Allow me to clarify.  Not everyone who has disliked me over the years has done so because I was fat.  Some people have disliked me because I’m an asshole.  I do get that.  For some reason, that just hurts way less.  I guess I never minded being an asshole while I really disliked being fat.  It even seemed for many years that I had more control over my character than my physique.  Like it just wasn’t fair.  Judge me for being a jerk, not because my body has a tendency to conserve energy.

Fat was my reality for a lifetime.  I was six when my parents put me in TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) with my older brother, who was also overweight.  We also went to the diet doctor, Dr. Noble.  Back in the day, my brother and I were given diet pills.  All I remember about them is that they didn’t work either.  Nothing did, really.  At least not permanently.

My first taste of success came when I was eleven.  I stayed with my Aunt Edith, Grandpa’s baby sister, during the winter break.  She fed me healthy, filling meals three times per day.  Other times I could snack on the pickled cucumbers she prepared and left sitting in the refrigerator.

Aunt Edith ran a lunchroom in a trucking company and I went to work with her and helped out.  At night we would walk and do yoga.   I lost weight quickly and steadily until my father picked us up for Christmas.  After being deprived of all sweets since I arrived, I ate many Christmas cookies with my dad’s second wife.  When I went back to my aunt’s house the scale showed a gain for the first time.  “What did you do?” Aunt Edith asked.  “Nothing,” I replied.

Of course, the truth came out.  Aunt Edith asked Celeste, Dad’s wife and she came clean about the cookies.  I was in disgrace, not for eating the cookies, but for lying about it.  I did understand the distinction and it was made clear to me.  At the same time there was the sense, yet again, of myself as a big fat failure.  When I went back home the weight came back and stayed on for some years.

In middle school the fat was symptomatic of a host of other problems.  I came to hate school around that time.  Although I was smart, I ceased to care about my grades.  I felt alienated and , of course, I blamed the fat.  The fact that some fat girls were not having the same experiences didn’t seem to register with me.  The fat was a convenient scapegoat.

In my junior year, I passed the California proficiency test and left school.  Since I didn’t find work right away, I sat around the house getting fatter.  One day I stepped on the scale and I weighed 268 pounds.  I resolved to do something about the weight.  Fortunately, I also got a job around that time.  I was young and with the increased exercise my weight dropped to 205 pounds without having to change what I ate very much.

Eventually, the weight climbed again.  291 pounds was my wake up call the next time.  I exercised and ate less and my weight dropped to 210.  I rode my bike a lot and did tae kwan do.  At some point the weight crept on again.  College was a very fat time.  I was sedentary, studying constantly.  Math, my major, was a tough one and I didn’t give much thought to my body.  It was then that I passed 300 pounds and stayed there for the next fifteen or so years with one big weight loss during those years.

That loss and the gain that followed led eventually to my finding Trung and ultimately finding my way into onederland.  I like onederland.  I want to stay here now.

 

 

390 pounds.  That was my highest weight ever.  379 pounds.  That’s what I weighed when I walked into Trung Nguyen’s garage/gym nearly three years ago.  162 was my lowest weight reached back in June of last year.  Recently my weight has been hovering around 180 pounds, still a tremendous accomplishment for someone who lived a lifetime of obesity.

I have gained 20 pounds from my smallest, give or take, and I still weigh less than I did in high school.  I wish I could explain what it is like to grow up fat.  That was my identity.  That’s who I was.

My parents constantly bribed me to lose weight, but I had no clue how to go about it.  I would have loved to not be fat any more.  The kids at school made fun of me.  I desperately wanted to fit in.  Instead I got called, “tubby,” “fatso,” “earthquake,” “P43.”  Everything was about my fatness.  People didn’t like me because I was fat.  I was molested because I was fat.  My mother screamed at me because I was fat.

Call it paranoia, but some people do say stuff to you just because you’re fat.  Once I was at the local community college, taking an exercise class with my sister.  We had to walk around the pool and I heard the swim team talking about me.  There were those guys in Santa Cruz, there was the couple in the restaurant, there was that woman at the gym, there were too many to count and definitely not people worth remembering.

I experienced the world as a hostile place and so I was hostile.  Some people say that people treat you commiserate with your attitude, but what came first, the chicken or the egg?  Is it blaming the victim to say that if you had more self respect people wouldn’t talk trash?  Somehow I don’t believe that’s completely true.

I’m confused.  I don’t feel very conspicuous these days.  Men seem nicer.  More willing to carry on a conversation.  Can it be that if my attitude was the same then as it is now I would have experienced a kinder world all along?  That’s hard to believe.

Yet I do feel differently about myself now too.  How can a person lose 200 pounds and not feel different?  How can a person run way more miles than they ever thought they could and not feel like a badass?  I ran 26.2 miles, a full marathon.  I never want to do it again, but I did it.  How does that change a person?

I would like to lose the 20 pounds I’ve gained, but that is not the same journey I started back in 2013.  I was forty-nine years old.  I was super obese.  I had sleep apnea and I struggled just to get off the couch.  That little fat girl is still in my head, but she is no longer a reality.  Today my journey is much more about health.

I lost the weight.  Now I want to get healthy and stay that way.  It might be two sides of the same coin, but they are not exactly alike.  For me, it’s like I needed to get the fat out of the way so I could figure out how I really want to live.

I want to talk about the weight loss journey, but I also want to talk about the new journey.  My quest for good health without the focus on the scale.  I’m trying to free my mind for that one because it’s what really counts.