Growing Up in a Fat House

My father was of average weight. My mother was very heavy. I didn't really notice how heavy, though, until I was a teenager.

As a child I remember snippets of weight related incidents. I remember one morning my mother being very happy. She was singing while making breakfast. I asked my father why mom was in such a good mood. His reply was a criptic "she's just happy because of what she saw on the scale this morning". It was probably the first time I understood that my mother was not happy with how much she weighed.

Another remembrance: My mother started driving us to school every morning. After riding a school bus for the first 5 years of my academic career I was not sorry in the least for our sudden good fortune. The reason for the rides was not really discussed, but I figured out that my mother was going to a weight loss clinic every morning for a shot and weigh in. I have no idea what was in the shot and I didn't ask. Excess weight was not talked about in our house.

Once I hit my teens I was all too consciously aware of how heavy my mother really was. I agonized over it. I felt personally picked on. I would look around at other "normal weight" mothers and think to myself that their kids had no idea what I was dealing with. When I would find another woman whose weight was close to my own mother's weight I would feel a kinship with her children and silently think "I know what you're going through, buddy." One particularly horrifying day I remember being in a store with my mother and seeing some other kids from my school come in. I was so afraid that they would figure out that my mother was the fat lady that I hid from her. That day is horrifying in my memory because I now know how horrible I was. I'm ashamed of myself.

In short I was a self-centered, self-conscious, prick of a teenager. I thought it was all about me. Now that I find myself in a similar situation in struggling with my weight I feel ashamed and sick at heart for the heartless thoughts and feelings I had while growing up. I know now how despairing feelings come with carrying all that extra weight and not being able to do a thing about it.

The Nightmare of Being Fat

Gina Kolata recounts some true horror stories in her book, "Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss - and the Myths and Realities of Dieting."

"The stories fat people tell are legion.

"Tina Hedberg of Conover, Wisconsin, saw a doctor in the summer of 2005, when a diet she was on was no longer eliciting dramatic weekly weight loss. The doctor, she says, told her she had a mental problem because she weighed 400 pounds. She was trying to commit suicide by getting so fat, the doctor informed her. Then the doctor told Hedberg that she had two choices. She could be admitted to a mental institution or, the doctor said, "I could wire your jaws shut so tight that you can't move your jaws to talk, and if you can't talk you can't eat."

" Hedberg said that every time she sees a doctor, she is told that anything that is wrong with her is because she is so fat. One time she went to a doctor because her knee was swollen after a fall. 'The doctor told me the reason I fell was because I was fat,' she says. 'He told me there was nothing he could do for me unless I lose some weight.'

"Miriam Berg, president of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, says the same thing happens to her. "Every condition I know of, I have been told the reason for it is that I am fat and need to lose weight to fix it. Including a sore throat. The doctor said I had too much fat around my neck."

No one wants to be fat. In fact, in the book Gina cites a study by Colleen Rand, an obesity researcher in Florida.

"...asked forty-seven formerly fat men and women whether they would rather be obese again or have some other disability. Every one of them said they would rather be deaf or have dyslexia, diabetes, bad acne, or heart disease than be obese again. Ninety-one persent said they would rather have a leg amputated. Eighty-nine percent would rather be blind. One said, 'When you're blind, people want to help you. No one wants to help you when you're fat."

"...77 percent said that their children had asked them not to attend school functions."

"I was told by upper management that I would never be promoted until I lost weight, and the union took management's side."

"The respondents told of humiliation. Ninety percent of the fat men and women said that friends or relatives had ridiculed them or made nasty comments to them about their weight, and three-quarters of them said they had been laughed at or derided by fellow employees. One of the survey participants wrote, 'While attending a lecture in college, a professor stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence and said, 'When are you going to lose weight? You are really fat.' There were over 100 people in the class.'"

I'll never forget the first time it happened to me. After a meeting I was a little slow to stand up and the child next to me said, "hurry up, Fatty".

The Club No One Wants to Join

Life is full of them. Bunches and groups.

Children - usually under the age of 12. There are subcategories of course, ie. infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and so on.

Teenagers - anyone who's age ends in the subfix "teen". 'Nuff said.

Adults - the rest. Of course there are subcategories here as well. Young Adults, Middle Agers, Empty Nesters, and Senior Citizens, among others.

In school there are other ways of division among classmates; popular and not, smart and not, the haves and the have-nots.

It's just a fact of life that populations are divided into "clubs", or bunches and groups.

There is a club that no one chooses to join. Everyone is aware of this subset of people and most of us live in terror that one day we will join their ranks.

It's a silent club. You recognize other members by sight alone. One quick look and you know. Only the crass and truly obnoxious among us will point out anyone's club membership.

I am speaking of course of the overweight.

This is my story. How I evolved into one of them, what difficulties I've had to face, what exhilarating triumphs and crushing blows I've experienced, and the science behind weight management. I hope you will join me as I talk the talk and walk the walk of a reluctant heavyweight.