Truth be told the title is not literal. I believe I was born a heavy baby (above 9 pounds), but I don’t think that constitutes being born fat. So, for a while, I imagine I was more or less a normal baby and it was only later that I became what we call fat. Why or how did I become fat? A couple of words on my best guess. My parents, while well-intentioned, didn’t have the luxury to know much about nutrition (not that this sort of info was very obvious in America in the late 90s and early 2000s anyway) and my family was also low income. There’s research about situations like this where it’s the bad food that’s affordable, so it’s the bad food that gets consumed. Add onto this cultural custom of Mexican cuisine which is now let’s say ‘known more’ to not be the healthiest. Most importantly, add onto this the fact that I got hooked and I LOVED to eat. A quick note, now I view food mostly as fuel and as an occasional source of pleasure so I think this intense love for eating was probably born out of habit, and habits are hard to change.
But yes, I loved to eat. Eating made me so happy. My mom takes some blame as she says she was constantly giving me Gatorade to drink instead of water and we were always stocked up on Little Debbie snacks, which I always figured out how to get down from the top of the fridge when she wasn’t home. I measured my family members in terms of how good of an eating experience I would have if we visited them. My grandma was my favorite by far, she would always be ready to make me a big plate of scrambled eggs with salchichas (which is spanish for weenies) – breakfast food is still my favorite today. Second was an aunt that was always happy to make me food. Everyone else was more or less equal. I have a huge family and tons of cousins so whether it was a baby shower, baptism, or birthday there were plenty of special occasions. Forget quality time with family and higher meaning and all that, special occasions yield special food was my thinking. I was gluttony embodied. Priding myself on being able to drink 5 cans of Coke and putting away several plates of meat. I liked the feeling of my stomach being full to the max. I felt accomplished. When I was taken to Golden Corral (an American buffet chain), after 3-4 plates of food I would get up for dessert and take a real moment to sincerely admire the beauty before me before I laid a little bit of everything on my plate and gobbled it all up. The word that comes to mind is exhilarating. It’s hard to describe in words, because it’s really a physical sensation.
It’s interesting, because when you live like this, you are living aka it’s your reality and you don’t really have cause to think something is wrong with the approach – that is until you do. In practice, it seems up to a certain age perhaps 8-9 it’s somewhat cute to be a fat child. Then all of a sudden it’s not cute anymore and I’m a fat blob. People are making fun of me. Something is wrong with me. At first, the dark side of being fat wasn’t too dark – I still made friends pretty easily and I was always the smartest kid around so at least I had that for my ego to cling to, but definitely by third grade fat became an anchor of my identity. That’s also when I started to feel the nerves of self-consciousness, embarrassment, and shame.
About as long as I can remember, my visits to the pediatrician ended with the comment that I am overweight for my age and height, and in middle school / high school it was officially obese. So, I knew it was a technical problem as well for most of my life. Did I just keep on eating? Yes. I knew it was not the right thing to do, and I kept doing it. Later on, the bullying got more intense although I have to say it never became perpetual / debilitating in my situation. I was generally friendly with everyone, but not true for the guys a couple years older than me on a Mexican soccer team when I was 10. We had to run laps at practice, and I was too scared to take off my shirt after the coach told me to so the guys would lap me then trail me while making fun of me and slapping my butt. Pretty humiliating, but that’s life right. The bigger shock for me was that it’s also your family that takes jabs. Mid-bite into my second McDonalds breakfast sandwich my mom snapped at me, that I can’t stop eating it’s all I do (have to mention even then I logically thought but you bought me the food!) – yes I cried and the rest of the sandwich looked sad and pointless to me – I was 11 or 12. Another time after being picked up from school I was adjusting the seat belt on my shirt and she snapped again to stop fidgeting with it, that it would not change the fact I am fat. Kinda outta nowhere but you never know where this stuff will come from. Of course, these situations are emotionally charged and when you don’t know where the next comment will come from it does create I think a sort of anxiety of anticipation.
Perhaps shocking to no one, but there is no happy ending in this sort of life. At least not for me. As long as I was fat, there was always an I am this and this and this BUT I am fat which means I am also this and this and this, which made it hard (maybe impossible) to be truly proud of myself. I had tried a couple times with a moderate amount of resolve to make a change but I just couldn’t seem to do it. The healthy food was gross. The real change came when I graduated high school. I was 5’9’’ and about 216 pounds – not much muscle. The doctor had recently told me I seriously needed to consider the health consequences of being obese. I had heard the spiel before, but the words hit home that time. I remember the fear I felt thinking man I’m really in danger. Maybe because I was 18 and life felt a bit more real. Maybe a bit because I was about to leave high school and go to college. If I kept being fat in college I would probably be fat forever and suffer all those consequences. If there ever was a right time, it was now. If I can’t change now, how can I change later? It’s not even about the food being gross, this is just bad and I need to do something.
That summer, I stepped out of my comfort zone in many ways. I did my research and called a gym owner (Greg) in a nearby town saying I wanted to start working out and lose weight. No one in my family that I knew of had been a gym member before. Greg suggested I come to his gym’s kickboxing cardio classes and also taught me how to workout. As an introvert and not knowing anyone I felt very out of place showing up, but I went anyway. Everyone was so nice, it caught me off guard. I started to see that when you are willing to show up and work on yourself, people aren’t going to put you down, even if the person showing up is fat like I was. I was also interning with an IT team that summer, and I specifically asked my mom to only pack me healthy lunches – so for a couple months I was generally eating things like turkey sandwiches with lettuce (at the time eww), grapes, bananas, and other simple foods. Every time I had a healthy meal was a grueling challenge. Minimal bad food – and only when I allowed it. I remembered the shame of secretly eating junk food – before I thought it was fine as long as I didn’t get caught. I guess a switch flipped and I somehow understood the concept of accountability (with some help from motivation videos). The most important person to stay true to was myself, not others. If I caved and ate the gas station potato wedges, I was gonna be the first person disgusted with myself. I would have to instantly accept that I’m weak and I failed. Which I did a couple of times, and I accepted. I made good progress that summer losing about 20 pounds and throughout college kept up with the working out and progressively improved eating to continue slimming down to a more natural appropriate weight.
Since then, I’ve been making continual progress under the general umbrella of health. I feel pretty good about where I am and the direction I am going – the big difference is that now being healthy is part of my identity. Being fat was the result of a lot of things for me, it entailed a lot of suffering, and it took a lot of work to dislodge that word from who I am. Like a lot. And the process of changing sucked, even though I was making a change for the better. So when I hear people talk about why fat people don’t just change, it is literally that easy, but it’s also not that easy. Doable, but so hard. It’s really a personal battle with yourself. Still, for me it was net positive because of the confidence I gained from that experience. Abstracting the pattern, I found myself capable of winning a mental challenge so when I took on unrelated things like learning finance or moving to a new city I would remind myself hey you were fat and you figured that out so why not this. I don’t put all my stock in the fact I used to be fat, but it is important because I think it kicked off the positive feedback cycle. I learned that I will feel better if I face my problems instead of letting my weak side spiral. I learned that there are always people there to help if you are brave enough to take steps into your unknown to meet them. I learned there is satisfaction and peace on the other side. I learned to think less about how much negative there is and more of how to start today on the positive. Some things you learn the hard way, but then you have them forever.
