Going out to dinner, I was a real treat, nothing enraged me more than the waiter handing me the kiddies menu; no way could that fill me up, I could eat more than the average grown woman! However the worst, the thing I hated most, was when we were out with family friends and parents would ask if I wanted to share a meal or desert with their child. Their little tyke couldn’t possibly eat an entire kiddies pizza along with ice-cream and chocolate sauce.
My folks really did try the lot. Since I was between the ages of 6 and 8, I have been and am still to this day on a diet. Every diet, every book, and every trick: I have tried and tested.
I was encouraged to do sport, which I enjoyed. Although sometimes I did pretend to have left my sports kit at home to rather receive a black mark instead of doing sport. I did this because we would have to run around the field to warm up. Being larger than most, I was usually last. This meant having the whole class wait for you to finish running around the field before the sports actually began. Running in last, red-faced, wheezing chest and red, itchy thighs from blood circulation a little round body hadn’t been getting regularly. It was humiliating.
However, I carried on and when we were old enough to be allowed to play hockey, I did and I loved it. I played wing, which is actually quite funny as they are generally the ones that run up and down the field, being really fit and what not. My sporting efforts did not change my weight, not for lack of trying, but rather my sheer love for a quick snack. I never said no to any food, or rather I was always asking people for their food, swapping cool sharpeners or pencil tops, anything I could trade for their bar-one or whatever other treasure lay hidden in their lunch boxes. My lunchbow consisted of a fruit and a sandwich or what ever the weigh-less or weight watchers plan had on the menu that day. These diets were tricky and I made mistakes, for example one day when I came home from school my mom asked me how my salad was. I told her I had swapped it but before she could shout at me I told her not to worry, I swapped it for another salad… a potato salad!
Another hot favourite of mine was climbing to the top of the pantry where all my brother’s and sister’s lunchbox snacks were hidden, grabbing them and running deep into the bushes to eat the snacks in secret. It was on occasion that the snacks were finished. If this was the case I would look in the freezer where there were always treats; mini quiches and tarts or muffins left over from my mom’s book club, breadsticks and mini garlic breads from a dinner party. Now this got a little tricky, I had to warm them up. The problem with that was that the smell would fill the kitchen, or I would get caught standing in front of the microwave watching the carby surprise rotate and actually harden, waiting with bated breath for the microwave to beep at zero. So, as to avoid the risk of getting caught I would just eat them frozen. It did take longer to eat, but if you heard someone calling you or someone coming you could hide it in your pocket as there was no smell and no packaging to make a crinkle sound, and because it was frozen it stayed fresh(ish!).
Every dietician was the same too. Asking how my week went how was the eating this week etc. I would like to point out that not one of my dieticians were thin, they were all carrying a little pudge around the edges, they needn’t worry about a 7 year old when they have their own muffin tops to assist to! It was always the same though one week half a kilo off the next week one on and so on and so on. To tell the truth, I just got larger. Food just made me happy.
I was little so I didn’t really understand the full emotional pain of being fat. I ate and I was happy. That was until one year, I must have been about 8 or 9. I was at a firework show with my friend and were having such a fun time. She suggested we ask to get an ice cream, I was thrilled, my eyes lit up. She asked her dad if we could get an ice cream. Now if you can picture this there were a lot of people around, people he knew, picnic blankets the lot. On hearing her question he looked at her then at me and said, "well you can have an ice-cream but she is too fat for ice-cream." and roars of laughter followed his comment. I wanted to die.
I had such a sad feeling inside me. Other people had said, "ah your so healthy," or, "its just puppy fat." (Yes, but puppy fat starts going away almost as you start walking). All I wanted then was my mom; I had never felt such a feeling. This was not the only parent who would be so nasty to a little girl, another mother on a different occasion had the same idea with the ice cream, "why don’t you share one, Jubie's too fat for a whole one" said a friend's mom chuckling and pinching my tummy as she said it.
I began to realize I was ‘FAT’ in every sense of the word. Shopping became an issue. Every piece of clothing I tried on, I would cry, and then my mom would cry. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t fit into anything nice and how my friends all looked good in their white spaghetti string tops, while I looked like a cloud, with the strings practically lost in my shoulders. Now if that was bad, can you imagine swimming costumes and bikinis? You would have thought someone had died in the changing room with the amount of tears we cried.
All my friends had cell phones except me, I had to work for it: get a good history mark and eat healthily. This was the deal I had made with my dad because he was buying me the cell phone. One Thursday morning before school, he asked me what I was going to do and I told him "get a good history mark and eat well". That was the last actual conversation I had with my dad. That night while I was sleeping, he was late back from work. He came to wake me up to say goodbye as he was leaving on a fishing weekend. He woke me up so that I could see him before he left, made his hand in a ‘thumbs-up’ shape and said "you gonna be fine." That Sunday we got the news that my dad had had a heart attack and died at 48, I was 12 years old.
I felt numb for about two weeks, everything was racing around me. My mom was absolutely finished. It was the first time I had seen and been able to conceptualise emotional pain infecting the human form. It was so alien to me; until then my life had been seemingly perfect, but this was something that hit me in a place I never knew existed, a pain that actually burned.
That year I gained more weight and clocked in at 72 kilos on the scale. While my friends were wearing size 6’s and 8’s I was wearing sized 14’s or 12’s if I was lucky. It was the year of Avril Lavigne. And so it was the year of massive skater shoes, tank tops and cargo pants. Now yes, all the girls looked super hardcore, super cool. But, when a 72 kilo little girl has huge skater shoes on, beige cargo pants, a white tank top, and messy make shift pigtails, this is not attractive, does nothing for the figure and the colour scheme only made me look relatively larger. It didn’t help that my hair was curly and had been cut short. My sister had short hair, was thin and beautiful and I thought I would do the same and it would look identical. I was wrong - it bounced up and mushroomed out, if I didn’t wear girlish clothing I looked like a little boy.
I began to realize I was ‘FAT’ in every sense of the word. Shopping became an issue. Every piece of clothing I tried on, I would cry, and then my mom would cry. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t fit into anything nice and how my friends all looked good in their white spaghetti string tops, while I looked like a cloud, with the strings practically lost in my shoulders. Now if that was bad, can you imagine swimming costumes and bikinis? You would have thought someone had died in the changing room with the amount of tears we cried.
All my friends had cell phones except me, I had to work for it: get a good history mark and eat healthily. This was the deal I had made with my dad because he was buying me the cell phone. One Thursday morning before school, he asked me what I was going to do and I told him "get a good history mark and eat well". That was the last actual conversation I had with my dad. That night while I was sleeping, he was late back from work. He came to wake me up to say goodbye as he was leaving on a fishing weekend. He woke me up so that I could see him before he left, made his hand in a ‘thumbs-up’ shape and said "you gonna be fine." That Sunday we got the news that my dad had had a heart attack and died at 48, I was 12 years old.
I felt numb for about two weeks, everything was racing around me. My mom was absolutely finished. It was the first time I had seen and been able to conceptualise emotional pain infecting the human form. It was so alien to me; until then my life had been seemingly perfect, but this was something that hit me in a place I never knew existed, a pain that actually burned.
That year I gained more weight and clocked in at 72 kilos on the scale. While my friends were wearing size 6’s and 8’s I was wearing sized 14’s or 12’s if I was lucky. It was the year of Avril Lavigne. And so it was the year of massive skater shoes, tank tops and cargo pants. Now yes, all the girls looked super hardcore, super cool. But, when a 72 kilo little girl has huge skater shoes on, beige cargo pants, a white tank top, and messy make shift pigtails, this is not attractive, does nothing for the figure and the colour scheme only made me look relatively larger. It didn’t help that my hair was curly and had been cut short. My sister had short hair, was thin and beautiful and I thought I would do the same and it would look identical. I was wrong - it bounced up and mushroomed out, if I didn’t wear girlish clothing I looked like a little boy.
Usually in a friendship group there is that one that kind of pokes out. Well that was me. Whenever there was a movie at a shopping centre I would go with all the girls to meet ‘our’ group of boys and it was always the same. No one watched the movie; everyone was busy texting each other when they were only a seat or row back. Saying how hot this chick is and how they should ask that one out, or my personal favourite, "will you go out with me? Y/N?" And I would go every weekend, every time, only to sit, watching and trying to smile as if I was also getting pleasure out of this whole texting, early adolescent, routine of socialization. I hated it. But when ever I went I had hope, I always thought, "yip, today will be it he will look at me and want my number," and of course at that age all I could think about was a boy sending me those lame bears holding hearts saying ‘sweet dreams’. My phone never beeped. It was always on silent so that when I did look at it after the day was up it would be a surprise to see a text. I don’t know how I thought some boy would magically get my number and start texting me. It didn’t happen. I wont even get into Valentines Day, because i simply hated it.
Boys never spoke to me. I don’t know if it was because they were embarrassed to talk to a fat girl. Maybe it was an ego thing, I’m not sure, but I wasn’t even greeted. Sure, we were young and just learning about socializing with boys, but when you are the only girl, that’s trying to look happy and cant really say anything its pure hell. Some boys did speak to me and became my friends but it was clear that was it. Some boys thought I was cool, I remember overhearing a conversation where the boy said, "oh Jubes, the fat chick? Ya she’s cool." I was that girl, the go to girl. The fat best friend.
I had had enough; I was tired, I was sad, I felt left behind and I wanted to experience all that my friends had and were experiencing. I wanted to be my own person and not someone’s sidekick, I was tired of being the safety friend. I went on a different diet the next year and stuck to it, and took it too far.
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