“My Struggles of Life-Long Acceptance”
As an obese person in a society of super models and rock hard bodies it’s been a daily struggle of acceptance and one of humiliation at times. I’ve never felt like I belonged. From my childhood to today I’ve had to endure society exposing me to what they considered acceptable. Whether it was my GI Joe actions figures, sports players or actors society has unintentionally placed a stigma on accepting obese people.
As a child, I knew I was different from the other kids because of my weight. Not knowing why or how I got the way I was. I just knew I was bigger than the other kids. I never let it keep me from having fun and being a kid, like some kids I know. I wasn’t scared to play pick-up football and baseball games with my buddies. I never shied away from terrorizing the neighborhood on my bike either. There wasn’t much that I didn’t do because of my weight.
Year round, I was involved in the community sports programs. I started when I was about 6. My summers were spent playing baseball and my falls were for soccer. I even tried basketball once just for fun. The one vivid memory I have from playing sports is I was always the slowest kid on the team. My weight issues obviously had something to do with it. During baseball season one year, I was told that if my legs would go as fast as my arms, I would be faster. It would be like having a car where the front and back wheels went around at two different speeds. My mom would sign me up year after year for any and every sport I wanted to play. In her opinion, it was a good way for me to develop team work skills and it didn’t allow my weight to become a life-long crutch. She knew I wasn’t the fastest or the best player on the teams, but she signed me up anyways. She told me to do my best at whatever sport I played because that’s all the coaches wanted from me. There were games that I never got to play in or hardly got to play in because of my weight and ability. Even with all of the obstacles I faced as a child because of my weight, I never let it keep me from enjoying myself and having fun.
Being a teenager was a very challenging and fun time period of my life. Not only did I have to deal with the regular hormonal issues and body changes that come at that stage of life. I also had to deal with additional body changes due to the excess weight I had been carrying for years. They weren’t very flattering changes either. There was no overcoming my new body composition, it was what it was.
Football was one sport that I found enjoyment in. If it wasn’t for football, my teenage years would have been unbearable. This was the one sport that my weight was helpful in. I was still the slowest on the team, but I was also the hardest to move. Being “short and stocky” as some people would say, made me the perfect practice dummy. One of my teammates actual referred to me as “the human shot put”. Even though I was a great practice dummy, I hardly got any playing time in the games. The only time I got to play was when my team was up or down by 20 or more points. Needless to say, I didn’t have a very stellar high school football career. Maybe with the right workout routine and some direction from the coaches, I would have been able to improve my skills as an athlete. This is really when I started to notice the way my weight had an impact on my life. I’m assuming the coaches thought that I was a lost cause because of my weight issues, I’m not sure. I do know this, the kids that got all the direction from the coaches and playing time were those that were fit and athletically gifted. It pains me to look back and realize what I could have been with the right guidance and a little hard work.
In my early twenties is when my weight really started to balloon out of control. With no organized sports programs and being able to eat and drink whatever I wanted too, year after year I was buying larger clothes. I went from 3X shirts to 4X, then 5X and finally 6X. At this point, I was around 425 pounds, I guess. When you’re that big the thought of stepping on a scale isn’t very appealing. I would compare it to getting your teeth pulled without anesthetic. My pant size was an astonishing 68 inches. The average man has a 40 inch waist. I was nearly double that. To put in perspective, I was as round as I was tall. Not everyone can say that about themselves.
Being that big, life truly sucked. I wasn’t able to do the simplest things like use a seat belt, fit into booths at restaurants or sit in normal sized chairs. There are three major incidents that really stick out as moments of clarity on just how big I really was.
The first was: I was invited to a buddy’s house for dinner. We all sat down to eat, out of nowhere there was a snapping sound, similar to someone breaking a stick into two. Next thing I know, the wooden arm of the chair I was sitting in, was on the floor. We all laughed about it, but deep down I was truly embarrassed. This was the first time we had been invited to their house for dinner; I was hoping it wouldn’t be the last.
The second one is similar to the first but this time it was at a movie theater. My nephew and I went to see the “Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King.” It was a holiday, so we got there early to get good seats and we did. Our seats were in the front row of the second tier, probably the best seats in the place. As I was wiggling my way into the seat, the bottom fell out from underneath me. My hips and legs were so big they had pushed the arms of the chair wider than they were designed to be. The worst part was I didn’t even fall down when it happened. My hips were so wide they wedged me into place. Needless to say we had to go find the manager, get our money back and go to a different theater with arm rests that adjust up and down.
The third and I would say the most humiliating moment was about 5 years ago when I started a new job as a CAD technician. I had to ask my supervisor to order me a larger office chair. Here I was, first week on the job and I already needed a new chair. The one they original gave me was a top of the line ergonomically designed chair. It was designed for a normal sized person thou. Certain parts of the chair were made out of hard plastic which left bruises on the back side of my thighs. Even at the widest settings, it still wasn’t big enough. The chair they ordered me was huge. I knew I needed to change, I just didn’t know how.
As time went on, I was trying to find my place in society that didn’t want me. Society made it loud and clear about not accepting me. Everywhere I went I was stared at like I belonged in a traveling freak show, with the bearded lady and the lizard man. I could hear the Ring Master making the announcement, in my head. “Come one, Come all to see the quarter ton man, I promise folks he won’t eat you”.
Sitting in the confines of my personal sanctuary, I was stuck doing my nightly routine of watching TV. As I flipped through the channels, I came across a new reality TV show. It was called “The Biggest Loser”. Little did I know the impact it was going to have on my life. It was a TV show about extremely over-weight people, just like me. This was the first time as an adult I felt accepted by society. Here I was glued to the TV watching a weight loss show with millions of Americans on a weekly basis. Season one aired over a 14 week time period and left me asking myself one thing, could I lose weight like they did? I had my doubts because I had more weight to lose than anyone on the show did. I saw how happy they were after losing their weigh, I wanted and needed that. Was this going to be my ticket to social acceptance? Six months later season two aired, the contestants were bigger and closer to my size. Once again, I was glued to the TV watching the contestants lose weight. Week after week they were winning back their lives they had lost or never had. Before I realized it something had come over me, my emotions had gotten the best of me. There I was tears streaming down my face like I was at a funeral service. I was at a funeral, a funeral for my unhealthy lifestyle. It was time to change; now I needed to find the resources to do so.
The next day, I woke up with a yearning to change. I found a fitness center in the building next door to where I worked. After checking it out and talking with one of the fitness trainers, I knew this was it. The Yards Athletic Club was going to be where my life was going to change in ways I never could have dreamed of.
November 8th, 2005 is when I started my lifestyle change. Before I could get started I needed to know one thing, my weight. There I was standing in front of the scale trying to prepare myself for what I was going to see. I took a deep breath and stepped onto the scale and closed my eyes for what felt like an eternity. A few seconds went by and I finally opened my eyes to see what years of neglect would look like. The scale delivered a blow that I had been preparing for my entire life. Like a prize fighter preparing for the biggest fight of this life, I was ready for it. In big red numbers the scale screamed 451. I wasn’t shocked, I was embarrassed, embarrassed that I had let myself get to the point. Those numbers 4-5-1 were burned into the deepest parts of my soul. At the same time 4-5-1 ignited a fire inside of me that still burns to this day.
Pound by pound I was getting my life back, a life that I never knew I was missing. After a few months of healthy habits, I started to notice huge changes. I no longer needed to use the elevator at work. I bounded my way to the second floor using the stairs, like a large cat climbing a tree. My special ordered office chair was turning into an over-sized lounge chair with wheels. For the first time since buying my car I was able to use the seat belt. I no longer had to stare at the seat belt light that constantly reminded me of my old self. It was the little things of life I had been missing out on, that most people take for granted. Overcoming the little obstacles was bringing me closer to my goal of social acceptance.
It’s been almost 5 years since I decided to change my lifestyle. I’ve had moments of weakness and triumphs of mass proportion. I’ve lost over 160 pounds and plan to lose more. I no longer get stared at in public like I use too. Whether society has accepted me or not, I don’t care anymore. I’ve accepted who I am and that’s what really matters.
No comments:
Post a Comment