I’m fat, and there’s nothing I can do

Do you ever get that unsettling feeling that when everything is going right – something must be wrong?

I weighed in today at 163lbs. Actually, my first weigh-in was 164.5, but I stepped off the scale and then back on it again because I haven’t dipped below 165 in a couple of years. It’s always best to double-check, especially with these wonky digital scales.

163, hmmm. I wasn’t expecting a lower number.

I stepped off and on again because now you need the tie-breaker – 163 again. After a mental woo-hoo and some self back-patting, I think… maybe there’s something wrong with me.

To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing wrong with me. I’m no stranger to the doctors office. I get my regular check-ups and screenings. I’m sure I’m fine and I’m just being paranoid.

More accurately, it’s a mental block that makes it hard for me to see myself as a person of a normal weight.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I’ve had weight struggles my entire life. What’s worse, my two older siblings had zero issues keeping their trim figures. They ate whatever they wanted with no repercussions. I could think about a cookie and gain weight. I remember my sister telling me to “just stop eating.” My brother’s favorite nickname for me was Blob. It didn’t take long for my young mind to get the idea that I was fat, and there was nothing I could do about it.

No amount of dieting helped. I’m sure many people have had this experience:

• Get on a diet – fad or sensible, it matters not.
• Lose an encouraging amount of weight in the first two weeks.
• Week three, you don’t lose an ounce.
• Week four, you starve yourself half the day and gain a pound.
• Some drama happens and thus ends your diet, and all the progress you made.

In my mid-twenties when I tipped the scales at 210lbs, I had some real struggles. I was taking flying lessons, and if you know anything about small airplanes, you’ll know that stuffing a large ass into a Cessna 152 is a real issue. Checking the fuel tanks for preflight was also a mess. I could barely lift myself up on the strut peg to get to the top side of the wing where the fuel caps reside. Other people could do it. Why couldn’t I?

Oh yeah, because I am fat and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I treated my weight like a handicap – a disability I would never be able rid myself of, like missing an arm. I went about my life, adjusting my ways to accommodate my “affliction” until the day I went away to school…

The Epiphany

This was one of the biggest “a-ha!” moments of my life. I’m away at school, 1100 miles from my home, friends and social life. I have an enormous amount of school work, a part-time job and very little cash. Because of this, I abstained from the fast food places I frequented on an almost daily basis when I was home. I had my own apartment, so I made my own meals. It was nothing fancy and certainly nothing you’d consider healthy – mostly ramen noodles, Boboli pizza and fried bologna sammiches.

I went about my business, and lived my life. I didn’t own a scale so I didn’t know what was happening when my clothes started fitting funny. I was thinking I was doing something wrong with the laundry. After all, I was using those apartment complex coin-operated beasts. They were most likely beating the crap out of my clothes and that’s why they were hanging off me wonky. I thought nothing of it.

I was fat and there was nothing I could do about it.

I went home at the end of the spring semester, and the first thing out of my mom’s mouth was, “Wow, you lost weight!”

I looked at her blankly. That wasn’t possible. I wasn’t on a diet. The only way you can lose weight is if you are on a diet, right?? I shrugged it off and again blamed the laundry for my clothes being stretched out. The next morning, I stepped on her scale – 195lbs. How could that be? I hadn’t been under 200lbs. in several years. Then it dawned on me.

No french fries

Before I went to college, I did a lot of fast food and everything comes with fries. Burger and fries, BLT sandwich and fries, chicken nuggets and fries. Sure, I guess you can get a meal without fries, but the sandwich alone doesn’t seem like enough. Many places (at least in the 90’s when this was all happening) didn’t give many (if any) healthier options for a side.

Eating at home, even though it wasn’t the healthiest, took me off the fry train. It’s an easy extra 400 calories a day I didn’t need. Between that and the extra walking to classes contributed to a gradual weight decrease of 15lbs. over the course of six months. This accounts for a half pound, a mere eight ounces, of weight per week. This would be almost imperceptible if you weighed yourself daily.

I never felt like I was depriving myself. Obviously not, I didn’t even know it was happening. I actually allowed myself a nice restaurant meal (nice being subjective – it was usually Denny’s) once a week. It became a treat instead of a way of life.

So is that it? Do I have this whole weight-loss thing licked? Hell no! After I would lose that initial 15lbs. I would gain most of it back when my boyfriend at the time joined me at school in the fall. He had this thing for Chinese buffets. The weight would creep back on, but now I had one more tool in my toolbox to reel it back in: the power of small changes.