I am an expert on weight loss! How did I become an expert? I have spent most of my life thinking about, reading about, learning about, and personally trying out every diet and nutritional bit of diet information that I’ve ever come across. Sound familiar? Yes, you’re probably one of my diet-expert “colleagues”, as are so many other people (mostly women), that have this same goal in common…losing weight.
As a middle-aged woman, I can now look back and say that I was not a “fat” child, or a “fat” teenager or a “fat” young adult. I can’t tell you the exact moment that I started to see myself as someone who took up too much space. To define myself as a “fat” person. I have a clue from one of my childhood memories. When I was about twelve years old, my family played a game in which we chose animals that would represent us. We picked each animal for it’s characteristics that reminded us of that person. For our dad, we picked a Giraffe, because he had a way of walking very upright and rigidly when he was in a hurry. Watching him walk just brought to mind the stiff, long-necked, giraffe. Our mother was a bear because she was cuddly and protective. My Brother, a mule, because he had big teeth and was very stubborn. Little brother, a mouse, because of his very small and cute face. He was about six years old at the time. And my sister, who is only a year younger than I, was the Ostrich. She was so skinny when we were growing up that people often asked if she was ill. She had long and pitifully skinny legs and definitely reminded us of an ostrich. Then there was me. The animal that I chose to represent me was the Hippo. I don’t know why I chose the hippo. I think I just saw myself as a big, fat, ugly, lumbering animal (sorry hippos, nothing personal). The odd thing is that I don’t remember anyone putting up an argument. I think everyone just accepted the fact that I was to be the hippo. I can honestly say now that I wasn’t fat and I wasn’t ugly. I was afraid. I was afraid of not fitting in. As the oldest daughter of Venezuelan immigrants, I felt different. Growing up in a small “white” town in Connecticut, I felt “white”, but I LOOKED different. My hair was black and so were my eyes. My olive skin, a little darker than any of the other girls. I was acutely aware of my differences. I don’t know how it happened, but “different”, soon translated into “ugly”, and ugly, somehow, came to mean “fat”.
So, I danced. I danced ballet every night in the dark, with only the glow from the kitchen lights shining on the living room walls so I could see my shadow. I could see the shape of my body. Those are my first memories of my lifelong obsession with changing my body so I wouldn’t be “fat.”
Through the years I have read countless books on nutrition and diet. On vitamins and exercise. I have tried hundreds of ways to lose weight. And you know what? Most of them worked! But not for long. I did what I’ve heard so many other women say they have done. I lost a lot of weight and gained it all back. My life has been a weight “see-saw” of up and down and up and down. My mother was a wonderful cook who couldn’t say “I love you” in any other way than to serve her family and cook huge delicious meals. She wasn’t happy unless everyone ate a second heaping plateful of anything she made.
The sad thing is that I ALWAYS felt fat. I look at pictures now and know that I wasn’t fat back then. I look back and think to myself, “If I could only look like that now”. So I wasted so much time and so much energy on “feeling” fat. I am certain that thinking about losing weight has always given me something to distract myself from the other fears in my life. I didn’t have to deal with these issues as long as I was focused on my “fat”. Now I am middle-aged and I have reached a weight that is no longer healthy for me. Now I am more interested in health than I am in looks. WAIT!! That’s a lie! I still want to look good. Yes, I need to lose weight so I can be healthier, but the main reasons for my wanting to lose weight are still the same as they have always been. I want to feel more in control of my life. I want to feel prettier. I want to feel more attractive. I want to be noticed. I don’t want to be invisible! Yes I know, these are all internal issues that probably have more to do with self-confidence than with weight, but knowing this still doesn’t change the way I feel. I am about to embark on a new journey of weight loss and I invite you to join me. I hope this is the last time I will ever have to do this!! But before I start, I want to discuss a little bit of my weight-loss history and some of the successes I have had. Please stay with me. Knowing that there are others out there struggling with the same issues will help me on my journey.
A. zudro
