So 15 years ago, after being obese my entire life, I lost 55 pounds.
At first, I typed “after being fat” … but that wasn’t accurate. I wasn’t just fat; I was genuinely, medically obese for pretty much all of the first 29 years of my life. From pictures, it seems like I was just a bit chubby up until about age 4, but I clearly remember in kindergarten being the fat kid: having the P.E. teacher sending me exasperated looks when I couldn’t crab walk more than a few feet without collapse, falling to the back and getting a terrible stitch in my side on a class walk to the park, having my best friend yell at other kids who were making fun of me.
When our first grade class staged a circus, the teacher made me the elephant, and even now, nearly 40 years later, I remember the sick feeling of humiliation and thinking, “Why did you have to call even more attention to the fact that I’m fat?” Each year when we were weighed and measured at school (do they still do this?), the nurse would call out to her helper each kids’ stats, but for me, she would whisper it in my ear. It was kind, but not particularly helpful. I remember one kid plaguing me the entire bus ride home to tell him what I weighed.
I was never bullied – I grew up in a small town with the same 100 kids in my grade all 13 years, and we all knew so much about each other that there was a sort of assured mutual destruction in picking on any one person too much; plus, as one teacher said to my mom, “We never really have to worry about SB speaking her mind, do we?”
“Fat” was always, always a part of my identity, from my earliest memories.
But “fat” was always, always a part of my identity, from my earliest memories, made even more stark by the fact that everyone else in my entire family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, was average to thin. My parents alternately made jokes about my weight and worried about it. My mom, who only knows how to cook the way Iowans ate when she was growing up (meat, starch and sugar), would have bars or cookies waiting for us when we got off the bus, but also one day surprised me with a “gift”: a rowing machine that I had little interest in but feigned enthusiasm over because I knew it was expensive and that it was her way of trying tactfully to help me.
I tried numerous times over the years to lose weight, but by my 20s, I had pretty much accepted my identity as a fat person and was reasonably OK with it. But for some reason, the prospect of turning 30 lit a fire under me like nothing else. I woke up one day at age 29 and thought, “I have been fat my entire life. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life being fat.” I joined Weight Watchers, and within 6 months, I had lost 55 pounds.
It was awesome. I got loads of affirmation and compliments. For the first time in my life, I could shop in the normal part of the store, not the plus sizes. I bought sexy underwear and bras. I wowed everyone at my 15-year high school reunion. (“Holy s—! SB looks AMAZING!” a former classmate gasped when I left for the bathroom.)
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The problem is: I wanted to lose another 10. This wasn’t some arbitrary goal: That additional 10 pounds would finally, finally move me from the “overweight” BMI category to the “normal.” I had already left behind “obese,” but I wanted, for the first time in my entire life, to be “normal.”
But I couldn’t get there. I faithfully adhered to my 18 points a day. (It was a cruel joke of WW at the time that the more weight you lost, the fewer points you got.) I stopped using my weekly 35 bonus points. I bought an elliptical machine and used it 40 minutes a day, every day. I read every article I could find on how to get past a weight-loss plateau.
The scale would not budge. And I could not let it go.
“You look so great!” people would say.
“Thanks!” I’d reply. “But I want to lose another 10.” And they’d nod in understanding.
Fifteen years later, not only have I never lost that additional 10, I’ve gained back 15. I no longer fit into some of the clothes I bought in those first heady days. I feel like a cushiony chub next to the svelte women at work. I obsess over my back fat.
In short, I would give ANYTHING to be the weight I was back then. Remember: the weight I wasn’t OK with, that wasn’t enough?
I read an article a couple years ago about a woman who took her 93-year-old grandmother out to dinner for her birthday, and when she suggested ordering dessert, her grandma said, “Oh no, I’m on a diet.” And the woman thought: “What? When does it end?”
I wish I’d saved that article (I tried desperately to find it as I was writing this post, but I couldn’t), because it was an epiphany for me. Oh, I thought when I read it. OH.
The writer, who is in her 40s, said she looks back at pictures of herself in her 20s and, remembering how much she hated her body when she was that age, wishes she could go back and tell her 20-something self how good she has it. And then she realizes that when she’s in her 50s, 60s, 70s, she’ll likely look back at her current self and think, “Why didn’t you realize how good you have it?”
A few years ago I went snowshoeing for the first time. I was with friends, and we chose what we thought was a 2-hour trail but instead was a 6-hour trail. You know, one of those situations where, by the time you realize, it’s just as hard to go back as to go forward? Snowshoeing is surprisingly easy – it’s basically just walking – but after several hours, my right hip was hurting in a way that made me think that at age 80, I was going to be pointing back to this as the turning point for when my hip went bad. My friends were in similar shape – numb feet, aching joints. All of the horsing around we’d done in the first couple hours was long over; we were now on a grim mission.
Then my friend RB, who’d become our leader by dint of being the only one who’d ever snowshoed before and being one of the most sensible people I know, held up her hand for us to stop. “Friends,” she said, “Let’s pause for a moment and give thanks. We are so blessed to be here, in this moment, and to have bodies that can do this.”
Wow. Have I ever been thankful for the body I have at this moment?
David Brooks said in “Bobos in Paradise” that the defining American characteristic is that we’re aspirational; no matter their age, gender, religion or country of origin, what makes someone American is that they believe better is possible. Other countries accept things as they are and as they’ve been for decades, even centuries. Americans: No way. Whatever the now is, it can be better. We can be richer, thinner, happier, smarter, busier. The grass is always greener.
New York Times writer Sarah Miller had an article I loved titled, “The Diet Industrial Complex Got Me, and It Will Never Let Me Go.” “My weight has probably occupied 50 percent of my thinking for my entire life,” she wrote. “Even if I don’t fat shame others, I cannot stop fat shaming myself, and yes, I know this means that I am sort of also fat shaming others by doing so, but, as you may have gathered, I can’t stop … It is too late for me, and it’s too late for pretty much everyone my age. We are so brainwashed.”
Have I ever been thankful for the body I have at this moment?
Miller’s right; it’s too late for me to ever be fully healthy in how I think of myself. But what I can do is follow the example of my friend R: Despite the hurt, despite the discomfort, to remember to stop and give thanks this moment for the body I have now and all it can do, so that 10, 20, 30 years from now, I can look back on that body and know that I had some appreciation for it and recognition that, relative to others now, and to my future self, it’s beautiful and healthy and enviable.
Things I Wish I'd Known in My 20s 