I used to be fat...and just for clarity, I'm talking F-A-T fat, not phat. Although, you could still apply the latter? Regardless, yes, I, a medical retiree from the Army, used to be on the larger side of the body mass index. You might be thinking, "Oh, he probably only had a few extra pounds", but otherwise he presented as a regular guy. No, I was fat AF, as they say. I was definitely considered morbidly obese by definition. Fat.
So you might be naturally curious about a few things. Did I lose the weight? Yes. Was I always fat? No. Do people treat you differently when you're fat? Yes. Why did you get fat? Well, I suppose all of this will be explained in today's post.
The Early Years
As a child moving through adolescence into adulthood, I never would've been considered fat by today's standards. I also wasn't skinny. My mom would've and did often qualify me as "husky". I remember clothes shopping in early adolescence, you know, that time when your body begins morphing into something other than a child but not quite an adult. For boys, at least, we sometimes get stuck halfway, changing into pseudo-werewolves. Rapid growth, new hair, an oscillating voice that goes from high-pitch to gravelly smoker in a moment's notice. That time of life where hunger is never satiated, and we raid refrigerators like primitive hunters searching for the presence of easy prey that we may consume. That awkward, in-between phase, where things start changing and every day brings new surprises. "Huh, what's that off-white mound with an angry red border, popping up on my face?" "Why do girls look so good? Don't they have cooties?" and "Why are my balls hanging so low?!" Who can run with these sensitive, fleshy, ovoid orbs slapping back and forth between your legs?" By this point, I'm sure you're picking up what I'm putting down. Puberty.
By the time I hit puberty, I was "husky" but not fat. And moving forward into the teenage years, my weight would ebb and flow from physically fit to physically shit. Back and forth like a carnival ride. Everything was predominantly under control in those years, just not constantly.
He's not fat, he's big-boned! He's not heavy, he's my brother!
No, I was fat. When I left home and started college for the first time, I may have lost all ability to self-manage. I dropped out of school early into my first year and started working full-time for a small IT company. This was the early 2000s, and that's when a lot of these companies just needed warm bodies who weren't complete idiots to do things for the public that made them seem like wizards. I had a strong work ethic and an "OK" brain, so I moved up quickly in the company and became the Operations Manager after a few years. Mind you, this was a small company, and I don't think we ever employed more than 10 people at any given time. So, it sounds more impressive than it really was. I often found myself practically babysitting people who were the same age as me or older. Not all, but some.
It was at this time when my transition into a human globe started to occur. I found myself working close to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, at a desk. I stupidly lived about an hour away so I could be closer to my girlfriend at the time. Stupid. So you add in two hours of sitting in a car each day, and you have a grand total of 14 hours of being camped out on my voluminous ass. You may also assume that I didn't move much in those 10 hours I had outside of work each day. You would be correct in that assumption.
I had no ability to cook anything outside a box at the time, so you can imagine that my diet predominantly consisted of foods that were "fast" in nature. So you take all of these factors combined, and that equals Captain Fatass! Or, in the real world, a rapid weight gain of over 130 lbs within a year. Remember? I did say I was fat.
I don't specifically know how rotund I had become, but I do remember stepping on a scale at one point and seeing 330 lbs. It was then that I stopped stepping on scales because if you don't see it, it didn't happen, right? Not only that, but I'll assume that I ballooned past that 330 and would wager I was in the 350 lb range at one point. I suppose it's also important to mention that I'm 6 ft tall, so it's not like I was wearing it well. Shaq at 350 lbs looks a lot different from Beard Dad at 350 lbs.
Do you remember that girlfriend I had mentioned before? Well, she wasn't my girlfriend no more. Soon after my reverse quickening (I realize how obscure this reference is, so I'll spell it out for you: look up Highlander), she made her exodus to the tune of cheating on me with another dude in another state. Her original excuse was that God was telling her to, but my best friend had it right, "She found Jesus!" but it was said in the Hispanic pronunciation. Ah, who am I kidding at this point? I would've left me too. At the time, I was convinced that any woman who said she cared about personality was lying to my face.
So there I was, in my early 20s, over three hundred pounds, single, and soon-to-be unemployed. My former boss started going through an involuntary divorce and, in doing so, closed the business. I feel just as badly for him, as his wife at the time was shacking up with the neighbor. Yikes! All the variables in this scenario added up to equal... sadness.
Have you tried not being fat?
Yes, actually, that's what I did at that point in life. I made the very grown-up decision to move an hour away, back home, with my parents and live in their basement. A cliched basement-dweller, living and playing video games in their parent's basement. You can imagine how embarrassing it was coming home in that state, but that's precisely what I needed. Something familiar, stable, and careful. I have to give credit to both of my parents for letting an adult child become their "roommate" after what I'm sure they assumed was going to be the best years of their lives empty-nesting. And they did it without judgment but with a healthy dose of reality. My mom graciously started cooking for me again in an effort to right the sinking ship that was my diet. She started me on The South Beach Diet probably because that was the fad diet that she was adhering to at the time, but you know what? It worked. The weight started to come off in noticeable increments. It was also around this time that I started a temp job working in a factory.
Paired with my new diet and the fact that I was no longer sitting on my ass all day, my body started to move back to a state of equilibrium. I wasn't huge anymore, but I wouldn't have considered myself fit either. That would come later. But this is about the time when I realized that people started treating me differently.
Appearance matters.
Recently, there has been a sizable movement towards positive body image. Things like being happy with your body the way it is, giving yourself grace, and all kinds of nonsense that justifies being fat. I get it, and I think there is a lot of benefit from the mental perspective of being kind to yourself and being happy in your own skin. BUT, and this is a gigantic "but" (Baby Got Back!), no matter how good you feel about your appearance, people will still judge and treat you differently because of it despite how you feel about yourself. People would ask me after the fact, "Did you know how fat you were?" The honest answer to that was yes and no. I had a vague understanding that "I was packing on a few pounds" but I don't think I had realized how much and how bad until I stepped on that scale.
Subsequently, I didn't know how much your appearance affected people's treatment of you until I experienced both ends of the scale. People I had known for years would hardly give me the time of day after my weight gain. Employees in businesses treat you differently; typically, they're more rude to you without cause. Often, people would talk to you like you were simple...the fat didn't destroy my cognitive capacity, just my ability to run any distance without wheezing. Hell, even kids notice fat people without filters: "Why's that man so fat?" I don't know, kid? Why are you so ugly? If I did know, don't you think I would've fixed it by now?
Even the least likely of all people would treat you with scorn: medical providers. I remember one instance vividly. I was sick and therefore took my thick ass to the doctor. It turned out I was sick, but she walked in and gave me one of the worst dressing-downs of my life! She started ticking off all the reasons I was going to die an early death, and frankly, she seemed angry about it. "You're obese, your blood pressure is high, etc, etc... You're going to die an early death!" Every word was a gunshot.
After I lost the weight, I began to notice how nice people were being to me again. Showing attention and kindness without preconceived judgment. This is when I fully understood that weight not only affects health but also how easy it is to interact with the world and the people in it. It unknowingly made everything harder.
In summary.
Look, I could write a whole book on everything that happened next, but let's just hit the fast-forward button. Here is the highly accurate, chaotic timeline of my adult life:
- Got fat after high school
- A few years later, lost weight
- Realized people treat you differently based specifically on how much you weigh.
- Started back to college without any idea of what I wanted to do. (Declared English major)
- Took an aptitude test with a college counselor and joined the Army. WTF?
- Got fit.
- Met my wife
- Graduated college (not English major)
- Went to war
- Came home and got married.
- Kept Armying
- Hit a groundhog on my bike and got MS.
- Had a kid.
- Medically retired from Army.
- Stay at home with kid, while wife works.
- Had another kid...she autistic! Oh shit!
- Take care of kids.
So that's the very accurate timeline of my adult life. Sure, there might be some things, here and there, between those events, but, eh. If you really want to hear about it, please let me know, and I can expand on that later. I probably will anyway since I have nothing better to do.
I try to always have a point to these musings, and I'm finally getting to it now. My point is, weight has been a constant struggle for me, as I know it is for many people today. I'm not always winning the battle, but I think it's important to continue the fight regardless. If not for yourself, for your family. People will always treat you differently based on your appearance, and if for nothing else, maintain your appearance to reduce the amount of stress in your life. I would like to be around a long time for my kids. You know, watch them grow up and become judgmental assholes like their dad. I love my family and want nothing but the best for them, and if I can't lead by example, what kind of parent would I be?
If you're reading this and you're struggling personally with any issue that affects your health, know that you aren't alone. If a grumpy, physically old,man like myself can make major life changes, I know you can too, and you don't have to do it alone. Thanks for reading, and please don't hesitate to comment on any major hurdles you've overcome so we can celebrate the wins together.
Dad out...I gotta go take a walk... I walk myself like a dog. Ugh.