Jenny_F
"Quod me nutrit me destruit"
I can't remember exactly when it began, but I have had a weight problem since early childhood.
I was teased endlessly as a kid and it really destroyed my self esteem. I always felt that as long as I was fat I wouldn't be good enough. This has carried through into my adult life. Not good enough for the jobs, the men and just about anything I wanted, most days not good enough to get out of bed.
Even after successfully dieting down to "normal" size throughout the years, I could never get rid of the Fat Girl- people still saw me as one, and I still felt like one.
Then the weight would come back and I would feel like a huge failure all over again. One of the most destructive things that dieting has done to me was to reinforce the feeling that I was a failure and I would never reach my goals, whether it be weight loss or other endeavours in life.
The dieting and gaining became a vicious cycle for me, every second year I would slim down just to regain the weight and feel miserable again. The fatter I got, the more depressed I'd get, the more depressed I'd get, the more I'd eat. I'm not even sure anymore if the depression is making me fat or if being fat is making me depressed- I guess it's got to be both.
Despite all the cruelty I've put up with from people over the years, for the most part I was a popular kid, a popular teenager and a socially comfortable adult.
I always had friends who were supportive of me no matter what size I was and for that I am greatful but I think in the back of my mind I was always waiting for people to suddenly realize I was fat and ditch me. The one sure way to keep people around was to make them laugh- hell I didn't have the looks or the body so I might as well have a sense of humor. I took on a typical fat girl personality, trying desperately to make people laugh so they would forget my size, poking fun and laughing at myself before they had a chance to laugh at me. I chose thin friends so I would be thin by association, nobody can blend in or dissapear into a crowd like I can.
There is so much shame that comes with being an obese person, so much guilt and embarrassment and self-loathing. It's a low place, it's the pits.
I have an addiction to food. I am an addict. Unfortunatley for the food addict we cannot stop eating-the way a person who is addicted to cigarettes can stop smoking or an alcoholic can stop drinking. This makes keeping my addiction under control so incredibly hard. Food is my best friend and my enemy- that which nourishes me also destroys me ("Quod me nutrit me destruit")
I didn't get to 320 pounds by eating too much salad, there's nothing physically wrong with me that would cause me to be obese, I don't have thyroid issues.
That's right- I'm comming out of the FAT closet- I ate myself up to 320 pounds, I ate every bite. Along with it I ate my feelings: my sadness, my loneliness, my disappointment and everything else I was feeling. I stuffed all my emotions down with food, and here I am, with all those emotions still facing me and a tired unhealthy, unattractive body to contend with.
I ate to celebrate, to reward myself, and out of boredom. Food was my way of sharing with friends and family, eating became a social event and for me the food was always first on my mind- the company of family and friends was a second thought for me. I was always staring at the menu while the others caught up on each others lives.
For the obese person, food is the primary goal. Food became an obsession. Everyday I would wake up and think what I would eat, and where I would eat. There was always the thought of food in the back of my mind-like a heroin addict focused on the next high. I would binge like a bear before going into hibernation for the winter-I'd eat till I could puke.
I also became very good at hiding my eating- I can be very deceptive. I would eat in secret and dispose of the evidence, or stuff myself before going out to dinner so I would seem satisfied in the resturant.
That's not the only thing I got good at. Having been obese for my whole life, I can walk by any mirror and not look at myself, I can put up with the searing pain of clothes digging into me all day long, I can shop in a maternity store and convince anyone I'm pregnant and not just fat.
You can't understand, without being an obese person, how much of our life revolves around being one-or trying not to be. When you are obese, you know it every second of every day-there's no escape from it.
On September 27th, 2006 I put my life in the hands of God and my surgeon Dr. Lutrzykowski and took a leap off the obesity bandwagon. I had a duodenal switch, which is currently the most extreme form of weight loss surgery available.
Ever since then I have been re-learning how to eat, what to eat and when to eat.
I am trying to find new ways of coping with emotions without using food, trying to find ways to fill the voids that I used to fill with food. Part of that is really discovering what those voids are and why they exist. This is the hardest thing I have ever done- but I know that in the end it will be the most rewarding.
Somewhere under all this fat-under all this pain, is the real Jen and everyday I get closer to finding her .
