by Kristin Blank
At my first Weight Watchers meeting in January 2001, my sister Jennifer and I waited to step on the electronic scale. I observed the other women waiting: some looked too skinny to be there; others looked just like me, massive, with flabby skin sweaty with the exhaustion of hauling ourselves around.
I’d been overweight my whole life, and at 21 years old, I was done being the “Fat Girl.” That day, I was racked with anxiety. It embarrassed me when even my doctor read the scale, but I closed my eyes and stepped up. The woman behind the counter filled in my “Starting Weight” box. 238 lbs. My throat closed. Oh God, I thought. Don’t cry, don’t cry.
I knew my body was larger than others. But seeing that number innocently staring up at me cemented it in my mind—I was fat, huge, massive. I can’t do this, I thought, this is too much. I pushed down these thoughts that I knew would make me fail before I even began. I glanced at Jenn’s paper and saw 220 lbs., then showed her mine, clenching my jaw to ward off the still-threatening tears. Neither of us could believe I weighed that much.
*
Later, I logged on to the Weight Watchers website and tried out the tools. I checked the charts that told what my healthy weight was: at 5’5”, I should weigh about 135 pounds—at least a hundred pounds had to go.
I clicked to find out my Body Mass Index. I needed to face the truth, just like I needed to face that Starting Weight box. I entered my height and current weight and waited for the computer to process. Your BMI is 39.7. According to the explanatory paragraph, a BMI of 20–25 is healthy and a BMI over 30 is considered “very overweight (obese).”
I scored nearly ten points above “obese,” which meant I was unbelievably obese, send-in-the-clowns obese, morbidly obese. I’d never defined myself by that term—who wanted to call themselves morbidly anything? Morbid means rotten, near death, overwhelmingly odorous, gruesome, or somehow psychologically depraved. The woman thought the man morbid because he pinned live insects to cardboard and watched them writhe. To be morbidly obese meant to be hopeless, disgusting, fit to be examined beneath glass but never touched with bare hands.
*
And then, I was thin. In hindsight, the transformation feels instantaneous. In reality, it took about a year until I was satisfied with my body. In hindsight, it seems effortless. I followed the program and weight fell off me in little bunches and that was that—the Fat Girl was gone. At least from the naked eye.
Once, I ran into someone who hadn’t seen me throughout my entire weight loss. He didn’t even recognize me until I spoke. Totally new person to him.
And yet, my grandmother said, “You look so much better than you used to.” Totally repaired person to her.
I never owned my fatness. I never celebrated it the way some people seem able to do. I never stood nude before a mirror and said, “Yes, this is me. I am the bounteous rolls of flesh, I am the thickness of supple thighs, the curves of soft shoulders, the roundness of these hips, the woman of these DD-cup breasts.”
Instead, I didn’t look at my body except in shame and told myself that I was just like all my thin friends. I was awkward in my fatness, because I didn’t wield it like the weapon it can be in the hands of a girl who doesn’t let the body she has stand in the way of the person she is. By getting thin, I felt I was excavating from the caverns of fat the girl I really was. With each pound gone, I felt I was getting closer to her, getting closer to me.
*
At size eight, one could say, I have arrived. I am at ease in public. I can concentrate on the book in my hands or the sidewalk beneath my feet because I don’t worry if someone is wondering why that Fat Girl can’t get control of herself.
In many ways, I have become invisible.
Yet, I am seen. I am seen for my dark brown eyes and shiny auburn hair. For my slender pianist’s fingers and rosy cheeks. For my easy smile and sense of humor.
For these things that were there all along.
Kristin Blank earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from American University in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Vermillion Literary Project, and on BettyConfidential.com. She currently lives in Maryland.
