I learned at a very young age that fatness is something shameful. Fatness is synonymous with laziness, stupidity, meanness, undesirability, greed and/or weakness. I was surrounded by these messages. I heard it in media; the fat characters were never anyone I wanted to be. I heard it at school. Teasing the fat kids was expected, even encouraged. I heard it in my family. Fat was a regular insult in my house. It wasn’t just from the kids, I heard adults fling these terms at each other and even more often at themselves.
My mother regularly spoke negatively about her weight and her body; feeling defeated about it. “If I could just stop being greedy,” was one of her denied wishes. She would relive the past frequently talking about her former body. She used to have a nice body, nice and thin until she got pregnant with me. “I lost all the weight after I had your [older] brother, but I gained weight with you and I never lost it.” She reminded me of this on numerous occasions. I remember thinking, “I made her fat.” Whether she meant to blame me or not, I felt the blame and shame around ruining my mother’s perfect body. My mother would often tell me how pretty I was. Hallow words from the woman who was supposed to say things like that. That is what moms say. But why would I believe her? Her repeated self-deprecating remarks about her own body taught me that fatness was ugly but I’m supposed to believe that I’m not ugly?
It’s no wonder that I spent most of my life ashamed of my body. As soon as I started going through puberty at age 8, I became a fat kid. I was the target of bullying, mostly verbal assaults but in middle school the bullying developed into physical assaults. Middle school is when I developed the habit of not eating during the school day. I didn’t want to eat and give my bullies even more ammunition. I wouldn’t eat all day then come home to binge eat whatever I could find. Fortunately, when I moved up to high school, the external bullying stopped. Unfortunately, I replaced it with my own inner self-loathing thoughts. At one point in my teen years, I prayed to never wake up again. I had two failed suicide attempts. Each of those times I was hoping to just fall asleep and never wake up again. The pain so was intense.
Somehow, I found the resolve to stop focusing on my body and focus on my academics. School always came easy to me. Even though my hatred of my own body was still there, I was able to receive enough praise for my academic achievements that I started to feel hope, hope for a better life. I would just be the lonely but smart and successful fat, black girl.
Once I got to college, I had freedom and access to many diet plans. Over the years, I attempted several. Each time thinking now this is the magic bullet, the secret to lifelong happiness that had evaded me. If I was skinny, my life would be perfect. Even though I didn’t have much money in college, I kept finding money to spend on various diet attempts. I can’t even name them all. I’ve been on Nutrisystem, “diet pills” prescribed by my doctor which I quickly realized were just placebo pills, Weight Watchers, Overeaters Anonymous, LA Weight loss, ultra-low caloric diets, workout/diet plans from infomercials, etc. I wasted so much time, energy and money in the pursuit of thin happiness, each time gaining more and more weight. I believed my body was broken. I had no will power. I believed I was a food addict.
I can’t exactly pinpoint when it changed but my life changed for the better. I started cognitive behavioral therapy and worked through many of my childhood traumas. I found a spiritual community that taught me I am whole, perfect and complete. Eventually I started to believe that to be my truth. I found body-positive podcasts and books that taught me that beauty isn’t a body size. Everyone is worthy of love, respect and kindness no matter what. I saw body-positive images on social media. If I found these women with fat bodies beautiful, I can see the same beauty in me. I found information from health-at-every-size dietitians that taught me that diets, like the ones I so desperately tried repeatedly, are the biggest predictors of weight regain. All the over-restricting I was doing is what was really triggering my binge-eating and weight gains. I stopped my all-or-nothing thinking about food. Food is neither good or bad, it’s just food. I wasn’t broken and I wasn’t an addict.
Armed with all of these resources, I gained confidence. I learned to look in the mirror instead of avoiding them. I would look directly at the mirror and smile to myself. I used to cringe whenever someone would say I was beautiful. It was embarrassing. I assumed it was politeness and not a real compliment. Now whenever someone says I am beautiful, I reply with “thank you,” as I’m secretly thinking “I know, right? I am beautiful.” I used to avoid wearing a swimsuit, ashamed of having my body exposed. Now I confidently sunbathe on the beach, no concern at all about what others might think of me because I know how I feel about me. I proudly went to Hawaii (330 lbs at the time) and Mexico (290 lbs at the time) and never once felt self-conscious about my body. Because of my confidence, I had many great conversations with the staff and other guests. Because of my confidence, my vibe is friendly and approachable all while wearing either a swimsuit or a cover-up.
I spent a couple of years not desperately seeking magical weight loss solutions. I just lived my life unconcerned about needing to change my body. I know now I do not need to change for happiness, for confidence, for kindness, for respect, for desirability or for love. I already have those things. During a routine health screening I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and prediabetes in December 2020. I didn’t slip back into the old messages of shame. I calmly decided to make changes for me. I did so not out of fear but out of love for me and my life. I made very small, steady changes that did not feel anything like the punishing diets that I had been on before. These changes made me feel better and stronger. As of today, my blood glucose and blood pressure are back in the normal range. I am currently training to complete my first runDisney event in November 2022. This is where I am today and I have no idea where my journey will lead. But I do know that I am whole, perfect and complete right now.