Still Not Exempt from Fat Fees

I’ve written here about the clothing fat fee before.  This refers to the manufacturer/seller’s justification that since such vast quantities of fabric are required to hide the enormous girth of an overweight person from sight, they can charge more money for those sizes.  I have always felt that charging by the size was a ridiculous and unscrupulous practice based solely on a seller’s ability to use acceptable discrimination as a way to better line their pockets.

I wasn’t expecting to still have to pay the fat fee after having struggled and sweated off seventy pounds.

Like a lot of women, I’m a top-down weight loser, meaning that my fat cells tend to shrink first in my face, then my collar and chest area, then my waist, while my stomach and thighs hold more stubbornly onto their fat stores and remain disproportionally bigger for a longer time.  As such, I’m now wearing about a women’s standard size XL or 12 on my top half, while my bottom half is about three sizes larger at an 18.  Yes, this makes dresses very difficult, but that’s another post.

A while back I purchased a geeky t-shirt for myself as a weight loss reward from a website that uses a particularly high pressure sales tactic of only offering their limited edition shirts at a certain price for a 24 hour period, then raising it by about seven dollars if you miss out.  That’s not what I have a problem with.  I have a problem with the fact that they charge one price for sizes small through extra-large, then raise the price by a dollar for every size larger than that.

The one shirt I have from them is what they call a women’s 3XL.  When I first ordered it four months ago and it arrived, I was dismayed to find that the largest women’s size they carried looked to me like doll clothing.  It took me losing about twenty or thirty more pounds before I can now wear it comfortably.  This means that their largest size available for women, what they call a 3XL, is actually about a size twelve, what most manufacturers consider a large, or extra large.  And they charge more money for it.

So, apparently a size twelve is such a gigantic size that it requires several dollars extra worth of fabric to cover.

Yes, I get that it’s only a few dollars.  No, that is not the point.

The point is that there is no reasonable or possible justification to charge more money for what is in fact one of the most common sizes worn by American women.  There is no reason for this, none whatsoever, other than the fact that the sellers know that they can get away with it.  Since they are charging the most money for the size that is probably ordered the most often, they’re probably making a fairly good profit by charging the fat fee to people who, in this case, are not even fat.

Right now I’m mostly annoyed because they’re running a sale on a print that I desperately want, and I’m struggling with myself over whether or not I can in good conscience continue to support retailers who do this.  If I decide not to, it’s going to eliminate a LOT of places for me to shop.  Most retailers, particularly for things like t-shirts, charge a fat fee of some sort.  I’m honestly not sure what to do.

In case you're curious, this gorgeous Dark Crystal t-shirt print is the one causing my conundrum.  Cool, huh?

Update: I sent this clothing seller a link to my blog and expressed my dismay to them at the small sizes for which they are deciding to levy fat fees on customers.  This was their response:

 "Thanks for contacting us! The reason the larger tees cost more to buy is because they cost more to make. It's not meant to be an insult. I apologize if it is taken that way. Congrats on the weight loss :) Please let me know if you have any further questions."

How to Kill an Albatross

On January 24^th 2013, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection made it illegal to dispose of televisions via municipal waste disposal sites (in other words they cannot wind up in landfills because they are bad for the environment).  What this meant is that most trash pickup companies stopped taking them from customers, even for an additional fee.

This small historical detail is going to become more significant as this story goes on...

Recently Ted and I acquired a shiny newfangled flat screen HD television.  We got it as an unexpected blessing, secondhand and for free.  After hooking it up, we were duly impressed by the difference that HD really does make in picture quality.

The downside was, we now had to find a new home for a 36” old fashioned CRT television which works just fine, but weighs roughly the same amount as an NFL Linebacker in box form.

Not wanting to throw away an item that works (and not yet knowing that throwing these things away has recently become impossible in my state) I posted the Albatross on Facebook a week ago with the attached picture, offering it free to a good home.

A friend of mine suggested I try Freecycle, so I quickly investigated and just as quickly signed up.  I had no idea this awesome service existed with the sole purpose of getting rid of items for people who no longer want or need them and getting them to people who do.  No money, no strings attached, just people getting rid of stuff and people getting what they need.  Within an hour I had an ad posted and was ready to find a new home for Albatross.

Before any of the Freecyclers had a chance to react, however, an old acquaintance popped up on Facebook offering to take the set off my hands.  Delighted by how easy that turned out to be, I took the Freecycle ad back down immediately.

I then spent last weekend trying unsuccessfully to arrange a pickup time with my acquaintance, who I finally found out on Sunday evening was too busy to come get it.  I figured that was okay though since I didn’t really need Albatross out of my house until the following Saturday the 26^th, also known as Tedmas: the annual observance of the celebration of Ted’s day of birth.

After pestering and pestering and… pestering this entire past week I found out at 4PM on Tedmas Eve that my acquaintance was not, in fact, going to come get Albatross from us.  After having not run the Freecycle ad for it all week, I now had about twelve hours to somehow dispose of a CRT television so heavy that it generally takes three adults of Herculean strength to move it around.

Panic mode – ENGAGED.

I spent the next solid hour calling everybody: my trash company, other people’s trash companies, thrift stores, and every recycling center listed in the yellow pages for my town and the three towns around me.  The only people remotely willing to entertain so much as the possibility of taking this thing was Best Buy, who would even come get it from me… for a hundred bucks, but only if it was a few inches smaller than 36”.

Near tears, I inquired of the sympathetic lady at Waste Management just what exactly a responsible citizen was supposed to do to get rid of one of these things legally and within the boundaries of the new Pennsylvania laws?  Dismantling it myself and hiding it piecemeal in the trash was starting to seem like the only way out.

Finally, she directed me toward the Environmental Protection Agency.  Call me a paranoid Libertarian if you want, but going for help to the United States Government who had enacted the law that was busting my butt in the first place just hadn’t really occurred to me.

Turns out, that’s exactly the right place to go.  Since they’ve made it completely impossible to legally dispose of these things in the trash, they now have arranged community pickup days where you can take them and drop them off, free of charge.  Had I only called the County in the first place I’d have saved myself quite a bit of trouble.

The thing is, why did I have to make forty phone calls to find that out?  Shouldn’t the very first recycling center who refused me have known about it?  Each and every time I was refused, I immediately asked the Customer Service Rep if they knew who I should call instead to solve my problem.  Usually they said they had no idea, but occasionally they’d suggest a different recycling center.

One suggested I call the TV manufacturer and ask them, so I called Zenith and did just that.  They directed me toward three different repair centers in my area who, “should be able to help.”  Could they dispose of a CRT TV?  Nope, nope and nope.  Did they know of someone who could?  Nope again.

Why don’t people in this industry, who know immediately and with harsh finality that they absolutely cannot help, know who people should go to instead?  The collection events are fantastic but if people are clueless to their existence it’s not going to do anybody very much good.

It also turns out that there was one of these collection events at the library at the end of my street just last weekend, but we missed the boat on that one and will now have to take the Albatross for one final car ride (not to mention figuring out how to lift it into the car) on Tedmas morning.  Definitely not the way we were expecting to start the celebration, but hey – at least it won’t be in residence in my dining room any longer.

So the takeaways here are this:

1)      Freecycle is very cool and you should use and support it.

2)      Unless you are aware of the one approved method for doing so, the government has made it a colossal pain the butt to get rid of electronic items.  Which makes me wonder if a lot of people, after trying and trying and TRYING to dispose of them legally aren’t maybe giving up, dismantling them, and hiding them piecemeal in their trash or dropping them off high cliffs somewhere.  The blinding efficiency of the United States Government at work, as usual.

3)      If you have a CRT television and you need to get rid of it – call the Environmental Protection Agency.  Nobody else will help you.  Seriously.  Nobody.  I’ve done the legwork.

Status Report: 2 lbs. lost, 70 lbs. total

This update, as well as regular posts in general, are very far behind.

There’s a couple of reasons for this:

1)      I've been a bit down lately for reasons that are complex and too personal to go into here.  When this happens I lose touch with creative energy (or any energy for that matter) and tend to fall asleep very early each night as a form of mental escape.  Writing of any kind feels impossible.  Regular exercise also hasn't been happening.

2)      Another unfortunate side effect of feeling down is turning to food for comfort.  The desire to comfort-eat mixed with my generally high hunger level has made it very, very difficult to shave off any weight, which is why my cumulative weight loss for the past month has been only two pounds.  So basically there hasn't been much to report, or rather nothing tremendously positive to report.

That being said, I can still say a couple of good things about the past month:

1)      I got to go on one of the most wonderful vacations of my life, details of which (and pictures) to follow.

2)      Despite some emotional struggles, I did not gain weight and still lost two pounds!  When I've had this much of a difficult time in the past I've been known to give up and my weight skyrocketed as a result.  This time was different, and I’m really proud of myself for maintaining my weight loss through a tough stretch and even continuing a slow trend downward toward goal.

3)      As of my last weigh-in I was 219 lbs.  I know the numbers shouldn't matter that much, but I was super-excited to be in the teens.  Getting under the two hundred pound mark feels like it’s really and truly within my grasp!

4)      I have become a pro at saying “no” to desserts.  This is largely because I get so much practice at it.  Cakes, cookies and doughnuts appear at work several times per week, and ignoring them has become such an ingrained habit that I barely think about it anymore.  People who are totally satisfied with, “just a bite” can’t understand this – but for me that single bite is exactly like an alcoholic deciding to put a drop of bourbon on their tongue.  Its pure torture, and I’m much happier not knowing how something tastes so I can’t obsess over wanting to stuff myself with all of it.  It’s also incredibly touching and sweet how my family always makes sure there’s fruit salad on hand for me at family dinners, so that I have an alternative for dessert that’s safe for me.

So overall, a lot more positives to report even though this hasn't been the best time in my life of late.  I have things to be proud of, and more importantly things to be grateful to God, family and friends for.  If I can focus on those even in my darkest moments, I know that I will always be carried through. 

An Unexpected Word for Weight Loss

A friend of mine recently posted an article on Facebook about how long-term research is revealing that the several million Americans who fall into the “overweight” or “obese 1” categories on the BMI scale are actually at lower risk for certain diseases (like diabetes and heart disease) than people in the “normal” and “underweight” categories.  Additionally they are finding that people who change their body weight (be it gaining or losing drastically) are at highest risk of all.

Since we’ve all been force fed a steady stream of insistence that we must all be skinnier to be healthy for so long now, I can understand why these statistics would be surprising to some people.  Since I’ve been eating, breathing and sleeping weight loss and nutrition research for five years now they are not surprising to me.

There is a word for losing weight via calorie restriction: that word is starving.

When you lose weight because you are deliberately not giving your body the calories it needs to maintain its weight, you are starving to death.  You’re doing it very slowly, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually good for you.  Those of us with enough extra calories stored up can successfully starve to death for years and years without dying, but rest assured if we do not eventually stop it will kill us one day.

Regardless of what the FDA or the CDC or your own Doctor tries to tell you, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever that is medically healthy about starving.  Changing your body weight is a dangerous process and it needs to be done carefully, and preferably slowly.  I am aware that right now as my weight is dropping I am more at risk for a heart attack than I ever was while maintaining a steady 275 pounds.  When I get to my goal weight, once I stop changing, my risk factor will drop back down again – but right now in the process of changing is a dangerous place to live.

That’s also why yo-yo dieting weight changes need to be avoided at all cost.  Dragging your body up and down the weight scale repeatedly is an incredibly dangerous thing to do, and may account for a lot of deaths among obese individuals that have incorrectly been attributed to simply being obese.  I am guessing (and it’s just a guess) that the reason why people in the overweight and obese 1 categories seem to die the least frequently from heart disease is because their weight tends to be stable.  Though they may struggle endlessly to shed those fifteen or twenty pounds they find aesthetically displeasing, the truth may be that their metabolism stubbornly holding onto a state of homeostasis is probably what is protecting them, just as it’s meant to.  Women in particular are biologically designed to hold onto a few healthy, protective pounds around our belly and thighs area.

I won’t argue that steadily being a lower body weight rather than a drastically high one isn’t good for human beings in many ways, particularly with regards to joint issues and negative social repercussions.  However, the process of losing weight is not and never has been a healthy thing to do (just as gaining weight isn’t) and I am really tired of the medical community not only failing to address that fact, but also deliberately trying to hide it.

Maybe if they addressed the truth they could do a better job of helping people find ways to change more safely.