FAT — A rant

I wasn’t aware of being “fat” until I went to high school.
Before then, I’d been the girl who enjoyed reading. The girl who was awarded Writer of The Year in her last year of primary school. The girl who could do a handstand up against the wall for waaaay longer than anyone else. I was a whole planet. These achievements were my satellites, life-sustaining and vital.
I never paid much attention to my body. I never felt shame when I had to do PE in my vest and pants because I’d forgotten my kit. I played football with the boys every lunchtime, never caring that I was the only girl. I wore tracksuits, t-shirts with Britney Spears’ face on, trousers with tassels. My body was just…me. It did what I needed it to do. I enjoyed using it.
If I was a planet, high-school was the asteroid that destroyed life as I knew it. It gave rise to a whole new environment. An environment where my body became a whole entity in its own right. Something I had to work around.
The first strike came in class. Concentration fuelled by an unconscious bouncing of my right foot. Whispers. She’s making the whole room shake. The molten lava of embarrassment trickling down my neck, burning my cheeks.
Then, more. She plays goal keeper because she blocks the whole net! Humiliation vibrating through me, like an earthquake that rumbles across a faultline.
Sniggers, jibes, private notes scrawled on scrap paper, sideways glances. A tsunami of shame and self-hatred pounding my surface after each tremor.
I began to plot my transformation. The issue was so obviously me. More specifically, the issue was my body. I no longer thought of it as the chassis that carried all the unique parts of me. It became a separate entity. The enemy. It was to be moulded and remade into something more aesthetically pleasing and acceptable.
And so, I turned to diets. Endless diets. Weight Watchers. Slimming World. Me, 14 years old, surrounded by women at least ten years older than me at best. I was taught there that it was right what my peers were saying about me. I learned that we should hold contempt for the fat body, and do everything we can to avoid it.
I consumed the literature in lieu of food. List upon list of what was bad and what was good. What I was allowed to eat and what was forbidden. Meetings were driven by guilt. I slipped up this week and had a chocolate bar. I ate a McDonalds. I couldn’t find time to exercise. Shame, shame, shame.
It wasn’t enough. Despite strict portion sizes and days of stomach-churning hunger, my body still wasn’t right. I started visiting the gym every night after school. My portion sizes dwindled. Eating became an embarrassing, guilt-ridden habit. I saw it as something that could be quit, like smoking. After the gym I would allow myself half an apple, then take myself off to bed to sleep away the dizziness, nausea, and hunger-pangs that wracked by body.
The amazing thing? Or perhaps it’s actually not so amazing when you think about it. No one batted an eyelid. Not my parents. Not the people at Weight Watchers. Not my friends. I was doing A Good Thing. I was taking control of my body. In it’s current state, it was unacceptable and disgusting. I was working hard to become healthier and more attractive. Go me.
This ‘health kick’ didn’t last. It couldn’t. The hunger grew and grew and grew. Everywhere around me people ate with reckless abandon. The sound of it grated at my ears. Just watching someone chew made me want to punch myself in my own face.
I would binge when I was alone. It would start by allowing myself just one thing. Then the snowball would begin to roll, gathering momentum, until I was surrounded by the detritus of my shame. Nothing was off limits. Then, you guessed it, more shame and guilt. More restriction. More exercise. A vicious cycle that resulted in me losing and gaining the same weight over and over again for years. Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I was insane, chasing a dream I could never quite reach.
If I could go back in time, what would I say to myself on that first day of high-school?
Don’t listen to them. Your body is strong. You are strong. Your appearance doesn’t define you.
My question now, almost 16 years later: Would it even make a difference?
The problem was never me. The problem was never my body.
The problem was the attitude of the world around me. I had the audacity to be fat, and for some reason that threatened people.
I sacrificed a healthy relationship with my body and food because I did not fit the right mould of those around me. I was the other.
I never stood a chance.
What is most frustrating is that now, so many years down the line, I’m still living it. I still feel inherently wrong. I still feel like my body is an imposition to those around me. I go through intense periods of hating the skin that I’m in. Rebelling against it by fasting or restricting. Regularly I feel the allure of very low calorie diets and get-thin-quick diet pills.
When I was pregnant with my daughter I was told to lose weight by health professionals. I had to keep a food diary and be weighed. All the while my body was doing an amazing thing and all I obsessed about was how much weight I would gain over the course of nine months, and how would I get it all off, quickly, afterwards.
Always looking forwards to when I’m thin.
I wish I could say I’m detangling myself from the weight of that expectation now. I’m not. Currently, I’m eating a low-carb, low-calorie diet in a bid to fit into my wedding dress in two months. I’m starving and I’m miserable and my approach to food is still as crappy and disordered as ever.
I’m sorry if you came here for a happy ending or enlightenment.
If you take away anything, let it be this:
When your daughter tells you she wants to join a slimming group, tell her no.
When you notice your daughter is going to bed earlier and earlier to avoid mealtimes, talk to her.
Don’t praise her for starving herself. Don’t congratulate her on her weight loss.
Food should be both life-sustaining and pleasurable in equal measure. It is not a sin or a bad habit. Teach your children that today, right now. Then teach them to love and respect their bodies, and the bodies of others. Demonstrate healthy eating without condemning the fat frame.
Don’t teach your children to be scared or ashamed of their bodies.
It’s hell, trust me.
