Fat

Fat causes a lot of psychic misery and health problems.  It’s now a national obsession under its bulkier clinical name, obesity.

While fat causes so much trouble in bulking people out, it is itself such a trim little 3-letter word.  I suggest it be bulked out by being spelled “phaatt” or maybe all upper case, “PHATT,” followed by an exclamation mark.

I’ve been fighting with PHAATT! for most of my life.  As I see it, my problem emerged when I was in the 8^th grade and went off to get a physical exam to enter high school.  At the end of the exam, Dr. D (he’s long gone but I’ll mask his name anyway) informed me in a somewhat surprised tone that at 5’3” and 120 lbs, I was 17 lbs. overweight; I was supposed to weigh 103.  I was devastated and humiliated.  He gave me no suggestions, oral or written, on what I should do about this problem.  I knew my mother wouldn’t help.  I was left with what felt like a lodestone of failure.  Also a long term dread of going to doctors who would bring up this humiliation again, a dread banished eventually with the emergence of many more women into medical practice.

Half way through high school, I had a much larger problem than at that 8^th grade physical.  I was bookish and plain in a blue collar Catholic school with little money to spend on hair, makeup and clothes.  I was a major failure as a teen and food became my game.  I’ve been battling weight ever since.

The rest of the story is the usual one of getting motivated and/or equipped with diet pills, losing weight but never so much that my weight is “normal” for my 5’5” adult height, giving up the diet after many months, and regaining more than the lost pounds.  In the meantime, I’ve become pretty knowledgeable on food, calories and nutrition.

I had my usual luck the first time I joined Weight Watchers in an at-work program.  I was motivated by a leader who sympathized with my typical slow progress (9 weeks, 11 lbs.)  After a year, I had lost a lot but was still many pounds above normal, had hit an impenetrable plateau, was very tired of tracking everything I ate and being focused so much on food, all to no avail.  I drifted away from the diet; the weight returned once again over the next several years.

I mention with much gratitude that my husband, a slender guy, has always been tolerant of my weight no matter what it might be.  But I won’t admit the number even to him.

I have a theory about weight which my doctor thought was reasonable.  The Darwinian pressure is to gain weight to offset the food-short circumstances in which people lived for eons.  When we diet, we teach our bodies to find ways to end-run our self-imposed deprivation.  Over time, dieting becomes harder and harder as we have to outdo the tricks our bodies have learned.  I think young people should be told that they must never go on a diet.  If they find that their weight is higher than it should be, they should concentrate on healthier eating and on getting more exercise. 

In 1999, I bought a horse, something I had wanted from childhood.  The riding hobby along with other activity has made it possible for me to get into pretty good shape.  My excess bulk bothers me less but I sure wish I could get rid of it.  It would be nice to be normal.