Weighty Matters

The Globe and Mail is currently running a series where they provide excerpts from a newly published book. This week it’s The Hungry Years by William Leith. I always find books about being fat so tedious.

It’s always the same schtick.

Someone is depressed or a food addict or otherwise out of control. It's never normal people dealing with normal problems who would just like to lose a few pounds. I suppose an itemization of epic failure makes for more compelling reading, but I just find it annoying. Overweight people are always presented this way. Maybe the appeal is some bastardized there but for the grace of God process. I can imagine the reader saying to him or herself, “Hey I may be maxed out on my credit cards, in a loveless marriage and in a career I hate, but at least I’m not fat. I’m not that out of control.”

For that is what we’re really talking about. That is the label that is being applied.

I remember a girl in high school saying she’d rather have cancer than be fat. (I don’t want to even imagine her internal landscape.) But I bring this up because many times, this is actually how people view the matter of weight. This is the trashing of other human beings that goes on.

I’m really trying to read the book excerpts with an open mind, to be understanding, but as someone who has had a weight problem since childhood, well forgive me. I just don’t get it. In my darkest moments I have never come close to feeling like I'm going to lose the will to live if I don’t have white bread toast with butter for breakfast. That being said, food shouldn't be exempt from the realm of addiction. What I don't understand is why food addiction is behind the weight problems of seemingly everyone who decides to write a book about the experience. It's an inaccurate picture that is being painted.

Another example. I picked up the latest issue of Oxygen, a women's fitness magazine. I find doing this hard. As I shuffle my size 18 frame to the check out, I feel like a walking joke. But I do it anyway because I like to read these magazines. It's important to not give up and have a sense of what you're aiming for. The magazine also has excellent health and exercise information and the success stories give me hope.

But I found the success story I read in this latest issue questionable. Here’s why. The feature was about a woman who lost 43 pounds and was featured on the Dr. Phil show. She used his book, The Ultimate Weight Solution, and got stellar results.

Great. Good for you missy.

Here, according to the article, is what this woman ate in a typical day when she was overweight.

Breakfast: Pop-Tarts, Fruit Loops, Captain Crunch, Diet Coke (heh!)
Snack: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
Lunch: French Fries, Toast
Snack: Junk Food
Dinner: Any meat. Mashed Potatoes with Gravy, One Vegetable (yes. one.)
Snack: Popcorn with Butter. Junk Food.

Am I the only one who finds this ridiculous? Did I miss something? How can you eat like this and NOT expect to be overweight?

I don't vent vent my frustration like I am the Mother Teresa of healthy eating. I’m anything but.

But seriously y'all. C’mon.

I'm overweight. I'm probably technically obese. I don't eat like this woman did.

Have I had my moments of bad food choices? Yup. I still do. All the time. There have been plenty of occasions that I could have called a friend when I was upset. I got chocolate covered almonds instead.

There are many days, usually late afternoon, when my brain is fried and I’m tired, that I get a chocolate bar from the vending machine because that’s easier than taking a 10 minute walk. Guilty as charged.

Do I like potato chips more than I like celery? You bet your ass I do.

But I think I’m like most people with a weight problem. It caught up with me somehow. I had food allergies I wasn’t aware of initially – always a way to gain. I don’t exercise enough because it’s tough and tiring and I hate it. Or I get too wrapped up in things – usually taking care of everything else but myself and not setting appropriate boundaries. But none of these things are an excuse. They are all simply choices and my weight is a result of them. I can deal with that.

What I can't deal with is being lumped in with the whacked out food addicts or (let's be blunt shall we?) idiots who are regularly making food choices universally acknowledged as just plain stupid. Here’s the dirty little secret about being fat. Overweight people, like most people, have healthy meals, day in and day out. We’re not chronic out of control eaters that come home and scarf down a gallon of ice cream, or an extra large bag of Doritos because we had a bad day or hate our lives or can’t control our emotions.

We have crappy metabolisms, or can’t handle carbohydrates well. We don't make exercise a priority. Or we’re just busy, muddling through as best we can. Unlike most people, we can’t have French fries two or three times a week or regular helpings of comfort food when in crisis, and not pay for it with some kind of weight gain.

But does any of that get considered? No. To be overweight in this day and age is to be crucified on the cross of public judgment. You’re a loser. You don’t count.

I do count. I’m not a loser.

I hold down a job. Pay my bills. Contribute. I’m a kind and compassionate person. I’m also a size 18.

Do I like being overweight? No I don’t. No one bit. At all. Would I like to do something about it? Yes, and I will. I got a new career after 12 years of being a secretary. Frankly, if I can do that, I can do anything.

I want to stop living a life where if I get dessert, I’m not wondering if people are looking at me thinking, “She shouldn’t be having that”.

I want my knees to stop hurting.

I want to wear clothes I really like. Not being able to wear clothes you love is a drag. In fact, there’s a special kind of heartbreak in trying on a pair of pants, fastening them up and having the button snap off in one gut wrenching rip, as it's unable to hold back your girth. Then you put the pants back and get out of the store as quickly as possible, hoping a sales clerk hasn't noticed.

Or your pregnant friends, oblivious in their understandable joy, talk about how excited they are to be expecting, but that they hope they don’t get too fat and can lose the weight soon, because they can’t stand feeling like a whale in their maternity clothes – clothes that are at least three sizes smaller than what you wear every day.

I wear what fits, not what I like. Who I am is never presented to the world.

How ironic that I can be so big and yet so invisible. And I suppose in numbing myself to the fallout that comes with being overweight, I have numbed myself period.

This is my experience. Not the experience of everyone with a weight problem. They may not even think they have a problem and God love ‘em I say. That’s their life and their choice. Be happy. Life’s too short. But this is my life and I’m not happy about this and I'm going to do something about it once and for all.

I’m starting my next great journey.