Everyone has a magic-wand wish. You know, that impossible thing that you would gladly give your right arm to your fairy godmother in exchange for: A stable relationship, a million dollars, bigger boobs, a smaller nose, free post-secondary education.
For me, my wish was to be thin.
I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t fat. I was always a little teapot: short and stout. I tried everything from fad diets (looking at you, Atkins) to just straight-up not eating; in the process, I managed to yo-yo, binge, and crash-diet myself up to a BMI that basically meant my blood was mayonnaise.
Being overweight was such a huge part of my identity that I never questioned it. But not because I was one of those girls who believes she isn’t defined by a scale. Not because I loved my curves and rebranded my stretch marks as bad-ass tiger stripes. And certainly not because I convinced myself I wasn’t morbidly obese, I was simply “thick” or, better yet, “juicy.”
The ironic part is that I envied those girls (I still do), the body-positive ones who don’t let their size stop them from being fierce as fuck. The ones who consider their figures luscious and clap back against Photoshop and fat shaming. I simply wasn’t one of them.
I was the one who was called “Sasquatch” on the playground and let it define me. The one who was told I would have “such a pretty face” if I just lost weight. The one who was informed that if a guy was attracted to me, he must be a chubby chaser. I was the one who believed all these things to be true. And as a result, I felt less than human.
I spent a majority of my years trapped under rolls of fat, living but not experiencing life. My weight was a prison, holding me captive from what I could have if only a fairy godmother would grant me the privilege of being thin.
My fairy godmother never did appear, but in January of 2017, I decided to make a change. It was because of a combination of a New Year’s resolution, my sister (who I’m fiercely competitive with) deciding to go on a health kick, and Donald Trump being elected as president of the USA (no way I was going to be fat if he blew up the world).
Honestly, when I started this journey, I didn’t think this time was going to be any different. I would lose 50 pounds, get down to a weight where I was still chubby but not grotesque, get bored, get insecure in losing my security blanket of fat, and gain it all back. It wasn’t my first time at the rodeo.
As predicted, I lost the 50 by May, and by the summer I was chasing onederland, that mystical place where the scale’s first number is a one instead of the two that had been present since I was 15. It was a place I had been within 10 pounds of countless times before. On the other side of the scale was “normal”… and it scared the hell out of me.
Somehow, this time (probably thanks to my fierce competition with my sister), I managed to hit onederland. I cried, lost another 10 pounds, another 20, and miraculously rang in New Year’s 2018 in size 6 jeans (okay, a stretchy 6 that gave me a muffin top, but still a 6, damn it!), and a size medium Camosun hoodie.
And it wasn’t thanks to a magic wand. It was thanks to a lot of sweat, a few tears, and some unexpected life lessons I didn’t anticipate.
Cost of healthy living
The idea of an obese starving student is a bit of an oxymoron. Yet, I was living proof such a thing exists. And, in all honesty, my bank account will tell you it is significantly easier to be a starving unhealthy student than a healthy one.
While I’m not daft enough to try to pawn my weight problem off on the cost of healthy groceries, it certainly didn’t help. A box of Kraft Dinner or a frozen pizza is way cheaper than chicken breasts, spinach, red peppers… and don’t even get me started on avocados.
My grocery bill has probably tripled since I started to eat more healthily. Because healthy equals clean, and clean equals unprocessed, which equals more ingredients, and… well, you get the idea.
Plus, there are the protein shakes and meal replacement bars and ridiculously overpriced but oh-so-worth-it low-cal, high-protein ice cream that I buy and tell myself tastes as good as Ben and Jerry’s.
There’s also the Fitbit and monthly Weight Watchers fees. Thankfully, I prefer hiking mountains to lifting weights, so I’ve managed to avoid a costly gym membership that I’ll never use.
But it’s all worth it, because it gets results. Which means your clothes get looser. Which means you get to buy new clothes. Yay! Super fun. Who doesn’t love a good shopping spree to reward all that hard work, right? That was certainly my mentality when I dropped my first dress size. By the eighth time I had to replace my entire wardrobe, the novelty wore off. (PS, did you know that you lose weight in your feet? Bu-bye 40 pairs of heels!)
I’ve donated countless garbage bags of clothing to women’s shelters and friends (half of the stuff still had the tags on it) and become a master of shopping sales, which was a heck of a lot easier to do when I wasn’t the same size as everyone else… which has required me to shop secondhand to supplement my closet.
Because when you’re replacing your clothing on a monthly basis, your Visa needs a break.
Old habits
Let the record show: I can still demo four pieces of pizza in one sitting. I also have no self-control when it comes to cookies. Like, ZERO self-control.
Someone once told me sugar is as addictive as cocaine. The first time I tested this theory was December 2017. I had made it almost an entire year without eating any sweets before I fell off the bandwagon. Hard.
My sister invited (guilted) me over to help her decorate gingerbread men. By the time I arrived, she had already baked the first batch of 10. The smell of spices and molasses made my mouth water and my heart begin to beat faster.
The kitchen was a veritable assembly line; one that spilled into the dining room, where sheets of waxy parchment covered the oak table, pinned down by bowls of Smarties and sprinkles. Dozens of cookies piled in a mountain of temptation in the corner tortured me as I sat down.
I told myself I wasn’t going eat a single one.
I lied.
It started innocently enough. One of the men pulled a Marie Antoinette as I decorated him. My fingers were trembling as I lifted his poor decapitated head off the table. Every fibre of my body was screaming not to do it.
I did it.
The tsunami of sugar roared through my system. A surging panic required me to shove his body into my mouth to destroy the evidence.
His Smarties buttons burst in my mouth, filling me with a rush of satisfaction and guilt. I swallowed and reached for his comrade in sprinkled arms.
A few cookies later, I realized the men could no longer satisfy me. I took a mouthful of Smarties. Then another.
By the time my sister brought over the next batch of cookies to be decorated, I had turned the icing bag inside out and was licking the thick white goo from its crevasses.
Not my finest hour.
The next day I woke up with a headache worthy of a run-in with tequila and intense sugar cravings that took until the New Year to curb. I managed to successfully stay clean until Easter… poor chocolate bunny never saw it coming.
Endurance
Did you know that, depending on the route you take, there are up to 75 stairs between the Foul Bay parking lot and the top floor of the Young Building?
In my first semester at Camosun I had a class in Young 300. I loved that class but dreaded getting to it. The journey required me to take a break at the top of the 30 concrete stairs that led up from Fisher to the exterior of Young, and a prayer that there was no one to hear me wheezing as I struggled up the 17 stairs into the building.
Once inside, I continued my harrowing trek down the hall. My schedule allowed me to arrive to class when the halls were relatively quiet and, on days when I was lucky, I was able to slip into the elevator undetected, eliminating the remaining 28 stairs. If there were fellow students loitering around the lift, my pride would force me to drag my ass up the remaining steps. My lungs would burn by the time I sat down, and I’d be thankful I was usually the first one there, so I could recover before my in-shape classmates and prof arrived.
I once saw a guy running up and down the stairs between Fisher and Young for cardio and thought about calling security, as I was fairly certain homeboy had lost it. The idea of exercising was about as appealing to me as a root canal. Why would people do it for fun?
I’m not going to launch into an ode to exercise and how amazing it is; I still curse every freaking step on my Sunday morning hike up Mount Doug and I’m convinced a sadist invented burpees. But now, when I’m stressed, I reach for my runners instead of a bag of chips.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m an endorphin junkie (let’s not get crazy here, people) but I can confidently say I am reluctantly athletic and can see the value of exercise.
Except burpees. Burpees are bullshit.
Loose skin
Okay, so I knew going into this I was going to have to deal with excess skin. I had seen enough extreme-weight-loss shows to accept that I would never have a six-pack.
What I did not anticipate was the mindfuck that comes from having a stomach that looks like someone strapped five pounds of raw pizza dough to it, or having a chest look like I’ve breastfed quints. My upper arms look like they have old-man balls dangling from them when I extend them, and don’t even get me started on my ass.
When you lose over 100 pounds, your body just kind of looks like a bunch of deflated balloons, which can, in turn, deflate your self-confidence.
On top of being unsightly, it prevents me from losing that last 10 pounds to have a “normal BMI”—which, yes, I’m aware isn’t a good barometer for a healthy weight—but being considered “overweight” (even in my hella-stretchy size 6 jeans) still makes me feel like I should be thinner.
Someone recently asked me if I ever considered getting my extra skin removed. After a quick Google search (complete with post-op photos) I realized that, first of all, ouch! (Anything that requires incision drains should not be done electively.) Also, it would cost me less to finish my double-major bachelor’s degree than to lop off my batwings and wet-diaper butt.
The peanut gallery
About 80 pounds into my weight-loss journey, a relative cornered me at a family function and demanded to know how much weight I had lost, and how much more I wanted to lose. He wanted to know how I had done it, and how I was planning on keeping it off (because, did I know that people who lose large amounts of weight are likely to regain it?).
I’ve also seen people practically clutch their pearls when I reach for a piece of cake at a celebration. “Oh, Lord. Here she goes, falling off the bandwagon. Quick, someone snatch her fork. Save her from herself!” (For the record, one piece of cake will not cause you to spontaneously gain 110 pounds.)
In many ways, it’s like being pregnant—without the fetus. Your body undergoes this crazy transformation, and everyone has an opinion about it. “So-and-so’s cousin went through it, this person had a difficult time with it, that person’s done it five times…” People voice their unsolicited concerns and experiences and ask far too personal questions about your body.
Except it doesn’t end after nine months. It’s been eighteen months and still, the first thing that people who knew me back then comment on when they see me now is my weight. Like, all the fucking time. And I’m not just talking about people who haven’t seen me in forever. I’m talking about people I saw last week! They still comment on my weight loss.
It’s a complete mind trip. And, truthfully, it’s annoying.
In the last year, I’ve slayed some pretty major accomplishments academically and professionally, but people are still more interested in my waistline. “Oh, you got your first piece published? Great! Now, tell me more about that protein powder you love!”
Honestly, one of the only reasons I agreed to write this was because I knew those people would actually read my writing if it was about my weight loss.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the encouragement. I do. It’s just that, as someone who grew up without a kind word being said about my body, it’s hard having so much emphasis being placed on “how great it looks” now (especially when I know the truth about my pizza-dough stomach).
Losing weight is not a magic-wand wish. Yes, I can climb the 75 stairs to the top floor of the Young Building without dying. Yes, I can walk into a store and buy an article of clothing because I like it, not because it will fit me. But I’m still the same person.
There’s just less of me to hide behind now. “Me” is a little closer to the surface.
I feel more human, but it’s like being given a pass to a club I’ve observed from the outside my entire life. And it’s hard not to feel like my membership should come with an asterisk:
Katy*
*former fatty.
And that asterisk is not because I used to be obese. It’s because I still carry the stigma: the cruelty of thin privilege and the damage of growing up in a time when it was more important to be skinny than it was to be body positive. I still feel like a Sasquatch when I eat too many carbs. I catch my reflection in the mirror and struggle to see any difference between my body then and now. My asterisk is both a bone of contention and a badge of honour.
Much like the puppy skin tucked into my Spanx, it’s a part of me. Maybe one day I’ll get it removed, but in the meantime I’ll struggle to accept it and realize that I am not defined by a number on a scale.