Fat is as Fat Thinks
Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front. I’m fat. I’ve always been fat (at least as long ago as I can remember and to some degree). I’ve never been at an ideal weight, if such a thing exists. I look at people who are not fat and have never been fat and wonder how that changes their world view. I could guess, but I’m betting that I would guess all wrong. Being fat is not so different than being short or being red-headed. It’s a state of being that makes you something less than perfect, probably in most people’s eyes, but certainly in your own. Redheads could be an exception to that but I needed another example beyond height and I think hair color qualifies as least if your hair is ginger red rather than, say, auburn red. At very least, not being blonde and blue-eyed is a similar state of being, I imagine. Otherwise, why would someone have invented the phrase that blondes have more fun? My point is that once you get a grip on what you are and determine that you are unlikely to change it, you adjust yourself to accept that and just get on with life. Some gravitate to others like themselves as their friends and lovers and some go in exactly the opposite direction if they can and try to make up for their perceived deficiency by proving to the world that their perceived deficiency doesn’t matter.
It’s easier being a short woman and a fat man than the opposite. Tall women actually have some form of diminishing returns once they pass through the statuesque stage and get into the too-tall stage. It clearly limits their pool of partners. As for weight, fat men do not have it easy by any means, but as a man you can be portly or beefy, but there are no such safe havens for women. If they are too fat, they are just too fat and unless you are just fat enough to be Rubenesque or Zaftig, you are going to be behind the proverbial eight ball due to your weight. As for hair color, I’m guessing that its a lot harder to be a red headed man than a red headed woman. There is a certain intrigue about redheads for men and I’m not so sure that there is much mystery as to why. Men are pretty crude and very basic. But then again there is Damian Lewis and David Caruso, but I think its fair to say that they are exceptions. Only 2% of the world’s population has red hair and it is caused by a mutant gene called the MC1R gene, so I don’t think its unreasonable to suggest that there is at least a bit of stigma with redheadedness.
Kim and I both grew up fat and we have discussed the topic a fair bit over our married life. We have concluded that we are better and more empathetic people because we grew up fat. That’s not to say that either of us would wish that hardship on anyone as a way to improve their character, but it has occurred to us that we both managed to get through whatever trauma it represented to us and have come out the other end better for it all. We have both also agreed that it is amazing to look at old pictures of ourselves and ask why we thought we looked so awful. In fact, looking back on old photos from youth generally makes us feel that we were not as fat and horrible looking as we thought we were at the time. That’s when you get into the whole body image issue that people talk about so much in terms of what social media and celebrity media in general do to the adolescent mindset, especially of young women.
There are so many better palliatives for excess weight these days that its hard to imagine people being as beleaguered as we were in our youth. Of course, that is a very ethnocentric view that ignores the reality that social class distinctions get reflected in education levels about good nutrition and with regard to both the funding available for less harmful and caloric food as well as the means to access these new palliatives. Both Kim and I have had bariatric surgery. I have a LapBand and Kim, who had a LapBand, now has a full gastric bypass. I got my LapBand in 2006 and have for 17 years been more or less able to maintain my weight loss, and more recently, even reduce a bit further as I have transitioned to my retirement regime with the astoundingly simple shift of the equation of more exercise and less ingested food. No one would accuse me of being at fighting weight, but that is a relative issue for a person who has spent his life between 300-400 pounds. I do still hope to find my way into the mid-200’s at some point, but fully appreciate the difficulty that 70 years of lifestyle failings create in getting there. Since my constitution seems willing to accommodate my higher weight and I generally feel fine (don’t we all, right up until we don’t feel fine?), I am driven more by joint and muscle constraints to my day-to-day life that seem to be driving me gradually to want to be less heavy in order to be able to get around comfortably. I credit this realization to an Irish physician I had in NYC for a decade who, in his exit interview with me said, “We know that your heart and diabetes and the normal aging diseases are unlikely to get you, but now let’s talk about your joints….”
Kim has had a very different journey. She got her LapBand about two years after me and while she lost weight, she had a lot more digestive trouble with this little plastic disruptor in her gut. Eventually, two years ago, Kim threw in the towel and went in for a gastric bypass. It took the surgeon 7 hours to extract that nasty bit of LapBand plastic, which had wrecked havoc with her system, but the bypass has worked very well for her. She is probably sitting 10 pounds off her preferred perfect weight and likes to say that for the first time in her life, she has a waist. She is generally a happy camper with her weight.
Both Kim and I did not come to bariatric surgery easily or quickly and we both went through just about every form of weight loss strategies available. I even spent a total of two cumulative months in fat prisons of one sort or another (Duke, Pritikin, etc.). Ultimately, we both needed the prophylactic of bariatric surgery to get a grip on what has been a lifelong battle against whatever genetic attributes or lifestyle bad habits plagued us and kept weight on us. We were like alcoholics who simply are what they are, and thus, probably just fat people at our core who have finally found a fat chastity belt to put around ourselves to control the otherwise uncontrollable. We are both OK with that reality.
Think about that guy who lost all that weight by eating Subway sandwiches with veggies and whatnot. I think his name was Jared Fogle and he was the poster child for Subway for years as a guy who managed to get a grip on his weight all by himself with the help of Subway’s menu. Look what happened to him by trying to do it by himself. The FBI eventually tracked him down and convicted him of being involved in a child sex scandal. Obviously, he was a fat denier who’s dysfunction came out in another, much worse direction. I think I am happier just admitting to be a fat guy who has to keep struggling to deal with being fat and keep that dysfunction on my own bill of fare. I am prepared to think of myself as forever fat as opposed to trying to hide that fact and having it come out in some antisocial manner. I don’t have any scientific evidence to say that is how we function as human beings, but I just feel that it’s safer to remain fat in my head. That’s me, a fathead. That should make a number of my readers happy that I have finally admitted that.