What It's Like to Weigh 500 Pounds

I have been working on a first draft of a novel for several months now, and after over 100,000 words am finally drawing near the end (then comes the FUN part...editing and rewriting parts of the draft so I can submit it in hopes of finding an agent!)

I was exploring different ways to end the story and yes, it includes the possibility of killing someone. Maybe not in real life, but one of the characters might die. I don't know yet. In either case I remembered picking up and glancing at a bargain book at the local Barnes and Noble titled How It Feels to be Attacked by a Shark edited by Michelle Hamer. It had accounts by various people, apparently all Australian or New Zealanders, regarding their brushes with death.

It includes (on the back jacket) stories of getting shot in the heart with a nail gun, come back from the dead, getting trapped in an avalanche...interesting stuff, I thought, and maybe the recollections could help in my own shaping and description of a realistic fight or death in the story.

I started reading it and after a couple accounts of being struck by lightning and saving a kid from a storm drain after a torrential storm, I found one titled "How it feels to weigh five hundred pounds."

I had to stop for a break. Looking back at my own weight loss records, I started this year at 458 pounds. About 40 pounds shy of 500, but still it's up there. Before I had lost weight the first time, many years ago...maybe six or seven years?...I was probably pushing 500, if not a little higher. I honestly don't know if there is a record of it.

Seeing that title first had me thinking, "Is that really a life or death account?" Then I was scraping my own memories to see if I could recall what it was "really" like for me at that weight. What do I say to someone if they asked about it?

I sat back down and read the story. One thing I definitely took away from it was that not all fat people are fat in the same way.

This is the story as told by (and about) Bobby Ballantyne, 42. She hated her father's vegetables and fish, so she'd toss them aside in favor of ice cream and chips and candy. She'd make herself three or four "big, thickly sliced toasted sandwiches" instead. Hmm...okay, I don't think I normally had three or four sandwiches, but I would have two. I don't remember doing it but it's possible I had three on occasion.

She said she had seven kids, getting heavier after each one. Can't say I did that.

Then she said that one day she couldn't climb a chair to clean the top of the fridge so she just didn't do it. I don't remember not reaching a point where I couldn't get on top of a chair.

She said that as she got heavier, she found there were more things she couldn't do and fell into a depression. When she was depressed she had to think happy thoughts to get into a "tranquil frame of mind" just so she could eat, since she couldn't bring herself to eat when she was depressed. Me, I found I ate depressed or not. Happy? Sad? Morose? Angry? These enhanced eating. But it was time to eat at lunch time or dinner time or a snack time...so I ate.

She recounted eating half a dozen slices of toast with heaps of butter and grilled cheese by late morning, then a block of chocolate. She'd make tea and open a pack of biscuits (are they cookies in Australia? I'm not sure). She'd hide food from her kids so she wouldn't have to share. Me? I wasn't big on chocolates or candy. I ate lots of cheese...snacking on slices of cheese, maybe a peanut butter sandwich as a snack. Cookies if they were around. Mindless things that could be downed quickly. but not typically chocolate bars and lollipops.

She blamed fat- and sugar-laden foods in addition to the quantities that she ate. My only caution there is that there is plenty of research showing that fatty foods aren't necessarily horrible. It's how much you eat of them...so it's more likely that while she needed to vary her diet more, she was closer to the mark in saying that it was quantity that really was her problem. Calories are calories whether in fat and sugar or lean protein. Health is a totally different matter (even if you ate lean cuts of meat for your diet, eating just lean cuts of meat and nothing else will still adversely affect your health.)

She recounted deals she made with God to go on a diet if she survived her chest pains at night. Me? I don't remember chest pains when I weighed that much. In fact, I have them now periodically after losing nearly 200 pounds. Closest diagnosis I managed to find has been stress. I consciously stopped giving quite as much of a damn about some of the crap at work and much of the weird pains and chest aches have subsided. I still get them on occasion but it seems that after a couple tests with the doctors they aren't too concerned, or at least not concerned enough to keep testing. I do remember making "deals" with God, though, back when I was trying to believe in a God that cared enough to help. Obviously didn't help me in the formative years of my weight gain...maybe that was part of the reason I started more strongly questioning His existence. The answer I was given was that God helps those who help themselves, so I had to do the work. Well...then it's not Him helping me, is it? If I have to "help myself?" But that's a separate discussion. Point is that I remember making deals that never worked, and in the end I'd have to do it myself.

She said she couldn't walk far; checking for mail exhausted her. She had to wear ugly clothes because that's all that fit her. She had to wear bike shorts for underwear because that's all that fit, and they helped reduce chafing. She couldn't wear shoes because her ankles were swollen, and had to wear sandals. Hmm...I remember that yes, walking a distance was tiring, but I had to do it. I forced myself to do it, because if I couldn't make it from one end of the mall to the other (or at least as far as we needed to go to finish shopping for things) then I was admitting I was too fat. I remember going to the Renaissance Festival one year and feeling so very tired...I spent half the time wishing we were heading back to the car. I remember finding excuses to take the lazier shortcuts and procrastinating to do things that meant extra moving, but in the end I'd have to do it because...again...it was admitting I was simply too fat. I usually covered for this by complaining, griping, or moving just slow enough that I wasn't completely out of breath. People with me usually just wrote it off to me being a rude bastard and while I'm sure they made plenty of mental insults about me that would have been wrong to voice, they may not have ever stopped to think that my ornery disposition was in part a way of covering for the part that scared me; having to admit that I was a terminal fatass. Complaining and griping helped cover that part of my insecurity and redirected what I didn't have control over...my fat ass...to something I did have control over...the heat, the crowds, the prices, the disgusting bathrooms, and my vocal complaints about these things.

Ugly clothes? Yeah, I remember wearing what amounted to tents and sails. I was never one to give much of a damn about name-brand crap though. Maybe in part it stemmed from always wearing ugly clothes. Still, I don't care much about shopping at the Gap versus Walmart. I worry more about making sure my ass crack isn't on display, unlike the whorish outfits worn by teenagers now displaying their own full moons, whale tales and muffin tops overflowing.

She recounts sleeping in a chair because she thought she might choke from her weight on her throat if she laid down. Can't say I had that issue. I did develop a strong...VERY strong...snore. Came from obstructive sleep apnea. That leads to issues in itself that could easily take an entire post. After losing some weight, that largely went away. CPAP machines? No fun. Except it did let me make weird noises when I opened my mouth.

She broke several recliners that she used to sleep in, five chairs in ten years because they broke on her. Chairs, she said, were her worst enemy. Plastic chairs would break easily. She would have her son check out chairs if she were invited out to lunch; if she had to climb steps she wouldn't go, and if the the seats weren't solid wood without arms she wouldn't go. She was imposing restrictions on her life. For me, this was a creeping danger. I gradually had similar things happen and because they were gradual, it was far easier to accept. There were recliners that gradually fell apart...they were a few years old, they probably were in need of replacement anyway, etc...it wasn't just because I was too heavy for what they were designed to carry. I learned to avoid folding chairs. I literally get chest pains from anxiety when I have to sit in them. I slowly lower my arse into the chairs, constantly probing my balance to feel if one of the legs is about to give, even today. Plastic lawn chairs give me the same trepidation. I rarely sit in down unless I have to or there is a solid and sturdy chair available. I have trouble with chairs that have arms too. I hate them I hate them I hate them...and I always try to find seats without arms. Worse are the theater seats. I still don't completely fit them and constantly worry that they're going to break on me. Cars? I don't usually wear seatbelts because they went from being uncomfortable to just not fitting me at all; most people laugh or say that it's my own fault for being so fat that I have to find a car that I fit in instead of a car that suits me. The absolute worst thing for me now are cars that constantly alarm when they detect your ass in the chair without a seatbelt on. I have horrible memories of riding with my wife's father in his vehicle where it dinged until I could fit the clasp into the buckle. Again...anxiety attacks. I refuse to ride in his car anymore. I don't even like riding in other people's vehicles, period. At least in my car I can make the rules. There was one time that I remember breaking the seat in the car. I think my old jalopy I drive now has bent rails on which the seat is mounted, making it difficult to adjust. Don't tell my daughter, though. I imagine it's just an old car that has a finicky adjustment on it. She's just ding-batty enough not to put two and two together and realize the truth.

She said she was diagnosed a year and a half before she decided to lose weight with type two diabetes. Hey, I had that too! Had? I guess it's the sort of thing that doesn't go away...but still, I don't remember how long ago I was diagnosed. She said she continued to eat as she always did. I think I sort of modified my diet, but evidently it was just another item on the checklist (with dark fluid-filling ankles, hypertension, high cholesterol,...)

Her revelation came when she fell in the shower. She couldn't get up; she yelled for her son, who desperately needed her to get up again because the fire department would have to cut a wall to get her out. She started obsessing on how this was affecting her son; the harassment, humiliation, and publicity this would draw if they had to come in and do that just to get her back out of the shower. She described the huge effort it took, with pillows lining the tub, her son grabbing a kitchen chair in which he sat while she used it to lift herself up from an on-her-knees position in pain from the weight on her joints.  Okay...my recollection of the bathroom time is thus:
A) for guys, you lose sight of your anatomy. This makes peeing quite a chore due to lack of radar lock on the target. Fat guys, I know you know what I'm talking about. Leaning on the wall over the toilet helped with automatic aim. The rest of the time it was a matter of sitting to pee, which brought about two new sets of problems; seats that were too small for my diameter of butt, and constant fear of breaking the seat. It's happened. Whenever I saw broken seats, I wondered if I did it or not (and there are times where it honestly was not me).
B) I hated my wife's need for glass sliding doors on the shower. She took away the curtain, and voila'...I no longer fit in the shower. I still think she did it so she could have her own shower.
C) I despised, at the time, my wife's insistence on a jet tub. I think it's one more thing to break or have to maintain. However, this tub was big. The tub in the house where I grew up was a standard tub, and I barely fit in it anymore. Actually I could play in it by hitting the drain and letting water go down, only my tubbiness dammed the water behind me. In front of where I sat the water was gone. I'd have a full tub behind me. Then I'd lift my leg and have a flooding torrent of water rush to an equal level in the tub, and I'd pretend I was some great dam monster washing away a town in a valley. Tragic fun for self entertainment. The jet tub, though, was large. Much larger. As it happened I could only take baths at that point because this tub was actually big enough for me while I couldn't fit in the shower. The extra large two-person jet tub was actually large enough to let me sit.

Ah, the bathroom. The place where personal embarrassments are supposed to remain private whether you're fat or skinny.

Back to her story; she mentioned that people would speak slowly to her because the assumption is that if you're fat, you're stupid. She became rude so people would focus on her rude behavior instead of her weight, and she felt bad for what she imagined her kids went through. As for me, I'm sure that there were comments and rude thoughts tossed my way. I'm fairly sure part of my cynicism, my intolerance for stupidity, and several other vices were contributed to in some way by my weight. I had a thick skin develop (literally and figuratively) in large part from my weight level; I was insecure about my intelligence because I needed to be right. Being smart was my thing; I was a geek, a computer jock, at home in front of a keyboard or reading a book penned by Stephen Hawking instead of the football field, and by dammit I was good at those things. It made me fear failure (and thus makes my financial failings now, my debt, my realizations of missteps in life that lead me to worry about my debts now doubly difficult to take and cope with). I was fat but you were stupid compared to me and I was going to make sure I could claw myself above the majority of people academically because that's all I had. I defined myself by being the (unfortunately fat and) smart guy in the room. Downplay the fat, up-play the wits.

Complete strangers may think I'm a fat idiot. That's okay. Chances are that for the one reason you have to believe I'm an idiot, I've already found three or four reasons you shouldn't have been legally allowed to procreate and two reasons why you shouldn't be allowed to breath the same air as I was breathing. Yes, my mind honestly worked that fast when I caught you staring at my ginormous balloon shaped body.

What it came down to was that I couldn't control what you think. I had to learn not to mind it so much because I couldn't change my weight overnight, while most people around me were content to live in ignorance, which also didn't change overnight. It was a thought that comforted me.

In the end, she joined Weight Watchers and has lost 300+ pounds, according to this account. I had surgery and have changed many aspects of my eating behavior that has led me to a 190 pound weight loss so far with a painful several-weeks-old plateau in the 265 range and a nice dose of wallowing in a depression and whiplash from turning away from mirrors when I see my body with all the flapping loose skin.

Funny how many memories five pages in a $7 book can dredge up. I spent more time typing this entry than I did actually reading that epistle.

The next story in the book is about what it feels like to choke on a cheeseburger. Ironic?