The Fat Diaries: One Person's Chronicles of Dieting, Terrorism, and War

Welcome to the real-life chronicles of a woman who is trying to cut back on her dependence on foods laced with fat, white sugar, white flour, and white rice while dealing with the contradictory pressures that society frequently places on a woman to remain thin at all costs while—at the same time—indulge in unhealthy food as much as possible. If that isn't enough, all this dieting and exercising must be done while living with the twin specters of war and terrorism that constantly hover in the background like an unpleasant yellow jacket that's waiting to strike at any time.

This site originally started in the most roundabout way. When I used to work on a fan site that's devoted to interactive pets, I kept an online journal called "My Love Affair With Furby & Poo-Chi" detailing my interactions with these electronic critters. For the most part I limited my journal to interactive pets although I later used it to spout off about how I had some unpleasant e-mail encounters with some really obsessed fans with attitude problems (which I don't really want to go into here).

I have a site called Twisted Unicorn that includes animations and other forms of satire. The only problem is that such content is very time-consuming to make and I wanted to encourage people to return to my site on a regular basis. So I decided to take out a LiveJournal account where I would simply spout off on whatever I see in the news or in real life. I would sometimes write about myself but I would just use it to write about topics other than interactive pets. I figured that LiveJournal would be a perfect way to add new content quickly.

In January, 2001 I discovered a book that literally changed my life. It was called The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program. I was intrigued by the title in the bookstore and, after reading a few opening paragraphs, I recognized myself in it. So I bought the book and I began to use it. I began to feel better physically and emotionally. My mood lightened up in ways that I haven't felt since the early 1980's. The following year I bought the sequel Your Last Diet! and I totally changed my diet as a result. I eventually got hooked on the game Dance Dance Revolution, its official sequels, and its unofficial clones, which helped me to lose more inches and pounds. So I've been on the road to regain my health and stamina ever since (without resorting to fad diets or gastro bypass surgery).

So I began to write more about my struggles with my bad weight problem and less about my opinions of some latest news story about a corrupt politician or stupid people doing incredibly stupid things. In time, this diary also turned into a diary of war and terrorism—not because I wanted it this way. I live just a few miles from the Pentagon, which was hit by a hijacked airplane on September 11, 2001. The following month someone sent anthrax-tainted mail that resulted in the deaths of two postal workers in Washington, DC. A year later two snipers began to shoot people at random, terrorizing the entire Washington, DC metropolitan area. As of this writing, I live with the possibility of future terrorist attacks.

Needless to say, it has been a constant struggle to not let terrorism affect my diet and exercise program. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. But, in a way, those failures have been very educational and enlightening for me because I learned how to avoid them.

Well, anyway, I'm going to quit now since I don't want to regurgitate here what I have already written in my journal and turn this page into a long monster webpage. ;-)