100 Pounds
The internet, a microcosm of the world, loves weight loss and loathes fatness. I’ve got both. This story is not for everyone, but today is the day I’m sharing it. Please, be gentle with me, and be gentle with yourselves.
Until last year, I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t “growing.” I steadily filled out bigger and bigger clothes as I left adolescence and came into adulthood. I felt resigned to that fact. But somewhere in between weighing 300 and 350 pounds, life got harder. I got sweatier. Activities that I enjoyed, like riding my bike, became more challenging. My joints ached. I felt paralyzed by my increasing weight, unable to move freely.
I remember having a few tear-filled conversations with friends. I was overcome with fear about my body, my future, my relationships. I firmly believe, and believed then, that every person in every body is deserving of love, respect, dignity, and good health care. But somehow, I didn’t see myself in that belief. I didn’t see my own body as lovable or worthy. I didn’t realize how dark a place my own mind had become.
Like reading in a room full of windows as the sun goes down, you don’t always realize you’re squinting until it’s pitch black, or until someone walks in and flips the light on. Darkness had crept in, and I wasn’t fully aware of it.
I don’t want to paint a picture of a life that was completely dismal. So many stories about fat people are one-note. Fat = miserable, lazy, gross. Thin = vibrant, happy, beautiful. I reject that. My life had bright spots. Joyful community. Challenging, rewarding work. But the body I inhabited, and still inhabit, was disconnected from those joys. My life happened in spite of my body. I tried to think about my body as little as possible, which is to say, I thought about it all the time without ever feeling connected to it or thankful for it.
For about six months, I lived in that state of paralysis. I knew that I had to do something. But I had no idea where to start. I read about weight loss surgery. I read about Keto. As I thought about dieting, I ate and ate and ate, as if I were eating for the last time.
And then, I started seeing a therapist. She heard in me that I wanted to do something, and she helped encourage me to do those things. I talked to my medical provider. Doctors have been telling me to lose weight since I was a kid, but this was the first time I told a provider that I wanted to do it, and worked with her to make a plan. I met with a dietitian. I enlisted my cousin, a personal trainer, to work out with me. I started regularly practicing yoga to feel more present in my body.
I’m not going to share tips or tricks for weight loss here. If I’ve learned anything through this process, it’s that every body has different needs, and things work differently for each person. Not everyone needs to lose weight, not everyone wants to, and treating fat people as a monolith is certainly part of the problem. There were things I did in the beginning that I would not do today. Weighing all of my food was one of those things. It was helpful for a time, and after a while, it became obsessive. I don’t do that anymore. One piece of advice I’d offer, which I think applies for any goal:
Take time to regularly examine your practices, discern whether or not they are serving you well, and then adjust accordingly. Add on or let go in a way that feels right and healthy to you.
In the space of 11 months, I lost about 90 pounds. That was not a straight or easy journey. Sometimes, I felt strong. So incredibly grateful for my body and all the hard work it could do. Other times, I felt weak, discouraged, and lonely. A few times I broke down crying during a workout.
Six months ago, I stopped actively trying to lose weight. I weighed myself nearly every day for 336 days, and then I stopped for 40 days. That intermission was one of the best things I did for myself. I got to see how it felt to live in my body and honor it without the routine self-regulation of my body to which I had grown accustomed. At my largest, I felt disconnected from my body, rarely stepped on the scale, rarely looked at myself. As I tried to get healthier, I was hyper-tuned in to my body in a way that didn’t feel sustainable. I now aim for a balance between those extremes.
But taking steps toward not just weight loss, but also health, can be costly. So I want to acknowledge the way that this journey was made easier by my relative privilege. I earn enough money to buy whatever food I want. For a year, I paid a lot of money for a nice farm share. I pay for yoga and a gym membership. I shop at a farmer’s market in my neighborhood. I drive my car to nice grocery stores that are far away from where I, and many low-income people, live. I go to therapy every 2–3 weeks, which is an expensive thing that I pay for, and I take PTO from my relatively flexible job to make that fit into my life. As I started making many of those changes, I recognized that many people don’t have the same opportunities as me. Just as every body is inherently deserving of dignity and health care, every community is deserving of an environment that promotes health: green spaces to move and breathe clean air, grocery stores that carry healthy fresh food, safe environments for kids and families to play outside and enjoy life. These things have very little to do with weight loss and much to do with our basic humanity.
We shouldn’t need to go out of our way to be healthy. Our environment should encourage it.
Lately, I have not been trying to lose weight. But I have, slowly. Ten more pounds in six months. I attribute that to the healthy changes I’ve made in my life: making room for more movement; cooking healthy, well-rounded meals for myself; eating until I’m satisfied and then stopping; eating less take-out and definitely less fast food. And I enjoy those things, most of the time. I like the way I feel.
I’ve gotten some new scars through this process, and despite my weight loss, I am still not conventionally thin. I am “plus-sized” and considered by my doctor to be “obese” (a term that many body positive and fat activists want to do away with). I take up less space than I did before, but I still take up considerable space, and that is a hard thing to navigate as a woman in the world. When I write the words, “I have lost one hundred pounds,” that feels unbelievable to me. It felt impossible when I started, and now, I feel bittersweet about it.
Women’s bodies are often treated as public property — up for public display and criticism.
Experiencing weight loss brought that to bear in a new way for me. The comments. The questions. From strangers. From people I know well. Sometimes they were fine. Sometimes they were incredibly uncomfortable. Sometimes they were coded. Sometimes they were invasive. For what it’s worth, I now have a pretty firm “don’t comment on anyone’s weight unless they bring it up” policy because I have learned firsthand that even I don’t always know what I want to hear. I’m not always up for talking about weight or food. It is shaky ground.
#WeightLoss Instagram and #BodyPositive Instagram are a complex Venn diagram of opinions, which I have waded into more than I care to admit. I have posted only one post, ever, where I directly talk about weight loss. That was a black and white picture of my feet on a scale, along with a vague, short version of this story. It was among my most liked posts on instagram, ever. Like I said, the internet loves weight loss. I could post before and afters. I could post diet tips. I could be a body positive instagrammer. I could be a weight loss instagrammer. I could rack up likes doing these things. But I won’t. The internet doesn’t hold space for much nuance. When I look at the before and after pictures, the story I see is:
Before: fat, ugly, gross, depressed, bad
After: thin, beautiful, healthy, happy, good
This is not a true story, but it is a story that exists. Adding to the complexity- if your “before” looks a lot like my now, or is thinner than my now, that triggers a toxic comparison cycle that I have no interest in perpetuating. If you really want my before and after, scroll through my Instagram. I think what you’ll find is me, though visibly heavier, enjoying my life, cuddling with my nieces and nephew, taking selfies with friends, and being goofy and fun. I won’t be ashamed of that. I won’t tell people that that person wasn’t doing the best she could at the time. That person is also me.
One hundred pounds. I carried those pounds through Europe and on bike rides. They rose and fell with me in sun salutations. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I still see them, like a phantom limb clinging to my body. I still make space for them in the clothes I look at on hangers and in the chairs I choose. I resent them, and I love them all at once. And now, I move forward and try to remember, my body isn’t a problem. My body is me, and I’m not a problem. Just as I accept each and every body — yes, yours — I am learning to accept my own.
