Being Fat

What Losing 180 pounds Does to your Body & Your Mind

Jen Larsen is a fiercely real, funny, and honest writer. In her new book, Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head, she explains how losing 180 pounds and getting skinny wasn't all she thought it would be. Here, in an essay for R29, she explains what it's like to live through surgery - with unexpected results. The doctor said, "It'll be nice to be able to walk down the aisle of an airplane, right? To fit down the aisle, and to not see that look of horror when someone sees you coming."

He said that because I weighed 300 pounds. He said that because he thought that all I wanted in life was to not be that creeping horror, shuffling sideways to the back of the plane, trying not to make eye contact with anyone because I didn't want to see their relief when I passed by. Trying not to make eye contact with the person in my row because I didn't want to see horror, and I really didn't want to see pity, and I really didn't want someone to lean over and explain to me that I was fat and that there are things I could do about it. Like water and jogging, or carrots and the Thighmaster.

He said that like it was a fact about all fat people. All fat people hate themselves. All fat people know that what's good in life is really only accessible to thin people. Thin is the most important variable in of life's equations. Thin equals happy, thin equals beautiful, thin equals a life worth living.

The most embarrassing fact of my life - and oh, how many embarrassing facts there are in my life - is that it was true. I was angry at him for saying it, for buying into the cliché of the fat person. For assuming that my life would transform immediately. Because he was saying all the things I had secretly thought. He was reinforcing all the secret fantasies I had about the way everything about me would be more amenable and lovable and acceptable to the whole rest of the world. To everyone on airplanes and everyone in my life. To myself. When I lost all the weight. When I got weight loss surgery.

He was my psychological consultant, the doctor who was tasked with clearing me for surgery. He signed off my mental and emotional fitness to get a surgery that I genuinely believed was going to save my life. Not just physically - though I was actually healthy - but emotionally.

And, three months later I got weight loss surgery. Seven months later I had lost over a hundred pounds; a year and a half from my surgery date, I had lost about 180 pounds. I lost a lot of things along with the weight. I lost my sense of self. My sense of proportion. My sense of dignity, of maturity, of control. I was skinny, but my life wasn't suddenly and magically perfect-and that completely astonished me. It sounds ridiculous, having really fallen for the fairy tale of weight loss. But I had fallen for it completely, and then was blinded by the egregious lack of a happily ever after.

The nature of the weight loss surgery I got is that you can completely ignore the things the doctors tell you to do. They say, exercise, don't drink, don't smoke, eat well. And you don't bother to do any of that, but still lose weight. You still lose every pound you want to lose, and then some.

The problem was that I lost all those pounds, but I didn't have to change a thing about my self. I didn't have to address any of the emotional or psychological issues. I didn't have to figure out why I had been depressed - why I was still so, so depressed, despite the fact that the one thing I thought had been ruining my life was suddenly gone.

I was skinny, finally, and I was fascinated by the physicality of it. It was like my skeleton had floated up to the surface from the bottom of a murky pond. I had muscles and tendons and bones and in the shower I'd soap the ridges of my ribs, the knobs of my hipbones, and be amazed to make their acquaintance. It wasn't pretty-I lost so much weight that I didn't look like myself, and then I lost past that, to the point where I looked like a sick stranger. Briefly, I was a size two. Sometimes I was disappointed that I couldn't be a size zero.

It doesn't go away, you see. I thought that my body was wrong when I was obese; I thought my body was wrong when I was thin past the point of health. I thought there was something wrong with my body whatever I looked like, because there's always just one more thing to fix before I look perfect, feel good in bed with hands on my body, feel sexy in a dress or a bathing suit, feel comfortable in my skin.

I felt helpless before. I tried to dodge out of the feeling by getting weight loss surgery, and now I'm angry. That I wasn't fixed, yes. But also that so many people deal with this, this exact and pervasive struggle at whatever size they are, whatever shape, whatever they do. That we're not good enough, with the implication that the best we have to offer to the world is an appropriately sized pair of jeans.

Magazine articles about body image talk about loving yourself despite your flaws. Sometimes they get really radical and they talk about loving yourself because of your flaws, and that is supposed to be empowering. And it makes me mad, because we're talking about flaws here. A body that doesn't look like the body of a Victoria's Secret model is a flawed factory reject. My thighs aren't the thighs of a figure skater, so they're not good enough, but I should love the flubby little things anyway because I am so incredibly self-compassionate.

I want this: I want to say, don't love yourself even though you're not perfect - love yourself because you have a body and it's worth loving and it is perfect. Be healthy, which is perfect at whatever size healthy is and at whatever size happy is. And of course that's totally easy and I have just caused a revolution in body image. Let's all go home now.

Right. So, I don't know what the answer is, and I don't know how to make it happen, and I don't know what to do except keep yelling about it, wherever I can. Saying there's no magic number, and there's no perfect size - and of course you know that, but we have to keep telling each other because it's hard to remember sometimes. We have to keep saying it. We have to figure out how to believe it. 

I have never read anything so honestly put out there in the news section of my Yahoo.  I was pleasantly surprised to see something with the point of view of a fat person, although a now skinny fat person.  But unlike the author of the article I did not fall for the fairy-tale belief that if I was skinny my life would be perfect.  Being smaller was never a priority for me.  I hoped it would help make the people I wanted  to know better see me.  I had gotten so good at becoming invisible that I became invisible to everyone.

I think the combination of my personality and being fat was a volatile mix.  I think it is important to know that I did not suffer any abuse until I was 10 years old.  TEN YEARS OLD.  I look at my nieces at that same age and I am shocked at how developed they are.  I did not have a mean word said to me during my developmental years,it was just the normal sibling rivalry.  I need to give my parents a lot of credit for giving me a solid base to start from.  I was loved and I searched out my talents and who I was.  I think about those years with such a fondness.  I felt more of an adult when I was 6 years old then when I hit 16.  Before my move I was the popular girl at school.  I was the teachers pet who was given the responsibility to get the milk for the class.  That was a status symbol.  It showed the esteem and trust the teachers had for who the chose to be a milk carrier and I knew the other kids envied me when I was chosen for the job.  I was able to build on that trust becoming a go to kid, not only for the adults, but for my other classmates.  I was picked to do the special jobs like collect all the lunch tickets.  I was noticed by my teachers and the other students for my talents, not for the way I looked.  I was so cute, just look at the pictures, but I was always bigger than the other kids my age.

My mother put me into piano rather early.  I started out in a rec center mommy and me class.  I remember sitting on the piano bench screaming because they were forcing me to play.  They weren't going to make me do something I didn't want to even then.  Finally I was convinced to try.  I liked it and I started to  gravitate towards music.  My mother found me a very professional teacher because she had me memorizing Bach and Beethoven when I was only 8 years old and then entered me into competitions.  I won quite a few, but at that time it didn't mean anything to me.  I liked winning, but I did not need the win.  I performed in talent shows and concerts.  I tried different instruments and was finding out what I was good at.  I don't have any idea what my life would have been like if we stayed in Burbank.  I heard stories of gangs roaming the High Schools.  I longed to be back there many times.  I just knew that I would be a top dog in one of the gangs.

But everything changed when I moved to Simi.  It was a double edge move for me.  In Burbank there just weren't any girls my own age.  Your block is your life growing up and the only other girl was a teenager.  I wasn't included in the rituals of girl society.  I did not understand the subtle cues given or the manipulation and nobody showed me.  I liked the boys.  They were easy to understand and you can be just friends under the age of twelve, but with the interest of "hooking up" later on in life, I lost that chance for friendship.

I moved to Simi and there were plenty of people my age, involved in good activities, so everything should have been wonderful, but it was a nightmare.  I was judged on the way I looked.  I had gone through my life being judged on my talent & personality and then it was all about my physical body.  I didn't know how to take it.  I knew the words coming at me were true, but to me it had no baring on who I was.  I knew that what people said about me was wrong, but I didn't know what to do.

So I tried to prove myself to others.  I wanted to show others that I was a valuable member of society.  I had my faults, but I had good qualities.  I tried to become talented and smart.  That became my main motivation in life.  It wasn't to be better than you, but to be judged on how I truly was.  It wasn't a good motivation.  I hungered for attention, but I wasn't going to debased myself to get it.  I wasn't going to allow myself to become the person that these people seemed to think I was.  I wasn't going to become a whore or a nasty girl willing to do anything for a little "love".  So I had to come up with other ways to be noticed, but they never seemed to work because I just did not want to be noticed for the bad. 

Meanwhile, I was battling the doctors and battling my own body.  There is something wrong with my physical form, there has always been something wrong, but all I get is a shrugged of shoulders from the Medical field.  I was poked and prodded constantly, but nothing was ever accomplished and I had to live with the results.  I still do.  I am not surprised that I am so sick now.  I knew my body wasn't working right and so I am not surprised that it is breaking down now.

The abuse was constant.  Ever day I was told how fat and ugly I was and every day it hurt just as much as the first time they said it, because I didn't understand why that nattered.  What does being fat & ugly have to do with anything?  Why was it so important to tell me?  What could I do?  I'll tell you what I did, I hardened. 

The abuse came from everyone.  It wasn't just the jocks or the skater boys.  It came from the intelligent.  It came from the cheerleaders.  It came from the fringe, just as much as from the mainstream, but what I can say is my defenders came from the same groups.  I did not understand the motivation of those that stood up for me or gave me a kind word, but they kept my faith in humanity alive.  Just like I didn't know where the cruelty would come from I was often surprised at who would share the kindness.

The abuse stunted me.  I had to concentrate so hard on surviving that I did not really have any normal relationships with anyone.  My friend told me that I seemed to resent & hate people during that period.  Let me inform you that was not the case.  I know because I would stop myself and ask if I felt hate.  I didn't, but I had harden and develop a manner that sent people away.  It was just safer that way.  I do not know how I could have been any different.  A person has one chance to present themselves to me.  One, that is it.  If you don't make an impression then I cross you off the list in my mind and you do not exist for me.  I realize now how unfair that can be, but I am tired of being hurt to my very core.

Unlike the author of the previous article I have tried to work on myself.  I have spent the past 15 years trying to catch up to who I was before the abuse.  I have spent hours pondering myself and my choices.  I have studied my actions and I have tried honestly to change and a lot has, but in many ways I still feel stunted. 

When I was a Behaviour Therapist, my main job was to tell the child that what they were doing was not appropriate.  I wished that many times for myself.  I wished over and over again that I had someone watching my behaviour and choices and could tell me how it looked to the rest of the world.  I can take the criticism, just don't be mean.  I have a reason for everything I do.  But knowing that the people around me do not understand my reasoning goes a long way to avoiding problems.

I apologize publicly to those of you reading who knew me from childhood.  I had to go off of the assumption that everyone I meet wanted to harm me.  I had to protect myself and I am still living with that confusion even today.  No one abuses me now, but I do not feel connected to anything.  Is it important that I exist?  I don't feel it.  And in that way my abusers won.  They told me I was worthless.   The told me that my very existents was poisonous and harmful.

And despite my constant fight to prove myself otherwise, I believe them.