Destined to be FAT

Most teenage girls will usually earn money by babysitting, I never did. No I had a unique way of earning extra cash. I did it by losing weight. When I was younger my father told me I was fat. He said I was so fat I looked like the broad side of a barn. I remember the scene as if it happened yesterday. I was just coming out of the bathroom, and walking towards the kitchen when he said it. Then he went off on a tirade. Tirades were a common occurrence at my house. Sometimes he would go on for hours, stopping briefly to have my step-mother bring him a cup of coffee, which he would sip, pinky extended like royalty while we all had to wait like pissed off school girls for him to continue. It was his way of getting a point across. One day he held us all, a captive audience, while he went off for 4 hours because someone forgot to fill an ice cube tray. He was a darling man and oh, so passionate. He demonstrated how to fill it and then had each of us practice in front of him, my step-mother included.

On the day he informed me I was fat, (I say informed because up until that point I hadn’t realized it) , he also told me he had a diet and a reimbursement program that would give me incentive to lose. He told me I would earn a dollar a pound for every pound lost. My step mother would supervise my eating plan and I would follow it to the letter. I earned $30.00 dollars that year and I began my lifetime of dieting, or my battle with the bulge. From that time forward no matter how thin I was I always thought I was fat! I think it was because he hammered it into my head so much. And like a self-fulfilling prophecy I did gain and then lose and gain and then lose until my body was so messed up and my eating habits were so crazy that I had no idea what to eat or when to eat it. In fact I often went long periods of time not eating anything at all, just drinking mixtures and potions that were said to aid in weight loss and would clean out your system.

This is a pretty disturbing and fucked up way to live life! When I was thin for brief moments I would be elated and happy and when I was fat I would hunker down and hate myself every single minute of the day. Of course all of this culminated in the slow deterioration of my self-esteem and my health. Then I married a man who was very much like my father, who only valued me when I was thin, but who would sabotage any diet I ever went on by bringing me Ben & Jerry’s or buying delicious treats and leaving them in the kitchen where I could not resist eating them. While I was married I weighed the most I ever have and I dieted more than I ever have. Not only did I diet, but I exercised up to 2 hours a day and still could not lose. The more I tried and failed the more I hated myself and the more I hated myself the more my relationships deteriorated. I became reclusive by embarrassment since I didn’t want anyone to see me and I became very, very unhappy. I felt I was caught in an endless cycle and nothing I did could save me. I felt destined to be fat. Fat and unhappy. Because thin equaled happiness, something I could never achieve.

After my husband moved out, I lost immediately and without trouble 25 pounds. Some would say I lost 200 pounds just by shoving his loser ass out the door and in a lot of ways that was true because he was weighing me down. He was weighing me down with his expectations that I be as thin as his ex-wife. He was weighing me down because he never seemed to see the heart of me. He just saw the exterior. So when he left I felt a weight had been lifted and so had any expectation that I be thin. And still I had/have a belief that I must be thin to be loved and appreciated and I know it’s sad but true. This has in part prevented me from looking for another relationship and it has also taught me that being loved has nothing to do with my weight. Unfortunately for me this revelation comes at a time when my blood test results heed a warning! Lose weight or start taking insulin!

So 2 weeks ago I began a medically supervised program, this is new for me and so far, the way it’s set up I have been feeling better than ever. I have to eat at scheduled times. I have to eat exact weighed out portions and I have to record every minute of it. In one month I will be weighed and blood tested again to see how it’s working. I have been cautioned not to weigh myself everyday and I have been advised that I must lose 80 pounds and achieve a weight I have not seen since I was 27. The first week I could not help but to weigh myself and I had lost 4 lbs and 3 inches off my waist, but that is the last time I will take those measurements. No, instead I will weigh once a month as instructed and take measurements then too. I am hoping this is the last diet I will ever be on. I am hoping this balanced program will become a way of life for me and not just a temporary obsession. I am filled with hope and I am filled with fear that I will fail again. But this time I am doing it for me because I don’t want to inject myself, because I want to be healthy!

I may report here on my progress or I may not, it just depends on how I feel. My bigger goal is to be one of those girls with the before and after pictures, but I won’t be investing a lot in the exterior, at this point it’s an interior issue!

Wish me luck!