My Fat Story

 

            Have you ever stopped to wonder, “How did I get here?”  Here. Today. Now. I weigh 220.  I think by understanding our past, we can understand our present, and when we do, it may help us in the future. 220 is not bad….for a male, football player! But I am a middle-aged, medium-boned, 5’7 tall woman.

            It all began when I was born. Yea, I like to take things back to the root. I weighed 7.4 lbs on August 5^th, 1975. I started gaining weight right away and that was a good thing. I was perfectly proportioned until about 7 years old. I spent summers with my dad and his family and ate pretty well.  By pretty well I mean we had soda, chips and cookies on top of the regular meals of sugary cereal, PB&J sandwiches and delicious meat and vegetable dinners with plenty of bread and butter.  My dad liked to eat and cook! I learned a lot from him.  My mom liked to eat and cook too, we just did not have as much of the processed junk foods. 

            After one summer with my dad, we came home and I guess I grew a little too much, in the wrong way.  I can recall my mom telling people that I came back from my dad’s fat.  By ten, I was feeling really badly about myself. Looking at photos, you can see, I was a tiny bit overweight but I felt horrendous.  By 11, boys started noticing me, and I felt better about myself.  I thought if I were really that fat and ugly they probably would not be interested in me.  I had very pretty friends and boys always wanted them to be there girlfriends since we were very young.  I was never like them.  I never had good grades.  I did not think I was smart. I had been diagnosed with learning disabilities which now I know is linked to divorce. If I had any talent it was overshadowed by anyone else around me.  I always felt alone, misunderstood, unloved and afraid to be good at anything.  I thought, if anyone really knew me, they would not like me, and my good would never be good enough. I never felt loved by my parents or grandparents or anyone for that matter. Since I was too afraid to be myself no one ever really knew me. When I was 12, I decided to live with my dad.   The change of environment was literally life saving.  Boys, boys, boys! They flocked to me.  It was a really good way to boost my self-esteem.  But I was highly influenced by their poor habits.  For a while, I practically lived off of Coca-Cola!  I began smoking and doing drugs.  I was mildly anorexic.

            After a year, I moved back with my mom, people still called me “chubby” but I was really not at all fat. I was skinny! For me! I was like a new person when I moved back to California.  I had a close boy friend and maintained a long distance relationship for a couple years.  He held my heart! But life goes on. I continued to make friends with others who accepted me because I did drugs, drank and rocked on!  It feels good to be accepted, especially, when you have felt so rejected your whole life.  Slowly, deep seeded insecurities took over again and it was a constant battle to bury them throughout all of high school.  I was never as skinny as I would have liked.  I only really felt good about myself if I could get a guy to have sex with me.  If a guy wanted to have sex with me, I was not interested in him; I was actually grossed out by most guys who wanted to be sexual.  Guys can be really gross!  Some of you who are reading this may be thinking I sound pretty gross too!  Not that it is any excuse, but promiscuity is very common among children of divorced parents and broken homes in general.

            During my senior year of high school I began starving myself again. I lost weight and looked great! I had a boyfriend and we were very sexually active. He did not know I did drugs.  It was easy to hide because I only did them recreationally and was never addicted.  I think I weighed about 145 and felt really happy with how my clothes were fitting me. After graduating from high school, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ, he so transformed my heart that my life turned completely around.  I stopped smoking, drinking, drugging, kissing, screwing, I even stopped listening to heavy metal music.  All of those things summed up my life.  Food was the only “acceptable” drug in the church!  You can imagine I wanted to get married asap so sex could be an “acceptable” part of my life again too. But I was only 18 and my boyfriend and I had only known each other two and a half years, so we waited.  When we did finally get married three years later, at 22, I weighed 173.  I felt so horribly fat.  I tried to lose weight the healthy way but it was not working with all the stress of planning a wedding and being a full time student.  After our wedding, I had a great job for a whole two months.  Married life was nothing short of disastrous.  I gained 50 pounds practically overnight. We were so bad for each other but that is not what this story is about.   

            Losing weight seemed impossible.  I joined weight watchers and gained 10 pounds.  I worked out regularly but that did nothing!   Three years later, I conceived our daughter, weighing in at 225.  When she was born I reached 260 something.  I heard that the weight would slip off easily while breastfeeding.  I breastfed for 14 months and lost maybe ten pounds. 

            With my marriage constantly on the rocks, weight loss never seemed the priority.  Food was my only comfort. My husband always told me he liked me the way I was but knew I was not at a healthy weight. I met a new friend in 2001.  We each had a daughter the same age.  We both liked working out, talking about health and challenging each other with new weight loss goals. I discovered that I am very competitive! I was down to 180 when things in my marriage seemed different.  Good felt weird. I was not at all comfortable and without realizing what I was doing I packed on as much weight as I could, as quickly as I possibly could, until I felt comfortable again.

            Luckily, my church was starting a new weight loss support group called Lose It For Life.  I began attending to learn instead of lose. In describing my behavior I coined the term “foodicidal”. I knew I needed some deep emotional healing before I would feel comfortable at a healthy weight.  So, instead of focusing on my outward appearance, I began looking at my soul. Over the past decade I have lost some weight and gained it back many times within a ten pound range. I believe that “slow and steady wins the race”.   When I do reach a healthy weight I want to be able to maintain it with in a ten pound range. I’m hoping I will be comfortable at 170.  I have 50 pounds to go! I’m still learning.  Always learning, always growing (in the right way)!

            God has done SO MUCH to heal my soul but that is for another story!