ashtrohealth

[ashtrohealth]

I’m fat.

I’m not 100% sure where to start, but I suppose that I have to start somewhere. I guess I should introduce myself.

Hi! I’m Ashley. I’m 21 years old as of 05/11/2017. I’m an introvert, a Leo/Virgo cusp, an ISFJ personality type… I’m also not someone that believes any of those three things have any determining factors in someone’s personality. I’m extremely analytical. I’m sarcastic. I’m a regular concert-goer and road-trip taker. I’m a millennial. I like to think I’m a writer. I’m a personal chauffeur to my brothers.

I’m a good listener. I was a good student when I was in school. I’m a daughter, a big sister, a best friend, and a dog-mom.

I’m all of these things, and then more. There are so many different words one could use to describe me. So many different labels that could be slapped on me. But what’s the most prevalent in my life?

I’m fat.

In my family growing up, it was a bad word. You may as well have said “Fuck” as far as my mother was concerned. I get where she was coming from- I was an overweight child and she didn’t want people to use that word to describe me. Bullying was enough of an issue growing up, didn’t need it in my home as well.

It’s weird. Because on one hand, a large part of me is asking myself why fat is the worst thing a person can be? There are people in the world who abuse puppies and cheat on their significant others and rape people and murder people… and “fat” is the word that’s bad? Or the word that describes the thing that we aren’t supposed to talk about?

Except we talked about it all the time. All the fucking time. Without being allowed to use the word, it was still single-handedly one of the most prevalent factors in my life. Rightfully so- there was something wrong with me. There is no reason that anyone has been able to come up with that explains why I was always so overweight. Starting as a toddler and continuing into my twenties, it’s never stopped. No matter the diet or exercise regimen… No matter what medications I was on, what surgeries I had, or what doctors I went to…. Nothing changed.

It started as 10-15 pound weight gains per year… occasionally if I was especially active one summer (on top of my daily aerobics), I may lose 5 pounds… but they’d just come right back and then not budge for another year.

Then it was 20-pound weight gains a year. And then randomly it was 100 pounds in a year. Then I’d go down 10-15 if I did everything but starve myself. Then I’d still find a way to gain 2o. and It’s a cycle that has never ended… Some years were worse than others. Most notably 2009-2010 and 2014-2015

I can recall my weight at various months of different years better than I could tell you what I was studying in school at the time, or who my friends were, or anything else that was happening in my life. Everything else in my life is a blur the older I get, but my weights at various times in my life never change. I’ll forever remember that I was 160 when I quit soccer when I was 13. Or that I was at my highest weight of almost 285 at the end of 2010.

I’ll never forget when I was 9 years old and had lost 5 pounds for the first time and I was at 95lbs at just under 5ft and how elated my family and doctors were.

Or even better- I remember exactly when I first noticed stretch marks. (I was eight years old.) I remember the first time I felt a double chin. (I was fifteen. And then it went away and then now I can feel it again at twenty-one.) I remember when I stopped wearing bras because I didn’t know where to find any that were big enough of a band size for me. (That’s since changed, but that happened when I was fifteen.)

What does that say about me? That while I have a relatively good memory, I’m able to pinpoint that more than anything else? It was such a key factor in my life. It still is.

To this day, doctor’s are still stumped. I tell dietitians how I eat, and I show them my food logs, and I know they don’t believe me. They never have.

I tell doctor’s what meds I’m on, and they assume I’m non-compliant and don’t take them like I’m supposed to because the lab work doesn’t reflect it.

That has been a constant in my life. It’s gotten to the point where I’m just physically and mentally exhausted. I’ve just accepted that I’m going to be the fat friend, the fat daughter, the fat sister, the fat woman walking her dog…. Which is funny, because while that was never how I was meant to see myself growing up but now it’s all I see. I recognize that there is more to a person than their outward appearance, I’m not even remotely close to being that shallow. But this isn’t just my outward appearance anymore. It’s me being afraid to fly because I’ve heard horror stories of people who are bigger than me needing seatbelt extenders, and I don’t know if I’d need one. It’s me being consciously aware that I’m taking up more space than the girl next to me at a concert, and trying hard to hunch my shoulders and hold my arms in front of me and take up as little space as possible. It’s me being aware that everyone in my family, any of my friends, anyone I’m around can see what I’m eating and is either a) assuming that’s why I’m fat or b) assuming that I’m purposely eating less when I’m around people- depending on what it is I’m eating or who I’m around.

It’s when I tell my dad that I think one of my hormone levels might be off and my meds might need adjusting because I’m having trouble losing weight and my acne is getting really bad again, and he says “Well you don’t really exercise very much anymore.”

No, I don’t. But if I only eat 1000 calories a day…  just because I spend most of my day driving or behind a computer, does that mean I should be gaining excessive amounts of weight? No. I don’t think it does.

I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’ve gone to doctors about my weight since I was a toddler. The weight gains were never justified by how much I was or wasn’t eating, or how much I was or wasn’t exercising. I know this. If the simple calories in-calories out principal was accurate then I should not be the weight I am today. Simple as that.

But I don’t understand why I’m where I am. I don’t understand why that doesn’t apply.

I have friends who have had weight loss surgery, eat like crap, and still lose weight. I’ve had friends who went to the same weight loss clinics that I did when I was 10 who follow the same dietary and exercise guidelines set forth to everyone who went lose weight when I never did. I have brothers who eat like trash and manage to maintain or lose weight while I can eat like a rabbit while doing p90x and still manage to gain 10 pounds.

I understand that there’s room for error, or whatever… depending on how many calories a particular person’s body burns at rest. Or if one person has a particularly slower metabolism than another, but I feel like that can only account for so much. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I’ve just seen enough of them to recognize that nothing adds up.

While I can hope that one day one doctor will believe me and have an answer as to why I’ve struggled with this my entire life, I’m not at all optimistic. I’ve accepted that I’ll likely stay like this my entire life and that’s just how it’s going to be…

However- since I was a child I’ve been someone who needs answers to things. I need proof. I was that obnoxious kid who asked “Why?” in regards to absolutely anything I could. I wrote a letter to our president when I was 11 years old asking why we were at war because I understood that our country was but no one would explain why- in terms that made sense to me. I’m not religious despite being raised to be so because I need physical proof of something in order to believe it. I’m a very analytical person in every sense of the word… So despite me accepting that the reality is that I’ll likely never get an answer as to why my weight has played such a huge (no pun intended) role in my life? Part of me still wants one. I guess that’s why I still go to doctors. I guess that’s why I haven’t completely thrown in the towel on my diet. I guess that’s why I still go and pick up the prescriptions for pills that I hate taking.

I just keep telling myself that there are people who have it worse. At least I’m alive to be the fat friend, daughter, sister, and dog mom though. Right? I have no right to complain about this when there are people dying all over the world from curable diseases because of lack of access to treatments. There are people starving to death in impoverished countries. There are people I know personally dying of cancer. I should be thrilled that this is my only problem. Or at least that’s how I rationalize it to myself.

Maybe one of these days someone will have an answer for me. In the meantime, I guess I just need to continue accepting myself as-is. I’ve got to stop beating myself up for not being able to lose weight. No one can ever say that I haven’t tried.

And in the meantime? I’m fat. That was such a dirty word growing up… but what’s the definition exactly?

Fat: (noun) 1. a natural oily or greasy substance occurring in animal bodies, especially when deposited as a layer under the skin or around certain organs.

(adjective) 2. (of a person or animal) having a large amount of excess flesh.

That is, in fact, a word that accurately describes me. So I’m taking away the negative connotation. Yes, it’s not healthy to be morbidly obese. That’s correct. But it’s also not healthy to hate myself. While I currently am struggling to do anything about the weight? I’m also struggling to not hate myself for not being able to do something that should be so simple. Working on trying to not hate myself for something that for the time being appears to be out of my control- seems like a slightly more attainable goal at the moment, so we’ll see what happens.