Dear Friend,
I'm so glad you're here.
Recently I've been noticing the correlation between mental health and obesity.
Let me explain: I have lost (as of this moment) 168.7 pounds from my highest known weight. That's the same as a whole other person!
From a young age, I struggled with my weight. I remember the first time I really started noticing that I was "bigger" than my peers was in Kindergarten. Just barely a chubby little kid, but of course the children in my class were quick to notice the difference. I feel like that set into motion the rest of my school career.
It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I felt different, my peers treated me different, and so I acted accordingly.
I definitely was not popular. In fact, I feel like I struggled to make and keep friends due simply to the fact that I was labeled the "fat girl." In fourth grade I finally made friends. These two girls and I were inseparable. We had sleepovers every weekend, talked for hours on the phone (landlines, ha!), told each other all our secrets, gossiped and talked about boys. We stayed friends until middle school. One of these girls had confided in me that she also had a hard time making and keeping friends, but that she desperately wanted to be liked. She confessed that I had been the closest friend she'd ever had. In middle school she tried to make friends with the "popular" girls, and seemed to keep getting rejected. She would cry to me about the girls making fun of her behind her back. And yet, more and more she was spending all her time with them, even though she was miserable. One day, she just stopped talking to me. This was a tiny school, so it was very clear she was purposely avoiding me. Averting eye contact, not responding if I called out... complete avoidance. She was claiming that the popular girls were her best friends. I felt rejected.
The next year, I had been semi-accepted into a small friend group. I could sense that I wasn't fully considered a part of the group, but they allowed me to hang around. I even got invitations to some of the girls' birthday parties. One day at school, my old friend pulled me aside and told me that a girl from the group had been mocking me when I wasn't around. I was heartbroken. Then she told me what they had been calling me; "The Red Cow". (Important note here, I am a natural redhead.)
Ouch.
That wasn't the first time I had been bullied for being fat, but it hurt the worst.
Going into high school, I continued to live my self-fulfilling prophecy. I gained weight and ostracized myself further. In a town of 3,300 people, and a class size of maybe 150, your choices of friends were pretty slim. At this point in my life, I kept to myself. I couldn't handle any more rejection.
My small hometown in rural Wyoming was settled by Mormon pioneers. The culture was fostered towards the LDS church. If I remember correctly, 60% of the population were members of the Mormon church. Including myself and my family. The culture of that small mountain town really played a role in defining my personality. My parents raised me and my two siblings as devout Mormons. Whether it was the church or the small town atmosphere, I felt an enormous amount of pressure to be perfect. And the problem with being overweight: it's considered imperfect. So from a young age my thoughts were, "I am fat, therefore I am worthless."
It created in me a complicated relationship with God, and wrecked my relationship with myself. Not only did I feel rejected by all of my peers, but I lost my faith in a God that was supposed to love and accept me unconditionally.
This hurt in me brewed into an angry and sad depression and anxiety disorder. Around the age of 16, my depression came out through self-harm and suicidal tendencies. I hid all of this from those closest to me. At one point, I was scared of myself, so I reached out to my few friends at the time. I told them about my habits, and their response was not positive. One of them said I was doing it (self-harm) just to get attention. So I kept it to myself.
Then my mother found out.
To save you from the dramatic emotional story, I'll fast-forward and say that after therapy and antidepressants, I became mentally stable. At least more so.
While my depression and anxiety were at their worst, I actually was losing weight. I lost 70 pounds and was at my lowest adult weight of 180 pounds at 17 years old. After starting antidepressants, my weight started going up again. But I was so much happier.
I ended up leaving the church, and connecting with a Christian boy from some Midwest town called Kansas City that was actually not in Kansas, but in Missouri (that confused this small-town girl).
When I found the love of my life, I started ballooning in weight. My mentality had always been that no one would ever love me and that I didn't deserve love, all because of my size. And then he happened. And I felt secure and happy and loved for the first time in my entire life.
By the time we got married I was 330 pounds. When we had our first (unplanned, but no less loved) baby, I was at my heaviest at 368 pounds.
I had gotten to a place mentally where I avoided my body and my self-image. Because when I did address it, I went to a dark place. I've never liked what I see in the mirror, and if I address my weight it goes deeper to my self-worth. And that was too hard. So I got good at ignoring my body and those mental issues associated with it.
I tried for years to lose weight on my own, and I had minimal success. I struggled to get below 324 pounds. All that lead me to weight-loss surgery at 24 years old.
I am currently 13 months post-op gastric bypass. I have lost 135 pounds in that time.
The more weight I lose, the more I realize just how heavily my mental health played in my relationship with my body and my relationship with food.
What I want you to know: If you, like me, have struggled with your weight or your mental health: Your past does not define your future. Even if you've failed time and time again, that is not a forecast for the rest of your life. Day by day, year by year, time passes--and that's a good thing. Time brings opportunities. Time brings change.
"I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning or criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love." - Sylvia Plath
xoxo