My Childhood Smells Like Slim-Fast

You want to know a guaranteed way to gain a lot of weight really quickly?  Binge eat and then justify it by saying you will do much better the next day.  But, the next day comes and you don’t do better.  Rinse and repeat for an entire week.  Then, try to zip up those pants.  If they still fit, continue to binge and promise and binge and promise until you can’t get the denim past your gigantic thighs.

This is how I sabotage myself every time.

Every since I was a child, my weight has fluctuated according to what my schedule was like.  When I was in school, I was fat but I never gained any weight.  Sometimes, I’d even manage to lose a bit.  But, as soon as summer came around, I did nothing but sit at home.  I didn’t go to the beach or play outside like the other kids.  I sat inside and ate and stayed sedentary all summer.  Thus, massive weight gain.  The thing about it was I never realized how much weight I had gained until it was time to return to school.  Because I never went anywhere, I just wore my pajamas all day.  Elastic is fantastic, ya know.  But as soon as I had to put on those jeans or slip on a shirt, I was devastated to learn I couldn’t button my jeans and my chest poked from my shirts like a young girl’s burgeoning breasts.  And then school would start and I’d stop gaining weight because I’d be busy doing something.  If I was in school, I wasn’t eating and I was moving around somewhat.  So, the weight would stay constant.  The same cycle would happen the next summer.  I’d gain the weight, start school, have to buy new jeans, and then my weight would plateau again.  So, over the years my weight steadily increased each year and because it was so slow and steady, I never really played that much attention to it until I found myself reaching for a pair of size forty Levis.  I was ashamed and realized I couldn’t allow myself to get those jeans.  I was not going to be a forty and I was definitely not going to go past a forty.

For about a year, I wore my thirty-eight jeans unbuttoned.  I wasn’t worried about them sliding down because the girth of my thighs held them up securely and I wasn't too worried about any weird looking bulges from the free-flying zip flaps because my belly overhang hid them well.  I was ashamed and knew I had reached a scary new place.  During the summer before my senior year of high school, I made a commitment to lose weight.  And I did.  I dropped about twenty pounds and went from a size should-have-been-forty to a comfortable thirty-six.  And I kept it up because I began working regularly after school and then throughout the summer.  I definitely think keeping busy with work helped me maintain my weight loss and even lose more. 

I was the thinnest I had been in years, wearing a thirty-four that was actually started to feel loose on me and then I went to college and it all changed.  I gained the freshman fifteen plus another ten or so and then when summer would come by, I’d fall into that same cycle of second helpings and sloth.  I basically undid around two years of dieting and exercising and working hard to look good and feel okay about myself.  College was stressful and caused me to turn to food to cope.  Even with all my distractions, I still wanted to eat all the time.  My second and third year of college was much better.  Things began to settle down, I mellowed out and I was able to concentrate on losing weight again.  And I did, for the fiftieth time.  And then I graduated.  Came back home and couldn’t find a job so I fell into that overeating and no movement situation and put all the weight right back on again.

I say that I was oblivious to my weight gain when I was younger.  This is half-true.  I knew I was gaining weight but I think I just put it out of my mind until I finished my lemon squares.  I’d always say I’d do better the next day, allow myself to binge because I knew I would start on my diet later and make up for the massive amounts of food.  Later never came and all the while all those binge sessions accumulated until I had amassed quite a bit of weight.  And even when I would try to diet and exercise, it never lasted more than a month. Not only did I not lose the weight but I had lied to myself, over and over and over again.  And when you lie to yourself, it's just like when someone else lies to you.  You learn not to trust that person after a while.  And I learned not to trust myself. 

Recently, I popped in a new exercise DVD that my mother had purchased for herself (and never used).  I popped it in and started doing the moves and I was instantly transported back to about ten years prior.  I could remember being in that very same spot doing a different exercise program.  I was lighter back then, still fat but not as much as I am now.  As the sweat poured into my eyes, I could hear Mom coming back from the grocery store, hear the crinkling of the brown paper bags, hear the clanking and sloshing of liquid from the cases of Slim-Fast.  I remembered waking up early for school and having nothing but a Slim-Fast bar for breakfast.  I’d sit in bed, last night’s sleep still holding on for dear life in my eyeballs, watching old school Battlestar Galactica on television because it was six in the morning and nothing else was on but news programs and infomercials.  I remember that sickly sweet chocolate smell, the thick, chewy consistency of the bars, the way the shakes coated my mouth and throat in a chalky aftertaste.  I remember the diet pills: Xenadrine, Hydroxycut, green tea pills, carb blockers, appetite suppressants, etc.  I remember the way they smelled so awful and how some of them turned my urine a bright green.  If it was on the shelf, I probably tried it.  All with little to no success.

And as I stood in the living room, lifting my legs and panting, the déjà vu felt very sad to me.  All these years later and I’m in virtually the same position now as I was back then.  Nothing has really changed.  All the struggling and weighing myself and pills and shakes and bars and stupid diets and eating foods with no flavor and starving myself and exercising and crunches and all for what?  I’m still fat.  I’m still miserable and the saddest part is I never had to be.  If only I could have stuck with the dieting and exercising when I was younger.  All of that struggle could have been worth something if I would have just kept with it.  I keep thinking if only I wouldn’t have quit, maybe I’d be thinner and happier now.  I kind of want to slap myself across the face because I just don’t have to be this way but I’ve allowed myself to be and it’s pretty frustrating.  For most of the life that I can remember, I’ve struggled with my weight and with the health of my body and it sucks that this is my plight in life. 

And I don’t know if I have an addiction or an eating disorder or if I’m just plain crazy but I know that this will never go away.  Even if I do get to thin, it will be a struggle to stay that way.  It will always be a walk on a tight rope for me.  I’ll always have to have an intense concentration about everything that I put in my mouth and every step that I take because if I lose focus for a moment, I’ll go spiraling down into a batch of Betty Crocker.