Diary of a Former Fat Girl - Growing Up and Out

I have no pictures from when I was at my biggest. I shunned cameras and hid whenever I saw them. I’m sure there are some floating around – I was in a few plays that year and worked at Lonestar Comics where they seemed to love to flaunt that a chick was shift supervisor for a short period of time. I was the keyholder, are you the gatekeeper?

I don’t want pictures of me from then; I think they’d only make me cry that I let myself get that way, let myself go that much. I’ve always struggled with my weight. I started eating for comfort at a very young age when life’s emerging traumas proved too much for my fragile little mind. I hid inside during the summers, stayed up all night and slept all day, obsessed with Nintendo and fantasy-land sci-fi books as my only means of escape from the nightmare going on around me. No, I wasn’t in a war-torn country or being forced to work in a sweatshop. I was just lost in the suburban jungle, tangled in social lianas and slowly choking on the stagnant suburban air. We were stereotypical on the outside – father owned his own company, mother ran his office until getting pregnant with the last half of 2.5 kids.
I’m going to burn in a hell I don’t believe in for just referring to my autistic brother as “half a kid”.
We didn’t have the picket fence, every house looked the same on our street. Manicured lawns, Saturdays spent landscaping, swimming pool in the backyard and brick-built mailbox on the front lawn. Picture perfect family life but this isn’t a Norman Rockwell painting. My parents fought, all parents do, but its still traumatic for a kid to witness. My sister hated me, egged on by my maternal grandmother to tease and taunt and punch and shove and basically make my life a living hell. And I was strange. Like leopard print biking shorts with striped t-shirts and knee high athletic socks strange. Sideways Chrissy Snow ponytail half falling down, gap-toothed grin, dimples hidden as I looked at my feet to stop the crimson blushing strange. I liked science fiction and reading and would rather have gone to the museum than to the birthday party. I wanted to be everything from an actress to an astronaut and didn’t feel like I’d ever fit in with those neighborhood kids playing in the vacant lot with the giant hollow tree that eventually got leveled for a two-story mcmansion with a crystal chandelier.
I didn’t play with Barbie dolls, I wanted to build lego castles and storm them (humperdink!). I wasn’t the typical girl. And I was fully aware of that fact – hello cookie dough and chocolate bars to make that empty hole in my stomach go away. My own lack of willpower and about ten years later and I’m not huge, but not small – maybe slightly wider than average in a country filled with little houses.
I was in high school trying to start losing the weight so my mom would stop saying “you’d be so pretty if you lost about 30 lbs” and my sister’s friends would stop following me from the bus stop calling me “chunky” and “tub o’ lard” and telling me I’d never be pretty enough to get a boyfriend. I went on my first diet in high school when my mom went on a health food kick. And I lost some weight. Not enough, probably because I kept sneaking cokes and candy bars from the vending machines after gym where I sat on my ass in the bleachers most of the time. I hated working out in front of others for fear of how my body and my new-grown overlarge breasts jiggled. I couldn’t concentrate on crunches while waiting for that familiar whisper of “god, why does she even try – those ten crunches won’t make that stomach go away”
So I gave up for a while and resigned myself to a life of being lonely and fat and ugly. I’m used to the lonely. I am a rock, I am an island – Simon and Garfunkel. Wise men, broke up, very sad.

I lost a little weight the year I started college at 16. Being away from family stressors, new environment, having to walk all over campus all contributed to dropping the freshman 25 instead of gaining the freshman 15. Then I moved back home to go to the local university. And I started growing bigger. My constant size 16 clothes I’d had since high school started getting tighter. After about 5 years of ups and downs and wins and losses I eventually topped out at a tight size 22 (so a 24?) and about 250 lbs. that’s the biggest I ever was and the biggest I’ll ever let myself get.
I started working on losing the weight seriously this time. Lost down to a tight size 18 in about a year, and then stalled and couldn’t lose more. My mom read about this new detox diet – the anti-estrogenic diet. I fit the symptoms of estrogen overload – acne, stubborn lower belly fat, extreme mood swings, etc, etc, etc. So I bought the book and tried it. And lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks. Then continued losing throughout the next few months. There was, however, a drawback. If I didn’t eat the prescribed “meals” at certain times I experienced a sort of diabetic/hypoglycemic shock. This happened during rehearsals for The Tempest and I nearly passed out backstage. Not fun. I stopped the diet shortly after that night and went to being a (flexible) vegetarian.
I had lost about 50 lbs from January 08 – January 09 with no exercise other than normal daily activities and a hellish schedule my last spring semester of school. But it wasn’t enough. I was a size 16 and I still hated how I jiggled when I walked or how my waist bunched over my beltline when I sat down. So I went the whole 9 yards – full restrictive vegan, home cooked meals only, calorie restriction and no processed foods. I lost ~40 lbs between January and May. And then stalled again, for various reasons. I went off my diet when we moved, I’m having problems finding motivation to start it up again.
I still hate the way I look. I know I’m a thousand times better than I was. I know I’m in a healthy range now and I’m not hideously ugly or obese. But I want to lose more. Something in me wants to be a single-digit size range. Not skeletor thin, but maybe like a size 8. Still have curves, but toned curves. And with all the recent shit in my life, I’ve found the motivation to start again, to put down the chocolate and pick up the weights instead. I’m working on toning this time and not just losing inches. Breaking out the old pilates and yoga with the hopes that maybe I’ll stop having breast-related back pain (the one part of me that really hasn’t gone down proportionally)
Through all my diets and struggles and battles with myself I got left with lovely reminders – I’m pretty much covered in stretch marks. Breasts, stomach, hips, thighs, butt, back, even arms where I gained and lost bicep muscle. Yet another reason I still wear full jeans and baggy tshirts in Texas summers. I lost 92 lbs and got a lifelong souvenir for all my effort. I know they’ll fade in time, with vitamin E and cocoa butter. But they’ll always be there even faded. I’ll always notice them even if no one else does. Rub my fingers along the faint rough edges and wish I hadn’t ruined my body so young. I might have to change my stance on cosmetic surgery and get them taken care of once I’m where I want to be. We’ll see. Though probably not, I’m one of those live with the consequences types.
So yeah. Here I am. Almost 26 years old, 162 lbs as of my daily weighing yesterday. 41-31-41 perfect hourglass measurements, just a slightly bigger payscale. And like I said, not completely happy where I am, but working on it. I didn’t get that way overnight, I’m not gonna wake up tomorrow perfectly svelte and toned. If I can stop listening to dark chocolate’s siren’s song I should be able to get where I want to get eventually. This would all go much better if they didn't make food in commercials look so tempting. But I don't want or need easy solutions. Anything in life is worth the struggle, if it comes easily it isn’t worth the paper its printed on. Or some other old-fashioned saying like that.