Fat Armpits Are a Bad Sign

I am a medical reporter. I've spent the last couple of decades reporting on a variety of health problems for newspapers, then magazines and finally for TV. Now I freelance, dividing my time between TV news and magazines. I am usually quite private about who I am and what I do, but I share this here because I have finally realized there's an important disconnect in my life: I write about health and wellness; I know what I should do to maintain my own health, and yet...I never do it.

You can get away with that for a while, but not forever. But I thought I was somehow immune from the consequences of my own bad choices...a sedentary lifestyle, sitting in front of my computer for hours and hours every day, guzzling Coca-Cola like it was mother's milk. I told myself because I ate an organic diet and did not generally overeat, and stayed away from trans-fats and most junk food, I was fine. Never mind that I had to keep buying larger and larger clothes and finally topped out at a size 18. Never mind the facts. I was slim. I could look in the mirror and see that. My face was still the same, no double chins or waddles, and if my face was still slim, so was the rest of me, right?

But then one day I was walking by a low table and a small box jumped off the table. I spun around, puzzled. I was the only one in the house. Who had pushed that box down?

The question should have been: "What" had pushed the box down? It was my thigh, my thunder thigh that I believed was taut and sleek, not wobbly and flobbily. (Yes, I know "flobbily" isn't a real word, but don't you think it should be?) It was the part most adjacent to what had slowly become over the years, my old double-wide. What? I was still a size 10, wasn't I? I ran to the full length mirror in the hall and looked at myself. Thank God! There, shimmering through the heavy mists of my body dysmorphia, was my sylph-like Size 10 self. There she was. Never mind that the actual me was twice that size. In my mind's eye, I was still a slender and alluring girl. But then, what had happened to that little jumping box?

Then, another day, a night actually, I ended up in the hospital in a full-blown hypertensive crisis. My EKG looked so bad they told me they were going to have to do heart surgery. I was shaken down to my bones, but then I remembered what I knew about myself: I come from a family that has NO history of heart disease; I eat a moderate fat diet, I eat primarily healthy fats and no transfats, so the diagnosis made no sense. But there was that EKG showing possibly blocked coronary arteries. I simply couldn't make myself believe that was true. Wouldn't I have had some symptoms?

They did a fancy, expensive test and, thank God! My arteries were clear and healthy. The apparent blockages shown on the EKG were the result of arterial spasms caused by raging high blood pressure.

Staring at your own mortality should have an instant sobering effect. Yet, that scare happened way back in March and here we are in October, and only now am I acting upon my trauma in a positive way. I got the blood pressure under control with medication, but the doctor told me I could go off the pills if I lost weight and exercised. I didn't quite yawn in his face but I was tempted. So sheer terror didn't do it for me. Do you want to know what did? Peeling away the layers of self-delusion and looking at myself in a cold, analytical and clear-eyed way.

I decided to do some scientific investigation. I picked up a small hand mirror and turned with my back facing the full length mirror and looked. Oh, my God! Whose ass was that? It obviously wasn't mine. Whoever had that ass couldn't walk; they could only waddle. Had I been waddling for years with no awareness that my butt rolled up and down with each step, like waves breaking on the shore? That grown men who smiled as my Size 10 self approached cringed in terror or collapsed in hysterics after my Size 18 ass passed by?

Still in a scientific frame of mind, I stripped down and faced myself in my huge bathroom mirror. I lifted my arms like Venus rising from the sea, a sea of lard, that is. And I, Venus, am a little out of breath. After all, raising your arms is hard work.

I stared at the nightmare vision in the mirror. Oh, my God, again. My armpits were fat. That can't be a good sign. My naked upper arms, usually hidden under long, flowing sleeves, looked like Virginia Hams, only not as appetizing. (See, I am always thinking about food.)

I'm sorry, but I have to go back to that arm pit thing. I didn't even know you could get fat arm pits, but there they were, right where my arms joined my body...two distinct rolls of fat. No wonder I had so much trouble putting on deodorant. No wonder I used so much deodorant.

I pulled myself up onto a small step stool, amazed that what used to be so easy was now so difficult. I was an athlete all through school. I was fast, I was strong, I was graceful. And now I was having trouble pulling my 206.4 pounds up onto an 8-inch high footstool?

I finally got up there and regarded my self, or rather, the waist-down part of myself usually unseen in the bathroom mirror, and disguised by self-delusion in the dimly lit full-length hall mirror. My thighs looked like the Pillars of Hercules and my hips looked like two marshmallows that had gotten a little too close to the fire and sort of halfway melted. Formless blobs of pasty white flesh arranged in a not-so-fetching pattern. That was me, the real me, not the slender Size 10 me I had managed to delude myself into seeing all these years.

So, two weeks ago, I started a walking program, using a book called The 90-Day Fitness Walking Program. Notice the word "diet" is not in the title. I have an allergy to the word, "diet." I break out in hives whenever I hear it.

I laughed when I dug the book out. It was copyrighted in 1995 and the pages bore the evidence of many futile starts and stops where I journaled hopeful notes when starting the program, only to peter out two days later, having garnered so much satisfaction by talking to all my friends about what I was going to do that I felt no need to continue the actual program. But this time was going to be different. This time I wasn't going to brag to my friends that I was on a diet and exercising. (I'm going to brag to strangers, instead.) I wasn't going to promise myself I would lose 500 pounds in 10 days. In fact, I honestly wasn't all that interested in weight loss; I was interested in strength gain. I didn't want to be weak anymore. I didn't want to slide down into old age getting gradually sicker and weaker, with first this part failing and then that, all because I never took care of myself.

So I didn't tell myself I was going to "try" to do better. I told myself I was going to do better. I was going to start slowly and simply with two things–things I knew I could do: give up all soft drinks and follow the 90-day program for 90 days.

I have been on the program for 2 weeks now and my results are not impressive, but I am not discouraged because, for the first time in my life, I am finally doing a fitness program for the right reasons. I have lost just 1.8 pounds, (down to 204.6) but I have also lost 4 inches, including a full inch from my hips. I haven't missed a day. Each morning I rise and walk on my treadmill, and then record what I did in the journal provided in the book. That has become a high point in my day, a point of pride, written proof that I am finally taking care of myself and my body.

Big results? Not really. But a sea change inside my own head. It may take me a year; it may take two years, but one day, I will not only be a normal weight again, I will be a strong and healthy woman again. And maybe even (heads up, gentlemen readers)...alluring.

A friend who is also battling weight and health problems will be joining me here. We invite you to come along for the ride, literally and figuratively. Maybe we can help each other see and love ourselves as we really are, and most important, love ourselves enough to actually take good care of our bodies.