Taking Up Space & Cellular Hoarding
Because why not? More musings about my fat.
One of the feelings I associate with being a plus-sized woman is that of substantiality. Growing up, I got next to no reinforcement to the idea that I was worthwhile or had any right to take up space in the world.
As I moved far too early into married life, that lack of validation continued. I do not hold any grievance against my parents or my ex-husband or any other adults who could have given me that kind of validation. They were all working from their own wounded damage and I did not have the inclination nor the framework to let them know that I needed it.
I did not even know then that I needed it.
Any self-esteem I developed in the first part my adult life came almost exclusively from my refusal to accept my unworthiness, despite what I saw in the feedback around me. Everywhere I turned, I found reinforcement of the message that I was not good enough; that I was a hardship others had to endure.
I spent maybe twenty years of my adult and semi-adult life at what was arguably a “normal” size, although the cognitive dissonance of being told I was fat by people I respected at the time never allowed me to enjoy being slender.
When I was smaller, I felt fragile and vulnerable. I felt insubstantial. At a bigger size, I feel very present and the act of taking up space makes me feel seen.
The irony is that when you go beyond a certain weight, I would say 200 just as an arbitrary number, you become invisible. You are, for instance, all but erased from the female gender as a viable sexual partner except by fetishists. I have had service people look past me to the pretty woman of appropriate and acceptable size behind me in line instead of acknowledging me. It is though people are so uncomfortable looking at your fat that the avoid looking at you at all. We even edit our own photographs out of history because we can’t stand looking at ourselves.
If you wait patiently to be noticed, you are invisible, but if you try to do something fun, suddenly everyone looks at you. If you dance, you end up as a joke on YouTube. If you try to ride a roller coaster and the bar doesn’t close and latch, you have to do the walk of shame past everyone as you exit the ride. If you eat anything that is not green and grows in the ground, people around you feel entitled to have an opinion about your food. I have had people comment on the food in my shopping cart, even though it was not for me. People stare when you go to the gym or put on a swimsuit.
A long time ago, I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Fat people are harder to kidnap” and I thought, “Yes. There it is.” For me, fat somehow feels safer. It makes me think of how when I was thin, what I hated most was when people, mostly men, would pick me up and carry me. It looks romantic in the movies, but I always felt a rush of terror that I was going to fall. Falling is my #1 greatest fear other than losing the people I love. I am not afraid of heights. I’m afraid of falling, which is a different thing.
My friend, Kate, and I both suffer from bouts of vertigo. Mine comes from having Meniere’s Disease and the effects of it are not friendly with a fear of falling. I do not have a fear of “walking upright or erect,” as the typical “Fear Of Falling” or “basiphobia” is described. I have a fear of misstepping and wadding onto the ground like a broken toy. Walking is upright is great. Standing erect is not a problem. Falling is a bitch.
I am fortunate to have a wonderful health care provider who takes great care of me and is an excellent medical advisor. A couple of years ago, I saw a cardiologist who immediately told me I needed to be on an intense diet and exercise regimen. I asked her what she was seeing on my labs or EKG that was concerning and she admitted that everything was within normal limits except for my low potassium… but she admonished me that it wasn’t going to stay that way.
When I went to the Emergency Department several years back thinking I was having a cardiac incident because of my symptoms, the triage nurse, the floor nurse, the doctor, and the discharge nurse all said to me, “But you have high blood pressure, right?” Each time, I explained to them that no, I do not have high blood pressure.
At the time, my blood pressure was through the roof, dangerously high due to what I later learned was a primary Meniere’s attack (unrelated to my weight). I finally pulled up my past medical records on my telephone to convince them that my baseline blood pressure was significantly lower than what I was experiencing. They all agreed that my BP was far too high, but they did not understand that it was way higher than it usually is.
When you are fat, it is rare that a health care professional does not attribute any symptoms you have to your obesity or presume obesity-related maladies are present even if they are not. I am lucky both to have a healthy body and to have a health care professional who is, well, professional.
In a comment on a recent post, Willow Silverhawk touched on the idea that we hold our trauma in our fat cells and when we release the fat, we also release the trauma.
When I eat in compliance with Keto and keep my carbohydrates below 20 grams per day, within two weeks, I go into a dark, ugly depression. During those times, I have thought about the very thing that Willow brought up. That I am releasing fat and so my stored trauma is coming up, which causes both depression and resistance to success.
But I can feel that the depression in those specific times is biochemical rather than trauma induced. I love the lack of cravings that comes from eating Keto. I love the deep sleep and groundedness I feel when I eat Keto. I love the whole almost cultish “We are the ones who have the answer!” community around Keto. That depression though, man. There is just something about my body that triggers it. If I have that specific depression and eat an apple, taking me out of ketosis, the depression instantly vanishes like someone threw a switch. And I promise you, I don’t get that turned on over an apple.
I know I am now in a safe place to process my traumas from the past. I am not afraid of them anymore. There was a time when I would not look at them, but since then, I have revisted them repeatedly for shadow work. My more recent traumas are harder: the fire, the loss of long-time pets, the death of my parents, a year of medical challenges in 2022, the deaths of close friends. These are all hard but I have done intense work to process those traumas. I don’t believe there is any further trauma in me waiting to pounce, but I do not totally rule it out.
I am a hoarder by nature and have to always work against over accumulation of stuff. I purge my house every year. Of course, the fire was the biggest purge of all. I wonder if I hoard food. If I hoard fat cells.
When I look at only losing one pound this week, despite fastidious food tracking, I think back to my last post, which talked about the one week process of calorie processing. It takes my body approximately one week to turnover the effects of the previous week’s caloric intake. So what I weigh now reflects not the choice I made yesterday, but the choices I made a week ago. A week ago, I was still in a (rather marvelous, in fact) sugar rampage.
When you turn a train around, you must first slow down the train, then coax it into moving in the opposite direction. It doesn’t all happen at once just because you want it to. I am on a pretty heavy train.
I started making good dietary choices five days ago. Prior to that, I let Saxenda do the heavy lifting, but that’s a post for another day. For now, I will see how my progress looks in a few days and follow my health care provider’s suggestion to NOT weigh myself daily.
Thank you for being here.
Thank You for sharing.
What you say makes a lot of Sense, thank you for that.