The funny thing about people who are extremely fat (I hate the term morbidly obese, but I’ll go into that later) is that the only thing we want to do is appear like everyone else. We want people not to notice us in restaurants or stores, we want so desperately to look like everyone else, to blend into the crowd, to disappear.
When you walk into a store and people stare at you, you know it’s not because you have a cute outfit on or your hair looks great – it’s because they are wondering (as you are) how you got so damn big. Some people think it’s about will power or just eating the right thing. What these people will never understand is that will power has nothing to do with it. We’re not like alcoholics who have to stop drinking or smokers who have to cut out smoking completely out of their day…we HAVE to eat. What if the drinker had to have a small drink at breakfast, lunch and dinner? How long do you think they’d be able to keep that up?
In my own experience and what I’ve found in talking to others is that the overeating comes from a much deeper darker place. We’re trying to fill a void and remain calm at the same time. That’s why food works. For me food is the answer to all life’s problems. First of all, I have to eat to live, and then when I’m hungry, it nourishes me. When I’m empty it fills that void, when I’m sad it lifts my spirits. When I’m angry it soothes me. When I am celebrating it joins the celebration. It’s the answer to all. If only it wasn’t a drug. If only we could use food like everyone else does. But we can’t. We can’t because we’re looking for something that food can never give us – solace. But we’ll keep trying. We’ll keep trying until we become extremely fat.
I loathe the term morbidly obese, just like I used to loathe the term fat. When people use the term morbidly obese, although it is saying what it is, it’s also making a judgment call. It’s pointing out to all of us who are fat that WE did it; we put our lives in danger. But let me ask you this – have you ever heard the term morbidly alcoholic? Or morbidly smoke-damaged or how about morbidly tan? We all know (those of us with addiction problems) that sooner or later our addiction could kill us. But isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t the point to use our drug of choice to the extreme so that we don’t feel, we don’t hurt, we just curl up and die? If you asked people who are addicts if they want to die, I’m sure most of them would say they don’t. That’s kind of funny to me, because with every bite, with every drink, with every smoke, we’re all dying just a tiny little bit…and that’s okay. It’s okay because with every one of those the hurt dies just a little bit too. We may not to want to leave this life, but we sure as hell don’t want the hurt to continue living. It’s unfortunate that if we kill the hurt, we kill ourselves too. But I guess that’s the cost of tranquility.
The answer, I’ve found is accepting that if we are going to live, we need to kill the hurt without killing ourselves. I call my hurt “the beast”. By feeding the beast, I relaxed him; I calmed him so that he didn’t roar. He didn’t appear and make me sad, angry, lonely. He slept quietly while I tried to live my life.
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