Fat Girl, Little Clothes

Mood:  fat


Okay readers, it's confession time. I have struggled with my weight since I was old enough to walk pretty much. Seriously. I was 2 when I started taking ballet lessons and I continued until I was about 13 or 14. Long enough to make it en pointe and then I promptly quit.

Here is part of the reason. At 2 I didn't have any concept of weight, I just loved dance. But when we moved from Iowa to Pennsylvania and I was enrolled in an elite dance studio, I became acutely aware that I was not quite dancer material. I had beautiful form and posture and though the teacher sometimes gave me panic attacks, I thank her for her tough love to this day. She was a ballerina through and through and many of her students went on to be professional ballerinas. I danced in the Nutcracker with ballerinas who just a year or two later moved to New York City and were members of the New York City Ballet. That was my dream. To dance. But even at 5 I realized that was not likely. Sure, I had great posture and "pretty hands," but I also had thick thighs and a round belly.

One of my favorite lines from any movie ever comes from "The Virgin Suicides." A young girl, 13, attempts suicide and the psychiatrist asks her why she would do such a thing. He tells her that life certainly can't be that bad. And without flinching she looks him in the eye and says, "obviously doctor, you've never been a teenage girl."

There are things that are so intrinsically linked to womanhood that I do not know where to begin to fix the problem. Weight, and appearance, are two of those things. I knew at 5 I did not have a dancer's body. I knew at 13 that I didn't only not have a dancer's body but I also didn't have the body of a downhill skier, though the thick thighs helped that venture quite a bit.

Anyway. I have battled with myself for years about being fat. In college I dropped 50 pounds doing Pilates a few times every day and being generally more active. Sporadic eating probably didn't hurt, but it did explain why the weight came on again so easily once I hit grad school. There have been losses and gains since then.

And recently, I'm at a super gain. This cancer thing really sucks. The week that Jeff was in the hospital I got my period for the first time in a year (sorry male readers). All I wanted was ice cream and pizza and chocolate and sour cream and onion chips and...I ate them. All. A lot. And I felt like crap but damn, it tasted good. I have always been an emotional eater, I've just gotten better at hiding it. Now instead of eating 2 Snickers after lunch, I binge eat at night. I'll eat 1 Snickers when I get up to use the bathroom then another one an hour later when I can't fall asleep. By the time I wake up in the morning I've probably consumed my entire day's worth of calories overnight.

So. I'm fat. I've gotten fatter recently. And I am tired of it. My body is tired of it. My knees ache and my back hurts and I get winded going up two flights of stairs at the hospital. There. I put it all out there.

Jeff cringes every time I call myself fat. He tells me I'm beautiful. And I do believe that he believes that. The problem is that I don't. I have a beautiful soul and a wonderful mind and I can craft works of art with words. But my thighs rub together and my chin doubles when I smile and my stomach is just....ugh.

And I know what I need to do to fix this. I need to move. Jeff and I actually do eat pretty healthily, though I indulge my sweet tooth far too often for a diet. Polycycstic ovarian syndrome has a fun side effect, as do some of the medications that I take, of weight gain with the addition of making weight harder to take off. That isn't to say it can't or won't happen. It's just more difficult. And of course nothing will happen if I don't get my ass out of the chair every single day and do something.

My parents recently visited and brought with them pictures from my high school and college years. And I looked at them and all I could think was how I wish I could tell myself how beautiful I was. I know in another 10 years I'll say the same thing to my photos. And I'll curse how I spent so much of my time trapped in my head worried that I don't stack up because I weigh too much. But such is life.

All I can do is stop focusing on my weight and focus on my health. And for me, that does include losing a significant amount of weight. I've watched people from high school and college go public with their weight loss journeys. Some have had major success...I know two people who have managed to drop 100+ pounds with diet and exercise and lifestyle makeovers...and I know others who, like me, continue to take 5 steps ahead and 10 steps backwards. So I've been conflicted about going public with the struggle.

But here we are. I know that I need to do something and writing is therapeutic for me. So even if I don't lose a damn pound after this post, I will feel lighter.