Jen Larsen’s Blog

By Jen Larsen Last updated: Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:32am PST
  • User Post: Losing weight, gaining a sense of perspective

    By Jen Larsen, on Tue Feb 3, 2009 11:23am PST

    There is nothing in the world weirder than revisiting your past in great and glorious Technicolor surround-sound. I am working on a project about my weight loss surgery, about what came before and what came after, and I am spending a lot of time sitting down and looking through things I want to call relics–my old blog, my body of work posts on elastic waist, the countess emails I wrote when I was thinking about it.

    Pictures, lists of measurements, a Word document I found on my computer that listed all the ways my life would change and all the things I would do that spoke more of the great bone-deep unhappiness I was filled up with than any determination or hope or ambition.

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  • User Post: The eternal weight loss surgery patient

    By Jen Larsen, on Tue Feb 3, 2009 11:16am PST

    A few weeks ago, there was a Chinese new year party at a friend’s parent’s house, and it was delightful, as their parties always are, and filled with excellent people who I want to talk to and good food and a lot of booze and I was very excited to go, because people! Conversation! Dressing up and wearing lipstick and socializing! It was all so exciting.

    I was careful all day with my eating because I did not want to embarrass myself with socially embarrassing gas or by getting sick.

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  • User Post: What makes you feel the most like yourself?

    By Jen Larsen, on Mon Jan 26, 2009 9:34am PST

    I’m writing again. Wait, let me say that with proper emphasis and maybe you will hear the awe and wonder and excitement that surrounds every word in that sentence with a sparkly aura of amazement and glee (and even notice the little shadow behind it that says quietly in a mournful Eeyore voice “but for how long?”): I. Am writing. Again.

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  • Getting things done

    By Jen Larsen, on Fri Jan 23, 2009 8:06am PST

    I like to think of myself as a happy-go-lucky kind of gal, spontaneous and full of fun, up for any excitement, flexible, inventive, turn-on-a-dime and ready to go. It’s a vibrant and dynamic way to be, to be always poised for something good and ready to take advantage of it;...

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  • User Post: Your body is public property

    By Jen Larsen, on Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:47am PST

    It’s like a hilarious joke, or something. One of the things that used to make me angry when I was fat was that my body was considered public property. That I had a very visible and distinct physical characteristic which people felt the need to comment on. As if the fact of my fat and my size needed to be acknowledged, strangers felt it was important to demonstrate their powers of observation, helpful assholes felt it necessary to remind me of my great and space-hogging size and how offensive it was to right-thinking people. That when someone would look at me, you could almost hear them measuring out my width in inches, comparing it to their own width, breathing a sigh of relief when they assured themselves that they may have Figure Flaws, but at least their figured wasn’t that flawed!

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  • What would make you give up working from home?

    By Jen Larsen, on Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:46pm PST

    <p>More or less officially, I am out of work. I had a contract job as a proofreader at an advertising agency; they wanted me full time, and to run the department. I said I can only do part-time! They took me on, anyway. When I didn’t change my mind about working for them full-time, they... Read More »

  • User post: The Amazing Interview of Dietgirl

    By Jen Larsen, on Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:37pm PST

    Shauna is Dietgirl. She has Amazing Adventures, and writes not only a so-good blog about them, but also, recently, a book. It is, you will be astonished to learned, called The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl, and it is marvelous–it’s funny, moving, beautifully written, with a cast of wonderful characters and a story at the heart of it that will make you feel, for real, inspired and hopeful. It’s not a book about dieting, about how happiness is only achievable if you’re thin, but a book about health and about happiness.

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  • Appreciating your mom

    By Jen Larsen, on Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:13am PST

    Today is my beautiful mother’s birthday. She is mumblety years old, and looks about half that, which is sometimes very annoying. She has the kind of perfect pure white hair that you are forced to describe as “snowy,” the kind that you wish you will have when your hair...

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  • Expand your thinking about exercise

    By Jen Larsen, on Wed Jan 14, 2009 10:55am PST

    For the great majority of my life, I was a fat girl who didn’t see anything beautiful or positive about her body, her size, her shape, whose only purpose and goal in life was to lose every one of those...

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  • User post: Is It Worth Ponying Up For Premium Denim?

    By Jen Larsen, on Tue Jan 13, 2009 11:54am PST

    The jeans in my drawers, all three pairs, all come from Old Navy. I have three pairs of jeans that are no longer my size set aside to give away, and they are all Old Navy jeans too. There is nothing wrong with Old Navy jeans, really–they are very inexpensive and come in an exciting...

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About This Author

Jen Larsen is a writer, editor, and proofreader, living for less in the wilds of Utah. She writes daily at Jen Larsen (dot net) and Dearest Mabel. She has more than ten years of writing, editing and proofreading experience, with a focus on professional, scientific, technical, medical, and consumer markets. For the length of the site’s run, she was a daily blogger for Conde Nast’s Elastic Waist, posting under the name Anne Fitzgerald about her personal life (particularly her weight loss surgery), sex, books, health, eating and cooking, exercise, and shopping for shiny things. She’s got an MFA in creative writing from The University of San Francisco and is putting it to good use in her spare time.