I have to admit to enjoying the luxury of being thin for most of my life without any effort on my part. When I was a teen I was actually what most people would have called “skinny.” I hated wearing shorts and bathing suits because I was so lanky and devoid of even a scintilla of cellulite. I ate like everyone else but extra weight never came. I was able to binge on milkshakes and fried chicken and still maintain my Twiggy-like appearance. Clothes hung on me like I was a coat hanger in spite of no effort on my part to maintain my lightweight figure.
Once I had my first child I actually went slightly over one hundred pounds and looked better than ever, but I changed nothing to get that way. My body just seemed to be attuned to being slim. It was a state of being that I totally enjoyed as I ate whatever I wanted whenever I desired it. I was able to binge on Tex-Mex meals and pizza whenever I wished and keep my tiny figure. It was simply who I was and how I was born, not something that I worked to maintain.
Daughter number two added a few more pounds to my overall weight but I was still wearing small sized clothing and with my long waist and height of five six and a half I felt confident in my appearance. I enjoyed my seemingly weightless lifestyle until my fortieth birthday when consuming a bit too much birthday cake and ice cream pushed up the numbers on my bathroom scale and made my clothes feel a bit too tight. After awhile I even had to go up a size in my clothing, but I was still in the low numbers deemed to by society to be attractive.
As I grew older I literally began to shrink due to my osteoporosis and I remember crying my doctor showed me that I was only five foot four. As my height decreased my girth grew larger. I went up another size and actually began to panic and feel shame. It was then that I began to understand the pressures that our society place on people to maintain the body of a young athlete. I was only able to keep from growing ever wider by religiously counting my calories and keeping track of how much exercise I do each day. It was a brutal process that took so much so joy and freedom out of my life. It was also a time when I grew more and more understanding of those who had never been blessed with the kind of runaway metabolism that I had enjoyed for most of my life. I began to understand that weight or lack of it often has very little to do with a person’s lifestyle and everything to do with how well their body is working for them.
Our society does a great deal of body shaming. Those who sport a slim physique are often thought to be not just more attractive but more intelligent and reliable than their heavier peers. Some people have to work hard to maintain a healthy weight but many, like I once was, do little or nothing to look like the world thinks we should all be. I learned that my brothers were not so fortunate. They related to me how they were hungry twenty four seven and never were able to satiate that feeling. One of my daughters would later describe the same kind of struggle to get the satisfactory relationship with food that just happened naturally for me.
I saw my own mother go from a small size to the pluses when she began taking medication for her bipolar disorder. I often suspected that her tendency to stop taking the pills was directly related to her desire to be thin again. In her and my brothers and my daughter I saw people who were not gluttons, but rather those whose bodies were reacting to the normal act of eating in disturbing ways. I knew that they were trying every single day to rectify the tendencies of their systems to pack on pounds that they strove to remove.
On the other hand I watched my father-in-law keeping pace with the biggest eaters in town and never adding a single pound. He eats more calories at breakfast than most of us consume all day long. Between meals he drinks protein supplements and ends his days with wine, cheese, crackers, a large dinner and dessert. He exercise but no more than most people do just taking care of daily chores. He remains as lightweight as he was when he was twenty five years old. He likes to think that it is because of his lifestyle but I have observed that it is mostly because his body is attuned to properly using the fuel he provides it without leaving fat behind.
The fact is that we humans glorify images of what we decide is beautiful. For some achieving that state takes little more than being born. For others it is a lifelong battle that is painful and mysteriously difficult. I have witnessed that phenomenon both as a thin woman and one who has to be a bit more careful. In my own life I have realized that we are not all alike in how our brains tell us whether or not we need to eat.
Doctors now know that there are hormones emanating from the brain that send messages telling us that our bodies are full and we can stop fueling them with food. Such systems operate on a continuum from sending that message too soon, resulting in an unhealthy thinness, or hardly ever sending the good news that the body has sufficient food. Those who are hungry all the time feel the pangs and often end up becoming obese. The proof of such body chemistry has come in the form of injectable drugs that make them feel satisfied when they have eaten enough to keep their bodies functioning. Then they lose weight and feel more comfortable like the rest of us.
It’s time that we quit poking our fingers and our jokes at those who struggle with their weight. It’s time we understand that some of us are simply fortunate not to experience the always hungry feelings that so often plague the heaviest souls among us. Their bodies simply work differently from ours. They are not somehow inferior. it’s time to quit shaming or preaching the gospel of thinness to them. They are beautiful and there are ways to help them without making them feel ugly and deficient. We can do better.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 