Fat Warp Essays #3 Part I

Recently, in Cootehill, Ireland. (2015) BMI normal.

Pounds and pounds of flesh squeezing my heart, liver and kidneys! It has been 1500 pounds I've gained and lost and gained, yo-yoing from obese to overweight and back 15 times, a mundane, round number. My highest weight gain was 240 pounds in 2000. Thankfully, my trip to Paris was an eye-opener. There was not one fat woman in Paris, only me. This made me rethink American processed food, eating to enjoy one's meals, and my health. But still I wasn't convinced

This was in 2011 I was in a normal weight range but curtailing the amounts of food I enjoyed.

After a nightmare scare about my fatty liver, I lost weight without any aids, pills, lap bands or surgical procedures. I found in the past that I could not live on Weight Watchers programs or any other diet systems for very long. Besides, they didn't give much attention to clean, organic, non GMO foods. After a long haul of cutting the amount of food I ate gradually over a two year period, I got down to a normal weight on the BMI scale, and I did it by eating quality, non processed, organic foods and meats and fish that were sustainable and free range. But it was a long, hard process. The problem was not the weight loss it was the maintenance.

My cousin and I in 2012. Here I was approaching my "Hollywood" weight.

These past 5 years, I have been able to achieve a sliding scale of normal weight at 5 feet 5 1/2 inches  on the BMI calculator, moving from my lowest "Hollywood weight of 115 to my highest screaming "stop" weight at 148. I have achieved a sort of remission, but with weight loss of that nature, one never is in complete remission, and weight gain is always imminent. It is a daily struggle with no end in sight until the grave.

If you are overweight or thin, tell me. What is it like to live as a fat women in America? Here are the gritty and ugly details. I know what it is to judge oneself as loathsome, an object worthy of ridicule. I know what it is like to have one's skills and talents underestimated and undervalued by men and especially women who perceive that overweight and fat belies lack of intellectual rigor and ambition. I know all too well the contrition and self deprecation days and binge eating nights on leftovers, wine bread and cheese all together. I know how fat women disintegrate inside. I was one of them and the threat of obesity's past ravages is the ghost in my psyche that I try to exorcize, but will most likely have to live with forever.