Something to Talk About

Just about a week after my first fill, Thanksgiving is already looming over me. It’s a holiday all about food, and I’ll be honest, it seems like my whole life is about food. Everyone’s paying attention to what I’m eating, how much I’m eating, how much weight I’ve lost, how I’m doing.

To be honest, I was heavy for a long time, and during that time much of it was enabled by the fact that no one ever said a word. I wasn’t like most chubby kids in that I was never teased, laughed at, made fun of--or if I was, it wasn’t to my face. For all I knew, I was happy and somewhat popular.

And now everyone’s in on it, and it makes every set back seem more obvious, like my weight is suddenly a local celebrity and everyone wants to talk about it. Talking about it means thinking about it, and forcing myself to think about it a) makes me feel kind of inferior on a daily basis, and b) means I never get away from it, I never get a break. In my mind, I started down this whole track because I just wanted it to go away. And now it’s quite the opposite, in more ways than one.

Yes, it’s literally all around me, reflected back in the faces of my support system, but it’s also in every meal I eat and more particularly, in every meal that other people see me eat. And the worst part is, it’s not a good feeling, because despite having a fill, I’m not feeling much restriction still. I felt it for about three days afterward, but it very quickly let up. I’m left on my own, frustrated, and coming up on the one holiday that is all about eating and being happy about it. And I’m spending the holiday with family friends, and I know I’m going to have to talk about it that day, literally as we sit there, eating.

Really, it boils down to two different fears. The first one is that I’m starting to be afraid that I’m getting lost, that people are seeing my weight and my choices before they actually see me. That’s bad enough; I never felt like my weight defined me, and it seems like only now that I’m taking some semblance of control does it really start to. The second fear, far worse, far insidious, is that maybe people always saw my weight and my choices before they saw me, and I’ve just never heard any of it. Now that I’ve put my weight on the conversational table, are people suddenly free to discuss it like they’ve always really wanted to?

Worse still, who does that mean I’ll be when the weight is gone?

Resources

To learn more about relationships, check out these titles from Amazon.com:

Freedom in Your Relationship with Food: An Everyday Guide by Myra Lewin

Let Us Eat Cake: Adventures in Food and Friendship by Sharon Boorstin