I've always wanted to be lean, strong and healthy.

Well, sorta.

A more honest statement would be: I've always wanted to be thin and pretty.

I dress it up in the more respectable phrase - lean, strong and healthy.
That's what I would recommend to a client, or student, or friend.
I would recommend that they lose weight and/or get in shape for the sake of their health and well-being.
I would try to convince them that "if you have your health..."
or however that old cliche goes.

But when it comes to pinpointing my own dreams and my own goals...I'm full of crap.
I want to be thin and pretty.

Health is nice.
Universe, I 'm grateful for my health. Please don't try to teach me a lesson by somehow taking my health away so I that I can learn to appreciate it.

I DO I DO I DO appreciate my health.

It's just that I would appreciate being thin and pretty so much more.

Why?
Dunno.
Maybe I'm shallow.

Or maybe I'm scarred.

When someone suffers repeated, systematic abuse as a child, they're scarred for life.
Look, being damaged is no excuse for bad behavior,
but is trying to become thin and pretty really that bad??

It was my first criticism.
I don't remember being 'wrong' or 'bad' about anything prior to my pediatrician telling my mother to switch me over to skim milk because I was overweight for my age and height.

Did he ask about my activity level?
No.
Did he recommend more fruits, vegetables or lean protein?
NO.

With his irresponsible skim milk recommendation he started my mother down a slippery slope of imposed deprivation that contributed to my developing an eating disorder.

My mother embarrassed me publicly.

At social functions, while the other kids were enjoying dessert she would openly, loudly announce that I was on a diet and was not allowed to have any treats.
I sat there like a freak, watching the other kids.
If I sulked or showed any kind of disappointment, my mother would again embarrass me by asking me, openly and loudly, if I wanted to be fat like one of Cinderella's ugly step-sisters and if so, then GO AHEAD, have dessert.
I would put my head down and she would announce to everyone, SEE SHE DOESN'T WANT TO BE FAT AND UGLY!

On the rare occasions that I was allowed to visit a friend's house for play time or a birthday party, my mother would walk me to the door and tell the parent that I was not allowed to have any snacks, desserts or birthday cake because the doctor had put me on a diet.
While the other kids enjoyed cake or ice cream or god forbid, a Twinkie, they would look at me with wide eyes as I sat there watching them and feeling left out.

Even when the adults took pity on me and told me it was a special occasion, that it was alright to have 'just a little piece,' I would refuse, not out of discipline, but out of fear of my mother. She would grill me afterward. She would put me on the spot and ask if I had indulged in any of the forbidden food. I believe I DID slip up one time. I remember it vaguely. One of the mothers had convinced me to have 'just a little piece' and I did. She was an adult after all, an authority figure. If she said it was alright then it must be.

When I admitted this to my mother during her post-visit grilling she became enraged. How dare I let some other woman override her edict. What was the matter with me? Who the hell was so-and-so's mother to give me permission to eat cake? Did I want to go live with THOSE people instead? Since I was willing to listen to so-and-so's mother I must be UNhappy living with my own Mommy and Daddy and my cats, so I should go live with those other people if that's who I was going to listen to. She hollered at me. Sometimes she'd hit me, too.

In spite of all that imposed deprivation in and out of my household, I was still chubby. Back in the day, we ate Arnold's or Pepperidge Farm white bread, bologna and cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, Spaghetti-Os, sugary cereals, steak with butter, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, all in the name of the Four Food Groups and the All-American diet.

And I was sedentary.
I was not permitted to work up a sweat.
I was not permitted to run around outside with the other kids.
I was not allowed to make noise.

Silent, sedentary, and so hungry.
The crappy, processed foods I lived on were not filling.
The high corn syrup and corn starch content of most of my breakfast and lunchtime foods gave me energy highs, then dropped me down in the low blood sugar pits. My stomach growled by the time dinner was served.

I was starving when I sat down to dinner.
Starving and anxious.
My parents didn't get along.
My father was hungry and grouchy after his day at work.
His high ball cocktails before supper either brightened his mood or made him defensive against my contentious, offensive mother.

They could explode at any moment.

I wolfed down my food in a hurry. I wanted to be able to put away my first round of food and grab a giant helping of seconds before my parents were finished eating or started fighting thereby signalling the end of dinnertime.

My father scolded me for eating so much so fast.
He accused me of making noises like a pig when I ate.
It must have sounded that way as I gulped and snarfed at my food.
I often had the hiccups.

I was 5 years old when all this started.
The humiliation.
The derivation.
The dieting.

At five years old, I understood that if I were thin and pretty, the doctor would NEVER have recommended the switch to skim milk.

For more of Lisa's story and her DAILY look at post-op life:
http:/./TheSkinnyOnline.Blogspot.com

About Me
Clifton, NJ
Location
44.2
BMI
RNY
Surgery
08/16/2006
Surgery Date
Oct 21, 2002
Member Since

Friends 20

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Compulsive OverEater
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