Living Out Loud

I consider myself to be on a journey. A journey toward accepting my body in all of its glory and for all of its flaws. A journey to discover how optimally I operate when I'm eating healthy and moving intentionally. A journey toward being the change I want to effect in other people.

But it's not even close to being easy. I've been overweight as long as I can remember and I've been aware of it as a "defect" in my character for almost as long. When you're put on a diet at a young age by a mother who is also overweight and you watch the rest of your family having dessert every night while you don't, you internalize pretty early on that there's something wrong with you. I felt guilty and ashamed and embarrassed for being overweight. I felt that it was my fault. Even though I didn't do the food shopping or cooking as a young child, I somehow felt weak and responsible for my size. I can go to therapy for years, I can journal all I want, I can rationally tell myself that this thinking is useless and just plain incorrect, but you can't feel one way for 20 years and change it overnight.

I never wanted to talk about my weight growing up. On the school playground in the third grade, I remember my friends sharing how much each of them weighed. I easily weighed 10, 20, maybe even 30 pounds more than all of them and I was humiliated. So as each of them confessed, I kept my mouth shut. When it was my turn, I pretended weight was the last thing I cared about, that I never weighed myself nor wanted to. What a lie. I was aware of myself as a fat kid every moment.

As I've grown up, the situation changes, but in effect, it's always the same. My thinner friends and acquaintances sharing their unhappiness with their weight. It always managed to deepen my shame about my size and my fault in getting me there. If my 140 pound friends were upset with their bodies, how could I ever manage to pull myself out of my fat misery at 170 and 180 pounds? So I never talked about my weight. If I put myself on a diet (which I did often but which rarely lasted), I wouldn't tell people because in my mind admitting out loud that I was on a diet meant admitting my realization of just how big I was and if I did that, people would really realize it, too, and focus on it. I could never risk that. I was always trying to wear the right clothes, make the right jokes, stand or sit the right way so that people wouldn't realize how big I was.

The unfortunate side effect, among many, of never talking about this out loud was that I never got healthy growing up. I never stuck to a healthier eating plan. My views of my body and my intense layers of shame and guilt bogged me down. I thought that if I didn't talk about my body people wouldn't have to notice it or pay attention to it. I've secreted myself away and have lost part of my essence.

So now, I talk about it. I'm enrolled in this program where all you do is talk about health and our bodies so it's inevitable that I would talk about my weight and my goals. But now it's in a different context. I'm loosening my grip on guilt and on shame. I was an overweight, unhealthy child because my parents raised me that way. Once it became my responsibility to prepare meals, my habits were so entrenched that it was impossible for me to change.

Now I'm 26 and I'm on a new career path and talking about my body and my weight and my health are becoming commonplace and I feel so inspired. I've been told that I'm inspiring others. For a kid who felt so traumatized and so defined by her weight to now be inspiring others to live healthier, more intentional lives is almost unfathomable. It's an incredible, overwhelming experience. And all I had to do was stop living in secret.

When the majority of Americans are obese, overweight, or could be healthier if they lost even a little weight, I, and you, should feel comfortable expressing your concerns, your desires. Find a community who understands you, who will listen to and support you. I don't think I would be where I am today had I not started speaking out about where I've been and where I plan to be. Now you can't shut me up.