Today is my company’s annual Thanksgiving feast.  This brings up huge food issues for me and other angst I have surrounding Thanksgiving.  Including the memory of sitting on my kitchen floor this time last year, crying with a 15lb frozen turkey in my lap.  Sometimes I just wish I could skip the whole thing.

Nothing like a message from the good folks at Feeding America to put things in perspective.  Maybe after working hard towards my Bare Ass 2008! goals, the biggest lesson of all is that I need to get the frak over myself? 

Dear WGWaFA,
Just two days until Thanksgiving, and we’re in real danger of missing our goal of providing 14 million Thanksgiving meals for Americans struggling with hunger. With times as tough as they are, this would be a crushing blow for too many people. We urgently need your help to make sure families in need have food this Thanksgiving.

Remember, our partners at Tyson Foods® have agreed to match every dollar you give, up to $50,000. That means every dollar you give will provide 32 meals for families facing hunger!
I know times are difficult right now — but nobody rises to a challenge like Americans. That’s why I’m certain generous friends like you will step up and help your neighbors in need this holiday.

After all, this is the season of giving. And it’s never been more important for you to give your most generous gift. In fact, the USDA just reported a stark increase in the number of Americans facing hunger. Overall, one in eight Americans struggles with hunger.

Please, give as generously as you can. Nobody should have an empty plate on Thanksgiving — or any time.   CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW

Sincerely,
Vicki Escarra
President and CEO

I’ve tried a lot of things to raise money for Bare Ass 2008!  Funny stories, informative essays, pimped out my bare FA for charity.  Although some have suggested this might actually be a deterrent to people donating.  I try not to think about that possibility too much. 

Or how I accidentally backed into the heat pipe in my new bathroom getting out of the shower the other day.  Leaving a huge red ugly burn on said FA that I’m beginning to worry might scar.  My fear being this would give me yet another reason to be self-conscience about my FA and how this might impact the tasteful heiney shot.  Again, frak… over… self….

This Thanksgiving, I am going to be thankful for my Fat Ass.  For the numerous times I have fallen down and not gotten hurt because my FA has taken one for the team.  For all the long lectures or off-off-off broadway shows I have sat through on crappy chairs where my FA has provided the extra padding needed to get through the night.  For my childhood memories of sliding down large snowy hills, in just my snowsuit, sans an actual sled.  For all the free drinks that came following the phrase, ‘damn girl you got a brooklyn ass’   And finally for my FA being the catalyst to help raise $2320 for Feeding America.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE IN THANKS FOR YOUR ASS BE IT BIG OR SMALL

Happy Thanksgiving!

The White Girl With a Fat Ass one year party was a success!  Thank you to all that came out to Bar None and celebrated.  A special thank you to Matty for hosting the party and donating half the profits from the open bar to Feeding America!!  We had an awesome time at your bar.  If you think you would like to host a private party, click here for more info on holding it at Bar None

The grand total for WGWaFA is $2320 raised! Last night, with Kraft’s matching grant, we raised enough money to provide 2400 bowls of food for those in need.  If you would like to keep things going please CLICK HERE to donate.  Or pass this link to my charity badge onto your friends: http://www.networkforgood.org/pca/Badge.aspx?BadgeId=107977

Alot of people asked me what is next for WGWaFA? From now until Dec 31st, I’m going to be working my ass off (pun intended) to raise money for Bare Ass 2008! So please pass this blog onto everyone that you know. 

In January 2009, I will co-lead my first White Girl With a Fat Ass weight loss group with the goal of helping people improve their health while raising money for hunger relief. I have become a Certified Transitions Lifestyle Coach and I am looking for 10 people to start my first Transitions Group.  So if you, or anyone you know, wants more information please email me at wgwafa@gmail.com and my partner Jeff and I will be having free informational sessions.

A year ago I started WGWaFA with the following post. What a difference a year makes.  Come to BAR NONE tonight and celebrate my one year anniv! If you can’t come, celebrate by CLICKING HERE TO DONATE

 

11.20.2007

One of my first memories of New York City is getting up really early one morning to go be an extra for the worst indie movie of all time.  At the time I lived in the back of a hair salon on 45th& 8th.  That’s right a hair salon, the cool spinning chair, the big alien looking blow drier that comes over your head.  As I walked through Time’s Square at 5 a.m. – I realized THIS was the worst time to be out.  Because every body around me were not early risers,  they were still up from the night before. 

 As I walked along, so hopeful in my New Life in the City.  My hair freshly groomed with products stolen from my apartment/hair salon. I was in that total hat-throwing-I’m-gonna-make-it-after-all moment when from behind me I heard low faint chants.

‘white girl with a fat ass, white girl with a fat ass, white girl with a FAT ass’ 

What can only be described as a your classic 80’s movie drunken homeless wino, was following me chanting.  And as I walked faster, hoping to God he wasn’t following me, my hurried movement only emphasized the jiggling momentum of said ASS and his chant reached a fevered pitch.

‘WHITE GIRL with a fat ass WHITE girl with a FAT ASS white girl WITH a FaaaTTTT ASSSSSSSS’

And no matter how fast I hauled my now infamous ass, I could not escape those words. I have continued to run but those words have followed me. 

Here I am on the precipice of a Holiday season.  My second adult relationship has crumbled around me without warning (or at least one that I would pay attention to) and I have once again been unceremoniously dumped right before the Christmas season.   At the same time, I am coming to terms with the fact that I am the heaviest I have ever been.  199 lbs.

Refusing to give in to this, and refusing to ever be 200 lbs.  I have to do something. 

Today was my company’s annual Thanksgiving feast and I dreaded going.  All that food. All that waste.  And if I don’t eat it, will it just get thrown away?  I have thought about food every day for as long as I can remember.  I can’t stand when things are wasted.  I dread holiday parties.  And I have made relationships more complicated with my food issues, guilty bad moods, and sugar crashes.  It has to stop.   

But what would make it different this time?  And when I watch food go to waste, what would help me take a pass? We all know there are starving children in ‘insert impoverished country here’

I read this fact on the America’s Second Harvest Website.

In a country of abundance, it’s hard to believe that Americans waste over 96 billion pounds of food in just one year while 25 million Americans go hungry.

So today, I decided that I would let go of whatever happened to all that food sitting in our company’s conference room.  I would enjoy my small portion of what I wanted to eat.  And instead of buying the afternoon Coffee Delight loaded with sugar and calories that perks me up and helps me to forget that I had 3 more hours in this stuffy office, today I will donate that $5 I would have spent to this site.

http://www.secondharvest.org/donate/one-dollar-equals-16-meals

I will do this instead of thinking about the Christmas I was going to spend with the family I thought might someday be my in-laws.

I will do this instead of worry about going down and snagging some of the Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch tomorrow.  Even though a part of me still does firmly believe that free food inherently has less calories.

I will do this instead of eating an entire tub of ice cream to avoid thinking about how the same friends (that just got married) who I spent a third-wheel Christmas with 3 years ago when I got dumped, are coming in tomorrow for what now will be a third-wheel Thanksgiving.

Tomorrow on the Wed before Thanksgiving – the kick off to the holiday season, I will weigh myself.  And post it here.  And I will keep posting it here, and figure out how my Fat Ass can save the world.

P.S. – I know the girl on the graphic doesn’t have a fat ass.  But who wants to see that, really?

Tomorrow night is the one year anniv party from 6-9 at Bar None!  I know that this is a tough economic time for people, so I want to call attention to the fact that the $20 open bar is totally optional.  You are welcome to come and just have a drink! Or come watch us drink.  And here is something you can do to benefit Feeding America if you are unable to donate. 

 

Pillsbury “Home is Calling”: Pillsbury is encouraging people to share the warmth of home this holiday season by supporting Feeding America. Consumers can view the new “Home Is Calling” advertisements on Pillsbury’s web site and forward the link of the ad to a friend. Every time the link is forwarded from the website, Pillsbury will donate to help Feeding America deliver more than one pound of groceries to food banks nationwide.

Watch the ad, forward the link to friends! Though I warn you it made me a little horney for biscuits.  

I got a delightfully composed email from a ‘LUKE’ today to my WGWaFA inbox inquiring

WHAT CAN I DO TO SEE YOUR BAREASS?

Well Luke, you and all your friends can CLICK HERE to donate to BAREASS 2008! Clock is ticking, help me reach my goal before 12.31.2008 and the tasteful heiney shot will be delivered as promised.