Winning the Losing Battle
“True peace is rare when you’re fat. When you’re fat, you wear armor to protect and deflect…When you’re fat, you work so hard on being invisible. You live in fear of being noticed, singled out, of having someone point out what you already know.” Kristan Higgins
I’m sitting at my desk, facing a window in which I see the reflection of a woman sitting at a computer. She startles me. Sometimes, I have trouble seeing she is me. Yet, I know her quite well. We spent decades together fighting the obesity battle. We were born chubby, unable to shed what Mother called a natural propensity for pudginess. We were pleasingly plump, amenable little girls and charmingly chunky teenagers. By the time we completed college, we were spirited and stout young women with a promising counseling career ahead of us, a career that failed to take off.
“I can’t hire you,” were the all-too-familiar words I’d come to expect, but not a single potential employer told me why I wasn’t being hired, probably out of kindness. One day, however, rejection was followed with a life-defining explanation that included a hidden piece of advice. “Your level of obesity indicates you have emotional issues that’ll diminish your effectiveness as a counselor.”
How dare him! Emotional issues? Me? He doesn’t see me for who I really am, I stubbornly thought. I’m plump, but certainly not obese. You’re the problem, not me, were the words I wanted to say but didn’t. His words haunted me, however. A few days later, I stepped on the bathroom scale, hoping to validate my anger and denial. I stood perfectly still, waiting for the needle to rest. What? 300 pounds! This can’t be! This scale must be broken. I stepped off the scale and stared at my reflection in the mirror realizing for the first time that the woman staring back at me wasn’t pleasingly plump. She was morbidly obese and at a crossroads in her life.
Curse you! No more! I shouted at my image in the bathroom mirror. You can overcome this curse. I know you can! I asserted, vowing to conquer my obesity once and for all. So that day I began my weight-loss journey with nothing more than willpower, a positive attitude, and an understanding of this simple weight loss equation: To lose weight, I’d have to burn more calories than I consumed in a day. So, I counted calories limiting myself to 1,000 calories per day, exercised portion control, and burned calories, initially walking for just 15 minutes at a time. Although my arms and legs rubbed together and chafed, I persevered, pushing myself to walk five minutes longer than I did the day before until I walked for an hour then eventually two. While walking, I occupied my mind exploring my own feelings and life experiences, peeling away layer after layer of myself hoping to understand why I was obese.
Early on, I figured out that as agonizing as being overweight was, it was nothing compared to the anxiety of changing from a fat person to a thin person and facing the terror of being thin. Yes, the terror of being thin. “Why,” you ask, “was I afraid of the very thing I so desperately wanted?” Seems irrational, right? I was unaware at the time, but I was convinced that being fat protected me from my worries and fears. If that shield was gone, then I’d be vulnerable. Vulnerability was more frightening than remaining obese. What was I afraid of? My emotions? My inadequacies? My emotional wounds? My uniqueness?
I came to understand that life’s riddled with stressors, problems, and emotions that must be faced, solved, and handled. I was a frightened adult child subconsciously believing I was ill-equipped to solve life’s challenges and problems let alone the emotions affiliated with them. Emotions were just too high-risk and painful, and I avoided them at all cost.
I swallowed them instead, pushing them aside and numbing them with food along with my fears and inadequacies. What started out as an occasional comforting treat mushroomed into a full-fledged, seemingly irreversible habit I used to ‘solve’ all the normal worries, uncertainties, and problems of life—at least for that moment. I often ran to the cookie jar or raided the refrigerator to assuage a host of feelings—jealousy, anxiety, boredom, imperfection, anger, sadness, frustration, and stress. Nothing hurt so much that it couldn’t be soothed by eating an entire chocolate cake, a whole bag of cookies, or a double-meat hamburger with fries. For a short period of time, I felt comforted and happy.
But after such moments of immediate gratification, I experienced an intense feeling of self-contempt and guilt, drowning my sorrows afterwards in quarts of ice cream. My compulsive eating took on a life of its own, totally unrelated to physical hunger. It became an instantaneous, cyclical response to every situation, misgiving, and emotional challenge I encountered. I gave food control of my life creating a vicious cycle in which I compulsively depended on food in order to cope. In short, I’d chosen self-destruction, suicide by food, and was a full-blown food addict. What a horrifying revelation!
During my two-year weight-loss journey, I discovered many of the forgotten or unconscious reasons why I overate. My extra weight was a kind of armor—a way of keeping people out and shielding me from disappointing first my parents, then my spouse, boss, relatives, and friends. I assumed that being fat made me strong, commanding, and powerful. At some level, I believed that if I got thin, I’d die or lose control. Fat was my maiden shield and strength. How could I survive without it?
Being fat also gave me a rather odd sense of camaraderie with my friends and relatives, many of whom were fat. Each of them was an important and influential person in my life. As I changed my eating habits and patterns of thinking, I feared they’d reject me. Many did. One even said, “I liked you better when you were fat!”
What surprised me the most was the grief I sometimes felt—a grief I couldn’t explain. Why was I grieving when I was being successful? Over the years, I realized I was mourning the loss of my fat identity, an identity I’d carried with me for 28 years.
As odd as it sounds, I no longer see my obesity as a curse. Rather, I see it as a blessing, a silent cry for emotional help—a cry I ignored for way too long. I was fortunate in being given the wherewithal to hear that cry, the insights to interpret that cry, and the fortitude necessary to overcome obesity.
I pause from writing this essay, catching a glimpse of my reflection in my office window. I recognize the thin woman staring back at me. She no longer startles me. I am her; she is me. Together we prevailed, vanquishing many of our hidden doubts and misgivings. We bled together, accepting we couldn’t bandage our broken pieces and wounds with food. We found the strength to open up our wounds, stick our hands inside, and pull out the core of the pain that kept us fat. Together we won the losing battle.
This was me in 1979
This is me today weighing 128 pounds
Comments