TLDR at bottom.
It’s a generational thing. My mother was afflicted with obesity by her father. He was a POW in the Pacific during WWII. He came home after 3 ½ years of torture and deprivation with a compulsive eating disorder which he passed on to her. She was about 5’5” and weighed 395 lbs at her largest. It was the overarching theme of our life, my mothers’ weight, and its effects on her mental health and on her family. A lot like the movie "What's Eating Gilbert Grape". She put me on Weight Watchers when I was about 10 years old, and I have never been able to have a normal relationship with food since.
In about 1976 Mom had one of the first weight loss surgeries, a gastric bypass procedure which left her with the ability to eat enormous amounts of food, all of which passed through her without any nutrients being absorbed. I remember her spending hours in the bathroom with uncontrollable diarrhea. She lost about 150 lbs and was able to feel beautiful at least once in her life, at her parents 50th wedding anniversary party, before she died of a drug overdose in 1978. The surgery did an enormous amount of damage, causing her to develop arthritis from the lack of nutrients, as well as needing complicated surgeries to remove the excess skin and a hernia and her gallbladder. From the time I was eleven years old, she was in and out of the hospital on a regular basis. She was very difficult and unpredictable to live with. She was abusive and violent sometimes, and she could also be understanding and creative and hilarious. She became a drug addict because so many different doctors were prescribing her narcotics. After her death, we found stashes of pills all over her bedroom.
I was 14 when she died; the first thing I thought of when I was told she had passed away was “my life will be so much easier now.” I was glad she died, and I did not have anyone around who picked up on that; they all thought my acting out (skipping school, drugs and drinking, running away from home) was due to grief, but really it was because I felt like a piece of shit and didn’t have anyone to tell me otherwise, that it was normal to have emotions like that.
By the time I was 16, I had literally run away to join the carnival and spent a few summers working at fairs all over the western U.S. I once had a job as the trainer of the Worlds’ Smallest Horse, even! Also, I had a compulsive overeating problem and weighed about 210 pounds at 5’9”, not too terribly obese, but definitely not the thin svelte figure I craved so very much.
I moved to a small town in Southern California to live with my dad when I was 20 and got a job with a construction company. The foreman introduced me to crystal methamphetamine, which I took to like a duck to water. I absolutely LOVED not feeling any desire to eat whatsoever. I lost 30 pounds in about 6 weeks, only eating a few calories per day, most of them in alcohol and candy. I got thin and then got a really bad boyfriend, the kind every girl should try at least once, if only so you know a good man when you see him later. He was so handsome and charismatic and dangerous and I felt special because he wanted to be with me. He convinced me to move to another town with him, then isolated me from my family and tried to turn me into a bodybuilder, continually compelling me to go to the gym when I never really liked it. My meth habit got worse, and my self-esteem was in the toilet because the bad boyfriend was always cheating on me and telling me that it was because I was too fat (at this point, I weighed about 135 pounds and my ribs were sticking out).
I finally got up the courage to leave him, and the next couple of years saw me quitting meth and gaining 80 pounds. I lived alone for a time, and thoroughly enjoyed binge eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it.
At age 26, after another failed relationship with a man who wanted to change me, I moved closer to my family, and my sister convinced me to give Weight Watchers another try. I did, and had some success, reaching a goal weight of 160 lbs, which is just about perfect for my large frame. What Weight Watchers and my sister did not know was that in order to tolerate the calorie restriction, I had gone back to using meth. So much easier to stick to a restrictive diet when you never feel hunger.
I met a good man during this time, and we got married in 1993. I was gorgeous at last, and at my lowest weight in years, 153 lbs, which lasted literally for one day, my wedding day. At least I have pics...
I quit using meth the day after the wedding and gained 80 lbs in the first 18 months of being married, not from being pregnant or anything, just going back to my binge-eating ways because being married was not as great as I thought it was going to be and the pressures had me spiraling into a depression.
At age 30 I went back to Weight Watchers, having become a lifetime member. I was not able to stick to the program and found myself binging even worse than before, ending up at 245 pounds.
In 1997 or so, phen-fen was a thing. I found a doctor who would give it to me, and I lost about 90 pounds in a year with it, but of course, I had to quit it when people started DYING from it…so I gained back all the 90 lbs and maybe more.
2000: ATKINS DIET! I CAN EAT A POUND OF BACON IF I WANT!!! I lost all the weight and felt great for 3 `1/2 years. I was 39 and went on a cruise and wore a two-piece swimsuit in public for the first time ever. I had been married for 10 years at this point, and my husband never cared if I was thin or fat, he only ever wanted a nice person for a wife, and I’ve always been able to do that for him. We had a great sex life and never used birth control, so I thought I couldn’t have a baby. I was okay with that because I had stepkids that I loved madly. We bought a Harley Davidson and I asked my husband to have a vasectomy, which he agreed to, but asked could we wait a year…
SURPRISE! Just after my 39th birthday I discovered I was pregnant and that threw my life into a tailspin. After deciding to go through with a “geriatric” pregnancy, I had to quit smoking and quit the low carb lifestyle and I almost immediately started having some complications. My back hurt terribly, and I started gaining weight almost exponentially. My hands stopped working due to carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms from fluid buildup, and I had to quit my food serving job, which added to the weight gain issue. I started the pregnancy at 165 pounds and on the day I gave birth to an 11lb 6oz boy by c-section, I weighed 273 lbs.
I kept most of that weight on for the three years that I was home raising my boy. Again, I went back to Weight Watchers, managing to stick with it without drugs for a year and getting down to about 175 lbs. I went back to work when the boy was old enough to start school, but unfortunately, I chose a dysfunctional workplace with an abusive boss. I stuck with it because the hours worked with my parenting needs, but my self-esteem again took a hit, which always adds to my binge eating problems. I gained weight back again, to about 230 lbs, before quitting that job.
I found another job in a place I really liked, very popular and busy with a fast-paced environment. It was tough on my body doing that job weighing as much as I did. After being there for a year or so, one strange day, I was at home, about to put a plate in the microwave that had some leftovers on it, an omelet and some hash browns. The hash browns somehow slipped off the plate onto the floor, and I took it as a sign and went back to a low carb diet again that very moment. I was successful in losing weight again, getting down to about 165 and staying there for a few years.
In 2017, I started having trouble with the manager at my workplace. I had refused to get involved in the multi-level-marketing essential oils cult that she had joined, plus she was a fervent supporter of the newest U.S. president, which inspired a viciousness in her that I hadn’t seen before. She started mocking me for my political views, even though I never discussed them at work (never share your facebook with your coworkers!) She took me off my cushy 8am-2pm shifts and assigned me to the opening shift, which started at 4:30 am and was far less lucrative. An inexperienced server was put on my former shift and given authority over my schedule, often cutting me from my shift after only working 5 hours or so and making less than half the tips I was accustomed to. This affected my family life and again, my fragile self-esteem. I started eating more and more junk food: biscuits and gravy, hash browns, French fries etc, and, though the weight gain was much slower than earlier backsliding, by late 2019 I was about 190 lbs. I finally quit that job and began trying to start my own business teaching my craft (mosaic art) to people.
I had some success, having students in my shop and workshops at local venues, plus I submitted a proposal and was approved to teach a class with our city’s Parks and Recreation department, which would have started March of 2020…
March of 2020 rolled around, and while we are watching the whole world shut down, I started feeling a bit sick with a slight fever and a headache. I thought it was psychosomatic because I felt better the next day. Then my husband started getting sick, and sicker and then he ended up in the hospital with Covid-19. He was there for 22 days, 13 of them on the ventilator. During that time, my son and I did not see his face for 12 days until a nurse set his phone up for video chat, and then it was just watching him on the ventilator. He came home a different man, rude, selfish, and very difficult to take care of and it was months of recovery. We are okay now, but I’ve been dealing with all the negativity by eating foods which I know make me fatter.
My sourdough game is on point, though…
So here I am today at age 56 weighing 235 pounds. I don’t have a bra that fits, and I don’t want to shop for them. All my pants are stretchy. I haven’t had sex in 6 months or more because I don’t feel sexy and because my back and hips hurt too much. Hubby seems to understand, but I know it’s not fair to him. To be honest, I’ve reached the stage in my life where I don’t care to be sexually attractive to anyone and I don’t care too much about not being pretty anymore, but the weight causes me a large amount of physical pain, especially in my lower back, and some days I can hardly walk. I’ve been to a specialist and I have some hope that an upcoming injection and cauterization will give me some relief, but I haven’t been able to work much at all in the last three months.
I’m considering trying intermittent fasting, and for the past three days have been able to enjoy eating within an 8-hour window, but I don’t know how to make it work for the long term. I’m also dealing with a family who is resistant to dietary changes. I know I must learn to just make the food that works for me and if they don’t want to eat it, they can feed their own damn selves, but I feel responsible for their health, too, and it’s hard to make a healthy meal and then see your husband eat a huge bowl of sugary cereal a couple of hours later.
If there is anyone else out there with a similar story, and I’m pretty sure there are at least a few of you, I would love to hear from you. I could also use some words of encouragement. Thanks for reading if you read all of this.
TLDR: I’ve lost and gained back 50+ pounds at least six times in my adult life and I’m about to start on my seventh weight loss “journey” and I’m just so tired of it all and I need encouragement from people who know how I feel.
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