When I met my husband I was real skinny. What he and the rest of the world didn’t know was that I was also real hungry.
Jason and I met when I was 21 or 22, I can’t remember and don’t care enough to figure it out. Maybe I should have just stated early 20’s but it’s too late, the thought process has been typed out. A few bits before we met I started my 10th-ish diet at the age of 19 on New Year’s Day. Yep. A weight loss resolution. I started counting calories, focused on eating fruits and veggies, doing some walking etc etc. I was 191 Lbs.
Always a planner, I tracked out how thin I would be and when if I lost 1 Lb a week. By physician standards, a healthy goal. And it was good. I steadily lost weight and as I did, I increased my exercise and found new interest in nutrition. When I got to 150 Lbs the weight loss started to slow. So I pushed harder. More time on the treadmill, fewer calories. Still I was struggling to lose more weight.
I’m 5’4″ and according to the BMI chart, I was still overweight. So I went harder still and with an unwavering devotion to get my time on the treadmill in, which kept me from engaging in social activities. If you want to achieve, you have to put the time in, right? I found ways to fill my tummy with as few calories as possible. I managed to get down to 145 Lbs but that was barely even a healthy weight. I wanted to get in a ‘safe’ zone since weight can fluctuate, I wanted a cushion of error that was safely within my healthy weight range.
So I started making sure that everyday I was burning as many calories as I was consuming. If I ate 1,200 calories, I had to burn 1,200 calories. I’m a treadmill warrior so that meant 2 hours on the treadmill everyday. And I did that. Everyday.
I got down to 131 Lbs. Which is still only a ‘healthy’ weight for my height, according to the BMI chart. I was never able to get under 131 Lbs. And I would know because I weighed myself around 10 times a day. First thing in the morning, after I went to the bathroom, Before I exercised, after I exercised, after I ate, before bed, if I looked at a brownie, etc etc.
I felt great. I was starving but it felt so good. There was a wonderful high that the hunger would bring. How baggy my clothes felt. How boney my hip bones were. How loud my stomach would gurgle, begging for food.
Since I am old and when Jason and I met, Facebook was just becoming a thing, I didn’t have the luxury of lying about my looks online. I did it in real life.
Catfishing is a term used to describe a situation when someone falsely attracts another person online by creating a fake persona. An example would be if I posted a picture of myself from my early 20’s leading people to believe that is how I currently look (I do not). So I like to joke that I catfished him (I looked like a thin person when I am actually a fat person). However, the hard truth is that it’s not actually funny. It’s called an eating disorder and when Jason and I met I was deep in the throws of my first experience with an extended/long-term episode of binge eating.
There is a lot more to be said on the subject but for today I just wanted to make it official and say that I am a fat person. I am not someone who has let herself go or someone who is lazy or someone who can’t get rid of the the baby weight. No. I am a fat person. I have a fat body. And I am sorry to my fat-self for spending so much of my brainspace and precious time trying to hide it.
Life is here to live now and I deserve to live it now. So do you. Come as you are.
Lauren Blauw 