FAT: My lifelong struggle with weight

June 2015                              July 2016

I showed this pictured to Ben, age 8, today.  "So, do you see a difference?" I asked.

"Yes.  Your hair is longer," he replied.

"What?  Doesn't it look like I've lost weight?"

He grinned.  "Yup but I'm not supposed to talk about anybody's weight, Mommy." (See, he does listen to me on occasion).

I'm not in the habit of showing before and after pictures of myself.  In fact, as I've discussed HERE, taking pictures isn't really my thing. But a couple of evenings ago, I went to the store and I found that dress I'm wearing.  When I tried it on, I was caught somewhere between tears and maniacal laughter.  The dress is an XL. Not a plus size.  Just a regular old XL.  And it fit me!

See, I've struggled with my weight my entire life.  When I say struggle, I'm not talking about an extra five or ten pounds. I'm talking about an extra 50 or 100 pounds.  As a child, growing up with chaos and uncertainty and as an adult under constant intense stress and more uncertainty, food always seemed like the one thing I could control.  Except, it's always been the other way around: food has controlled me.

By the time I graduated from high school, I was close to 300 pounds and my world was not a good one.  Not just because of the weight but because of many things--a dad with a drug problem, lack of money, zero self-confidence.  Moving away to college allowed me to get out from underneath all of that and I began to make changes.,My sophomore year in college, I started walking about four miles a day, rain or shine, every day.  And this was Oregon so, yes, lots of rain. Every day I walked and I began to eat less (sometimes not enough) until I eventually dropped about a hundred pounds. That's losing an entire supermodel.  All of it came off of me.

My mom thought I was dying. I wasn't.  But I looked in the mirror and didn't see thin or healthy.  I looked in the mirror and saw fat. Still.

This is me at my thinnest.  I was in a wedding for a dear (beautiful and thin) friend.  A few months before the wedding, she called and asked for my measurements.  She wanted me to get an actual tape measure, measure parts of my body, and then send her these measurements over the phone.

I was horrified.

I couldn't do that. 

This would prove, in black and white, that I was as fat as I thought I was.

My roommates weren't home so I grudgingly went next door and asked my (extremely petite and adorable) neighbors to measure me.  This had to rank as one of the top most humiliating moments of my life (and trust me, it's an impressive list).  I slunk back home and, with trepidation, I called the bride-to-be back.  What was worse?  That I had to get measured or that I now had to speak them out loud?

I rattled off the numbers quickly and I remember saying something like, "I hope they can find a dress that fits me."

"Oh, please," she laughed.  "You aren't the biggest size even." She probably doesn't remember that but I do.  It's been 18 years and I remember her saying that to me. I thought she was lying to be nice.

I look at that picture now and think, "Huh?  I was kind of cute.  And I looked healthy and happy. Why didn't I feel that way in the moment?  Would it have made a difference?"

My yo-yo-ing weight continued.  I gained weight after I got married.  I lost weight to help get pregnant . . . and pregnant . . . and pregnant.  I never lost some of the weight in between babies.  I had two children diagnosed with autism.  I had financial worries.  I gained and I gained and I gained. Then I lost and we got pregnant again.  Then I got depressed.  Eating gave me a false sense of control, once again.  It filled the voids. But it never filled them for long.  I ate and hated myself afterwards.  I ate even when it didn't taste good and I knew it was bad for me.

Why am I telling you all this?  I've never really told anyone these things.  It's been a kind of secret shame.  In the last two and a half months, I decided to lose weight again.  Next month, I'll turn 38 and both of my parents were diagnosed with diabetes before age 40.  I'm not ready for that and I have to give myself a chance.  The decision to lose weight meant saying no to not just food, but yes to me.  To buying better food, to making better choices, to spending time exercising, and, finally, to making myself work though why I do the things I do when it comes to food.

Right now, I've learned three things.
1) I'm worth it.  I cannot take care of my family if I don't take care of myself.  I have to remind myself of this daily.  There's no one else that will make me do this.  I have to do this myself and, ultimately, for them too.
2) Looking back is important.  I need to see that I have made progress but I also need to remember how my thinking has changed.  A year ago, I felt hopeless. Three months ago, I wasn't sure I'd really follow through with this.  Today, I know I can.  Tomorrow, I might not feel that so much so it's vital I can look back and know I have have been successful.
3) It's about the journey.  Yes, I know it's cliche but it's really, really important and I think that's why this time I lose weight will be different.  Before, I've focused on my endgame.  I've never stopped to think about why I eat and how deeply my relationship with food is so ingrained in me.  I have to pick it apart, take it out, and examine it, find out where I went wrong and try to make it right.  I have to look at why I struggle to find the beauty in me.  I have to answer the hard questions: Do I think I'm not worthy?  What do I turn to when I want to turn to food?

If you've never struggled with your weight or body image, and I mean, really struggled, all of this might not be making sense to you.  You've grown up confident in yourself and in the way you look. Your confidence comes from somewhere deep inside you.

When people say things like this to me: You're beautiful,  You're cute.  You look great. I smile, sort of, but I don't believe them.  That's not how I feel inside.  That's not what I've learned my whole life. That's my truth.  That's what I'm working on right now and that's why I'm tell you all of this.  I've always been quiet about my weight.  I'd quietly lose it, not make a big deal of it, and then within a year or two it's back.  But I'm sharing with you now because you've become, for better or worse, silent therapists.  I'm not really sure how many of you read my words but, in some ways, it doesn't matter.  Getting this out there, down on paper forces me to focus on my thought process.  I hope I'll find the glitch.  I pray this time, the weight loss will stick.  I know it's one pound at a time but the important part, the part inside of me that no one sees, that's the part that needs to change the most. 

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