The Fat One, checking in

That's me up there. I was looking good in my new corset and decided it deserved a bathroom-mirror phone pic.

You can call me A. I'm twenty-six years old, of mixed race, and fat. Sometimes people insist that I'm big, but not fat, but if we're going by my BMI (35.1) I am obese. A fatty mcfattington indeed.

My journey toward acceptance of my body (fat or thin, which I have been in the past) was a little bumpy. Being mixed race, in elementary school I was too light for the black kids and too dark for the white kids. I always wanted to look like my mom, who is blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and who I thought (and still think) was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I inherited my dad's mutant height, and was teased for being tall and skinny until twelve, when puberty hit like a freight train. Overnight there were breasts and hips and thighs, and I was still a head taller than anybody else.

Eventually the boys caught up to me, but so did my dad's crazy genes. I was always a little neurotic, but now I was the owner of a full-blown case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I developed emetophobia, fear of vomiting. Combine that with a tendency to feel a little queasy when nervous, and you have a lovely recipe for a problem with food. I stopped eating in public.

I never weighed myself back then, but I know for damn sure I wasn't healthy. I was pale and skinny and my hair was like straw. I felt nauseated pretty much all the time, and had panic attacks almost every day. I almost failed out of high school, but somehow managed to graduate and get to college.

I learned to eat in public, and the freshman fifteen (or thirty, or something) settled in. I lost weight after moving out of the dorm, due to the lack of readily available cookies. Overeating sweets is a vice I've only recently beaten, I think because I severely restricted sweets on and off for years (I now practice Intuitive Eating). I graduated with a respectable GPA, and went on to work.

I went on medication. I will take this moment to say that Lexapro is the greatest ever. I can actually live my life the way I want to with the help of meds. I won't say that medication is the best for everyone, but for me it was a blessing. It did, however, come with a side effect. Fat. Mounds of fatty fatty fat. I dieted. My GP at the time was convinced there was something wrong with my thyroid, and administered many tests that came up negative, and were pretty expensive even with insurance. When she finally gave up on that, she decided I was fat because I had diabetes, and that was when I'd had enough of that.

I found a new doctor, but by the time I saw him, I was on a 1000 calorie a day diet and working out at least an hour every day. My doctor helpfully pointed out that this was ridiculous, and dangerous. To put it in perspective, a girl my size needs about 2300 calories a day to maintain her weight, about 2000 to lose. I was holding firm at the same weight.

"Listen," my doctor said. "You're a very healthy girl, your last blood panel was great. You're not going to lose any more weight unless I take you off your meds, or try you on something else. But it sounds like it's working well for you, so I don't want to change. You're at more risk for ill health effects from anxiety than from being overweight. Just eat healthy and exercise, that's all you need to do."

Well, shit. I thought. I could be fat and happy or skinny and miserable. I'd like to say that I made my decision and never looked back, but there have been rough patches. Everyone has rough patches, though, skinny or average or fat.

That's why size acceptance is so important, because every body is a miraculous natural machine, every body is beautiful in its own way, and nobody should feel shamed by or for their body. Maybe someday we as a society can stop shaming people for their bodies, and there won't be any more rough patches for anybody, fat or thin or anywhere in between.