9 December 2012

I have to say I really like the Christmas season, even if only for one thing: it's the only time of year that eating to excess appears to be openly encouraged.  Seriously think about it:  Thanksgiving is just one day.  Christmas is a whole month of parties, cookies, chocolates, multiple dinners with various family members...

I went to a 200+ person Christmas party last night at a recreational group I belong to and managed to stuff myself with some amazing food a friend had made and brought especially for the three of us who are gluten free.  She made everything that was on the regular menu, but gluten free.  For scheduling reasons that included a sick cat at home, we ate early and they left early.  Then, to my surprise, the people cooking the regular dinner had also made accomodation for the gluten free people (apparently there were others in the crowd I didn't know about) and I was good-naturedly forced to stuff down a second large meal about two hours later.  Seriously, it was a gainer's dream scenario and also one of the few times being celiac has actually worked in my favour as a gainer!

Got home, went to sleep, woke up six hours later...hungry.  Which is really good news to me because I swear I must have eaten almost whole day's worth of "regular person" (ie. non-gainer) food with those two combined dinners.

Being hungry now...so soon...I'm ecstatic that my body is FINALLY getting used to the extra calories and has now come to demand them.  I'd really like to keep up with 4000 calories a day and, when I'm sure I've gotten firmly in the habit, build on that.  I'm not sure realistically how much food a person can eat in a day and still find time to go to work at a physically busy job and do all the other stuff life demands but I guess the only way to find out is to try.  Regardless I'm feeling hugely encouraged by my newly acquired capacity for so much more food!

And I'm getting creative at finding quick, easy and, most important of all, palatable ways to slam back hundreds of calories without ending up painfully bloated.  My most recent invention is probably not news to anyone else but I'm quite proud of it: a version of a gainer shake that uses a 235ml bottle of Ensure Plus Calories (still available in Canada...for now at least) in a 400 ml glass, with the glass topped up to the brim with 35% heavy cream.  It's an excellent combination because it's super easy to prepare and the strong flavour of the Ensure (I'm currently using chocolate flavour) masks the somewhat cloying nature of the cream.  It ends up being a rich milkshake that goes down really easily and doesn't cause too much bloat.  I just ran the numbers and each one of those shakes ends up being 903 calories at a cost that comes in about the same as a McDonald's milkshake and with the convenience factor of being able to have them conveniently available anytime of the day without having to go out into the mind-numbing cold and get one.    I'm trying to drink two of these shakes each day.  I'm happy too because the Ensure has some vitamins and nutrients...something I feel I'm missing sometimes when I gaining hard and a 200 calorie salad starts to seem like a waste of time and effort (don't worry, I've found a way to work salad and veggies into my diet as well...)

Something else I did yesterday that I'm proud of, and yes I admit slightly titillated by, was that I was able for the first time in my life to be positively affirming with people I know in the real world - friends as well as relative strangers - about the fact that I know I'm getting fat, that I will likely be even fatter the next time I see most of them, and that I'm absolutely okay if I end up gaining a whole lot of weight, if that's what going off one's diet means. I stopped just short of saying that I am actually working hard to make this weight gain a reality because I don't want to come across as a freak to people who might not "get" or agree with what I'm doing.  Also, my weight gain so far doesn't have much impact right now because a lot of these people knew me during that brief time a couple of years ago when I managed to get my weight up to 202 lbs...and even at that weight I was only JUST starting to really be what I'd consider actually fat and not just the husky/chubster thing I'm rocking right now.  I guess I just want to lay the groundwork so people aren't too shocked or worried as I begin to seriously pack on the pounds.  And next year, hopefully, I want to roll into that same Christmas party, seventy pounds heavier and sporting what I hope by then will be an awesomely large and round belly. 

I'm going to continue my efforts at self affirmation with others, as the topic comes up, and even with people with whom this will be a very hard and intense conversation.  It's a good exercise, not just for my relationships with others but also as an affirimation to my self.  I've always been "closeted" about gaining and, although I'm never going to be the poster child for the gainer community, I really do think it's time I start to openly "own" this aspect of myself.  Especially since the more successful I am, and the fatter I get, the more obvious it is going to be that something's up with me.  I don't want shame or fear of what other people might be thinking about what I'm doing to continue to be a hurdle to my success at something I admit I've always wanted for myself.  And, so far with the very few people I've "come out" to (other than, for example anonymously online here...which don't get me wrong has been an amazing experience but isn't a substitute for honesty in one's face-to face relationships), the reaction hasn't been nearly as negative as I would have thought.  In fact, it's kind of been a non-issue, which is weird because it's always been such a huge deal (no pun intended) for me!

Wow.  I'm actually hungry again...