Skinny Girls Shouldn't Be Fat (Part One)

(Several months ago, I asked readers which topics they’d be interested in hearing stories about. At that time, the most often mentioned choice was the story of my history of morbid obesity followed by gastric bypass surgery. I wrote the blog at that time, but it was over 3000 words, which is a little long – even for me! I planned to break it into two parts, but I wanted to include lots of pictures, and I never got around to tracking down a good selection. Then other subjects caught my interest, procrastination set in, and I never shared this very personal story. Today, I am ready to do it. Below is Part One. Part Two will post tomorrow. If any of you have struggled with your weight, or have had a friend or family member who was obese, I hope you’ll find something meaningful in my story. I would also like to hear from other gastric bypass patients. This isn’t a particularly funny story. It is, however, an important one. It illustrates the changes my life has gone through, leading me to the person I am today.)

Around the age of 9 or 10, being a skinny kid started to bother me. I began noticing the sharp angularity of my high cheekbones, and the way my chest displayed a faint roadmap of blue veins (and absolutely nothing else). I became aware of my knobby, often scabby knees and bony elbows. Perhaps because I noticed these things and began emitting some kind of vulnerability pheromones, other kids began to tease me. I mentioned earlier how someone once said if I stuck out my tongue I would look like a zipper, and how that hurt my still-forming self esteem. I have no recollection of who the little bastard was who said that, but the fact that I remember this well over thirty years later says something about how deeply the barb penetrated.

(Me, Age 11)

As I started junior high, I found myself surrounded by girls who were taking on a distinctly womanly appearance, while I still didn’t look all that differently from the boys in my class. A foray into padded bras and exaggerated makeup only made me look ridiculous, like a seven year old playing dress-up in mommy’s clothes (if mommy happened to be a hooker).

When I finally began to “blossom,” even that wasn’t enough. Why is it that teenage girls are completely incapable of ever being happy with their bodies? Even if you didn’t have a school full of boys who either ignored or rejected you, and girls who knew that the best way to tear you down was to insult your body or your wardrobe, you still found countless faults with what (in hindsight) was actually a fantastic shape.

I wasn’t voluptuous, which was what I most wanted to be. I was, by the time I was 16, 5’5” and 120 pounds. Nothing wrong with that. But I was dismayed by my “barely-B” bra size, and disgusted that my jeans were typically a size 5 or 7. After all, my first boyfriend broke my heart and took up with a girl two years younger than I was, who was a size 3 and a C cup, which as far as I was concerned summed up my stunning inadequacies.

I was also convinced that I had the grossest, jiggliest saddle-bag thighs in the world. Which, in case you were wondering, I now know is impossible when you weigh a hundred pounds and some change.

(Me, age 17, summer of 1982. I was convinced my thighs were beyond disgusting. This is also the first year Tom went on vacation with me and my family. He took this picture.)

What I wouldn’t give now for those high, perky, firm barely-Bs! I remember my younger sister, who was a bit on the chubby side when she was young, commenting on my tiny, flat stomach as we were in our trailer’s miniscule bathroom competing for mirror space while getting ready for school.

Within a couple of years, all that changed.

After my son was born, barely two months after my 19^th birthday, I did manage to lose most of that “baby weight.” That isn’t what set me on the road to obesity. Let’s review the events in my life from May of 1983 to May of 1984. I graduated from high school, spent three weeks in Mexico, came home, got pregnant, withdrew from college before ever taking my first class, got married, lived in my in-laws basement for five months, endured my new husband being laid off for a few of those months, moved into our first apartment, gave birth, my mother died, and we got moved to Cleveland for Tom’s job.

Quite an eventful year.

Once we were in Cleveland, I was in the grips of clinical depression, but I didn’t know that for another 17 years. I was home alone all day with a baby (hardly my natural environment), while all my friends were off at college. I needed my mom, but she was gone. Tom was working long hours to take care of us, and when he had to go back to work after his two-hour lunch break when he had to work a 12-hour day I used to sit on the couch and cry.

We moved annually for those first few years, so that he could be promoted within the company and take better care of us. In a way this was exciting. It gave me something else to do. It kept me from making friends (not that I really wanted any), and it kept me from going to school or getting a job, but I wasn’t actually interested in anything like that, either.

I was not unaware that I was very, very large by this point. After a few years, I was around 180 pounds. I remember the rare phone call from my older brother, and the first thing he always asked me was how much I weighed. I stopped talking to him for a long time.

(Me, The Boy, and Tom, about 1986)

I did all the things overweight women do. I bought a leotard and tights (it was the ‘80s) and joined a gym, and went a total of about three times. I tried every diet that came along. I bought a work-out video, and tried to force myself to exercise at home. I avoided social situations even more than usual, stopped letting people take my picture, and avoided video cameras like a plague. I bought stretchy pants and tunic tops, and tried to pretend I wasn’t fat.

I did, however, enjoy finally having cleavage.

My first total meltdown came shortly after Thanksgiving of 1988. We’d moved to Indianapolis that year, and Tom had several friends among other company managers in the area, and they tended to congregate at one particular apartment in the complex across the road from ours. That Thanksgiving, I had managed to consume two pumpkin pies within the space of two days. Every time I got off the couch, I would cut just a tiny sliver (just a miniscule little morsel of pie), add some Cool Whip, and consume it as I wandered back to the couch. I was aware that this was not the best idea in the world, but what else did I have to do? I’d just started working part-time at the library, but otherwise little in my life had changed.

Then we went to a Christmas party at Tom’s friend’s apartment… and someone there had a video camera. These guys were single, so there were lots of pretty (not fat) girls there, and the camera got lots of use. When I saw the tape later, and saw myself, it was like getting hit in the head with a shovel. Who was that behemoth with my husband??? She had my oh-so-lovely hair, but she’s shaped like a Weeble, for shit’s sake. Oh. My. God. It’s me.

I weighed 213 pounds.

(Me, Christmas 1988. I had probably JUST begun trying to lose weight. LOVE the bi-level haircut and acid washed jeans!)

In the next four months, I lost over 60 pounds. I got back into size 10 jeans. How did I do it, you ask? A diet of my own making. Dexatrim, Diet Pepsi, and Wheat Thins with bits of cheddar cheese. And an exercise bike. Real healthy, huh? But I didn’t care. All that mattered was never seeing that bloated, doughy face on a video or in my mirror ever again.

(May of 1989, dressed for "Wild West Days" at the library where I worked. Ride 'em, Cowgirl!)

I maintained my weight loss for a little over a year. Then it started all over again. Fat is sneaky. You gain five or six pounds, lose three, gain ten, lose four, gain eight… and before you know it (or so it seems), you can no longer stand the sight of yourself. You don’t gain it all overnight, so you manage to convince yourself you don’t look that bad, and you aren’t really suffering any health effects. But you’re wrong.

(Me with Ripley-My-Love at our first Therapy Dog Visit, December 1998)

By early 2001, I was 254 pounds. My jeans were size 22. Emotionally, I was at an all-time low. Society either blames or ridicules the morbidly obese, or fails to even notice them. Women, especially, bear a stigma. My intellect has always been one of my strengths, but society tends to subtract IQ points for every pound you are overweight. I was short of breath all the time, and my face turned beet red with the slightest exertion. My back ached, and my ankles were painful and swollen. I developed heel spurs. I had horrible acid reflux all the time. I don’t even want to think what my blood pressure or cholesterol must have been. I was sick and tired of being disgusted with myself every minute of every day. I knew that if this was all my life was ever going to be, it just wasn’t worth it. I also knew myself well enough to realize that this pattern would continue, and before long I’d be over 300 pounds, until I eventually dropped dead of some weight-related disease.

That’s when I decided to have gastric bypass surgery. A client at the vet clinic where I worked had had the surgery, and that was the first time I’d ever heard of it. I got online, found a local surgery support group, and learned that the first step was to attend an informational meeting at the bariatric surgery department at a local hospital. I went, and never looked back.

(END OF PART ONE. TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR THE "JOURNEY BACK TO MYSELF," STARTING WITH MY 254# PRE-OP PHOTO.)