What Sparks your Fire?

Otherwise known as what caused you to get into an internet fight today?

This is how we get disordered eating!!!!!

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I wrote a book. I’m not quite ready to be published yet as I just finished the story two weeks ago. The storyline has been one that I have been very passionate about as well as pushed into anxiety over my entire life.

To provide some clarity, the book is titled “I Can’t be Her”. It’s the story of Casey, a young woman who has struggled since childhood with being overweight. She has endured emotional, physical, and psychological abuse from her family, as well as bullying and abuse at school while growing up and from strangers. As a result, Casey has isolated herself away from important personal relationships and developed traits of disordered eating.

Casey decides to pursue a healing journey to lose weight and overcome her disordered eating and must face her traumas and the people associated. Through her healing journey, she finds out what, and who, is important to her mental and physical well-being.

This subject is one that is very close to my heart for a few reasons. I have struggled from an early age with negative body image and have always struggled with my weight. I was a teenager in the 1990s and it was a time of “heroin chic” and waif-like bodies. I wasn’t exceptionally overweight, but I thought I was. I was always the “fat friend” of the group.

While I didn’t endure quite the same abuse as my character Casey, I did experience my own which stuck with me. My earliest memory is from when I was five years old, my stepbrother had been tormenting me so much about my weight that he went so far as to set up a scale for me to step on. He then proceeded to torment me about the number (I don’t remember what it was). I remember looking at my aunt’s hands and seeing how thin they were, and how pronounced her veins were. It made me think that maybe one day, I’d be thin enough to have hands that look like hers. In middle school, when puberty hit, I grew curvier but not taller. I became the object of many jokes from that point on.

These actions are sadly ones that stick with a person for years. I learned to be ashamed of my body at an early age, and it progressed as I got older. My weight increased with pregnancies and stressful marriages, as well as abuse. By the time I was 35 years old, I had lung issues caused by my weight, low self-esteem, fears about being seen in public. I was afraid of being an embarrassment to my kids. I weighed 270 pounds at 5’2”, with a Body Mass Index of 49.4.

This was 2012. In the 13 years between then and now, a lot of changes occurred in my life – but we’ll get to that. This entry is titled “What Sparks Your Fire?”, so let me talk a little bit about my fire.

Obviously, I struggled with obesity in my past, and it’s something that I struggle with currently and will for the rest of my life. I fought the stigma of being a fat person in a skinny person’s world. I was afraid of theater seats, narrow table arrangements at restaurants, dating was hard and had become a new form of bullying. Buying clothes, trying to exercise, eating in public (alone and in front of others), being with friends, everything became a reason to be observed and judged.

My ability to lose weight though, and the new kind of bullying and shaming that I experienced was not something I expected. As a result, this is what lights the fire in me and ignites the passion that I find difficult to tame at times. I used to be shy, quiet, and introverted. Now, however, knowing the multiple trials I have gone through, and the fact that I have seen both sides of the spectrum, I find myself being more vocal and ready to defend anyone who becomes a victim to the bullying.

Specifically, I’m talking about the use of medical methods of weight loss; surgery as well as the current medications available. (*Note* I know that there are non-prescription compounds available as well at this time, but I am not familiar with these concoctions, and only know that they are things that have not been FDA nor physician approved.) I have seen many people through social media, and friends I have made, who are fitness professionals. These professionals preach that proper nutrition and regular exercise will give the best results for weight-loss. Continue with a healthy lifestyle, and your results will be maintained. They are also, most times, strongly against medical assistance, and will happily express their opinion that it is unhealthy, under the guise of informing and educating.

The concept of nutrition and regular exercise to lose weight is not something with which I disagree. I have, however, utilized both surgery and injectable medication to go from 270 pounds to 150 pounds, where I am currently maintaining. In my opinion, the constant negative narrative regarding methods of weight loss to people who struggle with finding anything that works, is another form of bullying, and ultimately, fat-shaming.

So, first and foremost, I’m not going to get into the fact that some of the medication used is also used to treat more serious illnesses, which cause the shortage fears and pose the ethical question of “Which patient is more important?”. When it was determined that weight loss was a side effect, that was when the additional research and development came about to create the medications specifically for weight loss.

I do understand that people get frustrated by the fact that so many have been quick to jump into their doctor’s offices and request a prescription for the miracle drug to help them lose 30% of their body weight. The use of the medication or the surgery isn’t necessarily the problem, it’s that it has been over-prescribed to people who look to the medication or the surgery, as the fix all and expect it to do all the work for them. Yes, when you begin taking the medication, or after having surgery, the weight will begin to melt away. You feel like a different person, because nothing else has ever given you this kind of a result. It’s an absolute elation to know that something is finally working. It becomes very easy for someone to ride that excitement and let it happen. This is where the accusations of lazy or taking the easy road begin to surface.

The treatment you use is supposed to act like any other tool to HELP get a job done. During the time after you have surgery, or begin the medication, you’re supposed to be concentrating on your nutritional, exercise, and lifestyle changes. This is when you take the time to learn about what you’re experiencing, and what to expect for the rest of your life. It’s also a time to question when things need to be investigated or adjusted. Once your body acclimates to the changes made by the medical treatment (and this time frame is different for everyone), your weight loss begins to slow. If you haven’t made the lifestyle changes necessary, this is when you begin to plateau in your efforts or experience regain.

Now, where am I going with this? I’m not a medical, fitness, or nutrition expert by any means. I have, however, lived and experienced the ups and downs of the struggle. I started with surgery, and, while I began strong and did the necessary things that I was coached by the medical staff to succeed, it was still hard when less than 18 months later I hit a plateau, and eventually began to regain. I fought my body, not knowing what or why things were no longer working.

Some years later I learned about the injectable medications, and after much research and consulting with my doctor began using them. With the surgery, I was not able to stop my mental struggles, just because I couldn’t eat as much anymore. I still had the stress eating, later diagnosed as binge eating disorder. I still had the food noise in my head that was a constant narrative of food, body image, appearances, and other’s opinions of me. The medication gave me the opportunity to reexamine my mental and physical struggles and complete the necessary work that accompanies the treatment.

None of this was easy, nor does it remain easy. Once the medication stops, (insurance companies will stop it eventually) the struggle will continue because the narrative will come back, taunting, and screaming. It will be the ever-present reminder. When you have lived a life indulging your impulses and mental illnesses, changing that now becomes a life-long struggle. For the rest of your life, every meal you eat will be accompanied with an internal conversation about the right or wrong aspects of that meal. Every day you decide to go to the gym, or take a walk, or not is met with yet more internal conversations on the consequences of your actions.

This is why I get passionate when people who claim to be knowledgeable of fitness and health accuse medical weight loss treatment as being the lazy or easy way out. These personal trainers and instructors, fitness experts, bodybuilders, and all like them are in a position where someone who has struggled for a long time is looking at them for encouragement. They have tried many things and have found that this is the path that is working for them. It isn’t easy. They still have a lot of personal demons to overcome and, because it’s very hard to re-program chemical imbalances in the brain, will probably be fighting those demons for the rest of their life.

Additionally, if the use of the medical treatment is giving them success they haven’t before had, then as well as fighting the mental demons, they’re experiencing strange and new activities that can be intimidating and scary. To have that fitness professional that has been placed in a position of trust express criticism for your method of success because it’s not the “old fashioned” way, causes a level of shame and intimidation that makes them not want to continue. What comes easy to someone with the ability to lose weight and maintain doesn’t always work for others. The desire to share disgust is yet another way to shame those that do use these medications and causes tension and frustration when faced with that person.

I understand the desire for people in the fitness industry to want their clients to be as healthy as possible, which means no unnecessary chemicals. At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that it’s not their body that is taking in the medication. It’s not their brain that has to fight on a minute-by-minute basis with the right and wrong decision to eat or not eat something. It’s not their emotional set-back when after a month of counting every calorie, following every exercise routine provided, and taking all the advice, you gained 4 pounds instead of losing weight.

My personal opinion is, if in the industry, and you have a client come to you post-surgery or utilizing a medications on the market, try another tactic instead of pushing the constant negative narrative. The ultimate goal is to be off the medication, so why not work with helping them refocus on their lifestyle changes? Don’t call them lazy. Don’t say it’s the easy way out? Don’t shame someone for finding something that works for them when nothing else did. Be the encouragement you strive to be instead and help them make the changes they need. Help them use the tool for success.