Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Fat Girls.....

why am I fat? a novella (hey, I had a lot to say...)


I know there have to be people in my life who are dying to ask me how I got so dang big - especially people who knew me before, when I was normal sized. The answer is simple, and awfully complicated.


Mainly - obviously - I am fat because I love food. I love to eat, I love to cook. I love to invent recipes; I love to learn complicated cooking methods. I love to watch the Food Network (I call it food porn). I love to nurture people with food. I love to impress people with my ability to cook good food. In part, I define being a woman with the ability to nurture, please and impress with good food.


I'm a Southern girl, cooking is what we do. Or rather, one of the things we do, along with wear full pageant makeup to the mailbox, use the adjective 'sweet' as an insult, drop our 'g's, refrain from sweating in 100 degree heat by sheer force of will, and leave the womb with a working knowledge of etiquette and offensive pass interference.

But, there are other issues too, and like all really good deep seated issues, many of mine are rooted in childhood. Now, I basically define being an adult as getting over your childhood, whether it was good, bad, or otherwise. I also think childhood can have a huge impact on habits and behavior. So, into mine we shall delve. Get comfy.

The first time I recall being aware of weight was in 1st grade, when my teacher put a height/weight chart on the wall. I wasn't the largest kid in the class - there was a little boy who was very obese. I was nowhere near his size, but I was taller, and weighed more than he did. Kids are mean in general, and I guess there were more than the normal share of little assholes in my class that year. I know there were. We used to play this game when the teacher would leave the room, where one of the leader kids would ask 'Who likes Susie?' and those who did would raise their hand. The whole class always voted that they liked the popular kids, even though looking back, some of them were totally unlikeable. One little boy, I recall, did not fit in well at the homogeneous, don't-you-dare-be-different private school I went to, and whenever the question was posed 'Who likes Lee?' not a single hand went up. Kids are mean, but that game, looking back, seems particularly awful. So, you can imagine the comments I got when my weight went up on the wall as the highest in the class. Little bastards.

When I was eight or ten, my mother decided I should do the Weight Watchers program with her. Like many girls, my relationship with her had major power struggle elements, and for us they somehow unconsciously became centered around food. My childhood and adolescence was filled with hearing about what I didn't 'need' to eat. I can still remember the exact tone and inflection of her voice if I was caught picking at something before or after mealtime. So, I began sneaking food. Extra desserts, the Little Debbie cakes that were for my brother's school lunches, even slices of bread or meat - I distinctly remember hiding chicken fried steak in the waistband of my pajama pants, trying to get down the hall to my bedroom without getting caught.

Still, I wasn't a obese kid, just a little chubby. I had taken dance since age 6, and since my dad was a gym rat, I worked out too. Despite the heat, kids in the South were not allowed to lounge indoors all day back then, and I ran around our neighborhood, being chased by dogs and the occasional boy with beebee gun. I got plenty of exercise. But my fear of not being perfect kept me from enjoying sports. While I was quite an athlete in my own backyard, I could never show those same abilities when a crowd, even of just my peers, was watching. I equated that lack of athletic ability with being fat, even though I really wasn't. And this is the strongest argument I have for the power of visualization - I believed I was fat, and in enough time, I became so. But not for a long while.


In high school, I was a completely normal size, and very active. I kept dancing, moving into classical ballet as well as other genres. I sang in the school's choir group, which put on ambitious productions with lots of dance numbers. I walked with friends for exercise, and continued to go to gym with my dad. I was fit and strong. But I never understood that every item of clothing in the store was not meant for every person. When I tried on short skirts in the department store and my mom sniffed her disapproval and said 'That makes you look ten pounds heavier,' to me, that meant I was fat.

Never mind that I had a tiny waist and what was becoming a nicely curvy figure - I'd kill to have my teenage body back. I didn't appreciate it - I thought I was fat, the fattest, disgusting, unlovable. I recently read some old journals of mine from high school, and it's page after page of lamenting how fat I was, disgusted with myself, determined to 'do something' about my weight. I thought boys didn't like me because I was fat. I was a size 6 or 8 then. Boys didn't like me because I was smart and quiet and terrified of them, and they thought I was a snob. Or they just plain didn't know me, because I wouldn't let them.

So, cut to college - partying, drinking, eating whatever I wanted. As a freshman, I still exercised and continued to dance for a time. But before long, I started making bad choices, mainly using food as reward or comfort to deal with a growing problem with depression. Sometime during my sophomore year, I had stopped any semblance of exercise and topped 200 pounds for the first time. That summer was spent at home with my mom's disapproval hanging over me, losing weight and basically becoming anorexic. I ate almost nothing - saltine crackers and a Diet Coke for lunch, maybe a Lean Cuisine for dinner, taking cold medicine at night to make me sleep so I would not eat. Walking, always walking, exercising at every opportunity. I remember telling my mom that if I were thin and eating like that, she would think I had an eating disorder. She agreed.


I got close to thin that summer, losing 40 lbs in about 3 months. Then I went back to college, a huge state school this time, transferring away from the small women's college I'd gone to the first two years. I had been miserable there, but in retrospect, I would have been miserable anywhere. I sought approval in men's attention, quickly got into a bad relationship, and basically ate all the time. My depression deepened; weight packed on. I tried Jenny Craig, lost a little, gained it back. I felt worse, so I ate more. It felt like I was trying to prove something with all the eating, but I am still not sure what.

Then graduation came, along with the inevitable breakup with the college boyfriend, and the first job, a very stressful one in the news industry. With no real friends in a new city, food continued to be my comfort and recreation. It was my only friend. Nothing to do on a Saturday night? Find something good on television, go to the grocery store and make yourself a gourmet meal. I became a great cook. But by then I was totally out of control, more than 250 lbs, and after that who cares? Each new pound just seemed like a drop in the ocean.


I met my husband, B, when I weighed somewhere between 250 and 275. Between his goodness and the maturity that getting past age 25 brings, the depression, blessedly, evaporated. The fat, not so much. Four months into dating B, I began law school, moved away from him and gained more, breaking 300. Since we married, I've gained even more quickly, in part probably due to being so secure that he loves me no matter what. Since that time, I have done Weight Watchers four or five times, and pills from the doctor, but the scale mainly has gone up and up. Actually, that's a lie. My weight has gone up and up. I didn't HAVE a scale for the first four years or so we were married - hadn't had one since college. For years, I not only didn't know what I weighed, I truly didn't care.


So, that's the how. As for the why - well, I only really have guesses. For one thing, bad body image played a major part. I thought of my self as fat, even when I was thin. I became my vision of myself. Also, I have recently realized how much perfectionism had to do with it. I couldn't be perfect, and instead of being happy with what I could do well, I focused on what I couldn't do. Instead of just accepting my body's limitations, from how it looked to what it could do, I let them overwhelm me. And my rocky at times relationship with my mother didn't help - she tends to withhold love and approval when people don't conform to her vision of what they should be and do. In some ways, I think I got fat to prove to her that she would still love me, and that others would still love me, even if I wore on my body the most obvious imperfections I could.


But as I said earlier, I define being an adult as getting over childhood. All these situations and issues written about above have to cease to matter, or at least, they have to be used now to fuel something other than my appetite for food. If I'm going to change my body, I'm going to have to change my life, and that starts with changing the life inside my head. I have to put away the idea of looking perfect, and concentrate on looking my best, regardless of my size. I don't need to be an athlete, but I would like for my body to feel strong again. I can let people see my other imperfections, instead of hiding behind fat, hoping it's all they'll notice about me. And as for approval, the only one that need matter now is my own.