Things We Don't Say When We Talk About Weight Loss
By: Shannon Ashley
Tags: Weight Loss, Life Lessons, Life, Mental Health, Health

For the past few months, my body has been too heavy to measure. Well, too heavy to weigh on my home scale. It has a 400-pound weight limit.

When I first began my own writing career last spring, my weight was ranging anywhere from 340 to 375 pounds, but swinging upwards. At some point, I gave up completely and saw my weight reach 400 pounds last fall.

Obviously, that's a huge number. I know, some of you are laughing or rolling your eyes. Some of you want to vomit. Meanwhile, I have intense, conflicted emotions about all of it. About typing it out or even talking about it. Because nobody else really knows what it's like for me in my body. They can guess, assume, or argue, but both this life and this body are mine alone and not theirs.

Obesity is not simply a lack of knowledge on the part of fat folks.

Sometimes, people want to give me advice about how to lose weight. Honestly? I roll my eyes every damn time because I have a long history of triple-digit weight loss and weight gain, so I'm much more knowledgeable about nutrition than most people might think. And weight loss isn't only about knowledge, of course. But we don't often talk about that.

The truth is that I haven't been in a mindset to lose weight for a very long time. I'm talking about years of making a meal and exercise plan, but not following through on it for more than a day or two. If even.

Months ago, I wrote about going on a gastric bypass diet. I actually said I was going to eat like a gastric bypass patient, and why. But then I didn’t do it. Eight more months of my life squandered in self-loathing, occasional starving, and all-too-often binge eating. Why? It's not because I don't know how calories work, or that I have never been on a diet.

It's because we don't talk about the mental health or virtually any other health condition behind obesity. We don't talk about the loneliness, trauma, or pain.

If I wasn't the single mom of a young child, I’d have tried to put myself into an inpatient program for eating disorders because I just simply don’t know how to have a healthy relationship with food. Lock me away and teach me, please. Help cure me of my unhealthy fixations.

But within the medical community, and well, pretty much everywhere else, fatness and binge eating, or fatness and any other kind of disordered eating aren't taken as seriously “legit” eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia.

Sadly, most physicians will nonchalantly advise their obese patients right into an eating disorder — as long as it might translate into weight loss. Of course, most doctors don’t realize how much damage they are actually doing or have already done.

I have lipedema and PCOS. Two diseases which occur before obesity, but typically aren't diagnosed until after. So I know firsthand how hard it is to find physicians who don’t encourage drastic methods of weight loss for obese patients. It’s hard enough to find doctors who don’t blame your every illness on your weight. Regardless of how many other illnesses came first.

"Dieting" is... complicated.

Maybe "diet" is more of a dirty word in 2019. But the reality is that doctors do still prescribe diets to the morbidly obese, obviously. When they prescribe pills or exercise, there’s a diet. And even when they cut, staple, or bind stomachs, there's still a diet nearby. It’s the fat person's prescription for life.

And yet, everybody knows that diets don’t work, right? Even when they surgically cut and reroute our insides, weight loss surgery is simply a tool to help a person stick to a lifelong diet.

That doesn’t mean they’ll do it. That doesn’t mean the diet won’t fail.

For years, I have resisted bariatric surgery for myself, not only because it's so costly. But also because I know I have other issues at play. And I've seen patients get gastric bypass but still regain the weight. Frankly, I worry that I would be one of them.

I keep telling myself that I can figure this out without gastric bypass surgery. Not because surgery is an easy way out--but because I know it isn't. I still want to believe that I can develop a healthier relationship with food right now. If I did have the surgery, I'd still have to develop a healthier relationship with food.

But since my relationship with food has been so broken, I tend to push myself to extremes.

For a long time, I have had it in my head that I've got to go on a restrictive diet. So I keep telling myself to just eat as if I've had bariatric surgery. Like it's so simple. But I never do make it more than a day. Since becoming a mom, my ability to stick to a restrictive diet is (apparently) lost. I feel irritated trying to stick to protein shakes. And I feel guilty about things like sucralose and eating a ton of food that isn't really... food.

There are no one-size-fits-all diets.

People keep telling me about the benefits of ketogenic diets without realizing that I've done my research on them and even tried several variations for more than five years. I tried keto long before it became the biggest fad, back when it was mostly my fellow Scandinavians espousing the benefits of a low carb high fat (lchf) diet.

While I wished that keto or even low carb would work for me, the pounds kept piling up. What's been a miracle diet for some did very little for me. But it shouldn't be a revolutionary thing. There's no one-size-fits-all diet.

Even people who go on to have weight loss surgery end up doing different things with their diets. Surgeons often recommend a 900-1,000 calorie diet for life. But experts vary if that lifelong diet should be low carb, low fat, whole foods or what.

Oh well, right? Keto hasn't worked for me (despite actually sticking to it). Time to move on.

Weight loss is almost exclusively linked to failure.

I haven't had a wellness related win for a long time. With the holiday season, I mostly gave up (again) once I outgrew my scale. So I'm not sure how far beyond 400 pounds my weight has gone since my scale stops there. If I step on it while weighing more than 400 pounds, I get an error message.

And I'd been getting that error message for months.

Of course, when January came, I wanted to lose weight for the new year. It doesn't matter that it's a cliche. I'm unhappy with my weight, so I'd like to do something about it. And I kept telling myself that I just gotta to suck it up and restrict my caloric intake down to a 500 or 800 maximum. I've done it before.

Except that's the problem. I've done it before.

I have lost over 100 pounds twice in my life. I've lost count of how many times I have lost less than 50. See, weight loss has always been exclusively linked to failure for me. Because I have never lost all of the weight, and I have never loved my body. I have yet to feel comfortable in my own skin.

To be fair, I have no idea what my body could look like if I wasn't fat, because I have lipedema. That means I carry plenty of fat (particularly in my legs) that cannot be dieted or exercised away. That's not how lipedema fat works. It grows without regard to your efforts.

It's hard then, for me to consider weight loss without also feeling the failure of never being slim enough. And I suspect I'm not the only obese person to struggle with that.

I want to lose weight AND enjoy eating... right now.

Like right now. See, plenty of obese people with eating disorders gravitate toward restrictive plans to lose 20 pounds (or more) in one week because we so desperately need a win. I don't know how else to explain it.

I have been struggling with food addiction and disordered eating more than ever since my daughter was born in 2014. Like I just can't get my act together. I've been needing a win for a damn long time.

But what would happen if I gave myself permission to eat and enjoy my food rather than loathing myself for daring to do something so mundane? Can I eat happily and quit the painful binges? And lose weight?

I've written about wanting to drop the guilt before. And clearly, I've been largely unsuccessful. In case you missed it, it's pretty damn tough to build boundaries around healthy eating when you have... none.

I've read books on practically every diet (or non-diet) known to the human race, yet I still flounder when it comes to enjoying my food with healthy boundaries and no guilt.

Weight loss is painfully public.

Whatever I do when it comes to my weight, someone is going to notice. Hundreds of pounds cannot easily hide. I might as well write about it honestly, though of course, that means you'll be prithee to my failure too.

Over the past nine months, there's been a ton of failure in terms of my eating habits, body image, and weight. It doesn't help knowing that anywhere I go, people may easily judge me for my weight without ever understanding how much of a battle it is every day.

That's why I've been sitting on this story for a few days. Trying to figure out exactly what to say. Trying to figure out how to talk about a wellness win. God knows I've needed one.

Well, guess what? Strangely enough, I've got three. Three little wellness wins I'm hoping to build upon.

I haven't had a binge eating episode in a week. I've been enjoying my food... without counting calories. I can weigh myself again.

Finally, I am under my scale's weight limit of 400 pounds. I am eating mostly "healthy food," with a few "less healthy" treats here and there. And I think I'm finally in the mindset to lose weight. It's just a very different mindset, because I'm giving myself permission to eat more than 1200 calories a day. In fact, I'm not even counting calories at all now. And for a superfat girl with a long history of regain?

It's scary as hell.