What I Wish I Had Known Before I Got Fat
Due to the nature of this topic this will seem personal for some people reading, but I’ve always been aware of my ‘increased’ weight and the issues this presents. I love coming up with euphemisms for fat, anything to make it sound better. The ‘biggest’ (get it?) thing I wished I’d known beforehand was how hard it is to lose weight once you’ve got to the point you can no longer ignore it. This is about me hitting that point, and why I wish I had listened to doctors and family alike, who all tried to warn me.
Now, I was always on the bigger side, even in primary school. I used to be taller than the other kids and could carry it off, so it was never something that was really noticed. I have never been bullied for my weight, let me make that clear, don’t worry this won’t be a sob story. I just knew my friends were skinnier than me and I was alright with that, not everyone is skinny right? So why did it matter I was a bit bigger?
Once I hit my teens I got a bit bigger, more noticeable since I stopped growing at the average but still short 5’5, but I no longer had my height to counteract the difference and I began to notice it myself. If I went shopping for clothes with my friends I felt embarrassed I was already in adult sizes. While my friends were trying on their cute clothes, I felt more comfortable wearing baggy and darker clothes to attempt to hide my body, then no one could tell how chubby I actually was.
The older I got, the bigger I continued to get. I like food, and I don’t like exercise, see the combination? The reasons I kept getting bigger were very obvious but I could still ignore it; people I went to school with were of varying sizes, some bigger than me, some smaller. The fact I wasn’t the biggest was often my defence, a deflection of any mention of my weight. I got very good at this. During P.E I was fit enough to keep a solid middle, I had some stamina and even enjoyed some sports like netball and swimming, but I was lazy in keeping up and had no real interest in doing any more than I had to.
Moving on to university, I’m now in third year and the first two years were not good in terms of weight gain. It was here that people, family and friends started to notice more and more. I gained two stone in those two years, and another half stone in the first term of third year. I was drinking, eating takeaway, sitting around either doing work or watching Netflix. I had paid for the university gym membership in my first year and it lay dormant in my purse for the entire year; I think I went about three times. Lazy, remember?
Now throughout all of this, getting bigger and bigger, I made it into a joke, of course I was eating another takeout, that’s Paige! Of course I’m going to get a bus there rather than walk, that’s what I do! If I could make it into a joke, then nobody was laughing at me, I was making them laugh with me. If my family worried, it would be fine because ‘so and so’ is bigger than me, and ‘so and so’ eats worse than me. It was all pure deflection, anything to not make it about me and how big I was getting, and how I was doing nothing to help myself.
It was this year, over the Christmas break between terms at university, I don’t know what tipped me over the edge but I realised just how big I had gotten. I stepped on the scales and was disgusted with myself. My family were still worried about me and my ever increasing weight gain, but since I refused to listen and argued whenever they brought it up, they had begun to not say anything, but obviously were still concerned. With any previous attempt to lose weight I was too lazy to exercise and hoped I could do it through diet alone, but I often got bored and gave up when I didn’t see any results after a week, silly I’m aware. I was so frustrated with my size and my lack of commitment to stick to something. I realised I had to try and lose the weight, no matter what, I had to at least do something. Something to prove I meant it this time, I was actually going to lose weight and prove to them, and myself, I can actually do it.
So, this term I have actually utilized my gym membership, blew the dust off it, and have been going every day. I’ve been going to gym classes, I’ve been eating healthy, and I’ve been doing everything right. It will be slow going to lose the amount of extra weight I have and I wish I had known that before I got to this point in my weight at age 21.
I’ve just begun and can’t wait to see what I can achieve over this year.
I wish I had started years ago.
This year I’m finally going to do it.
With thanks to Richard Shelly
