Recently on Instagram, Khloe Kardashian posted the following—
2 Things a Girl Wants: 1) Lose Weight. 2) Eat.
No matter what you think of this post, we women have a strange relationship with food and our weight. How many times have you heard adult, successful women say, “I was bad. I ate Insert Item Here.” We revert to children and make moral judgments on what we eat and how much we weigh.
I’m no different. I’ve been recalling a lot of memories involving my weight. Some memories are painful and cruel, others are rather comical. So, in no particular order, here are some memories that have befallen me, a lifelong fat girl.
In 6thgrade, our gym teacher decides to weigh each and every one of us. What made the event even more humiliating was his having our classmates assist him. As each of us stepped on the scale, Mr. B would read the weight and call it out for one of our peers to record. That was bad enough, but Mr. B’s voice carried. After the gym period, I was accosted by one of the class beauties. Freya’s family was from Germany. She was a golden blonde, very tall for her age, with blue eyes and an athletic build. If she had been born fifty years earlier, the Third Reich would have recruited her for their Lebensborn program. Her expression was one of astonishment. “You weigh 127 lbs? That’s what I weigh.” How could that be? was the unspoken question. Mr. B probably thought he was shaming us fatties, but he unintentionally horrified one of his pets.
In my late twenties, I had lost a lot of weight. I thought it would change my life, but it didn’t. I was still me. Eventually I couldn’t handle the pressure to keep it off and gained it all back. A psychic fair came to town. I was given the best reading for the reason I was fat. No sad stories about how in a previous life I had been molested or had watched my brother kill someone just to see them die. My reason for being fat was quite original. Turns out in a previous life, I was a powerful and prominent king. Now in this life, as an ordinary person, I eat to make myself as big and as noticeable as possible. It was the greatest explanation ever. I thought this psychic was brilliant. No chastisement for weakness, no sad story. Just the latent desires of an emperor.
And you know how lots of heavy people blame their hormones? Well, I can legitimately do that now! Due to an autoimmune disease, my thyroid went off the rails, producing too much thyroid hormone and eventually, it had to be irradiated. Now I have to take thyroid medication. So, I can say, it’s not me it’s my metabolism!
Actually, when I learned I had the condition (called Grave’s Disease), I asked my doctor, “Hey, if I have this, how come I’m fat?”
“Because you eat too much,” came his placid reply.
Ask a stupid question…