Anthony and I just came back from a trip, and I was planning to write all about how eating the foods you want on vacation is okay in moderation. I might return to that topic, but I need to address a more emotional subject first -- and the trip did lead me to think about this particular topic.
Recently I have taken special note of photos of me from the "before times."
No one really knew how to express it until the Oprah special aired, but that girl was SICK. She wasn't sick with the flu, or COVID-19. She was sick with the disease of obesity -- and still is.
I weighed over 300 pounds. My knees hurt daily, and the leg that I broke in 2015 gave me persistent trouble. I dealt with nagging acid reflux and needed a constant flow of sugary drinks to feel energized. Parts of my skin were discolored. And I sweat. I sweat and I sweat some more. I sweat from walking from the car to the front door of our apartment. I sweat when it was 60 degrees outside. I couldn't stand for more than five to ten minutes at a time. Not to mention, I was winded constantly.
Until I wasn't that girl anymore, I had no idea how unhappy I truly was.
To be perfectly clear, if you are happy living life in a larger body, that is your business and only yours. It is not my business to tell you that you shouldn't be happy living in a larger body just because I wasn't. I pretended that I was happy when I wasn't, and if that sounds like you, I completely relate. But if you're not pretending, that is none of my business!
That said, I wasn't happy living life in a larger body. I can list all of the health-related reasons why until we are all blue in the face, and they are all true. But I'd be lying if I said that my appearance didn't play a part. I looked tired, flushed, and puffy. I see the photos of that girl and I can see that she was trying... so hard.
When Anthony turned 50 this past May, I saved (and borrowed, LOL) money and spent six months planning the best party I could possibly give him. I was on my feet for two straight days, between setting up and the party itself. Over the course of the party, I was drenched, in pain, and exhausted. I allowed myself to be proud of the job that I did, but I had to fight through the pain and the sweat. I hired a professional photographer for the party, and while he did a fantastic job, I look at the photos that I'm in and only see how awful I looked. I know that my village will tell me that I did not look awful, and I appreciate that more than they know. But it's hard for me to see past it right now.
Our society would tell me that my issues were my fault. If I could just have some will power and lose the weight, I wouldn't feel like a sweaty mess with knees that were numb. I held the key to ending my own misery.
While part of that is true -- I have always held the key -- it wasn't that simple. I was SICK. I am sick. PCOS, food noise, the disease of obesity, and binge eating disorder made me sick.
My brain is sick when it comes to food, and for the first 35 years of my life, no one knew how to treat that sickness properly -- myself included, as I dismissed my doctor when he first suggested trying a GLP-1 medication back in 2023. What I didn't know was that the sickness went beyond the diet plans. The nutritionist who was hired to help me when I was 14. My weekly talk therapy session. The binge eating coaching I signed up for last year. I am chemically and hormonally imbalanced, and while all of that talk therapy has certainly been life-changing for me in other areas, and the binge eating coaching led me to a lot of self-discovery, it was not going to fix the part of my brain that told me to keep on eating even when I was full.
Knowing those facts makes me angry. I spent the entirety of my life up until a few short months ago thinking that I was defective. At 300-plus pounds, I'd given up. I felt trapped and out of control, and well-meaning people whom I love (and have forgiven, don't worry) blamed me for that lack of control. The pervading notion (for me and for many others who suffer from food noise and binge eating disorder) was that I wanted to make myself unhealthy. That the sweat and the pain were the consequences of my own actions.
On the flip side, the knowledge that I have a disease that wasn't being treated correctly leads me on the path toward acceptance rather than anger. I can accept the girl who was struggling through the party she'd planned for months, knowing that what was happening was never her fault. I included a photo from the party with this post in a special push for acceptance. She was never lazy -- yet she spent so much time overworking herself to prove to the world that she was not lazy in every other area possible (I still kind of do that but it has nothing to do with the size of my body at this point). She never wanted to make herself unhealthy.
I know I've spoken about non-scale victories and quality of life previously, but the difference in quality of life that I felt on our trip was tremendous. I was able to drive from New York to Virginia without my back hurting me. I was able to walk through busy airports without debilitating pain -- still some sweat but nothing compared to the sweating I experienced before. I was able to eat most of the food I wanted to eat in moderation. I still needed my seatbelt extender for the plane portion of the trip, but there was a LOT of extender left over. The entire experience was just easier. It is proof that the "before times" were never my fault, as well as evidence of how unhappy I was before, now that I have experience to compare it to. And now, we move toward acceptance.
If you are unhappy in a larger body, and are dealing with poor quality of life as a result of the disease of obesity, PCOS, binge eating disorder, food noise, or some combination -- please know it is not your fault. It never truly was. I hope that knowledge leads to acceptance, health, and better quality of life for you.
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