The Truth About Being Overweight......

Failure is only a fact when you give up. Everyone gets knocked down, the question is: Will you get back up?

One of my friends challenged me to examine my own issues with my weight today.  She noted that no one ever talks about the issues that arise when a person is overweight.  If you know me personally, you know that I am always up for a challenge. So please realize that this blog post comes from a place of love, peace, and hope because I truly believe that unless you have been overweight, obese or morbidly obese, you may not ever know that people experience this or feel this way.

When you are overweight:

1. You dread going to shop for clothes.  Mostly because nothing fits the way it did (if you were smaller in your past) or people look at you with pity (or you think that they are looking at you).  I would order clothes online so that I did not have to try anything on. That way if I starting crying or was disgusted with how I let myself go, no one had to see it or hear it. And FORGET about swimsuit shopping.... That is just TORTURE!!!!

2. You loathe yourself. I couldn't bear to look at myself and I would down talk myself all the time.  Not great for the self esteem at all. Once again, a swimsuit AIN'T happening.

3. You are constantly worried that you smell because people somehow believe that all people who are overweight stink.  To remedy this,  I wear perfume daily and I also shower up to two times per day (yes, I know it is a little OCD).

4. You have difficulty doing basic things like playing with your kids and have difficulty getting in and out of chairs, up stairs, and other "tight" spaces. So you basically become a recluse.  I personally though that a birka was looking pretty awesome.  That way no one could see me and judge me.

5. You are painfully aware that people think that because you are fat, that you are stupid.  I found that I had to assert myself and sometimes state the obvious about my intelligence and my talents so that people understand that there was more to me than my weight.

6. You cringe when people you admire talk about how fat someone is and how they are lazy.  If you know me well, I am not lazy and in fact, I have to sometimes back off of doing things because I am always "on". It just plain hurts!

7. You isolate yourself because it is embarrassing to go out in public and know that people are judging you (or so you think).  I think about all the places I have gone to in the last few months that I would never go to before I lost this weight.  I robbed my daughter of going places with me because I was so embarrassed to be the "fat" mom. I robbed myself of simple pleasure like swimming.  I love the water and for the first time in the last 10 years, I felt comfortable enough on the 4th to put on a new (smaller) swimsuit and enjoy the water and the boat with my family.

8. You get tired of hearing from your doctor that all your health issues are weight related even though you know deep down that they are.  Talk about GUILT!!!  I had high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, fibromyalgia, arthritis, rashes in my fat folds and under my breasts that came and went, a pretty bad case of athlete's foot at one time and various broken blood vessels and capillaries.  I also had a HUGE fear of getting so big that I would have to use one of those Hoverounds and not be able to wipe my own butt.  Yes, I am being VERY honest here. I also got sick of seeing myself defined in medical notes as a 30-something obese female.... Yep, even the docs labeled me.

9. You wonder how your spouse finds you attractive and feel guilty that he had to marry a fat wife and not a healthy wife.  In my husband's defense, he married me and met me when I was bigger and I love him for that.  He looked beyond my weight and saw my heart and my intelligence. I always felt that he deserved better even though he assured me that he only wanted me.  I personally think that he deserves to have a healthier, skinnier wife because I was once smaller and I think that would take some stress off of him because of the medical issues that surround being morbidly obese.

10. You avoid pictures, family event, and people in general so that they lay off talking about your weight.  Hardly a family get together would go by without my mom talking to me about my weight.  I got sick of it because she has never struggled with being more than 125 lbs.  This was hard for me because I know that she wanted what was best for me, but she kept bugging me about it until I wanted to physically harm her (and I know that she reads this so I am being nice).

11. You do what you can to make yourself look good but in the end, all you are decorating yourself and trying to camoflauge the problem.  It's like going in the woods to shoot a deer and overdoing it on the camo.  Seriously, when you are big, you ARE the elephant in the room, but everyone pretends like you aren't there. I have literally had people look through me, because I know that my weight put them off. That totally sucks and makes you feel so inferior! I can't even describe how it feels!!!

12. You plan family events so that you have a day to recover because your weight is a literal pain in every part of your body.  I will say in my defense, I did what I could with Chloe because I didn't want to be the fat mom but I really WAS the fat mom and I didn't want her to remember that.  Yes, we still did family events but I usually suffered through it and for days afterwards.

13. You try to persuade people that you aren't fat, you are just "big boned".  In my case, that was a bold faced lie.  Take a look at my height and I am petite.  Yes, my birth parents were bigger and taller,  but I was in denial.  It was embarrassing to be 5'1 and just as wide as I was tall.  So I just dealt with it the best way that I knew how.

14.  You eat alone or hide when you eat lest someone criticize your food choices.  I ate healthily when I was bigger, but I always had issues with portion control.  Growing up, I was bothered alot about how I ate and what I ate, so I just quit eating in front of people.  There were times that I would rather starve than have people critique everything that went in my mouth.  I would have rather been hung up by my thumbs than deal with this.

So there you have it...   The truth however, I do want to mention that no one chooses to be overweight.  I didn't suddenly wake up one day and say, "I want to be morbidly obese".  I DID wake up one day and say that I want to be healthy, which is why I am on this journey.  I am very grateful for a husband who loves me no matter what size I am and parents who eventually came around to understanding why I chose to have gastric bypass.  I have to be honest and say that I have lost friends on this journey due to jealousy and negativity, but I hope that as you read this post, you have a greater understand for what overweight people go through.  I also hope that someday, we get to a point where we accept people for who they are and not what they look like.  I wonder how many people have missed out on having wonderful people in their lives because they were so superficial and fickle?