program is concerned. The man is a hurricane of dysfunction on every level, and is as crude and obnoxious a human being as I have ever witnessed, on TV or anywhere else. 

I am ashamed to say that I watched this episode AGAIN the other night, knowing exactly how vile Assanti would be. And I waited for the golf cart scene, waited for it because of his Dad's reaction as he stood there watching. He said something like, "He's fine, he does this all the time." And, in fact, he WAS fine, being extremely well-padded. The fall wasn't so much a fall as a well-timed slide. 

This planned accident ploy was a tried-and-true way for him to score narcotics from the hospital, a worse addiction even than food. The sad thing is that ratings go through the roof whenever they show the Assanti episodes (this was a four-part thing!). I know it's a sideshow, and I should be above all that, and only watch National Geographic Channel like my husband, but damn it, this is fine stuff. First-rate entertainment. It makes you feel so much better about your own life.

I have set Steven's famous slide to a musical score which I hope will enhance the experience for you. And made this little animation from screenshots of one of his rants. He is still very much a presence on YouTube, even after having several of his channels (including the infamous FatBoyGetDown) deleted. He now goes by the name of "K Smith".

Clothes are like skin to me

While blundering around in my files trying to find something, I found this. It was originally written for my first blog, the late and never-lamented Open Salon thing that was eventually driven out of town by vicious, insular harpies who didn't think I had a right to be there. Fine.

This essay, while relevant, doesn't entirely apply now, because my closet has since been vastly pared down (though it's surprising how many of the pieces I mentioned are still there). But I'm once more in a cycle of weight loss/body change. The more you do this, the worse your final shape will be. Today I look like a melted cookie. But perhaps it's still good for my health.

My blog style has changed, in that I no longer try to do "good" writing. No one wants to see it , and I don't feel like doing it. I see other people's blogs now and think I am in a hospital room. But only because mine is like a basement or garage or tool shed with spiders crawling around in it. No one reads it anyway, right? Well, not many. So why have I spent my life doing this? Hmmmmmmm??

I'll no doubt realize the answer a few seconds before I expire. Meantime, read this, it's pretty good, even if I no longer write in this sort of essay style - it'd kill me with boredom now

This is the kind of job I could put off forever. I don’t just hate my bedroom closet, I fear it. Long ago my husband moved his stuff out. Like a miniature version of Hoarders, it tells stories that ain’t pretty. Everything is so tightly packed in there that it emerges squashed into  ripply pancaked wrinkles that are nearly impossible to get out.

I am tired of this great whale, this leviathan that I have to wrestle with each day just to find something to wear. I am powerless over my wardrobe, and my closet has become unmanageable.

The thing is, I take care of my clothes, almost fanatically. I hand-wash and I hang-dry and I don’t bleach and I do all those things the little tags tell me to do, or not do. Because they irritate shit out of me, I remove most of the tags surgically, with a stitch-ripper. I take such fanatic care, the result is that nothing dies. There are items from every year going back to (bllompfdhhd). Items going back to so many fluctuating weight levels, I’m embarrassed to even think about it.

Shape-shifters like myself have always had a hard time finding anything nice to wear. Not to mention pyramid-shapes whose hddd’pvlms are a tad larger than “normal”. And those with penguin-flippers for arms, so that shirt-cuffs lop down 2 or 3” longer than “normal”. Turned-back cuffs do not look casual, they look sloppy and weird, as if you’re a kid playing dressup.

My body is not normal and my psyche is not normal, so what do I do?  Recently I’ve been on yet another round of weight loss, and though I’m not trying very hard at all (and so far, not using a scale to prevent the usual salivating obsession), I’m getting results. ALL my coats fit, that is, the ones that aren’t a little tight, but they all button up. I’m slowly beating the “bottom button” curse which all pear shapes will know about, the top of a blouse fitting beautifully and the last button pulling violently apart as if it’s three sizes too small.

What’s getting me now is that I know I have to get rid of some stuff, if only to make room for the things I’ve just snarfed up in the spring sales. There are pants in there that go back to 115 (AD, not BC) and (gasp) 165. There are pants with high waists and pleats. There are sweaters shoved in the back, probably from the 1980s, with big firm shoulder pads.  (For me, with no shoulders to speak of, they were a great blessing, and I hated it when they went “out”). There are unwise purchases covered in glitter or beads or even feathers. And there are lots of things that I take out once in a while, look at and put back, convinced they’re too nice to wear. I’m not sure what I am saving them for.

Then there are those few (very few) indispensable pieces, things I just wear and wear because they make me feel good. Blazers have always made me look great, almost as if I know what I’m talking about, because they’re structured (and I’m not) and have shoulders (and I don’t), and I have a cranberry one in pinwale corduroy and cranberry is my favourite color, well, next to turquoise (and there’s that turquoise blouse, and the t-shirt I picked up in New Mexico with the little “milagro” all over it – the t-shirt that DOES NOT GRAB MY ASS!) And stuff like that.

A few years ago, stretch fabric stormed the racks. Now it seems to be everywhere, and damn I like it, maybe a little too much. This past weight gain, which I put down to the dense regime of medication I must use to keep my health from falling apart, everything just sort of – flexed. Suddenly I could sit down OK. Waists slid down at least an inch or two even on the most conservative clothes, which for some bizarre reason flatters me. What better excuse to buy this, and this, and this!  Three-quarter sleeves, now ubiquitous, solved another chronic fit problem.

But jesus guys, I can’t take this any more. I am in closet limbo. This place is ready to explode, and most of it isn’t even really wearable. If I cull out the dead wood, I tell myself, I will reveal to myself treasures that I had forgotten existed. I have every reason, but the thing is, I hate reason.

Clothes are like skin to me. Not that I always like them. Liking isn’t the point.  They represent me, in some way that makes them hard to bag up and throw out. I can’t imagine some other woman wearing them, not even someone shivering on a street corner. They’re too old and dowdy, for God’s sake! Well, not all of them. But by now they’ve taken on my shape and scent and form and give and take. An imprint. My “vibes”, you might say. Do I love them? Maybe, but that depends. What’s love?

This morning I am going to take two or three green garbage bags and set to, ruthlessly defoliate. Rip, rip, rip (and RIP). Big chunks will be pulled out by the roots, never to be replaced. Some things I will just have to try on, even if for the last time (for I am now 2” less in the hip than I was 3 months ago), to see if the miracle will happen.  Or not.

The great law is, supposedly, if you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it. How many times have I rediscovered something I haven’t worn in ten years, tried it on and thought, Jesus, where did I get this? Thank God I didn’t donate it. They just don’t make stuff like that any more! Then put it back in the closet where it will slowly work its way back to where it was.

These items wait in the wings. I will wear them. Or I won’t. Each blouse or sweater or pair of pants seems to give off a scream of anguish as I rip it out of its socket and throw it in the bag.  Why have you forsaken me?  We saw some good times together, didn’t we? Can’t we have them again?

I try to get them to shut up as I open my third or fourth bag. But the uncomfortable truth is, it’s me that can’t move on.

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A radical transformation

Most of these Facebook-posted YouTube things give me the pip, but this struck me as the real thing. It's realistic about the time, dedication and effort it takes to attain real transformation. I'm reminded once again of a favorite quote:

The man who ate himself to death

TLC followed Ricky Naputi for years for their special, “900 Pound Man: The Race Against Time.” Naputi lived in Guam and had not been out of his apartment in years because of his weight. It was estimated he consumed about 10,000 calories a day and had grown in size to 900 pounds at one point.

He was cared for by his wife, Cheryl, who was loyally by his side through everything. She dealt with struggles, like not being able to consummate their marriage, but loved her husband.

He’d been told to lose weight before he could undergo a surgery that could potentially save his life. Unfortunately, Naputi didn’t make it to that. His wife was by his side and she was the one who found him and made the 9-1-1 call, which was played on the special.

“He was OK. I don’t know what happened,” she told the operator. “I was just laying here.”

Paramedics quickly arrived and tried to revive Naputi, working for an hour, but it was too late. The official cause of death was morbid obesity. Ricky Naputi was 39 years old when he died.

I have to confess I am hooked on "fat shows", even though I watch them through my fingers. What absolutely amazes me is how similar they are. This one was more disturbing than most, not just for the fact that this enormous naked man lay on a huge bed in the same room for years and years, but because SOMEONE helped him get that way, or even - it could be argued - actually made him that way.

There's always a wife, usually submissive, usually so codependent she seems to have no emotional boundaries at all. Since thousands of calories don't drift through the air and magically land in his mouth, "guess who" must carry them to his bedside year after year. And yet, this crucial issue is never addressed the way it needs to be. There is never a direct confrontation, just gentle reminders that maybe she should go out and buy some vegetables.

I watched this show, and I wanted to throw something at the screen. Ricky's wonderful, loyal, devoted wife who said she loved him more than anything in the world was murdering him, plate by greasy plate. She would cook and serve him literally anything he wanted, in any quantity, at any time. Her explanation was, "My husband wears the pants in the family" (ironic considering he was naked all the time, clothes that size being out of the question).

As usual, the wife cared for her husband's every need (except sex - he wasn't capable of that and the marriage had never been consummated), wiping his creases and washing his hair as if he were an enormous half-ton baby. After a while it became obvious that her need to do this was far greater than his need to receive it.

But I was even more furious at the way they pleaded for help, often in a whiny, weepy way, then refused help when it came, blew it off as soon as they were given an ultimatum or even mere instructions about the absolute necessity of losing some serious weight before having gastric bypass surgery.

Maybe because of all these TV shows, gastric bypass surgery is now considered the Answer to Everything in morbid obesity circles. There have been whole shows dedicated to it, and all the recipients seem to be success stories. But just lately, I've seen three shows where the results were not so positive. In each case, the "half-ton" subject (and TLC does like to use that term) died in their 30s before they could be helped.

Former pop singer and general professional whiner Carnie Wilson has made a side show of her own weight battles, having her bypass surgery broadcast live on the internet (and what if she had died on the table?), going blatantly public with her dramatic weight loss which she was apparently thrilled with (but I wasn't buying it: she did not look happy at all). Then came news the weight had started to creep back on. Then gallop. Next she was on Oprah, weeping histrionically to everyone that she was an alcoholic because of her "issues" (the main one being having Brian Wilson for a father). Then she was scheduling another bypass. Then. . . 

The bizarre world of "reality" TV has either spawned or showcased a new kind of narcissistic personality disorder characterized by a sense of entitlement. Fix me, or else. Ricky Naputi managed to attract the attention of one obesity specialist after another, some of whom flew halfway around the world to counsel him at his bedside. He sort of went blank during these sessions, not really looking at the doctor or responding, and at one point his wife grunted, began to text someone (a complaint to somebody, no doubt) and walked out of the room. 

And this after an Australian surgeon laid it on the line for them in a way which they might have seen as direct, respectful and a huge relief. I like directness, and hard as it is, I believe in taking responsibility for your problems, no matter how overwhelming or complex. This fellow was giving the Naputis a way out - you could be walking in a year, Ricky was told - and over and over again they sloughed it off and went back to their termite queen syndrome (which in this case, given the lack of sex, felt squirmingly like a feeder/gainer scenario in which one partner stuffs the other into complete immobility).

They wanted the problem fixed, but they didn't want to do anything. She in particular offended me with her vagueness, her claims to love him, and her bizarre 9-1-1 call at the end in which she seemed vague, slurry and stoned.

That may have been an underlying issue here. The fact that she did not even attend her husband's memorial service, not to mention her cliched statement that Ricky was in a better place where he could finally walk around, did not bespeak any genuine grief. There were no tears, there was no visible pain, only a sort of blandness. The fact is, one way or another, she killed her husband, maybe to lift an awful burden off her back. A burden she had aided and abetted for sick reasons of her own.

If someone is an accessory to murder, shouldn't there be some sort of penality? If you overfed a dog to the point where it couldn't walk, wouldn't the SPCA likely intervene?.

When I was a kid, we had a neighbor named Ruth who didn't have too many friends. Since my mother had caseloads instead of friendships, she took her into the fold in the most condescending way possible, but since Ruth was desperate, she took the bait. 

The reason Ruth didn't have too many friends is that she was fat. She must have weighed somewhere between 250 and 280 pounds, enormous by the standards of the day. 

The truth is, until the last decade or so I never even HEARD of anyone weighing more than 500 pounds, or cases of people being stuck to chairs or sofas, having to be cut out of their houses only to die in hospital, bloating up to termite-queen size as "someone", usually a wife and sometimes a mother, dutifully trotted to their side every day with heaping plates of fatal toxins. 

It wouldn't look so "loving" or "loyal" or "devoted" if a wife brought syringes of heroin to her incapacitated junkie husband, or bottles of scotch to fuel her alcoholic husband's oblivion and despair. Food is different, I guess. It's "love", apparently, or what passes for love in a culture that seems to be bent on self-destruction. Food is an obsession now, with bizarre competitive cooking shows proliferating, and - in spite of all the pressure to be thin and all the dire warnings about obesity - restaurants serving a whole cow on a bun or desserts with thousands of grams of fat in them towering to the ceiling.

Another curious thing - if this can be called curious, and not totally disgusting - it's been years and years since I heard a certain term which used to be universally applied to describe the greedy, excessive consumption of food. Hint: it used to be considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Can you guess what it is?

It isn't used any more because the super-morbidly-obese now have "issues" and can't be stigmatized by such awful labels. But why was gluttony, the constant, excessive cramming of food into the mouth, considered a deadly sin in the first place? Could it have something to do with the destruction of human life?

The Naputis may have asked for help, but when that help was offered, they pushed it away and went back to what they had always done. They are part of  a new phenomenon (for I truly believe this is new and not just "being reported more") that reflects a certain philosophy which is even more morbid than obesity. It is as if our main purpose in the 21st century is not to be productive or even to explore life's deepest mysteries, but to consume, consume, consume. 

The sickest, most destructive and unhealthy habits are increasingly becoming normalized. Kids are getting fat because they sit around eating and don't move. And food, the excessive consumption of the wrong kind of food, is evolving into a kind of sport.

If you can eat it all at once, you see, you can have it for free. How great is that?

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