Some of you have emailed me with questions. So here are the answers!

Hey!

I’m keeping this super-short so I don’t waste your time.

Just a reminder that it’s still not too late to sign up for an Eat Without Drama group if you’ve been secretly wanting to and just got sidetracked by the weekend.

The Monday afternoon group (that’s today at 3pm Eastern) has plenty of room left, and the awesome group starting tonight at 7:30pm Eastern has one seat left.

If the Friday night group (Saturday morning for my Kiwis and Aussies) is more your style, you can still sign up and start this week – a couple of people had to miss the first session anyway, so you won’t be alone!

As always, sign-ups are at www.eatwithoutdrama.com.

Cheers for a lovely week!
Michelle

Ahem.

This is kind of last-minute, but the long weekend really threw me off.

For a long time, I’ve been doing individual sessions teaching people how to eat normally after giving up dieting (in addition to writing this blog, of course.) Doing individual sessions means that they are pretty expensive, and it limits the number of people I can help.

Luckily, back in 2008, someone had the brilliant idea of doing the same program I do, but for small groups. They published this paper on it (it works.)

So, at the end of July, I started seeing small groups. I see more people this way, and it’s cheaper for them.

It also works, and has the bonus of being EXTREMELY FUN.

It’s sort of like going to fat camp, except online, and the point is not losing weight.

Mostly, the point is figuring out how to eat well, while at the same time laughing your head off with other fat people.

So this is what I’m doing now, and some new groups are starting for the fall. We’re calling it Eat Without Drama because, well, that’s what it’s about: eating without all the drama.

One group starts TOMORROW NIGHT (Saturday morning, if you’re in Australia or NZ), and the others start on Monday the 12th.

For the sales pitch, the times, the price, and the big buttons to push, go here.

If it’s not for you, no worries. You don’t need to buy my shit! We’re cool.

That’s all. Thank you for your attention.

*mic screech*

I have a personal background in home economics myself, since before I entered school to study dietetics, I was a housewife — back in my late teens and early twenties, when I first married and immigrated to Canada.

To be honest, I love homemaking. I admire homemakers, and I admire the skill-set necessary to be a good one. I admire people who have the disposition to do under-appreciated and unpaid Woman’s Work. You have to be incredibly self-motivated, and have an understanding of time management, finances, practical chemistry, appliance repair, cooking, textiles, and even decorating. Child-rearing, too, if you’re so inclined.

Most of us modern folks get by on working outside of the home and hiring people (or buying products) to do a lot of those things for us. Full-time homemaking is a radically DIY endeavour.

And I’m TERRIBLE at it.

I’ve come to grips with the fact that I am rotten homemaker, though I’ve studied it intensely and love doing it. The problem is, I can only handle it for short periods of time, and I burn out easily. My brain just can’t fire on those particular cylinders 24/7, so I only use my hard-won, mostly-self-taught homemaking skills in short bursts here and there, when I’m in the mood.

When I got married, I did not know how to cook, how to sew, or how to organize my own time without a job or a school schedule to keep me on track. I knew how to bake cookies, do laundry, clean bathrooms, and (awkwardly) care for young children. My mom wasn’t a homemaker — she was a full-time nurse manager with a degree in business. She did payroll on the weekends and served as an expert court witness in her spare time. Needless to say, despite her somehow knowing many of The Womanly Arts herself, she didn’t have a lot of time to transmit them to her eye-rolling daughter.

All of my photo-developing, poetry-writing, makeup-wearing, singing-and-acting skills didn’t turn out to be very helpful when I got married. I had to fill in the gaps myself through a lot of painful trial-and-error.

My husband, on the other hand, was given a lot of household responsibility in his teens. He homeschooled himself, did housework, yardwork, and started dinner. He got into the habit of work first, play later. He learned how to motivate himself and how to spend his time wisely — broad skills that are even more important to homemaking than knowing the intricacies of doing various types of laundry.

My career as a housewife was a pretty miserable time for both of us, especially at first. Neither of us enjoyed our traditional roles as breadwinner and homemaker. When I was finally allowed to work in Canada, we ditched that set-up for the more conventional two-income deal. But three years ago, when he developed a painful-but-not-disabling physical condition, we switched roles again, and decided to live like church mice on my income for a year, while he ran the gamut of doctors and specialists and treatments.

And, except for all the doctor’s appointments, it turned out to be pretty awesome.

I only made just enough money to tread water, and I was physically tired and my feet hurt, but I came home to a hot dinner, a clean apartment, and a cheerful husband every night. Even the cats loved it, because they always had a doorman, fresh food, and a clean litter box.

The biggest problem was this: whenever my colleagues asked what my husband did for a living, I stuttered and tried to explain, and got a lot of meaningfully-raised eyebrows. A few of them even told me straight-out that he was taking advantage of me — the guy who imported me to the country and therefore signed up to be my financial sponsor for the next ten years. The guy who fed and clothed me on factory wages when I wasn’t yet allowed to work. The guy who co-signed my enormous school loans, taking on debt that wasn’t even his, and then moved to the big, mean city so I could pursue a rather unconventional career.

Their suspicions really bothered me, mostly because I knew they were wrong, but partly because it freaked me out enough that I also sometimes wondered if they were right.

After a year, his illness got better, my work situation changed, and he went back to full-time work. He paid for me to continue school, to take extra training, and threw his total support behind my crazy-ass idea of starting a bizarre internet business in the middle of a recession. The business worked enough to equal my previous church-mouse income, and we both started to realize that we missed it — we both really missed having him here full-time.

I hated his job even more than he did, so I begged him to come back home.

Having lived on both sides of the fence, I can no longer buy the idea that there’s anything inherently suspicious about a man staying home to do the work of running a household. Frankly, I think it’s sexist to automatically assume so. All those years I was home, no one even hinted in a whisper that I might be taking advantage of him. A female homemaker is just easier to swallow, thanks to years of gendered sugar-coating.

It’s no coincidence that the largest field to grow out of home economics — clinical dietetics — is still about 98% female. Gender roles die hard, even when they’re moved out of the home and into the hospital. But despite them, and despite all sorts of convenient evolutionary psychology, no one can deny the bare fact that my husband is a better homemaker than I am.

Even though I grew up female with the attendant babydolls and beloved miniature kitchen accessories, while he played with rubber wrestling figurines and Transformers. Even though my professional training includes how to make a flaky pastry and properly sanitize a sink, while his includes how to grind a smooth weld and properly assemble a computer.

It’s only been two weeks, but already things are better. I have my meals more regularly, there are groceries in the house, and the place is clean. He’s done repair jobs that have gone neglected since we moved in. The cats are, again, spoiled by having their preferred human always around, and I’m slowly regaining the energy and time to write, while also seeing the extraordinary clients who put food on our table.

He’s contented that, instead of helping union-busting assholes make even more profit, his efforts now go toward keeping me sane and helping people, especially women, recover from chronic dieting and fear of food.

Not because he’s secretly exploiting me, but because he believes in this and loves you guys almost as much as I do.

I guess I had my suspicions about what issues would be most popular. I expected maybe people would want to learn how to stop eating when full? And, yes, that was a pretty popular wish. Or maybe, how to eat nutritiously (or, to use the phrase from Satter’s Hierarchy of Food Needs, “instrumentally”) without driving oneself bonkers? And, yes, that came up too.

But the most popular wish of all, the one that came up most often, was one that wasn’t even really on my radar when I asked the question – despite the fact that it was something I have struggled with myself, and something that was a key lesson I learned when I went through the Learn to Eat process myself several years ago.

You know what it was?

How to eat in front of other people.

By this, people do not, of course, mean how to put food in their mouth with other people present, or what foods they should choose when eating with others, but how to stop feeling so damn self-conscious about eating in public. Or with friends and family. Or with strangers at a party.

This not only makes perfect sense to me, having tussled with the same thing in the past, but it’s something that comes up again and again, now, with my clients.

So, I thought, yes – of course! Let’s write a little primer on how to eat in front of other people. And I have.

It’s a pdf, made with love…and with absolutely no clue how to make a pdf. I’ll email it to you if you fill in the form (the one that says “Join THE LIST”) over there on the right.

Alrighty then! If you take a look, let me know what you think. Or if you have things to say about eating in public, please do so in comments.

Good times! Kind of like camping, only inside and with more jackhammering and death metal.

So, my whining aside, here are a couple of links some lovely people have emailed me:

Third grader gets detention for possession of a Jolly Rancher. (From Elizabeth, who is lovely and knows everything there is to know about burning sugar to various stages of deliciousness.)

Dietitians of Canada (and the American Dietetic Association) has some interesting bedfellows — including Roche, makers of Xenical. (From Jenna, one of my former classmates who always asked the best questions in clinical nutrition, and will very, very soon be a kick-ass dietitian herself.)

Friend of the blog and all-around wonderful person Patricia has started blogging in English at More of Me to Love. She has some seriously great, practical advice for dealing with The Clothing Situation.

In other news, I’ve slowly been putting together the pieces to form an online class for people who want to learn eating competence, but can’t afford (or don’t want to do) individual counseling. If you think you’d be interested, you can sign up in the little email box thingy to the right, and you’ll get an announcement when the thing finally comes to fruition (maybe in the fall? Maybe sooner? I don’t know.) And if you have any ideas or suggestions for such a class, let me know in comments. It’ll help me to consider the various possibilities when putting it together.

Aside from all that, what’s up? What’s on your mind? Spread the love in comments.

Just FYI.

I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. For some reason, my inbox has seen a torrential avalanche of activity lately. (And a mixed metaphor, apparently.) I want to respond to you, particularly to anyone who’s struggling and needed to ask a question. And I will get back to you eventually. Thanks for waiting on me.

I’ve also heard that lots of people’s emails are bouncing, and I’m going to figure out what’s going on. If this happens, comments are pretty reliable way of reaching me, and I’m also on Twitter as @fatnutritionist, so you can try reaching me there.

I’ve also noticed my site is loading veeeeery sloooooowly. I’m working on it.

In the meantime, I hope you will accept this photographic evidence of me trying to figure stuff out:

Sincerely,
Michelle

We both are, now, but I was BORN (and raised) IN THE USA!!! just like Bruce Springsteen.

And I love America, to be frank. I love it in a way I never loved it when I still lived there. I love it in its brashness, its tackiness, its cultural ridiculousness. I love it “in all the excellence of its excess.”

I love American news, American talk radio, American commercials, American flag stickers on cars, the Star-Spangled Banner, bald eagles. I love shit-slinging political chimpanzees. Just…everything. I think it’s amusing, yes, but at the same time, I love it in a completely unironic way.

Canadians…don’t. In fact, lots of Canadians are downright snotty about their disdain for Americans, mainly because they seem to think Americans are boorish, unfunny, and intellectually lazy.

Totally shocking, I know.

But I love this, because it gives me the opportunity to make people really uncomfortable simply by saying, “I’m American, you know.”

And they get all flustered and say things like “YOU’RE an American?” and “NO WAY” and “Well, I didn’t mean you.” And I heartily enjoy myself because, truly, I am an asshole through and through.

So, today, when an American said something about how THE WORLD MOCKS AMERICA BECAUSE WE’RE ALL SO FAT, my husband’s response was:

We don’t mock Americans for being fat. We mock them for electing Bush, for starting wars without UN consent, for being distastefully patriotic. Duh :-)

And it was just so…Canadian…of him. I love that.

The Fat Nutritionist is taking a hiatus until February 5, because I seriously need to study some chemistry! And I keep getting distracted by interesting discussions and comments and whatnot.

So, keep talking amongst yourselves if you like. If your comment gets stuck in moderation, sorry — you’ll just have to wait till I get back for it to be approved.

See you in a couple weeks. And keep me in your prayers re: chemistry.

ETA: I’m also not taking questions at this time. But I wrote you a whole primer on how to find a dietitian in case you are in dire need!

That said, I will probably surprise myself with random posting at some point between now and then — never say never.

If you’re into this kind of thing, please feel free to use this as an open thread of sorts. Random questions and arguments always welcome.

I’ll get the ball rolling by extending something I was kvetching about on Twitter — that because a therapeutic diet is used for the treatment of a specific condition or disease does not mean it is therefore a healthy diet for most people. But I see this argument used again and again by people who’ve come to Jesus (figuratively) by finding a specific diet that helps or even cures their particular ailment, as in the case of gluten intolerance.

And to that, I say, fabulous! I’m glad you found the thing that works for you. Because, truly, different people have different nutritional needs. And it’s often up to us to figure out what those needs are, and what works best, for ourselves.

What I don’t say is, fabulous! Please continue proselytizing as though this diet is now The Answer to All of Humanity’s Ills.

What I also don’t say is, fabulous! By finding a diet that treats your condition, you have also likely stumbled upon the diet that would therefore prevent said condition from occurring in other people.

Cause it just ain’t necessarily so.

Thoughts? Examples? Swearwords? You know what to do.

I’ve set it to update every five minutes (rather than WordPress’ depressing default of every 12 hours) and the link in the title now points to the actual feed instead of, rather mystifyingly, to my own website. Links to other blogs also automatically open in a new tab, so you can more easily keep your place if you get click-happy. (But if lots of people find this feature annoying, I can remove it.)

If you scroll farther down, you’ll also find the option to subscribe to posts by email. At least one person asked for this a while ago. And I aim to please — so please, go nuts.

I’ve developed a posting routine that works for me, after many weeks of writerly angst, so that should result in more regular posts.

In more boring news, I’ve moved archives and categories to the bottom of the page, because, frankly, there’s just more interesting stuff to have in my sidebar. But, never fear, when you’re at the bottom of a post or the front page, they will be there, comfortingly, just waiting for you to click and read more.

So, that’s it really. Let me know if you’d prefer other tweaks or additions, and I’ll see what I can do.

Let’s get comfortable, shall we?

I first had to tell my husband and family I was quitting my diet, and all further weight loss attempts. That was a little hard, since I’d been such a devoted and obnoxiously voceriferous dieter (I’m sure you can imagine, given how obnoxiously vociferous a fat acceptance activist I now am. The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

Eventually, I got around to telling my friends, too. In the process, I discovered something that startled: every single one of my female friends had the same issues with weight, eating, and body image that I’d, until then, imagined were my own personal neuroses. I was floored to discover just how common these problems are, and how good we are at hiding them from each other.

I started writing online around 2002, in a personal journal-thingy, as I was discovering more of the literature on health and weight and dieting, and as I came to my decision to pursue a nutrition degree. I had catty drama-filled fights with pro-ana bloggers and with dedicated dieters, and we all did a lot of pearl-clutching at how insane we each thought the other was. Eventually, I realized that, despite appearances, we really were all on the same team, struggling in different ways, using different methods, with the very same problems.

The first time I spoke in public, to real, live people, about Health at Every Size and my own decision to accept myself was in the late summer of 2002. I nearly peed my pants before standing up in front of my biology class and saying loud and clear, I’m a fat lady and I think that’s okay. I thought I would be pelted with rotten tomatoes. Instead, people rushed to encourage and thank me. I was bowled over by just how needed the message of size acceptance was.

I then proceeded through school, writing papers about weight and Health at Every Size and body image whenever the opportunity presented. I did a couple more presentations where I talked frankly about how I’m a fat lady and I think that’s okay. Again, I never received the rotten tomatoes that I never failed to imagine I somehow deserved.

I wrote for and was active on Big Fat Blog for a number of years; I attended a conference about Fat Studies and met heroes — truly kind, scarily intelligent, morally advanced people.

And this has been an inventory of all the ways in which I didn’t hide.

But there were other parts of my life. There was work at the hospital, or rather, hospitals. Despite being a visibly, unapologetically fat person working in nutrition, I was hiding. I never told my bosses about my extracurricular activities, about my interest in fat acceptance.

The closest I came was when, once, my boss asked me what I was writing my term paper on, and I said, “Health at Every Size.” When another dietitian (who I love dearly) asked me how I felt about my own weight, I responded with a hedging, “As long as I’m healthy…”

I put a quote by Marilyn Wann on the wall above my desk, as a reminder of my principles in an environment that was sometimes hostile to my beliefs. It said, “You can’t hate people for their own good.” Sometimes my volunteers asked what it meant, and I mumbled something about prejudice and discrimination. I never explained it to anyone. I was hiding.

This September, I concluded my work as a diet tech at the hospitals. I had the good fortune to work in many areas (like eating disorders and oncology, and with frail, older inpatients) where my job was to encourage, not discourage, eating and enjoyment of food, where any focus on weight was more toward gaining than losing. This made me happy, and I believe my own comfort with food and my body gave me a special knack in this, because there was no inner conflict for me in encouraging people to eat and be satisfied with themselves. But still — I was hiding.

When I began this website and began using my real name in emails and when talking to the media, it scared the shit out of me. When I knew that I had to cowgirl up and actually start promoting myself, admitting to the fatosphere that I’m a nutritionist, and admitting to the nutrition world that I’m one of those fringe fat acceptance nuts, it scared the shit out of me. My cover was blown.

And, predictably, I took some heat for all that. It wasn’t unexpected, but it still scared the shit out of me. I also took a lot of sweetness for it, from people who have been encouraging and admiring and thankful. This, I wasn’t expecting — the sweetness scared the shit out of me, too.

I’ve been in the habit, for a long time, of singing in empty rooms, of reading my poems to no one in particular, of deliberately flying under the radar. It’s a comfortable place for me, for though I’ve always had a streak of the performer in me, I’ve also always abhorred a crowd, hated to have eyeballs on me unless protected by full costume and greasepaint.

To stand here, unaided by artifice, for people to yea or nay my value as a contributor to this world, has been unthinkable to me. I suppose because I take that vote seriously. I integrate it into my valuation of myself.

And now, here I am. Not only have I opened myself up for judgment, I have staked my professional reputation, and possibly the ability to feed and shelter myself, on my name, on this page on the internet. I have sworn like a sailor, I have proclaimed that a lot of nutrition is bullshit, and I have encouraged people to do the unthinkable by feeding their kids dessert twice a day. I’ve ruined the façade that I so carefully cultivated and conserved, and I’m not entirely sure, now, what to do with myself.

My only option remains to construct something new from these remnants.

But I’m struggling. I am not, by nature or training, a carpenter. I’m someone who sits at the back of the class, who covers her writing with her hand, who doesn’t answer the telephone — who, in short, keeps secrets.

But if I’m truly okay with who and what I am, there shouldn’t be a need for secrets, or to shrink from the yeas and nays. The referendum on my right to exist should be fixed, and I should have full right of veto.

Writing this blog is as much about helping people come to terms with their eating as it about helping myself come to terms with being visible. I apologize in advance that you will be exposed to a lot of the messiness and self-indulgence inherent in that process, but you can skip over those parts if you like. There will be times when it will seem like I am talking to myself, because, well — sometimes I am. It’s a habit that isn’t so easily extinguished. I suppose it’s a way of clearing my throat for the actual singing that must be done, whether I like it or not, before an audience.

Ellyn Satter said something this past week that made sense to me: “Somehow, going over and over a thing takes the bother out of it.”

So that’s what I’ll be doing here, taking the bother out of, finally, showing you my face.

Anyhow, I imagine I’ll have some interesting stuff to write about when I’m back, since I’m attending a training workshop called “Treating the Dieting Casualty,” which should sharpen my nascent counseling skills in normal eating. I’ll also get to meet Ellyn Satter, which I…can’t describe my excitement about.

Talk to you soon.

ETA: A while ago, I promised you tapeworms. So, behold — tapeworms:

I kind of didn’t know what to expect when I wrote it, but, as it turns out, I’ve had a lot of new visitors from Newsweek now, so hi. Good to see you.

(Though, I admit, I’m feeling some stage-fright here.)

For people looking to find out more about me and what I do (and maybe how much I weigh) the relevant links are at the top of this page. You can dig around in the (admittedly somewhat scanty) archives for more of my writing.

Sorry there’s not more — even though I’ve been writing for a long time, this site is new, and I wanted to use mostly-fresh material. There is more to come.

I’d also like to emphasize that, while I do welcome a variety of viewpoints here, I will be moderating the comments for anything beyond the pale.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what this whole “fat acceptance” thing is about, then I’d suggest you start here, and maybe here, just to pick up some of the general concepts.

Also — no polite questions turned away. So, if you’re confused about anything, please ask.

Edited to add: Please also feel free to leave your comments at Newsweek.

I even have quote in there!

God knows I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be saying “Hey, look, it’s a Fatosphere article in the New York Times!” let alone, “Hey, look, it’s ANOTHER Fatosphere article in the New York Times!” but, as we all know, things have changed a lot, at least online, in the last couple of years.

I’ve been writing online about fat stuff since roughly 2002, on a godforsaken online diary site where people would regularly come by to reassure me that I would die a horrible fiery death for “promoting obesity.” (That is, if simply being fat didn’t get me first.)

I’d quit dieting in 2000, after being made aware of the existence of fat acceptance in 1999 (from, of all places, reading Dean Edell’s book Eat, Drink, and be Merry, which had a brief blurb about fat ladies who formed a fatty swimming club together), and after developing some very dysfunctional eating and exercise patterns on the diet. As well as a nice case of pneumonia.

The book that finally sealed the deal for me was Laura Fraser’s Losing It. After reading it, I looked down at my body and thought, “This is a nice body. Why have I been abusing it? I’m sorry, body. Let’s stop this.” And I never looked back.

I decided to study and work in nutrition, as a fat lady. I wrote a bit for Big Fat Blog. When the Fatosphere and big-time bloggers like Kate and Marianne came on the scene, I was inspired to start my own Fatosphere blog. And now I’ve settled into what I think of as my permanent online home, still part of the Fatosphere, but, hopefully, taking up the topic of nutrition in a new way.

So that’s the completely unsolicited (and undercaffeinated) story of how I got here. And maybe of why you’re reading this.

Either way, it’s nice to see some fats in the New York Times. Again.

ETA: I don’t know exactly how or why this turned into a rambling, narcissistic recounting of me-me-me, me, and ME! instead of, you know, talking about the article, but I’m still blaming the lack of coffee. We can talk of things of substance in comments.

I work in healthcare. I belong to the Church of You Don’t Deserve This. I take care of alot of patients who, IMO, don’t deserve the medical care that I dispense. I know this is going to make me sound like a total and complete ass, but let me elaborate.

I take care of patients with kidney disease. Some patients got kidney disease through shitty genetics. Others through odd accidents or bizzare infections. Others through cancer. Alot of our patients (like my own father) got kidney disease from letting their diabetes go untreated for 20, 30 years. Regardless of how they got it, the vast majority of my patients refuse to take steps to prolong their life and improve their quality of life.

Dialysis patients, as a whole, are notoriously noncompliant. This is usually because they have a history of non-compliance which usually got them into their situation in the first place.

For example, dialysis patients shouldn’t really drink more than a liter of water per day. Yet we have patients who, as soon as they leave our hospital dialysis unit, go home and start chugging gallons of milk or juice. (And are consequently back in the hospital within a few days). We have patients who have two homes: their regular residence and the hospital. They treat themselves badly and then spend 1/3 of an average month in the hospital, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicare bills over the course of a year.

You know what I think about these people? I think they don’t deserve my services. (yes this includes my dad). I think that my services are wasted on people who refuse take even basic steps to help themselves stay well. I think I’d rather focus my energies on the patients who recognize the seriousness of their condition and take an active role in their self-care.

If I were king of the world, I would tell these people, “Look, we’re giving you three months to turn your life around. Start taking better care of yourself, stop drinking yourself to death and take your medications as prescribed or else we’re going to withhold treatment until you do. There are alot of people with kidney failure who want to live and we aren’t going to divert scarce resources to people who don’t care one way or the other if they die or not.”

Thats what I would say, if I ran the world. The Church of You Don’t Deserve This.

That’s not what I say, however.

My profession demands that I dispense medical care to all who need it, regardless of my own personal judgments. My profession demands that I provide care to someone who treats their own body so badly that they have their own PO Box at the local hospital. My profession demands that I care for the unruly, the mean, the stupid and the non-compliant. My profession demands that I provide care for brain-dead patients who are just being kept alive by their families for the monthly social security cheque. My profession demands that I care for everyone who darkens the door at my clinic, regardless of whether or not they are saints or Dick Cheney. My profession demands that I do things, which, in a perfect world, I would be able to not do.

And yet I do them anyway, because it’s in the job description.

What a hero.

I apologize for my lack of analysis right now, and for my lack of recent posts, but I’m adjusting to new medication and basically have been sleeping my face off. In a few days, I should be back to my old self.

Allow me a moment of unmitigated cheesiness and affection, however, to say this: I love my commenters. You are all making this new website adventure a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I love what’s happening here, and I want it to keep happening.

So, yeah. I guess I kinda like you. That’s all. Don’t go spreading it around or anything.

Which never happens.

Anyhow. I have the follow-up post to my last thing pretty much ready to go — just needs a bit of editing. But I’ve been busy working at yet another hospital lately, and it’s been good. Lots and lots of patients to see, which is the finest part of the job, hands down.

I’ve got flowers growing on the balcony, and even though I’m pretty sure I interrupted some kind of shady transaction going on in my backyard today, it’s a lovely day and Toronto is colourful, almost beautiful in the sunlight…

…or that might just be the GIANT coffee I drank this afternoon talking. Either way, I’ll take it.

I baked some bread yesterday for the first time in eons. I stopped baking it when I moved into my current apartment, which has a kitchen the size of a Band-Aid. But with the help of my MONSTER MIXER (700 watts, baby) and its dough-hooks, I didn’t knead anything, and the bread was righteously awesome.

If I do say so myself.

I’ve also been playing with my cat’s diet lately. Because, what are pets if not your own personal biochemical experiments?

I’ve had a couple of emails about specific nutrition questions, which I love, because it gives me the chance to dig through my old clinical nutrition notes and textbooks and brush up. Or to remind myself of how, exactly we did things back in some old clinic. So keep ‘em coming, if you have any questions. It’s good practice for me.

As future plans go, I’m going to let slip a little something I’m planning to do here. There’s a certain training I want to take in the fall, and said training will allow me to feel confident in offering nutrition counseling/coaching/cheerleading/hand-holding/helper-ing to people, either in person or at a distance.

I could do it right now, actually, but what can I say? I’m conscientious-beyond-conscientious, to the point where I will be the MOST RIDICULOUSLY OVER-EXPERIENCED DIETETIC INTERN EVAR!!! when I finally get there, since I insisted on working my way up the nutrition ladder by volunteering in eating disorders, and then working in food service, and then taking a (bizarre and disastrous) detour into real estate, and then doing clinical nutrition. Because I am insane and can’t just settle down and focus on getting a damn degree like you’re supposed to.

And even though I’ve got the whole nutrition care process thing down, I want more specific training. A method, to be precise.

So, I’m going to git myself some training, and then I’ll hang out my shingle, right here on this little ole website. And all six of my readers will have the chance to hire me.

Exciting, no?

Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.

Oh, and I discovered I’m an inch and a half taller since I last measured myself. Will wonders never cease.

And I thought, this is a good bunch of people.

We talked about healthism, and expectations of dietitians’ bodies, and feminist theory, and critical theory, and disability, racism, exclusion, food systems, agriculture, hunger, food insecurity, activism, queer theory, poetry, the environment, and just…everything. We laughed, we ate, we commiserated, we congratulated, we drank beer. Some of us even cried a little.

And it reaffirmed my faith that I belong in nutrition, even when — maybe especially when — I feel like an outsider and eccentric.

Because we need outsiders and eccentrics, or we don’t make progress.

For one of the very few times in my life, and the first time in a group of other nutrition people, I was able to openly say that I believe in fat acceptance and health at every size. And people just nodded and said, “Cool.” No raised eyebrows. No clucking. Just genuine interest from allies of every stripe.

It felt like we could talk about anything, and it felt like something new was born, right there in front of me — a movement toward expanding nutrition outward from its compact singularity of vitamins and chemistry, into a vivid universe capable of encompassing the messy realities of human lives and human cultures. Critical dietetics. Radical dietetics.

I was lucky to be there. As one of the participants said in his talk, “I have found my people.”

And it turns out that my people are outsiders and eccentrics, like me.

And what kind of asshole would I have to be to turn down free books?

As I read through it, I dog-eared each page that mentioned anything about food. That book is now double the thickness it was when I started, because damn near every page mentions something about food.

In case you weren’t aware, Monica Seles is a former professional tennis player — a spectacular one. She won the French Open when she was 16, and was ranked No. 1 in her sport for three consecutive years — in total, winning nine individual Grand Slam tournaments by the time she was 19 years old.

When she was stabbed in the back.

Literally. With a knife.

A man described as stocky and balding leaned over the three-feet-high (91 cm) barrier and stabbed her from behind. Miss Seles let out a scream, clutched her back and stumbled on to the court.

The attack took place in full view of the 6,000-strong crowd watching the match.

“He held the knife with both hands as he stabbed her in the back,” said one eyewitness.

~BBC News, April 30, 1993.

Following this traumatic event, the tennis world rather ungraciously left Monica behind as she struggled to recover, physically and emotionally. She lost her ranking and her sponsorships. Then her father died.

And in the course of dealing with all of this, her natural love of food was replaced by disordered eating — namely, binge eating.

She gained a significant amount of weight, and the press responded to this with the classiness and sensitivity one might expect. Which is to say, none whatsoever.

Monica Seles has got her appetite back, and not just for tennis. A frisky wind in Florida shows how she is piling on the pounds. Thunder thighs Monica, 23, made heavy going of her latest match…

~The Mirror (London, England), March 27, 1997.

The book details her attempts to get back into the game of tennis — attempts that would, ultimately, only deepen her disordered eating, as she fought against her body to lose weight and whip herself into competitive shape.

Surrounded by an entourage of trainers and nutritionists, who eventually became both food-police and babysitters, Monica seemed to have lost touch with not only her phenomenal athleticism, but with her body as a whole.

The turn comes when, surprise-of-all-surprises, she chucks the rules, chucks the diets, chucks the insane pressure, and decides to live her life.

She figures out food, and grief, and how to be in her body. In the process, she loses the weight she’d gained. She feels better about herself; she feels like she’s come home.

And that’s all very nice for Monica Seles.

The thing is, I kind of wish the weight loss thing wasn’t emphasized so much. There’s even an iconic too-small dress that she uses as a symbol of her progress. But, really, I believe weight changes are secondary to whatever is going on with one’s eating and health in general.

Besides which, if she hadn’t lost any weight, but still managed to figure everything else out, should she then consider herself not to have gotten a grip? To be, for all intents and purposes, gripless?

I think you know my answer, which is a resounding naaaaaaah.

At any rate, I am happy for her. I am always relieved and gladdened to hear of any woman negotiating her way out of weight obsession and dysfunctional eating. And though it’s not going to be winning any Pulitzer, this was an engaging book that exposed me to a surprisingly interesting world I hadn’t ever thought much about — the world of the professional athlete and tennis player.

Though I’m assuming it was ghostwritten, Seles’ playful — one might almost be tempted to say bubbly — personality comes through in an appealing way. Right along with her wildly enthusiastic love of food, which I can totally get behind.

There’s also an unconfirmed report floating around that I may have cried once while reading it. Yeah, just don’t go around telling people.