On Being Fat

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my history of being fat, and being not fat, and being fat again, etc. ad nauseum. This has been on my mind because of a couple of posts I’ve read recently. And I suppose because there’s some part of me that thinks that, by looking back, I can figure out who I really am — whether I’m genetically and profoundly and at-the-heart-of-it-all a fat person, or a skinny person. (Which is probably completely bullshit because The Power of Now taught me that hanging onto the past as a form of identity is just stupid and self-defeating, but anyway…)

I wasn’t a fat kid. In fact, I have a picture of myself from maybe second grade in which I was the skinniest, gangliest thing ever. It was a team photo from my first ever softball team, and I recall being the smallest girl on the team, and also trembling with fright every time I went up to bat, hoping against hope that I’d be walked. That was the first year. The second, I grew into a star player. I eventually became a pitcher and played first base. In soccer, I was a forward and a goalie. In short, I was pretty darned athletic, and very competitive, and confident, and I loved it.

Flash forward a few years when, in junior high and high school, no athletic options were open to me at school (I failed to make the couple of teams I tried out for). I ended up joining the marching band, and my physical activity dropped to nil. Participating in marching band meant one could opt out of gym. I’d once entertained the idea of trying out for the drill team, but there was a strict weight limit, and I was already over by that time — and I wasn’t even fat, I see looking back, until late high school. Of course, I’d believed I was fat since at least elementary school, when we endured annual public weighings, and I discovered I weighed the exact same amount as a boy I had a crush on — how unladylike. (Through my school years I spent lots of time at Weight Watchers and at Overeaters Anonymous, and in therapy, some of the time in the company of my mother.)

I didn’t begin to re-discover my inner athleticism until after college, when I started trying to lose weight and became a gym rat. That led to taking up running, and taking up with a group of runners. Then I did a marathon and some triathlons. We had amazing times training, and drinking beer post-training, and traveling to do races. Then I moved to New York, and never did quite find a group of friends that matched my previous set. Those people had known me as a runner; running was what we did for fun together, and that was just the way it was. Ah, for that society now.

I’m working now on building myself up again that way. One key, I think, is making time for it, even if my son wails and screams for my attention while I’m exercising (like grabbing my leg while I’m doing an exercise video, or wanting to get down from the jogging stroller). It’s important, I’m saying to him (and showing him), that Mommy exercise regularly. Mommy is an athlete, or at least takes care of herself physically, and doing that requires a commitment to exercise. So long as he gets his running-around time, and his park time, and his Mommy-attention time, all’s good, as far as I’m concerned.

When I was growing up, neither one of my parents exercised much. When I was a teenager, or so, my mom joined a gym and started doing Jazzercise or aerobics or something like that, but never consistently enough for me to feel like it was just a normal part of life. My aunt, by contrast, never let a day go by without making it to the gym or going for a run — it was easier, for her, because she never worked full-time like my mother did. Anyway, all this to say that more’s at stake now than just my own perception of myself as a runner, or an athlete, or someone who takes care of herself. My kid needs to learn that this is just how it is… you exercise, because it’s fun, because it helps keep you healthy, and because it makes your body feel good. That’s just the way it is.