Fat

I write about a lot of things, most personal, most to do with the various thoughts and beliefs rattling around in my head. I stay away from the big topics for fear of looking like an idiot. Instead I challenge behaviours and bad ideas (any sort of -ism), reading and nodding at the things others write as I agree with what they say. My social circle is such that folk recognise their position, challenge bad ideas as they see them and live their lives treating others as they would like to be treated. It comes down to empathy, people I know empathise with others so don’t tend to make stupid sweeping generalisations.

And that’s how I like it. Socialising with people who empathise, and if they don’t get me or something I think or feel, make a pretty good stab at asking questions and taking the time to get as close to getting it as they can.

Which brings me to this evening. It’s that time of year when it’s the Christmas social season, and if you have the fortune to work, have family, have friends, have any kind of social group, you will be invited out for food most like. So there’s me, 15 other people in the team I’m in congregating at an over-priced under-quality eatery in Spinningfields. the conversation meanders around work, sex, NLP, families, all kinds of stuff. I’m not great at small talk so I listen more than I speak. I call some of the people the out on the casual sexism and gender generalisation (not sure my words sank in) but thankfully they’re a reasonably bunch so no one is saying anything stupid or offensive.

At first.

Gah, I am so incensed I can’t even write properly on this front. This is an issue so deep and so personal I can’t begin to be even slightly objective here. The urge to splurge a profane textual tirade here is overwhelming.

Let me instead put it this way: I am fat.

I know this, you know this by looking at me, it’s there for all to see. With it comes a list of very obvious assumptions people seem to make.

I must eat a lot
I must be lazy
I must be jolly

This is before we get into assumptions thrust upon me from others.

I am a drain in the NHS
I could lose weight by just eating less
I must be unfit
I will develop type 2 diabetes as well as a range of other weight related conditions automatically

It all boils down to the seeming fact and assumption I am sub-human, have brought this upon myself and therefore am deserving of vilification and scorn.

Let me address a few things.

What prompted all of this was an off-hand comment about an 18 stone man ‘absorbing’ a female colleague if he had run into her when they had played squash together a few years previously.

So full of fail I do not know where to start.

Casual sizism in my earshot, the speaker ignoring the fact I was sat right next to them and just blithely carrying in with their sneer and joke at their comment and sweeping generalisation about fat people.

So let me talk about being fat for a while.

The body is at its core a machine, and yes if you restrict the calorific input and increase the calorific output then the net change will be the usage of stored calories and therefore overall weight will reduce.

Grrr, the focus is on the numbers versus the person as a whole. Their wellbeing and emotional and mental state doesn’t matter and it’s acceptable for people to make fatist and sizist remarks and get away with them.

See, coherence and structure is lost to me. I’m mad as hell and not prepared to put up with this. So, let me tell you a few things then about me.

I am human, the same as you.
I have DNA, the same as you.
I have thoughts, feelings, love and emotions, the same as you.

I do though have about 60 kilos of extra mass over and above the nominal average male bodied human.

Why?

Well, I have always been the large one. I have broad shoulders, my family do not breed waify people, they tend to be solid people. Not overweight, but not people who are going to blow away in a breeze.

Am I blaming genetics? No.

My relationship to food is complex. I learned early in life that food was comforting, and when times were tough and life was shit, food would be there to provide comfort and a temporary distraction from the word.

Does this mean I have binged on food in the past? Yes it does
Will I fall back to comfort food when times are tough? Yes, I will.

Comfort eating is a learned behaviour for coping with stress, pain and hurt. It’s avoiding behaviour from what’s going on in my life. It’s what I do, I know where it comes from, I know that I do it, I know what sets me off. None of that makes it any easier to stop myself from doing it though.

My size and weight has fluctuated radically over the last decade. I think I have hurt myself quite badly with the constant dieting, the meal replacement and starvation, the constant strive to… Well, that’s the thing, For what? it’s always been about the numbers. Get to a ‘healthy’ BMI, get to a ‘healthy’ weight, get below a certain waistline.

And for what? where in any of that is ‘be happy’? Where in that is what I might want? I don’t suck down cheeseburgers like there’s no tomorrow and do naught but sit on my arse playing console games. I enjoy a varied diet, I watch fat content, I maybe drink too much coffee, and I walk places as often as I can. Those things bring me enjoyment. Having to watch every calorie, having to worry about how I look and going to the gym because I’m told I have to do not make me happy. It’s control exerted from without, a desire to make me fit into a neat pigeonhole, with assumptions and crass comments made when I don’t.

I hate being like this, I hate having to shop at specialist stores for clothes. I hate the descriptors, the insults, the off hand remarks. I hate it. You do realise that ultimately this means I hate myself. So I end up hating myself, and others are encouraged to hate me also, or if not me, what I represent.

Because it’s never just fat is it?

I’m fat and stupid
I’m fat and ugly
I’m fat and lazy

I could be morbidly obese too were I that way inclined.

Fat never visited on its own, it always has company. So many lovely and varied ways to hate myself for not being the same, for not fitting into the very narrow mold of what is normal and acceptable.

I have no point, conclusion or resolution here. I just have the pain and fat I carry with me wherever I go, a reminder of my emotional pain, my failings and my nature. I place this here as a reminder, and perhaps an insight into what words can do.

Mirrored from Tales of the gentleman misadventurer. Please leave comments there thank you!