Why Do You Hate Being Fat?

There are a lot of reasons to hate being fat, but it’s important to be crystal-clear about what yours are.  You need to make a list.  It’s your own, personal, custom-tailored inventory of misery.  If you’re obese, you have a list.  Get honest and write it down.

And no, I don’t care how “fat positive” you are.  Being obese carries with it physical, lifestyle, and social tolls that are unavoidable no matter how supportive your community is of your freedom of expression or natural body type (or whatever they want to call condoning your overeating).  Get honest, and write it down.

Here’s my list I wrote five days before I started my new eating plan:

A Fearless and Searching Moral Inventory of Just How Fat I Am

– 235 pounds

– Size 24

– Winded after climbing a flight of stairs, huffing a bit after two

– Right knee hurts some and crackles frighteningly

– Lower back hurts all the time

– Shoulders hurt, hips hurt, thighs hurt

– Thighs won’t close without effort, which I can’t sustain for long, much less cross my legs

– Back fat rolls

– Belly protrudes several inches past boobs

– There’s a fat pad in the hollow of my throat

– I avoid things that involve walking, standing, dancing—I heard myself say “I don’t like dancing” the other day. That blows.

– I avoid getting dressed up and going out—very little wardrobe, not that into swathing myself in a muumuu

– I don’t feel sexy at all

– I’m avoiding social gatherings

– I will look like a gay pride float in the bridesmaid’s dress

– I’m starting to have anxiety about being told to purchase two seats on the plane

– I’m tired.  All.  The.  Time.

– I’m stuck in the vicious cycle of “too fat to want to go out and work off any of the fat, so I sit at home on the sofa eating to entertain myself, and figuring tomorrow I’ll change.”

– Can’t wear my pretty pretty shoes.

I think it’s interesting what things weren’t on the list.  My acne, which disappeared once I cleaned up my eating.  The colds I would get, and my nighttime cough, both of which disappeared once I improved my diet and lost some weight.  My orthopedic inserts, which I only needed because I was so fat I was destroying my own skeleton under my weight.  It came to me later, as an epiphany, that the custom footwear was because of fatness, and not because of some mysterious weak arch thing that just happened to me.  My denial was many layers deep, and full awareness took a long time. 

My thighs rubbing together and chafing I simply forgot to write down.  That painful rash really sucks.  I had a special silicone roll-on for thigh chafing.  Seriously.

It’s hard to realize just how crippling obesity is, because it sneaks up on you.  You think you’re choosing the handicapped stalls in the bathroom because you like them better, and not because you have actually become handicapped and no longer fit comfortably in a normal bathroom stall.

Post your list somewhere you can check on it from time to time.  This road will get painful.  You will be close to giving up.  Remembering the experiences you never want to have again can help keep your mind focused on the reason for your present suffering.  You have to remind your greedy little subconscious that the pain of not having that Twinkie is substantially less than the pain of all the experiences on your misery list.