My battle with the word "fat"

In the last 10 months I have lost 11kg, 10 of those in the last 6 months. I'm by no means "fat" at the moment, and even when I was 11kg heavier I was still just a tad chubby, I wouldn't say I was very "fat". Even so, I still struggle with myself, on occasion, with thoughts that I am "fat".

The past week in particular I have thought of myself as "fat" more than I have in recent times. Even when I was 3kg heavier I remember feeling pretty content with my weight. I'm putting this down to the fact I have been a bit slack in the last 2 weeks. Probably been feeling a bit lazy, which could probably result in me thinking "fat" instead.

What is interesting, is that the last few days, when I've been feeling "fat", I've actually been at my lightest weight. It's possibly due to some muscle loss, or who knows what.

I started thinking about why I think of myself as "fat" so often, and I have come up with some thoughts.

My scales
Until this morning, every time I have stepped on the scales they have returned this horrible term back at me..

Overfat


Every day I get told I'm OVERFAT. That can't be good for my mental health!

(this morning it told me I was HEALTHY, but after my gym session it was back to being a big jerk face).

Wii Fit
This is pretty much just having a go at BMI. Until only about 1kg loss ago I was considered "Overweight". My Wii Fit Mii character would have slumped shoulders and be all upset because I was "Overweight". If my Mii character is all upset, why should I be all happy with myself??

I think Wii Fit is also giving me a very unrealistic idea of what weight I should be at. I'm pretty sure it tells me that my super ideal weight is 12kg lighter than what I am now.

Even after being in hospital for 5 days with pneumonia I wasn't that light (I got pretty close!). Crazy.

--

There is pretty big support out there in saying that BMI is shit. It clearly doesn't consider everyone's circumstances. What about people who have a lot of muscle? Some very muscley dudes are getting called obese due to their BMI.

Anyway, I think right now I should be sitting here and thinking I'm lazy. Not fat. Lazy.

Stop being so lazy Julie, you have a marathon to train for.

Which Dilbert character are you?

Having worked in IT for nearly 7 years (crikey), the topic of Dilbert has come up many times in many situations. Often Dilbert characters are used for avatars at work, or discussions have been had about 'Who would be Alice? Dogbert?' and 'Oh yeah, that guy is so much like Pointy Haired Boss'.

So, since we had just updated JIRA to a version that allows avatars, I took on the challenge to find a decent female Dilbert character for me.

The female options in Dilbert are fairly limited, we have:

Alice: The only female "primary" character listed on Wikipedia. Alice is actually a favourite of mine, because she gets so angry. I'm particularly a fan of her "Fist of Death".

He probably deserved it.

Carol: The secretary. It's been too long since I've done admin work, I can't relate. I'm sure all secretaries/office managers hate everyone.

Dilmom: She complains and is lazy. Not bad.

I'm starting to see a pattern that all the woman are angry...

Tina: Tina is the one I chose for my avatar. She's the tech writer, so she has to deal with shit from the developers. It's the closest I could get. (Although, I'm almost leaning towards Alice now. That "Fist of Death" is so awesome.)

Damn you, Dilbert.

Apparently people complained that Tina was too negative and "stereotypical", so, Scott Adams responded to this by creating..

Antina: (get it? ha). Only appearing in one strip other than the introduction one, Adams then got criticised for making fun of lesbians.

For the record, I tried to take the coffee machine apart and failed. I must be Tina.

Liz: Who knew Dilbert had a girlfriend? I didn't.

The story...

Flicking through TV channels one night, I stumbled across a new television show called 'Tester QA', a show that follows a smart, attractive software tester and her colleagues. Already amazed that such a show would exist, I was blown away to discover that the show's main character had the exact same name as me.

The next day at work I was an office celebrity, phone calls were coming in constantly throughout the day. Customers were requesting I test their projects, because someone with such a name must be the number one tester in the entire universe.

At lunch time, I went shopping and bought the exact same pair of glasses to match my namesake. Back in the office that afternoon I had adopted the 'Tester QA' character catch phrase "...and that's the end of that test cycle".

That night, I was too busy adjusting my new glasses in the mirror, and didn't watch the second episode of 'Tester QA'. I figured TiVo would record it anyway.

The next day at work, on my way to my desk, I started to hear the whispers and chuckles. Unfortunately, my office fame was short lived, and had changed into office humiliation.

For some reason, the writers of 'Tester QA' had decided that the awesome, sexy, brilliant tester they had in the Pilot episode, was not the character they would go with for the rest of the show's episodes. Instead, they decided that the character was flat chested, clumsy and pretty much the worst tester to ever exist.

For days I suffered the agony and embarrassment of being associated with such a useless excuse for a Quality Assurer. I couldn't stand having colleagues walking past my desk and quoting the new catch phrase "uh oh, unreproducible". I would not put up with this.

After numerous phone calls, and meetings with the 'Tester QA' producers, I could not get them to agree to change the name of the character, or for them to explain to my why they had changed such an awesome character into such a lame one.

If they weren't going to change the character name, well then, I would change mine.

Meet... MAXINE POWER.