DeeBee
No One Likes a Fat Chick – An Introduction to Me.
I guess I finally realized that I was way too fat when I took a plane trip once in the early 90’s. An airplane is as good a place as any to discover the true size of one’s own ass. It’s confined and space is limited. I was sent up to Minneapolis for a conference and was flying economy class. I have no clue who is flying business or first class, everyone I’ve ever talked to says their company won’t pay for those fares. Maybe it’s people using air miles. I can never seem to use my air miles, they never have any seats. But, if I were to have flown business or first class, I would have never discovered my ass.
So there I was, boarding the flight bound for Chicago, changing planes at O’Hare and then on to Minneapolis. I hadn’t flown in years and it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t fit into an airplane seat. But there I sat, or attempted to. I couldn’t believe it! I could barely sit down. I was so embarrassed. I had an aisle seat and thankfully, there was no one in the center seat so I could flip the arm up and let it spread.
After that, I resolved to loose weight. I didn’t want to be one of those people who demand they make everything bigger for me; I know that’s ridiculous. I’ve heard where some organizations for fat people try to get it where they can have two airplane seats for the price of one, or try and force movie theatre owners to re-arrange seats in some way to make it more comfortable for them. I think there’s an organization called something or other for Fat Acceptance. What a laugh. I hate to tell them, but that ain’t gonna happen. Fat reeks of excess and laziness. Speaking as one of those people who find standard seats uncomfortable, better to put the fork down and get up and move around than try and make the standard world fit you! I know, easier said than done. Believe me, I know. The fateful airplane trip was in 1994 and I’ve been fighting ever since.
The real self punishment didn’t begin till the winter of 1999. I had met a guy the summer of 1998 and at first didn’t think anything of him. We met through work and I pegged him immediately as one of these handsome, hip, successful cruel-heart guys. The type that would never give me the time of day. That was usually pretty fortunate because who needs them anyway, right? But we started e-mailing on a personal level after a few months of working together. This surprised me because like I said, this type of guy never looks at me. As a matter of fact, in the four years since I parted company with my boyfriend/housemate, no guy ever looked at me. I would wonder why. After all, I’m single, successful, have a great sense of humor, am independent, creative, fun. If I were a man, women would be lined up for me. But, my bottom line was basically my bottom line. I knew deep down I was too fat, but denial can be a strong motivator to do nothing. I guess you could have called me a reverse-anorexic. I would look in the mirror and think I looked okay.
So, anyway, after an incident with my car, this guy starts in on me with telling me I can call him if I need to talk etc. We started out with e-mails. Then it escalated to phone calls. He would call me long distance (he lives in California) and we would talk for hours at a time. I was telling some friends about this and they convinced me that he might have a thing for me. I wanted to maintain that he just liked me as a friend. After all, I was a fat chick, therefore disqualified from the romantic aspects of life. But, my friends assured me, men don’t usually seek out females as “just friends”. Further to that, they don’t call up long distance and talk for hours on end to just friends.
But, as fate would have it, I seemed to find one who did. After a few months and a few heart to heart discussions I decided to bite the bullet and ask him how he really felt about me. Maybe looks didn’t matter to him. Maybe I finally met someone who can see past the surface and appreciate me for who I am. I was far too yellow to ask in person so I sent a letter, snail mail as we in the e-generation call it. I didn’t hear back from him for weeks, and that didn’t look good for the home team. I spoke with him and got e-mails, but nothing about my letter. Finally, I had to force it out of him. Yep, just as I thought, I was deep in the heart of Friendville.
Then, the opportunity arose for me to go to California for a few days. I had seen him the last time in December of 1998. He provided me with a plane ticket to go home and see my mother who was being treated for lung cancer. Then the next time I saw him was at the beginning of April 1999. Unbeknownst to him, I had dropped a significant amount of weight. He told me after I was back in Phoenix that he was completely taken aback when he saw me. Told me I looked terrific. Truth be told, I had dropped most of the weight right after I got the “We’re just friends” kiss of death. He was an unknowing catalyst for a big change in my life. I decided at whatever cost, I had to loose weight. If I were thin, he would feel differently about me. I was surprised enough that he even wanted to be my friend because I was so fat, so being crushed with the Just Friends Kiss Of Death was the final blow.
So, I stopped eating. I lost 11 pounds in a week and a half. I also got to exercising like a fiend. It was really working! It wasn’t too hard to do, either. Anytime I felt hungry, I would tell myself what a fat looser I was and that no one was ever going to love me. I would think about the guy, become very depressed and refuse to eat anything. I would nibble just enough to keep me exercising at top capacity. The depression is what really did it for me.
It’s very difficult for most people to loose weight, and that is an understatement. There are many factors involved and as diverse as there are personalities in the world, that’s how diverse the reasons for obesity are. Some people have medical reasons, some just like to eat. Some are fat as a reaction to abuse. But most all who have maintained a large frame throughout life must confront one thing: if I loose weight, I’ll be different. People will treat me different, I’ll look different, everything will be different. The Undiscovered Country. It’s difficult to confront. Even though being fat is the pits and you don’t like how you’re treated, it becomes a habit, and like all habits, bad or good, it’s hard to break. It’s like an insecurity blanket. You get used to the social abuse, you get used to asking for a booth in a restaurant because you’re petrified that your fat ass will never fit into one of those chairs with arms on it. You get used to disqualifying yourself from social situations because you’re a fat chick and no one likes a fat chick. As a fat chick, you get used to knowing clothing choices are limited. I had dropped some weight before Christmas one time and thought for my company’s Christmas party, I would treat myself to a new party dress. I was feeling fit and fairly trim for the first time in a while so after doing the usual scour of the one rack set aside for fat chicks in the department store, I decided to look at the seemingly unlimited choices in the “normal” sizes. Let me state one thing here as well. They are getting better about fat chick clothing selections in department stores, but the PLUS department is almost always located far and away from the “normal” clothes. Usually up on a different floor near bed linens or something. How ironic is that?
So, there I was, wandering in uncharted territory, the ladies department, sized 0-12. Normally I don't dare even stop in these areas because I'm sick of the salesgirls looking at me like I don't wear a human size. I was looking for the party dresses and a woman floor clerk asked me if she could help me find something. I said I was looking for eveningwear. She asked me if this was for myself and I said yes, then she proceeded to tell me that the PLUS sizes were up on the third floor, next to bed linens! I wanted to shoot her.
No one can screw you up quite like your family.
Thin people have weird ideas on what makes a fat person fat. They think it’s due to laziness and some personality flaw. Sometimes it is, but not all the time. I’ve known women to put on weight starting as a child because they were sexually abused and they want to appear as unattractive as possible. In my particular case, I have been chunky most of my life. I think the last time I was thin, I was about 6 years old. The reason for my abundant butt lies in poor eating habits learned at home from dear old mum. In my family, affections were scarce and therefore, food is love. My father was an alcoholic and my mother tried to make up for his shortcomings by feeding us till by the time I was 12 I weighed more than I should weigh now. I learned how to eat large portions of very fatty foods. I thought that was normal, because in my world it was. We’d come home from school at 3 in the afternoon and my mom would have cheeseburgers waiting for us as an after school snack! Then there was supper. Chicken fried steak, not one for each of us, but several for each of us, mash and gravy, fried chicken, huge creamy casseroles etc., you get the picture. Then dear ol dad would bring home candy for us. He would commute to San Francisco from the Leave it to Beaver ‘burbs we lived in every day and come home via the train bearing goodies. So, there was breakfast, consisting of eggs and bac, toast, sometimes French Toast or pancakes, then a packed lunch where mumsy included lots of sugary snacks, then the cheeseburgers, the candy from dad, then a huge dinner. My childhood was a feeding frenzy. Put this together with a robust line of people (we’re not delicately boned, mind you) and this spells disaster in America.
When I eventually left home for college, I managed to find some pretty porky roommates who’s eating habits matched my own. Hey, this is normal eating. Again, reinforcements of my bad habits. I did a bit better though, because I always had an athletic streak and all the walking on campus slimmed me out a bit, but I still remained overweight. Then after college, I found another roommate, a male, whom I shared a house and life with for the next 8 years. We were eating partners as well. He came from a robust line of people with big eating habits and so it goes….
By the time I decided to live on my own, I weighed close to 300lbs. Hey! Where are all the new boyfriends? I thought once I was single and out on my own I would have dates all the time! I didn’t look that bad…..again, the reverse anorexia. After a couple of years of no one calling me, I began to realize how bad I was.
So, I joined Weight Watchers at work. Where I was working at the time offered it up as a benefit. I’ve tried Weight Watchers off and on for the past 20 years or so and have never lost any weight. That’s not true, I lost 30 pounds one time and when my mother saw me she said nothing. I finally said, ya know ma, I’ve lost 30 pounds since you last saw me. She replied in disgust, yeah, and it looks like you could lose 30 more.
My mother has been my worst enemy in all this. The very person who shoveled food in my face all my life is the one shaming me for being fat.
I was trying to remember when it was I started getting fat. Looking back at old photos from when I was a child, I was an average kid up until I was about 8 or 9 years old. Then I started getting chubby and it didn't seem to stop. My brother started teasing me relentlessly and my mother started nagging me about my weight. She always said that I should lose it now as it was just going to be harder to lose when I got older. Well now I have two things to say about that. The first being, how could she criticize me like that when I was just a child and she was the one feeding me? Second, it was NEVER easy to lose.
From then on I have always been the fat kid, the fat teen and the fat adult. There has never been a time when I've not obsessed with my weight and how I looked in public. I can't remember having a real choice in clothing. If it fit, I was elated. In recent years, it's been an inability to physical activities. Now I have co-morbidities associated with my weight. Something has got to be done.
Hunger is a very strong feeling. I rarely eat when I'm not hungry. As a matter of fact, I will usually go without until I'm voracious, then I'm ready to eat a dinosaur. That feeling of hunger can make you rationalize some strange thinking. When I feel really hungry I'll tell myself it's okay to devour an 8 piece fried chicken dinner because I was really really hungry. Then like a snake, I'll go a day without eating. Then I'll pig out again. If I could learn to eat little bits when I'm not hungry and therefore never feel hungry, maybe I can beat this weight thing. Who am I kidding, I've tried that. Life gets in the way. I can't eat little meals every four hours like a fitness trainer once told me. But shit happens. I go to school as well as work full time. I can eat breakfast at 6am, then second breakfast at 10am, the lunch at noon, then a snack at 4, then if I have class I don't get to eat again till 11pm. By then I'm voracious and stopping off at the 24 hour Mexican taco stand with the torpedo-sized burritos sounds wonderful. Delivery from the hunger!
Maybe I'm just not disciplined enough? If that's the case, even this surgery isn't going to work out for me. They say your tastes change. What if I get an uncontrollable craving for something that's going to make me sick? What if I don't lose any weight at all and feel sick all the time? What if what if what if???
