My Weight

I have a big group of friends that I love hanging out with. We have game nights, we watch our favorite tv shows together, we camp, we do picnics, movies, causes, and we have house parties to celebrate each other's birthdays.

There are four people that are my closest friends and I tell them things that I wouldn't tell anyone else. Three of them each have a child that I'm godmother for. I spend every chance I get with them and my godkids. The fourth one lives overseas so we talk a lot on the phone.

Six weeks ago I signed up with a personal trainer. I'm a part of her group training sessions since I prefer to work out around people as opposed to working one on one with the trainer. I've made fast friends with the other group members.

What do all these people have in common?

In almost every conversation with them, I bring up my weight. I vent about my weight in a "this is a comedy moment" kind of way. I tell my friends about the way acquaintances greet me on the street by saying "Where are you going getting so big girl?" or "What's up Fatty Boom Boom?" or, my favorites, "Do you realize that you've gained a lot of weight? What happened? You need to do something about that." and "Are you pregnant?" And all the while I'm laughing through my stories.

Along with those four close friends, my Mom, my best friend, knows the truth. She knows that feelings of anger, hurt, and shame course through me whenever I have these encounters. I take the comments with a smile on my face and I make a few excuses to the people who are doing the commenting. But afterwards, I feel really crappy. And I beat up myself for being overweight.

The Anger:
What pisses me off is that more than half of the people who say these things to me are either more overweight than I am or they don't do any form of exercise whatsoever! While I'm kicking ass in the gym. Also, they don't know my struggles. They don't know my medical history, which has significantly contributed to some of my weight gain, and they don't understand how difficult it is to break many of the bad lifestlye habits I've accumulated over the years.

The Hurt:
People don't know how hard I try. I wake up at 4:30am Monday to Friday to go to an intense workout. After work I'm back in the gym for circuit/spinning/abs/bootcamp/Zumba/kickboxing classes. And even after that I lift weights. Sometimes I swap those workouts for cycling or running at the track. Occassionally, on Saturdays I workout too, but I understand the importance of resting, so I don't do it all the time. Exercise and healthy eating go hand in hand, and I eat more healthily than most people in the country although I have a weekness for sugary snacks. I get impatient because the weight just doesn't seem to be coming off fast enough. But I fight through the frustration and put in as much as I can. And whenever possible, I try to have fun with exercising like hiking and road relays with friends to help.

Don't worry...I'm not crying while I'm typing this. :)

The Shame:
It's my fault. I used to weigh 40lbs less than I do now. (My trainer will weigh me tomorrow to see how much I've lost. I'm sooo nervous.) I can blame my weight gain on a bunch of different circumstances and many of them are justifiable. But I have to be honest and acknowledge that my own bad habits have also caused me to be in the position I'm in. In past years, I've been unacceptably lax with my workouts. I would workout steadily for a week and then not workout at all for a month before starting up again. When it came to eating I would go the whole day without taking a bite, caught up in the business of work, and then eat a whole lot at night, just before going to bed. That, my friends, is a recipe for disaster. I ended up with a fat back and ulcers.

The Facts:
Concerning my weight commentators: I've been advised by a few well intentioned friends to stick my middle finger in their faces and say, "!%#$ off and go buy a gym membership!" I love my friends! Lol! But the fact is, that's not who I am. Secondly, I am doing something about my weight...In fact, I'm doing A LOT about my weight. I'm exercising; I'm controlling my portions; I have the occasional slip (which can be considered healthy simply because it keeps me sane); and overall I'm adapting a healthy lifestyle. Final fact, I can't control other people and what they say, but I can control myself.

The Solution:
I chose to love me. Every inch of me. Some days, that declaration seems like a joke, and it's an ongoing battle to actually love myself and my belly fat. But I've stopped making excuses and I'm putting in the work. Best of all, I'm getting healthy for me. I've also come up with the perfect answer for the commentators: "Give me three months." What does that statement mean? It means, give me three months to shut you up; give me three months to make you wish you were me. In addition, for every commentator I have loving family and friends who give me truck loads of encouragement.

The !#$%-ed Up Thing:
When I reach my weight loss goals, people will probably start saying that I've lost too much weight and that I need some "meat on my bones." That's what they said five years ago when I was fit, trim and feeling great about myself. But screw them! This is my life, not theirs.

So if there's anyone out there who feels where I'm coming from, just know that you're not alone. And know, that you have it in you to make the difference. Forget what people say. Everyone was born with a mouth and will always talk. Find the workout plan that's right for you and take Nike's advise, "Just Do It!" It's the only way to get results.

The Up Side:
My friends and I went camping at the beach over Easter weekend and had so much fun that we forgot to put on sunblock. We all got badly sunburned. So instead, people are now asking me, "How come you're so black?" Lol! Humans boi!

2012: May Thou Be Dubbed The Year of Happiness

Dear Everybody,

It's true what they say, you know: we do all that we do in the pursuit of happiness - the jobs we fight for, the things we buy, the hobbies we take up, the circumstances we tirelessly try to change - all of it boils down to our need for the one thing that oftentimes eludes us; happiness.

And yet happiness is everywhere! It's draped all over the place like vines; we wake up everyday and it's right there, just waiting for us to grab it up. But we don't see it because we get up in a frenzy, bustling about; busier than bees with the ups and downs of our lives. If we were to just slow down for a minute we would see that we've actually been passing it by at every corner. We're the ones that have been neglecting happiness, not the other way around.

And so as I focused on 2011 and the moments that made me happy, I remembered my absolutely adorable God-children - that I'm crazy about - and the overwhelming happiness they gave me with their hugs and kisses, their giggles and their games; I remembered my mother - the most wonderful woman in the Universe who spends her days loving her family - and the times we spent eating pizzas from Big Banana on our girls' night out; I remembered laugh-out-loud get-togethers with my hilarious friends from the Arena; I remembered cosy days and movie nights with my other ten toes, and then I remembered that I promised myself to keep this blog short and so there isn't enough room for all my happy moments.

The bad parts of 2011 were basically the moments that I chose sadness over happiness. Sometimes the stresses of life got in the way and, more often than I'd like to admit, I left happiness in a corner to fend for itself.

Dear 2012, may thou be dubbed The Year of Happiness as I pursue it more vigorously than ever! I vow to laugh harder, smile as loudly as I can and to be more grateful for this sweet thing called life.


And so to all of you, out there in the blogosphere, I wish you all the happiness your heart can hold and I encourage you to LaUgH-OuT-LoUd! every chance you get: laugh with loved ones, friends, strangers, your pets...and most of all laugh with yourself.

Have the Happiest 2012!

Love,
Fayola

Why Has Santa Claus Never Been To The Caribbean?

It's Christmas time and there are a few things that we can depend on to alert us that it's that time of year again:

1) Baby Jesus in his bed of straw;
2) Christmas music blaring on the radio; and (drum roll)
3) Santa Claus is coming to town! *in my most impressively sarcastic voice*

Please permit me to tell you a story:

Once upon a time, when I was 7 years old, I was allowed to stay up late to watch a Christmas movie that featured none other than rosy St. Nick himself. I was so very impressed by the fat white man with the long wavy white beard who, despite his hefty figure, slipped down people's chimneys on Christmas Eve night, leaving presents to all the good little girls and boys. At the end of the movie, I made a decision:

Apparently, the criteria for earning a present from the jolly old man was to have been a good child all year long. Easy! I was the 'goodest' child of them all! And so I sat down with my piece of paper and my pencil and I wrote Santa a letter and asked him for a toy. It occurred to me that there was a slight dilemma; I didn't have a chimney, after all I lived in the Caribbean. But that didn't de-motivate me. I wrote my letter and I begged Mommy to take me to the post office so that I could send it off to the North Pole, ignoring her warnings that he wasn't real despite what everyone in TV land said.


It's interesting to note, that even at that tender age, my greatest concern wasn't the toy I'd asked for but the idea of this old man finding his way into my home to get it to me. I guess you could say I was testing the story; I wanted to see if he would really come, to see if he really cared about a little black girl in the Caribbean who didn't have a chimney.

Santa failed my test miserably!

On Christmas morning, there wasn't one present from him under my Christmas tree and my Oreo cookies remained untouched (not that I minded that part so much). I remember making excuses for him, thinking that maybe I'd sent the letter too late and it didn't reach him in time, or maybe my absent chimney was more of a problem than I thought. Whatever the reason, Santa didn't make it to my house that Christmas, and I later learned that he didn't make it to the homes of any other kid I knew either.


In fact, he didn't make it at any Christmas at all and it didn't take long for me to start believing that Santa didn't like me and he didn't like Caribbean kids and he wasn't going to waste his reindeer fuel on us...although people continued to promote him as a super duper present-giver to all the children of the world.

Lies! All lies, I tell you!

When I was older, I saw a news report that said Santa was getting help from more than just his elves. Apparently, he was getting help from Fisher Price and other companies who made toys for kids too. The report said that children were getting gifts from Santa that were manufactured by popular toy makers. Parents swore they had nothing to do with it and the companies either confessed or said that it was a secret.

Hmmmm.....

All this was well and good, except every year, a bunch of pre-teens (and younger) wake to the devastating realization that there is no Santa Clause; that they've been lied to from day one. They go crazy, start smoking pot, drinking alcohol, overdosing on prescription meds and spending late nights in front of toy stores while cursing drunkenly!

Well, not really.

But my question is this: What's the point of the Santa story? Why all the effort to lie about this fat white man that doesn't exist? Why build false hopes and dreams in a child, only to have them crushed in a few years time? What's the purpose people?

And I have another question: Do parents realize that Santa's real name is Consumerism? His wide paunch alone exemplifies it. Do parents realize that to keep the dream alive, they have to spend extra money on an extra present, just to keep their kids believing that a big belly man from the North Pole loves them?

Toys are only getting more and more expensive my friends. That's a fact that hit me square in the face when I went out to buy presents for my God-kids.

Personally, I think the season should be more about giving love, like Myst Carnival did with their HUGs (Help Us Give) food drive; collecting food for the less fortunate. To me, the season would be better spent with loved ones, family and friends; sharing and caring and being grateful for the many blessings we have in our lives. How about we teach our kids about the reason for the season instead of encouraging them to idolize Santa Clause and the consumerism that he symbolizes.

Some people may disagree with me and that's ok. This is just my two cents...

And by the way, watch out Easter Bunny...you're next! Wohahahahaaa!


Please enjoy King Obstinate's song: "How Will Santa Get Here?"

Always Arriving Late, On Time...

Yeah Right!

In this world, there are two types of time: regular time and Antiguan time, and you would know this if you are a) Antiguan or b) an Antigua resident.

If the invitation to the party says it starts at 7:00PM, don't expect people to show up before 9:00PM...

If you have a meeting at 8:00AM with an executive member of an association, by all means show up early, but don't expect the meeting to start before 8:30AM...

And if the shop sign says "We'll be back at 2:00PM", don't hold your breath...

Of course, there are those of us who cherish being on time and there are organizations such as Women Of Antigua that make no jokes about starting their show at 8:00PM sharp, but generally speaking, and most of the time, Antiguan people are always late. Late, late, late, late, late!

The numbers on the clock always seem to get blurred and although we might be rushing to get where we're going, we just never seem to get there by the prescribed time. This fact has become such a phenomenon in our society that Antiguan time has become an actual measurement of time...





Trisha:         "Bernadette, at what time does the function start?"
Bernadette:  "It starts at 3:00PM, Antiguan time."
Trisha:         "Ok."

Translation: The function will start at least an hour late.

Just like that, without question and without explanation, Trisha understands exactly what Bernadette means and this is indisputable among Antiguans and Antigua residents.

When I was in high school, I had a brief stint in an Office Procedures class and I remember we were given a test on Job Etiquette. One of the questions on the test went something like this:

Your employer requires you to be at work by 8:00AM. At what time do you arrive in order to be early?
Answer: 7:30AM.

And I also remember a Sensei at the karate school I attended saying:
"Class begins at 7:00PM. If you arrive at 7:00PM, you're late. If you arrive at 6:45PM, you're on time and if you arrive at any time before 6:45PM, you're early."

So it means that the issue isn't that we haven't been taught the importance of being early. We have. It was drilled into us when we showed up late for school and we learned that lateness was a thing to be ashamed of when we were frowned on for walking into church a few minutes after the service had already started.

So what's the problem people???

Why are we perpetually late for almost every event and every occasion? Why is it a must that we're not on time? Is it some kind of innate malfunction that causes us to disrespect the entire concept of arriving on time? And pray tell, who came up with the idea of being fashionably late?

All these things crossed my mind this evening while I waited an hour for the organisers of a 6:00PM presenation to show up. Upside: I was inspired to write this blog.

And while I'm on my soap box, I'd like to say that I've been working very hard at breaking the cycle of being late for everything. So far, I'm doing a pretty good job, although I fall off the band wagon ever so often... That is all.

Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number...What About Weight?

How many times a day do you think about your weight? Once? Twice? Too many times to count? How many of us stand in front the mirror and frown while we tug at love handles, scrutinizing our body and wishing that we didn't have to shimmy into those spanks?

If I had a quarter for every time I wished for a better body, I'd be sipping on a piña colada on my own private yacht right now.

I don't hate my body, but I don't like it very much either and although I wish I was completely comfortable in my skin, the truth is that most of my insecurities arise out of my bad personal body image.

Can I get an Amen? Because I know that I'm not the only woman out there who goes through this. Come to think of it, I've never met even one woman who didn't express the desire to change herself in some way when the topic of physical appearance came up. Not one, who was honestly happy just the way she was and wouldn't alter a thing even if God Himself came down and offered a safer alternative to plastic surgery. From the slimmest to the fluffiest, we all have some issue or another with our body.

We want to look sexier; wishing for Halle Berry's fab legs, Nicole Scherzinger's tiny waist, Amber Rose's bodacious ass, Ciara's washboard abs, Scarlett Johansson's volumptuous breasts and Michelle Obama's toned arms. It's one of the many variations of the fantasy menu, all-you-can-eat, buffet style; take what you want and leave the rest. But then reality sucks us back in and we sigh and reach for a chocolate bar....

A few months ago I was out liming (partying) with some girlfriends. A very overweight woman passed us and one of my friends was annoyed by the woman's appearance. She didn't know her but from the get-go started to criticize her for her weight. "Laud have mercy! Look at that cow! Why doesn't she go to the gym for crying out loud! She's huge!" my friend exclaimed, eyeing the woman scornfully from the corner of her eye. "She looks nasty! I would not be caught dead in public looking like that! Kill me first!" she added. Mind you, the woman wasn't scantily clad. I was so embarrassed and upset although I knew the music was too loud for the lady to overhear...

I have an aversion to fat jokes and the judgement of fat people on a whole. I'm not obese but I am overweight myself and so I'm fully aware that "dropping a few pounds" isn't as easy as it sounds. And I'm not making excuses; I know that the way to do it is to live a healthy lifestyle by exercising and eating right, and that's what I'm trying to do. But the truth of the matter is that the older we get the harder it is to lose weight. According to online articles I've read, after you hit 20 your metabolic rate decreases by 5% every decade. Plus, on top of that, there are an innumerable amount of other reasons why people put on weight. Permit me to name a few: Motherhood, which, for many women, can stack on a lot of poundage; Genetics, that can determine how small you can actually get, even with exercise; Hypothyroidism, a disease that makes you fat no matter how healthy your lifestyle; and Steroids. Yes, steroids. Some of the medications used to combat certain diseases are steroidal, for example Asthma, and I personally know this. I'm Asthmatic and I had an experience where I was prescribed a medication that plumped me up so much that two hours after taking it, I woke up and didn't recognise myself in the mirror. Scary? I know.


My point in all of this? Weight is something that we all struggle with, particularly as women. From overeating as a means of comfort to having diseases that fight against our weight loss goals. We have more than enough pressure to be slim and sexy and perfect coming from the media. Why are we adding to the pile by judging each other instead of supporting each other? How about we make weight 'nothin' but a number'. Stop judging a person based on their number on the scale. The fact is, you have no clue as to what their struggle is. You don't know how they feel about their weight and you don't know why they are as overweight as they are. As a matter of fact, you don't even know if they actually aren't doing something about it. Being annoyed because someone is overweight will not help them to lose the weight, so what's the point? In fact, do you actually care? Are you actually concerned about their well-being? Hmm?


Like I said earlier, most women, if not all women, have some issue or another with their body. I think this should make us more understanding and supportive towards each other. I know that obesity is a huge problem in our society and people need to be made aware as much as possible that we need to adopt healthier lifestyles; to lose weight healthily so that we can improve our way of life. But name calling and unwarranted criticism isn't going to do it.

And by the way, the fat lady that my friend was so annoyed at? She works out regularly at the gym I go to...

"Miss Representation"

I recently attended the showing of a documentary titled "Miss Representation" written, directed and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and I've decided to share my feelings about it with the cyber world. The documentary covered much more than I'd be able to write about in this blog so I'll only touch on a few things.

Only minutes into it and I was crying. My tears brought on by a teenage girl who criticized the media for its part in teaching young women to hate their body. She mentioned her sister who cut herself as a result of her insecurities about the way she looked. I have two sisters of my own that I love very much, and I don't know what I would do if one of them began hacking away at her flesh because she didn't like the way she looked. And so the tears silently flowed.

I watched as the documentary took a political twist, showing clips from major news networks whose male anchors had a lot of fun berating female public figures who were running for public office. I was shocked to hear many of their comments geared negatively at the physical appearance of these women; criticizing their hair, their face and their body, and even making sexual innuendos. It all seemed so grossly inappropriate and irrelevant.

And there were the hot bodies. The women whose perfect breasts and perfect skin and perfect vagina and perfect hair and perfect legs and perfect everything have the rest of us swooning to look exactly like them. The problem is, the people we aspire to be don't even exist; they've all been either graphically enhanced or their body has been hacked at by plastic surgeons. Although some of us have been genetically blessed with great bodies, even those bodies have their flaws and real women all have a few scraches here and there.

Unfortunately, this doesn't deter us from trying to live up to ridiculously elevated standards of beauty.

And I cringed at the part where little toddlers are dressed up like miniature versions of Dolly Parton and sent to model and pose on a stage, in front of judges who will tell them that they aren't good enough to be this year's prettiest little princess.

The backlash to all this isn't just a generation of appearance obsessed females but also confused males who begin to believe that all women actually look like the graphically enhanced and plastic plastered poster girls that the rest of us are dying to be. And so the pressure is on, the hot poker even hotter, when men begin to expect a fallacy to be a reality.

And the documentary touched on what I call woman on woman combat where we bash each other instead of support each other. We choose cat fights over girls nights and unnecessary female criticism over female appreciation. One woman's flattering appearance is enough to bring down the gods of war and fury, and ashamedly, it's our own fault that our daughters are so messed up.

And of course, there's the man on woman war; the glass ceiling that's still very much intact although some men would like to fool us into believing otherwise. The statistics in this documentary were overwhelming. I couldn't have imagined that in large, modern media corporations that dominate the media waves, women take up only two seats on a board, versus men who take up thirteen. I had to agree with the women who were interviewed for this documentary that said the female interest isn't represented during the decision making process that carries on in media houses.

So if the female interest isn't present, does it mean that men in top, key positions are the ones responsible for the damaging advertisements that reach young girls and women, young boys and men?  The numbers aren't lying people. 

I'd like to have a daughter one day, but I'm more scared than ever to get pregnant. How am I supposed to protect her from all this and raise her to appreciate herself as a intelligent individual who's worth more than what the media shows her? And how am I supposed to explain a woman's worth to my potential future son when he will be surrounded by false portrayals of women, regardless of whether or not there's a TV or fashion magazines in our home?

Moreover, how am I supposed to save myself from the falsehoods that have already been ingrained into my brain...

Some men considered this documentary to be just another man-bashing production. Others have said that women will never be equal to men in the fight for gender equality simply because men are built physically stronger than women. I disagree with both statements and my question to the second is, why does it always have to go there? Why is it always the "I'm stronger than you so I rule the world" argument?

It's one loaf of bread, why can't we break it in half and share it...

Like I said at the beginning of this blog, the documentary was a lot more detailed than what I'm able to comment on here. Search for it and see for yourself.

Here's the official trailer: