The Fat Skinny Girl

They told me I could be anything!

But I will never be the skinny-fat girl. Ever. Even if skinny fatness was my life's passion, I could not, no matter how hard I tried, diet my way to thin. Okay, maybe I could... but realistically my bone structure, my genetics, and quite frankly, my will power, make it highly unlikely.

What I can be, on the other hand, is a fat-skinny and let me tell you, I'm good at being that.

Before I go on, let's break it down:

Our weight is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle. Sure, it shows you mass (unless you're cool enough to be in space), which can be a decent estimate of your general health. For example, if you're a 300 pound female, you've got some work to do. HOWEVER, weight can be very, very deceptive. I REPEAT!!! Don't trust the scale, especially if you're eating well and working out consistently. And definitely don't trust the scale if you've started lifting.

So what can you trust? Well, I'd love to say that there's an easy, super reliable system. But there's not. Taking measurements is a great way to track progress, but you have to be careful to measure in the exact same place each time; the area above and below your belly button are going to give you very different numbers. Also, if you're trying to burn off fat by building muscle (a great strategy by the way), you might not see the numbers drop as much as you'd like because hey, you're building up some guns!

Body fat percent is an even better mark of progress, in my humble opinion, but it can be tricky. Unless you have a  Hydrostatic Underwater Weighing devise lying around, it will be difficult to find an accurate percentage. Your best bet is to go into the gym and see if they've got something that tests it electronically. My gym, LA Fitness, has little hand held devises sitting out by the offices. I was told they were pretty accurate: only a 3% variance in either direction a.k.a. 6% variance a.k.a. not accurate at all. Cool. But since these things are calibrated, hopefully, using the same one each time will probably give you proportionate numbers. Therefore if during week 1 your reading says 35.4%, and week 12 says 24.3%, it is not unreasonable to announce proudly on Facebook that you dropped your body fat percent by 11.1%!!! ...Or maybe it is and I should stop posting things on social media.

Any way, back to the skinny-fat, fat-skinny discussion.

Some people look really skinny, but awkwardly still have cellulite and get out of breath walking from the couch to their potato chips in the kitchen. These people kill me. Either they are ungodly lucky and have the metabolism of a vacuum, or they diet like crazy and posses a will power I will never understand. These people look fit, but aren't. Just because they're skinny, doesn't mean they're healthy. Low weight, high body fat percent. Not good.

I on the other hand, seem perpetually locked into this 160 pound body. That's pretty heavy for a 5'5" girl. No, doctors aren't running in telling me I'm in danger and must loose weight ASAP to survive, and no little kid is going to point at me and say, "hey look at the fat girl mommy," but 160 isn't light.

I am a much, much healthier 160 now than I was 3 months ago however. As eluded to before, my body fat percent was 35.4 and now it's reading around 24.3! Clearly a lot of the old fat got burned off and replaced by some kick ass muscle. Even at my heaviest though, I had signs of a 6-pack. No, I'm not kidding, I had four chubby little squares that bulged out and there were clearly defined lines forming the rest. Instead of one pudge hanging under my belly button, I had two. It was weird. Now that I've dropped some of "the blerch" as the Oatmeal (look him up) likes to call it, I look slightly less odd. Hurray!

And so that's me. I'm the fat-skinny girl. And I'm pretty freaking proud of it.