toriamae
03-12-2004, 02:47 PM
I trot triumphantly into the gym, tote bag draped over my arm six days per week. The membership clerk behind the desk recognizes me as I am a regular. I change quickly and go into my routine: yoga, spin, elliptical trainer, weights, whatever I’ve chosen for the day. I scan the other patrons, skipping over the slender nymphs who gracefully ease their way through forty minutes on an elliptical trainer and pause only briefly to admire the muscular men lifting weights. I am not looking for the gym bunnies, but my kindred. And I see them, my brothers and sisters, struggling through crunches, panting through cardio, and some, like me, smiling. I have passed through all these stages in my own quest for fitness. I went through the times when I hated to work out: hated the feeling of not being able to breathe, my heart thumping, and sweat running down my legs, my thighs rubbing together, pushing the seams of my pants into my skin, and my fat heaving as I jogged. My exercise routine was once an attempt to rationalize my fat, to blame it on genetics instead of owning that my unhealthy lifestyle choices had shaped my body and my life. I’d nearly had myself convinced that my weight problem is more about my parents than the half-eaten pan of fudge on my counter. I am no longer so deceived. If nothing else, twenty six years as a fat person has taught me ownership: I own my life, my choices, my destiny.
The start of my experience as a fat person was no indication of how empowering my weight would eventually become. I distinctly remember the day I switched from the red box to the blue box of milk, hoping that its label of “low-fat” would, by some magic, become fixed to me. This change happened in second grade, and I even skipped the chocolate milk that was served on Wednesdays, and started eating only fruit for my snacks at school. Even though Mark was clearly the fattest kid in our class (everyone agreed on that point) I was well aware that I ran slower than the rest of the kids at gym and couldn’t hold myself up on the monkey bars or see saw with anybody. I had even tried a diet, a mimeographed sheet, stuck by a magnet to my refrigerator, which told me I could have as much coffee, tea, or water as I wanted, but only a half a grapefruit and a piece of dry toast for breakfast, and no snacks between meals. Unable to adhere to such strict standards, I gave up and decided that I would just have to stay fat.
Still, I was very careful of what I ate at school, lest anybody should think I was fat from too much junk food. I hoped that pretending to stick to a diet would keep people from blaming me for my weight. As soon as I was in junior high, I stopped eating the pizza or spaghetti that was offered on Fridays, opting instead for a salad. Salad is green, and one of the few foods that is socially acceptable for a fat person to eat. Nobody will accuse you of being fat because you ate too much salad.
But, “just salad” was an option only on Fridays. The other four days of the week I had to eat something else. So, I began to avoid lunchtime entirely. As the rest of the students shuffled noisily towards the cafeteria, I would silently slip into a bathroom in the upstairs hall. There, I would sit on the cold tile floor, my textbooks open in front of me, the smell of disinfectant spray and soap in my nose, waiting for the bell to ring. Nobody ever noticed that I was not in the cafeteria with the rest of the class. Though I was not there, I knew the pretty, popular girls would throw away half their lunches, complaining that they were just too fat. I avoided that conversation, wondering what they must think of me if they considered themselves overweight. Though lonely, those lunchtimes passed in the bathroom spared me the embarrassment of cleaning my plate in full view of the saintly dieters.
Even now, years later and well into a much healthier way of eating, I hate eating in public. If I get a full meal, I feel like everybody is wondering why the fat girl is eating so much…doesn’t she know that if she didn’t eat so much she would lose weight? If I skip the bread, I may be treated to a wise crack about the “Atkins nation…fleeing in the face of carbohydrates” or some such reference to my “fad diet.” I endure these comments, usually just when I don’t have time to cook. But as an awkward adolescent, admitting that I ate was just too much for me.
Instead, I chose to humiliate myself on the athletic field. As though being the last kid chosen for a team in gym class was not sufficient, I decided to participate in organized sports. I really did try to be a jock, playing field hockey until I was a freshman in high school. On cold, fall afternoons, I would put on sweat pants and a long tee shirt (to cover my butt) and walk to the field. As we ran our warm up lap, I jogged far behind the other girls. Sit-ups and push-ups were a joke, as I could barely manage either. When uniforms were passed out, I would patiently wait till the end and take the biggest shirt and kilt available. The skirt still was always too small. So, I would take it home and add extra material to extend the edge, giving the skirt the extra inches required to make it around my substantial midsection. I had few friends, and sports were my only opportunity to associate with the “in crowd.” Though such association did not make me part of their group, it was the only social contact I had, and I never intended to give it up.
However, my freshman coach was not as kind as my previous coach had been. At five foot two inches and one hundred fifteen pounds at the most, Deb was not pleased that the chubby girl who finished the warm up lap so far behind the others was on her team. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be the manager?” she asked on more than one occasion, as though my sitting on the bench at the games would bother her less if I was not wearing a uniform. I decided not to give her the satisfaction of making me quit and remained a team member for the entire season, despite her informing me that I would never play more than ten minutes per game. I stubbornly donned my uniform and kept the bench warm for the forty-five minutes I wasn’t on the field, waiting out the season. I was so relieved when the last game was over that I vowed to never participate in organized sports again. To this day, I have yet to find the courage to break that oath.
Slowly, however, I am transforming my image of myself into an athlete. I am training to participate in the MS 150, a fund raising bike ride from Houston to Austin, TX. For many people this is a fun ride, something they don’t take seriously. For me, it will be a victory, a mark of my transformation from fat chick to athlete. I was fortunate to be aided in this process by a generous donation by the YMCA of greater Houston: they gave me a one year membership. Six months ago, I began using that membership to take one yoga class per week. Through that one class, I began to pay more attention to my body and change my perceptions of what exercise should be. Before, exercise was a way to castigate myself for over indulging in food; yoga was a way relax from my stressful life as a first year teacher and to reward myself for working hard with my students. Regardless of how I ate during the week, I went to yoga. Wanting to improve my yoga practice, I began listening to my body and eating better. I also added more cardiovascular fitness activities, thinking that any improvement in my fitness would improve my yoga. When I tried spin, I was hooked on cycling and decided to make that my fitness hobby. Though I am still a beginner in this, I am committed and am working for a specific goal. I know I will see success with this endeavor.
The truth is, my health and my way of life depend on it. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary disorder (PCOS) during my junior year in high school. Unfortunately, my doctor did not tell me that was my diagnosis until several years later. She just gave me birth control pills and sent me on my way. Well, the nausea the pills called was enough for me to stop taking them after two month. At that age, who wants to deal with morning sickness? I didn’t realize how much worse it could get. My weight problem only escalated. A combination of the PCOS and eating too much at my movie theatre job took my weight to 270 pounds by the time I left high school.
However, leaving high school and leaving home proved a huge blessing to my weight. Away from the “food is love” mentality I had been raised on, I made changes in my lifestyle. By laying off the junk and walking around campus, I lost 40 pounds my freshman year. I also learned how to use the internet that same year. Of course, little was available on line at the time, and between working and school, I didn’t take the time to really educate myself. However, I kept reading, and several years later, when the link between PCOS and insulin was made, I took the information to my doctor, insisting he consider prescribing one of the drugs suggested. He ruled the research insufficient, and my request was denied.
(Continued....)
The start of my experience as a fat person was no indication of how empowering my weight would eventually become. I distinctly remember the day I switched from the red box to the blue box of milk, hoping that its label of “low-fat” would, by some magic, become fixed to me. This change happened in second grade, and I even skipped the chocolate milk that was served on Wednesdays, and started eating only fruit for my snacks at school. Even though Mark was clearly the fattest kid in our class (everyone agreed on that point) I was well aware that I ran slower than the rest of the kids at gym and couldn’t hold myself up on the monkey bars or see saw with anybody. I had even tried a diet, a mimeographed sheet, stuck by a magnet to my refrigerator, which told me I could have as much coffee, tea, or water as I wanted, but only a half a grapefruit and a piece of dry toast for breakfast, and no snacks between meals. Unable to adhere to such strict standards, I gave up and decided that I would just have to stay fat.
Still, I was very careful of what I ate at school, lest anybody should think I was fat from too much junk food. I hoped that pretending to stick to a diet would keep people from blaming me for my weight. As soon as I was in junior high, I stopped eating the pizza or spaghetti that was offered on Fridays, opting instead for a salad. Salad is green, and one of the few foods that is socially acceptable for a fat person to eat. Nobody will accuse you of being fat because you ate too much salad.
But, “just salad” was an option only on Fridays. The other four days of the week I had to eat something else. So, I began to avoid lunchtime entirely. As the rest of the students shuffled noisily towards the cafeteria, I would silently slip into a bathroom in the upstairs hall. There, I would sit on the cold tile floor, my textbooks open in front of me, the smell of disinfectant spray and soap in my nose, waiting for the bell to ring. Nobody ever noticed that I was not in the cafeteria with the rest of the class. Though I was not there, I knew the pretty, popular girls would throw away half their lunches, complaining that they were just too fat. I avoided that conversation, wondering what they must think of me if they considered themselves overweight. Though lonely, those lunchtimes passed in the bathroom spared me the embarrassment of cleaning my plate in full view of the saintly dieters.
Even now, years later and well into a much healthier way of eating, I hate eating in public. If I get a full meal, I feel like everybody is wondering why the fat girl is eating so much…doesn’t she know that if she didn’t eat so much she would lose weight? If I skip the bread, I may be treated to a wise crack about the “Atkins nation…fleeing in the face of carbohydrates” or some such reference to my “fad diet.” I endure these comments, usually just when I don’t have time to cook. But as an awkward adolescent, admitting that I ate was just too much for me.
Instead, I chose to humiliate myself on the athletic field. As though being the last kid chosen for a team in gym class was not sufficient, I decided to participate in organized sports. I really did try to be a jock, playing field hockey until I was a freshman in high school. On cold, fall afternoons, I would put on sweat pants and a long tee shirt (to cover my butt) and walk to the field. As we ran our warm up lap, I jogged far behind the other girls. Sit-ups and push-ups were a joke, as I could barely manage either. When uniforms were passed out, I would patiently wait till the end and take the biggest shirt and kilt available. The skirt still was always too small. So, I would take it home and add extra material to extend the edge, giving the skirt the extra inches required to make it around my substantial midsection. I had few friends, and sports were my only opportunity to associate with the “in crowd.” Though such association did not make me part of their group, it was the only social contact I had, and I never intended to give it up.
However, my freshman coach was not as kind as my previous coach had been. At five foot two inches and one hundred fifteen pounds at the most, Deb was not pleased that the chubby girl who finished the warm up lap so far behind the others was on her team. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be the manager?” she asked on more than one occasion, as though my sitting on the bench at the games would bother her less if I was not wearing a uniform. I decided not to give her the satisfaction of making me quit and remained a team member for the entire season, despite her informing me that I would never play more than ten minutes per game. I stubbornly donned my uniform and kept the bench warm for the forty-five minutes I wasn’t on the field, waiting out the season. I was so relieved when the last game was over that I vowed to never participate in organized sports again. To this day, I have yet to find the courage to break that oath.
Slowly, however, I am transforming my image of myself into an athlete. I am training to participate in the MS 150, a fund raising bike ride from Houston to Austin, TX. For many people this is a fun ride, something they don’t take seriously. For me, it will be a victory, a mark of my transformation from fat chick to athlete. I was fortunate to be aided in this process by a generous donation by the YMCA of greater Houston: they gave me a one year membership. Six months ago, I began using that membership to take one yoga class per week. Through that one class, I began to pay more attention to my body and change my perceptions of what exercise should be. Before, exercise was a way to castigate myself for over indulging in food; yoga was a way relax from my stressful life as a first year teacher and to reward myself for working hard with my students. Regardless of how I ate during the week, I went to yoga. Wanting to improve my yoga practice, I began listening to my body and eating better. I also added more cardiovascular fitness activities, thinking that any improvement in my fitness would improve my yoga. When I tried spin, I was hooked on cycling and decided to make that my fitness hobby. Though I am still a beginner in this, I am committed and am working for a specific goal. I know I will see success with this endeavor.
The truth is, my health and my way of life depend on it. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary disorder (PCOS) during my junior year in high school. Unfortunately, my doctor did not tell me that was my diagnosis until several years later. She just gave me birth control pills and sent me on my way. Well, the nausea the pills called was enough for me to stop taking them after two month. At that age, who wants to deal with morning sickness? I didn’t realize how much worse it could get. My weight problem only escalated. A combination of the PCOS and eating too much at my movie theatre job took my weight to 270 pounds by the time I left high school.
However, leaving high school and leaving home proved a huge blessing to my weight. Away from the “food is love” mentality I had been raised on, I made changes in my lifestyle. By laying off the junk and walking around campus, I lost 40 pounds my freshman year. I also learned how to use the internet that same year. Of course, little was available on line at the time, and between working and school, I didn’t take the time to really educate myself. However, I kept reading, and several years later, when the link between PCOS and insulin was made, I took the information to my doctor, insisting he consider prescribing one of the drugs suggested. He ruled the research insufficient, and my request was denied.
(Continued....)