I was once told by a professor, to get a better answer one must ask a better quality question. So in my personal quest to understand my struggle with obesity I began with a question. For years I asked myself “why can’t I lose weight?” The only answer I got from that was “because you eat too much, and have no discipline to exercise regularly.” So I tried to eat less and be rigorous in my exercising. I would lose some weight and then gain it all back and more. That went on for more than 30 years, over 1000 pounds up and down. Finding myself once again on the plus side I began yet another diet and another exercise regime – then my former professor’s advice came to mind. What I really want to know is why to I eat when I’m not hungry and once full keep eating to the point of passing out? Why would I do this to myself over and over again? Why do I beat myself up mentally, emotionally and physically as “atonement” for all the eating? Am I crazy?
Starting with the last question first, the obvious answer is a resounding “Yes, sweetie you are crazy.” Ah but don’t worry because this “crazy” is merely average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, and it can be fixed. It will take time, and could be painful but it’s a pain worth experiencing and not like the beating up you’ve been doing all those years. The awful painful truth of the matter is that in the very beginning I was made to believe a horrible lie-- that lie was that there was something wrong with me and that something needed to be fixed. I believed I was not okay as I was— mostly that my body was not okay, it was too large. Now at eleven this is strange, given that I was little over five feet tall, wore a size 9 shoe, and weighed about 110 pounds. Okay a little bigger than average, but nothing to alert the media. So food was the declared enemy. Declared by others, cause no one asked me—I loved food. I believed food was the way to fix it.
It starts out slowly, almost imperceptibly—you bring home a good mark in school and are promptly rewarded with cookies. Next there is a bad day and another sweet treat to ease the pain. The connection is made and from there it grows. That tasty morsel is reward comforter pacifier. Every up, every down is accompanied by a BLT— bite, lick, or taste. So many feelings, it’s almost overwhelming and expressing actual true feelings is FORBIDDEN! My immediate response—eat something, choke down the feelings. Soon the food IS the feeling just like that. The eating, or not eating, is about not experiencing the feelings. Then when the weight begins to add up those treats become the source of my punishment. My increasing size is evidence of my imperfection as a human being so I have lost the “privilege” to eat like an ordinary human, because I no longer am—I am now THE FAT GIRL!
To be clear the title of THE FAT GIRL (TFG) is not based on your actual size, it is based on your size relative to those bestowing the title—who the hell are they?? This status for me was my Scarlet Letter. Now I must stand in the stockade and suffer my shame, the awfulness of bearing witness to the dirty secret that for me food is not just fuel for the body—food is breath, and life. The dirty secret that food is my God. That is the core of any addiction and my relationship to food is an addiction. So stand there TFG because this is all the “honor” you deserve now, this is good enough for you. Maybe when you lose the weight you will be someone we should respect and give “true” honor.
Who said this is all I deserve? Who said that “good enough” is now good enough for some of us? When did I stop dreaming of big things for a big girl? When did gaining weight become the singular and ultimate definition of failure? When did this become the norm? When did success disappear? As I began to hear these questions resonate in my core I began to sense the feelings growing— all of them. Anger, hurt, fear, rage, pride, delight, joy and total terror. Each day, more and more this sensation of feelings crept into my being. Sometimes while riding the bus or walking in the city it’s like I can feel everything going on inside people as we pass on the street. I feel the aches of loss and sadness. I feel the despair and hopelessness. I realized that it was this energy in the world that gnawed at my guts and wrenched them until I just wanted to eat myself numb, and then throw it all up to get all, all, all the feelings out of me. Then I just wanted to be away from everyone and everything because feeling is too much. The feelings are like an assault on every fibre of my being, every nerve was on over stimulation and the thoughts came so fast and furious they seemed more like flashes of light and not full thoughts.
That was then, this was a new day. As they began to rise up and for the first time in too many years I resisted the Pavlovian reflex to stuff them down with thick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I reached for a tissue to wipe my tears rather than a cheese-stick. I stared in the mirror and not in the open refrigerator for confirmation that it is not “good enough” until I declare it is. The things in this book are not new, but they were the “wake-up” call I needed. Now I say to myself “I am enough as I am, and I am GOOD! Once I woke up to the connection the addiction was released, however it is still very easy to "fall asleep" again and fall back into addiction. The key, for me, is to re-acquaint me with myself regularly.
