F*ck This!

"I spent my entire 20's being overweight, and I'm tired (literally!) My goal is to be healthier by my 30th birthday (September)."

(my weight graph, Oct 09-June 10)

This is the quote that greets me on my diet tracker web site. I joined it October 1, 2009. That was just before what we can call "Hed's Great Depression" that occurred the next month. I actually did well. I joined a gym (and went!), tracked everything I put in my mouth, and focused on healthy items that would fill me up instead of give me a quick burst then drop me. At the time I had just started working at Starbucks, where I could drink my glorious caramel macchiatos every day if I wanted to. When we would sample pastries I would have a sample bite without going ape-shit and eating an entire piece. I miss working around coffee sometimes, because seriously, the anorexic models were onto something! I get coffee right before I start grocery shopping, and all (okay, most) impulse buys are gone. Now we are dirt poor and usually scramble to eat what we can. I've been so depressed lately that spending an hour in the grocery store planning meals is the last thing on my mind. I want to run to Del Taco, get food, and go home. Two things yesterday made me look at myself, my situation, my fat, and see there has to be a change.

My husband and I went to the local drugstore to get updated passport pictures-I had to change my married name and they needed new pictures since mine were from 2005. I had done my make-up and hair, which I haven't done lately unless we are really going somewhere I would be uncomfortable without make-up on, like dinner with the family. And I love make-up, so not wearing it should show you just how crappy I've felt lately. Anyway, I look straight at the camera and it's done. We walk around the store while they are getting processed, and I overhear a clerk asking another clerk, "do we have any wheelchairs?" I brush it off and wait for the photos to finish. I look at them and oh.my.God. These aren't my pictures. That's not me. This person has this face with no structure and is a fat blob. She has a bowl haircut and the color is dirty brown. Her make up looks terrible. Never have I taken a picture of myself and have truly been shocked at how I must look to others. The guy asked me if I wanted to redo them, and I sheepishly said no. I thought, no camera in the world could cure my ugly, so why bother. They were awful, not self-conscious girl-type awful, but awful like I wanted to soak the pictures in gasoline and light them on fire awful.

We walk the 20 steps from the photo booth to the cash register, and J forgets to pick up soda, so he runs to get some and I wait in line. A lady slowly passes me with a cart of only three things; what looked like gauze, ointment, and something else. She had to be twice my size. She was a big woman. And she was exhausted. She was breathing like she just ran a sprint, was all sweaty, and started hunching over the empty cart like it was a cane. I didn't want to be a hypocrite by looking at her because I hate when others do that to me, but it was a wake-up call. I'm tired when I walk up the stairs to my apartment. I see the sad beginning of cankles. I gasp for breath when I fall asleep. When she got to the cashier, she kindly asked the clerk why they didn't have wheelchairs or motorized carts, and I realized the clerk in the back of the store I had passed was asking for one for her. She walked in the store, went through one aisle, walked back to the front of the store and she needed a freaking wheelchair. I don't want a wheelchair someday. Unless I break my leg, I'll walk, thank you. I felt sorry for her, and I hate that I did, because she was once my size and nothing stopped her from getting larger. I saw myself in five years in her.

There are always articles I read about obesity, and the comments are shocking. Some say "they should be able to control themselves, they are disgusting, vile people". Others make fun of fat people lightly, and even more say they should "do themselves a favor and kill themselves". I don't want to be made fun of. I don't want people to snicker at me. I am so aware of my movements, how my clothes are fitting, my facial expressions, how I talk etc. when I am around strangers. Just like with everything else I want them to only see me as a nice, kind person. I don't want them to know I hate myself. I don't want their pity. I want their approval. And obese people are unacceptable in the minds of many. My home is my comfort zone. I can do what I want there with no prying eyes. I sometimes even have to ask my husband to leave the room if I'm getting dressed or feeling miserable. The thought of moving to a new country is terrifying. My main thought is if I'm out and about, the minute I open my mouth someone will think, "heh, a typical FAT American" and automatically dismiss me. I think the ratio of me thinking about what people think of me versus me thinking of me is 95/5. I'm so sick of it. It all boils down to all the stresses in my life and what I can do to change them.

I'm no good about taking care of myself. I do what is the easiest and what is the path of least resistance. In any avenue of life when I hit a wall, instead of climbing it or breaking it down, I just run the other way. I have to get out of this pattern, or I will die. Die from either something weight related, or something depression related. (I've always pictured my death as driving on a freeway overpass trying to eat a cheeseburger and *BAM* fall off the bridge. Seriously.) I didn't plan on waking up this morning and saying to myself "okay, today is the day!", I just did it. I'm not going to be excessively detailed this time. I'm going to go with the flow. No power scooters in my future. No more back pain from walking from a parking lot to an office building. I' done. I'm DONE.

What's your definition of "fat"?

First off, I'd like to share with my readers that I am typing this naked in the middle of the day. Because my brain never turns off, my mind wandered to the look of my own body while I was in the shower so I sat at my computer in my towel and started to write. In the shower, I came to this conclusion: I think there is an invisible weight limit for each individual where you cross the line from-

"skinny" to "trim"

"trim" to "healthy"

"healthy" to "curvy"

"curvy" to, gosh, there's so many, "plump", "chubby", "chunky", etc.

"chubby" to "fat"

"fat" to "really fat"

and finally, "really fat" to "I can't lift my legs out of bed fat"

I am the second to last one. Really. I'm not some tabloid mag that shows Beyonce with jiggle and proclaims "FAT!!!", I'm the one you would say to a friend, "I can't believe she got so big!" or "she always had such a pretty face". I do have a pretty face, damn it, it's just hard to see the actual shape of it.

I'll lay out the grim, uncomfortable details: my thighs don't just touch, they stick together. I'm starting to get stretch marks on my knees. My knees! The stretch marks I was blessed with when having my son have actually risen upward and backward. That horrible back fat near the bra area some of us are plagued with? Mine actually rests on my lower back fat. My ears are fat. (No, not really, I just wanted to break the gross visuals with some comic relief.) It's hard to lift up my body, like when you pull the blankets out from under you when you are lying down. I walked the other day to our mailbox and by the time I got back my back was aching. The worst part about my fat is that I got passed down an apple shape via my grandmother. I'm all stomach. My ex said I was "shaped like a boy", because I carry all of my weight in my middle, as opposed to actually hot fat girls who have boobs and booty. I'm still a C cup. I used to have to buy jeans that were tight up top but baggy everywhere else because I didn't have big legs. Now I wear track pants, which is ironic because I've never been to a track in my life. My feet are fat. I wear slip-on because tennis shoes are too tight.

By the way, I'm not writing this for you to feel sorry for me. I heaped this on myself. Mr. McDonald and the Colonel and Jack were merely accomplices. The thing is, I want to be invisible. I want to walk somewhere out in the open and not have one person lay eyes on me. When I am in the grocery store, I make my husband go with me because I can make him be the culprit if we put Oreos in the basket. People may look at him and pay no mind, but I feel like if I grab cookies, people are like, "doesn't she know how she looks?" I only go through drive-through, because you are anonymous and people can assume all that food you are buying is for a family of six waiting for you at home. I feel instantly guilty whenever I say "and one Reeses McFlurry". I refuse to eat a hot fry or take a sip from my milkshake in the car while waiting for more food. Even one fry in public means I am a fat, lazy cow who belongs in Wal-Mart on a Jazzy scooter. Of course this is the main thing we talk about in therapy, because my outside is what I convey to others. I can be whomever I want on the inside to anyone, because that is what I do. I can't hide my outside. I can only hide inside-I mean, in my house, away from any eyes.

When I was younger, 130 pounds was fat. See how fat I was?

(Face covered to protect the innocent fat people. Namely me.)

I wanted to slap my 90 pound friends when they said they were fat. Where??? I used to work in a plus-size clothing store, and I loved it, even though I was a size 12-14. So many insecure girls would walk in and it was like the store was a safe haven. It screamed "look at everyone around you! You are not alone!!!" I wasn't the smallest girl that worked there and I wasn't the largest. Other than my stomach, I was okay with my body. I still had food issues back then though. I would try and hide the food I would eat when I had to leave the store on lunch and go to the food court. Us big girls always had plenty of snacks to go around, and I would make sure I would only eat either in private or when another girl was eating the same thing. After that job I started in the restaurant business, and as a manager I got all my food for free. For free. I would buy the massive desserts all the time because I knew that my servers would offer to split it or I could half it right away so I wouldn't seem like a fat pig. That way, instead of them looking at me eating, it would be like a reward for them and take the emphasis off myself. Fried foods were a daily indulgence. The cooks were so awesome, and I could ask them to make special stuff with the ingredients they had that weren't on the menu, like patty melts or crunchy fish tacos. Even after a ten-hour shift, I would still pick up fast food on the way home. It's like it was never enough.

I've tried to rationalize to myself that overeating is self-destruction, so it wouldn't be a big deal if I became bulimic or started to starve myself. Bulimia is out-I can't believe some people get a high after they puke, I feel awful and shaky and just want to lie down. And starving myself? Fat chance (pardon the pun). If I don't eat after eight hours *BAM* instant migraine. If I block out foods they become all I think about. If I only drink liquids I crave solids. I can't take ephedra or fat-burning supplements because of my medications and my somewhat bum ticker. I don't know what is scarier: walking into a public gym or being in the same room with a cockroach. They are both paralyzing.

I'm not gonna lie: I want the surgery. I want something that forcibly says, "you want that slice of cheesecake? Oh hell no! *Puke*". I know the drill people. I can't expect to succeed even with surgery if I don't change my routine and eating habits. When I buy a candy bar, I tell myself, "just today. Tomorrow I will cut out a sugar item". Then I eat another candy bar. It sucks. I have an addiction. It's not like crack, where you can learn how to recover from the dependency. You have to eat to live. And I live to eat.

Food=Love.

I like being alone. I always have. At family events at my home growing up, I would come downstairs to make an appearance, then go back up to my room and shut the door. Maybe it's because I can do what I want when I'm alone; no one is judging me or telling me what I should or should not do. The funny thing is, I was never without a boyfriend in my high school years. I think the idea that even though I liked being alone, I liked the thought that there was someone that loved me, that wanted to be around me, and I could share my thoughts and ideas with. I was so co-dependent with guys. I felt like if we broke up, it was the end of the world. I'm pretty sure that's not the depression-I'm pretty sure it's because I was a teenage girl? As soon as a relationship would end, I would latch right on to the next guy that showed interest. It's funny, I started writing this blog to profile my love affair with food, and it kind of went in a different direction. The segue with being alone was the fact that when I am alone, I can truly do whatever I want, which includes eating whatever I want and how much of it I want without anyone watching me or telling me that it's wrong or bad.

As a teen, I was "average", varying between 130 and 140 lbs at 5'7". Of course I always thought I was fat because I was still wearing the higher junior sizes of 9 and 11. Food wasn't really on my radar; I can't look back and picture a day where I binged or went out of my way to eat copious amounts of food. Actually, I would get lunch money every day while some of my friends did not, and I always shared my food with them. When I got pregnant at 17, I was 150 when they weighed me for my first prenatal appointment-a true heffer. I ended up gaining 51 pounds because I subscribed to the fact that I was "eating for 2", "it's all baby weight", "I'll be the weight I was as soon as he's born", etc. On my son's first birthday I was 159, which was unacceptable, but I had never had to diet or exercise before. By this point I was not a teen, I was an adult working for a living, and I didn't feel like I could be careless as a parent. In my high school years I dabbled in drugs, but even the thought of doing them as an adult was out of the question because I have to be a role model for my son. I worked in a casino where all of the snack bar food was half-off, and they had my favorite foods: nachos, patty melts, chicken fingers with ranch, ice cream. My job was also a sedentary one, so I ended up putting on 20 lbs in a year. When I met my first boyfriend after my son was born, I would go to his place after work and we would rent movies and stop by Circle K and pick up Ben & Jerry's, pumpkin seeds, and one-liter Pepsi's. I was about a size 14 or 16 then, and even though I was "fat", I was still finding clothes that fit at The Gap, NY & Co, and Hot Topic, so it was okay.

Fast forward a few years and I'm in a bad relationship, not working due to stress and depression for a year, and barely making ends meet. My live-in boyfriend was out doing God knows what, and I was driving through McDonalds getting a large Double Quarter Pounder meal with 20 chicken nuggets and a McFlurry. Daily. It was the only time I would leave the house, and it was the only time I felt satisfied. I would bite into the burger and the comfortable feeling would flood into my head and I would be happy. I would continue to eat even when I was stuffed and the food had no more taste to it because there was still food on the table. By the time I left my boyfriend and moved home, I was 221 pounds and in a size 18/20 at Lane Bryant. When I moved back home, I had to sleep in my son's race car bed. I had to put everything I owned in storage. I had no boyfriend, and I needed a job. I needed to get my shit together. I went to the doctor and found out I was pre-diabetic, which meant my blood sugar levels were on the threshold of becoming out of whack. My best friend was my savior. His own diabetes helped me realize I really didn't need that cheesecake slice when we would go out to eat. (Doesn't that sound awful? "Your diabetes saved me!") He also was my object of pure love and affection, which he fought off on a regular basis due to the fact that I had a LOT of demons I needed to figure out before I could be in a healthy, stable relationship (summed up in this statement: "You're not girlfriend material"). He also happened to be a black belt in karate, and taught me how to kick box (hes a triple threat!). I had gotten back down to 180 pounds, had the confidence to get my dream job, and to also make it on my own by moving out of my parents house after three years and moving out and relying on myself. (P.S. We finally ended up together)

Now, everything is a blur. You may have read my blogs where "Old Hed" is not me. I don't know where it went wrong, but I slowly gained weight after getting into a truly healthy relationship where I was unconditionally loved. I'm pretty sure that's not the depression-I think it's because I was a happy girlfriend? I weighed 200 pounds on my wedding day, roughly 18 months ago. Something clicked in me shortly after where I realized I had the great husband, the great job, the great house. I started growing increasingly anxious, that something terribly bad was going to happen; that there was nowhere else to go but down. I quit my job without notice, stopped going to school, and shut down completely. I am now 260 pounds. Yep. 260. I haven't told anyone that magical number. I am now closer to 300 pounds than I am to 200. I am over 100 pounds overweight. I can go on and on. These are the thoughts that run through my head on a regular basis. I don't spend intimate time with my husband anymore. I wear sweat pants. I've stopped wearing make-up. If you're like me, you may have watched a morbidly obese person stuck in a bed because they are so fat and thought, "how could they have let themselves get that FAT?" Well, if you're also like me, you have just stopped caring. Feeling. Being happy. When I have slept so much I can't sleep anymore and my husband is away, I am alone. I binge on food. I immediately feel at ease and happy when I eat. Even the feeling of fullness afterward makes me happy. When the feeling goes away, I am left with myself and my body and nothing else to feel. I truly loathe myself.

I have mentioned more than once to my husband if something like heroin wasn't illegal I would definitely try it. I see the emptiness behind addicts' eyes and I relate to it. The only way for them to take the pain away is to be high. That's how I feel with food. At this point, I don't know what else to do because I don't have the energy or motivation to make a change. See you at 300 pounds.