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What is my experience of being overweight? I have been fat, (the F word), all my life. I have good genes and in the past 8 years have only missed work because of illness twice. My colesterol and blood pressure levels are normal. So far I've been lucky.

When I was in nursery school I was the second biggest girl in the class, and grateful for that. In grade school I survived taunting, tacks on my chair, a bloody turkey claw shoved in my desk, having snowballs with rocks in them thrown at me, and a stab with a safety pin in my ample backside as I was getting off the school bus. I had boys come to sneak a peek at the scale when the nurse came into our classroom to weigh us and broadcast the amount to everyone in the room. I remember being transported home by someone's mother and 4 little boys wrestling my notebook away from me, and page by page, ripping out my homework and throwing it out the window. The mother's response? "Be careful boys, you might hurt somebody's feelngs." I came to expect that people did not and would not like me.

In the 8th grade I took the friends no one else wanted: the girl who smelled the back of her hand all day, and the horsey girl with a man's cleft in her chin, who at age 12-13 dated 26 year olds and knew a lot more about sex than anyone else our age. This was in 1960.

My junior year in high school my doctor perscribed speed and I lost 50#. I thought when I was a normal size everything would be all right, but it wasn't and I gained it back.

Throughout the years I've tried fad diets, the Jennine eat what you want, grapefruit and egg, soup, blood type, and high protein. Although I've never been the chocolate cookie and Pepsi for breakfast type and had accepted a whole-wheat lifestyle, I learned how to eat properly at Weight Watchers. I lost and gained the weight back. I went to Jenny Craig with my tax returns and eating their food and using their walking tape, lost 50#. It took more and more exercise in order to maintain. I did therapy. I joined a recovery group. I gained it back plus.

I've been up and down forever. In the last 4-5 years I've lost 80# twice. I'm 62. I can't do it anymore. There is no elasticity to my skin and no substance behind sagging flesh on my inner thighs.

To me, food is an addiction, just like smoking, gambling, alcohol, drugs, promiscuous sex, saving, compulsive shopping or cleaning.

For me, being an overweight person in this society is like being a pedophile.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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