THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

It seems like most of my life I have fought the battle of the bulge and I feel as if I have been on the losing side the majority of the time. Looking back at pictures of my youth I think I started to gain weight in 4th grade. That was the year after I fell off of the monkey bars at school crushing three vertebrae and fracturing two. I wasn’t able to be as active as I had in the past and I began to get chubby. By the time I had entered junior high I was the fat girl. I was very self conscious about my weight and the cruelty of kids at school exacerbated my already waning self image.

One memory of the ridicule I suffered is particularly strong. It happened when I was in 7th grade. I would walk to school, so I would enter through the back doors of the building. On this particular day, when I tried to enter, some older kids held the doors closed. I remember they were skinny cowboy kids in their Wranglers and cowboy hats. They were all laughing and pointing at me. Unable to contain my tears I began to cry. One boy started pointing and taunting me by saying, “Look at the fat girl cry! Look at the fat girl cry!” I could still hear their laughter and taunting in my head as I walk around to the front of the building where I bumped into my favorite teacher, Mrs. Jones. She asked what was wrong and between tears I told her the story. She immediately went to the back doors where she caught the offenders. She reprimanded them all, but the damage was done.

By the time I had entered high school I had developed an eating disorder. That summer I had made a vow to myself that I was not going to start high school as the loud fat girl from junior high who never had a boyfriend. Upon returning from the summer with my aunt, I started purging. From there I began exercising everyday and finally I was barely eating. I subsisted on about 50 carbs a day at first. I dropped 50 pounds that first month – going from a size 14 to a size 10. I received so much praise from everyone around me that I was floating. On the first day of high school, when I walked in the door no one recognized me. I think they were in shock. I continued barely eating and purging what little I had in me. I would never eat with my family, so they never saw what I was doing. I thought I was still fat and wanted to lose even more weight so every night I would go running then I would come home and put on a sweat suit and sit in the bathroom with the shower on hot so I could steam the weight off. I was so self conscious at school that I became somewhat introverted and it was extremely painful for me to even attempt to make conversation with the opposite sex.

It wasn’t until my junior year that my mom suspected something was wrong and confronted me. Apparently she had heard me purging several times through the vent in the bathroom. I was so humiliated when she confronted me. I tried to deny it, but I always had a hard time lying to my mom’s face. She immediately made an appointment for me at the University Hospital. I found out later that one of my teachers had suspected I had a problem and had called my mom at home to discuss it with her. Once I was at the doctor’s office I got the lecture of a lifetime. The doctor was almost hollering at me as he asked me what the hell I was thinking and did I want to kill myself at a young age. I think I was in tears when we left. I ended up with a referral to the eating disorders clinic. Everyday after school I had to take the bus to the hospital to visit the clinic lest I wanted to be hospitalized and force fed. I had to bring a list of everything I had eaten and tell the doctor whether I had purged and why. I was weighed in every day. I would be patted down to make sure I wasn’t weighting my clothing. Through all of this, my little brother was by my side. He would meet me at the bus stop and ride with me to the hospital sitting in the waiting room while I talked about why I felt the need to do this to my body. This lasted the rest of my junior year. Then one day I got so frustrated with the therapist, I just walked out and refused to return – that was probably the worst decision I had made at that point in my life.

I struggled with my eating disorder throughout college where I would occasionally binge and purge. I struggled with it when I moved away to DC to work where I began an intensive work out regime along with limited food intake. My meals would consist of coffee for breakfast, coffee for lunch, and dry toast and a small boiled potato for dinner. I felt like my life was spiraling out of control. Eventually it all caught up with me at the age of 30.

That fall I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and I gradually began to gain weight. Before I knew it I had gained 100 pounds. My self esteem took a huge nose dive. By this time I was married and I think I took my frustration out on my husband. I was frustrated because I noticed the difference between the way I was treated when I was skinny and the way I was treated when I was fat. Every time I went to the doctor he would tell me that my only problem was that I was fat. It got to the point that I would have to be on death’s door before I would go in to see him and then I would try to ignore his fat comments. He was a little old man and you don’t know how badly I wanted to say, “So! You’re old. At least I can lose weight. You on the other hand are just going to get older and die!” However, I managed to refrain.

After three unsuccessful years of trying to have a baby, I went in to see an OB/GYN. I had never seen this woman before. When I told her my concerns, she said, “You’re fat. Have more sex.” I was pissed! I never went back to her again. Eventually I found a fertility doctor who told me that although obesity does contribute to infertility, many heavy women get pregnant. I eventually went on to have my daughter.

When we moved to Utah I decided to go back to the OB/GYN that I had seen before I left and who happened to be my mother’s doctor for the past 30 years. When he walked in the room I handed him my medical records. He took them and didn’t even look at them. Then he looked at me and said, “You’re fat. You should go on the South Beach diet.” I tried to ignore him but when I spoke to him about the problems I had with my pregnancy he cut me off and said, “It was all because you were fat.” About this time I was wondering how the hell he knew if I was fat then or not. What I should have done was gotten dressed and walked out, but like a dummy I just sat there dumfounded. I did, however, find a new OB/GYN after that.

A few months later I had been referred to a Rheumatologist by my primary care doctor because he thought I was in a Lupus flare up. When the rheumatologist walked in he looked at me and told me that there was no way I had Lupus because I was too fat and that if I had Lupus I would be skinny because it would eat my body. What a joke. I was so angry. When I told my primary care doctor what he said he was visibly upset.

My experiences with being prejudiced against because of my weight go beyond the medical. I travel often for work. When I was skinny I always had men asking if they could help me with my bags or offer me their seat on the shuttle. Those days were gone once I gained weight. I can be struggling with my bags and almost fall off of the shuttle and they just standby impatiently waiting for me to be done. It is very frustrating.

I finally realized I was in a huge slump this past spring. Why can’t heavy women look beautiful? Resigned to wearing what my family referred to as my leisure suits, I had no desire to buy anything new, so I spent my winters looking like a fat frumpy house frau! I finally decided to check out Lane Bryant. I love that store – it proves that you can be big and look good!

As good as I felt I looked, I still had low self esteem. In the past when I am heavy I don’t like pictures to be taken of me, but recently I let myself be photographed at family parties. A few weeks ago I was looking at those pictures and I realized I had become that fat woman I promised myself I would never be. I had gained a total of 150 pounds over the past 10 years – most of it the first two years. Not wanting to die young like other members of my family and already being at risk for heart disease through genetics, I finally decided I was ready to take the weight off. I joined Weight Watchers last week and as of my first weigh in have lost three pounds. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but at least I am on the path to becoming healthy again and being able to keep up with my daughter. My husband and I have made walking each night a part of our family time routine and our daughter loves it. I know I can do this and I can do it the healthy way. It will take longer to lose it than it did to gain it but I am determined.