Dear Reader,
Some of the most influential “relationships” of my adult life are really nothing of the sort. I have come to the realization that I am a serial dater of the worst kind – a serial flinger. I long after the brick, unyielding house of honest commitment, only to wind up living in the metaphorical equivalent of my car - two to five dates with a stranger that will soon pull the dreaded fade. And to be fair, sometimes, I am the one that panics and doesn’t call back. More often than not, the prospective suitor is driven away by a combination of clinginess, latent emotional issues, and the disappointing discovery that under my sparkling wit and independent lifestyle lies a scared, insecure, little girl. There are only so many times you can be screwed over before you really can’t trust someone with yourself, no matter how desperately you want to. I have spent many a night wondering how many women of my generation are the same: educated, accomplished twenty-somethings still adrift in the vast, shifting seas of immaturity, independent and yet irresponsible, just now learning what it means to be a grown-up and a human being, and learning how truly alone they really are. With the pace we live by, I think we are the first generation that experiences the heartbreak of failed love so completely before we are even adults. And yet, even though we are terrified, we still keep trying. We hold onto our irrational faith, that we will find our other half, that we will find ourselves, and that we will find meaning in all of this. I don’t know if it makes us crazy, or brave, or both.
Wait, how did I get here? Okay, go back. Flings. Right. The point I was trying to make with the flings is that often, these short trysts are incredibly revealing, both about myself and about life in general.
Case in point: A few months ago, I got tangled up with the “ultimate man’s man.” He was a good ol’ southern boy from Texas, a cowboy with a number of broken bones from riding bulls and a few extra pounds from a deep love for fried…well, fried everything. Notice, I said “a few”; he had a very active job and was often so busy he forgot to eat, so a few is really all it was.
So one day, perhaps our second date (out of three, in case you were wondering), his sparkling baby blues looked up from the menu and ordered a monte cristo sandwich. Due to the unique circumstances of my upbringing, I had never seen or heard of one of these before. So imagine my surprise when they bring a fried sandwich. I mean the entire damn sandwich is fried. And they brought jam. This literally blew my mind. My first thought was seriously, “Can they even do that? How is this possible?”
I of course, had to ask about forty questions about this sandwich. How does it stay together when they fry it? Does the whole thing fry evenly? Is it possible to make one in your house? Why the jam? Do you really even like it?
And after making me try a bite, Tex launched into a list of his favorite foods. His eyes lit up discussing southern cooking in a way they had not talking about any other topic – not even sex! Shocked, I told him so.
“I’m a fat boy.” His statement was blunt and even, without any note of self disparagement whatsoever.
“Don’t say that…” I started. He wasn’t, I mean he really wasn’t. How could someone that was barely chubby label himself with the dreaded f-word?
“No. It doesn’t matter what I weigh. I’m a fat boy at heart. I always have been and I always will be. I love my food. I’m a fat boy.”
In the spring of this year, I broke up with a horrible person, one that betrayed me and lied to me. Rebelling against how helpless and hurt I felt, I felt like running and fighting at the same time, so I did both. I took up jogging, slowly working my way up from only a minute at a time (at a pace I could have walked) to being able to go for a full twenty at a nice clip. I also took up weightlifting, gradually sculpting my frustration and weakness into strength. I started eating primal foods to power my workouts and prioritizing my sleep to keep myself in top shape.
Six months later, I’m also forty pounds lighter. I’ve gone from being medically obese (by BMI) to being 13 lbs from an optimal weight for my height. My face has reemerged, my neckline and waist have been redefined, and beneath my skin lies an iron network of strong muscles. I am flexible enough to bend over and lay my palms flat on the floor. I am strong enough to do ten full on-the-toes-in-the-dirt push ups. I have enough stamina to run two miles or blast through a brutal kettlebell workout.
And yet, although I’m the fittest I’ve ever been, and thinner than I was in high school, in my head, I’m still a fat girl. I think I finally understand what Tex meant by that. I’ve spent so long identifying myself as fat that in a weird way, it is the thread that binds many of the parts of my life together. It has defined what clothes I wore, what foods I ate in public, and how I felt about myself naked. It told me where I could go on vacation and what activities I would probably enjoy. It has definitely colored my interactions with men; the fat girl always starts at a “deficit” with a major flaw that she has to make up for in intelligence and personality, and quickly. She is more willing to put up with shit and more willing to compromise on her standards in general. This may change as the “fat acceptance” movement establishes itself and the waistline of the average joe continues to expand. But for my formative years, these were the rules, and being a fat girl defined my life.
And there definitely were reasons that I was fat. My relationship with food has always been disordered. My mom would often tell me I was getting fat, even as she loaded up my plate with seconds of macaroni and cheese. From the age of seven or so, I was on diet after diet. By the time I entered school, I already knew how many calories were in everything, and which foods were good foods and bad foods. Predictably, food became an outlet for me. I ate out of shame and guilt, but also out of a sense of rebellion against my mom. One of her tactics was to throw “unhealthy” foods away, and I can actually remember eating out of the garbage in more than one occasion. And I wasn’t even hungry so much as angry. Some people hide porn under their bed; I had cookies.
Twenty years later, and food is still something special for me, something significant and meaning-laden. It is a symbol, one deeply rooted in my unconscious and intrinsic to my values. A date doesn’t feel like a date unless there is dinner; a celebration feels bare and empty without at least a few snacks. Do you know how I celebrated, once I realized that I was a fully independent adult? I went out and had chips and ice cream for dinner, because I could. Because I was in control of my food and I could eat if I wanted to. And in my act there was such pleasure, because that is the flip side of being a fatty. You really, truly, appreciate your food on a level that most people will never reach. It is orgasmically good.
Now, after losing almost 25% of my total body weight, my feelings about myself have changed (at least partially), but the way I feel about food hasn’t. It’s still something I turn to for comfort and something I enjoy most profoundly. And while that could change (and I’m kind of trying to change it), I kind of doubt it ever will. I’m starting to think that fat is not a physical state, but rather a state of mind and a way of being, and that once you’ve been “fat”, there’s no going back.
And strangely, I’m okay with that. I’d rather be a fat girl in a healthy body and be at peace with that then any other configuration I can currently imagine.
