Fat Begone!

Around the holidays I start having wardrobe malfunctions. My waistband moves up or down, trying to find a place to rest with all the new me it has to cope with. If it moves up high, the fat goes under the waistband, but I get a really serious case of camel toe. If it moves down, the fat squeezes up over the waistband to form an unattractive toadstool. It’s a universal problem with average sized women who overindulge on occasion, and I realize that I’ve touched on this subject before, which only goes to show that there are no easy solutions.

If I buy a size bigger pants, that would take care of the problem, but it would be the end of being average. Right now, with only a few extra pounds, I’m uncomfortable. If I lose the weight, which would mean cutting carbs and candy, I can be comfortable again. This is torture, since I live for buttered bread and Milky Ways, but it’s doable with a week of suffering as long as I don’t have too much fat to begin with.

However, if I buy a bigger size, in the short run I’ll be comfortable, but in the long run, it’s just a matter of time before the bigger sized waistband starts choking me, and this time I’d have to lose twice the weight if I wanted to get back to average.

What I really hate is that period of time when I become uncomfortable, which occurs after every social gathering where the host puts out spreads of sumptuous food (and this can be just potato chips and dip). Beiing kind-hearted, I try to save the host the unpleasant chore of storing all those leftovers by eating and drinking non-stop the whole time I’m there. In fact, I’ve looked up from the buffet table to find that I’m the only person left in the room, and snoring is coming from the host’s bedroom.

So today I set about to find an undergarment that will camouflage that inner tube of fat around my stomach until my weight loss resolve kicks in, which sometimes takes awhile. I know I’ve worked on this before, and I actually found a solution for under a dress, but I’m dealing with jeans, and that’s a whole new set of problems. I went to Fred Meyer’s undergarment section and was surprised to see all the different girdles, body suits, corsets, etc. available for people in my predicament.

I tried a couple of them on. A full body suit is flesh colored and looks like one of those old-timey swimsuits that is one piece with legs stopping just above the knees. I’m happy to say I lost at least two pounds struggling into the thing. It had “stays” all around the torso, which are hard pieces of “boning” that hold the suit up and keep the fat in. I think you could stand a body suit up on your front porch at Halloween and scare off goblins.

The disadvantage of this item, including the inability to get out of it quickly enough if you’ve had a couple of beers, is that the fat has to go somewhere. Where the undergarment ends, fat lurches out and forms a rim that can easily be seen under the thickest sweater or pants. Also, the 60 little bra-type hooks needed to rein in the fat also showed under my t-shirt.

So I tried a high waisted girdle, but it had the same problem. You’d think your internal organs would have the decency to move over and give the fat a little space, but they won’t budge. It has nowhere to go so it balloons out the top and underneath. The fat isn’t high enough to enhance your bosom (what a funny word), instead it just makes you look like you’re sagging, and the fat pushing out the bottom makes your thighs look like they’re wearing twin tourniquets.

I tried combining a long shaping bra with a tall firming girdle, but the fat all went to the no-man’s land between them where the two didn’t overlap. I looked like I had an hourglass figure with a mini hula-hoop in the middle.

I decided to bag it and go on the diet right away. Except that there are leftover pieces of a super-yummy chocolate pecan pie that I’ll need to plow through. I can’t lose weight with temptations in the house. Plus I’ll need to finish off some really soft chocolate chip cookies my daughter made. But the second I get through those, and the rest of the bag of Oreos, I’m losing that fat, or my name isn’t Megan Fox.

Spare Tire Blues

I’m going to a costume party tonight and my costume makes me look fat, which isn’t surprising since everything else does too.

I’m not so fat that I have to sit on two stools at a café counter (one for each cheek), or my breasts would slap me in the face if I run, or that I can’t get through a turnstile. I’m just muffin top, mushroom belly, spare tire fat.

In other words, I have a lot of lumps and ridges where there should be slopes and curves.
I’m going to be a Spider Woman or Black Widow – whichever sounds best at the time. I’ve got a lacy, spider web looking dress that slips over top another black, spaghetti strap dress that looked okay until I put on the spider web tights. The elastic at the top cuts into me like a rubber band around a wad of pizza dough. Stuff is squishing out the top and bottom, and I tried everything to flatten it out.

I have this Wonder Woman strapless bra thing that I hoped would work, but the fat oozed out the bottom. So I put on a girdle, and that took care of the fat around my torso, but it all came out the base of the girdle like someone had stepped on half a balloon. I looked like I had massive goiters growing on the tops of my thighs.

So I tried pulling the tights all the way up under my bra. That worked pretty well, but they wouldn’t stay there. They migrated back toward my waistline, pushing fat in front of them like a steamroller. I thought about sewing them to the bottom of my bra, which would have worked perfectly but could I use the restroom? I’d have to take off the dress, take off the under dress, unhook the bra, and let the whole apparatus fall down around my ankles. This wouldn’t be out of the question except I go to the bathroom a lot, and I worried I wouldn’t have the stamina to keep it up through a long evening. I’d have to crawl into the host’s bathtub and taking a nap after the 13th trip.

By a sheer stroke of genius and after hours of trying everything else, I figured out that I could l cut little notches in the elastic to make it not so tight. I’m happy to report that it works just great, except that the elastic has lost a lot of its holding power and I’ll probably have to fidget with it all night and pull the tights back up as they creep down my legs. I wonder what spider webs look like when they bag around your ankles? I have a feeling I’ll find out tonight.