Chapter 2: The Start of Something Big

You can say the last few months of high school and the summer after I graduated is when my weight gain journey sort of began. You know how it is; high school is ending and the countdown is on until everyone goes away to college. You try to fit as much partying and fun time in with your friends as you can. Me and my friends were no exception. We went out to eat constantly. After we graduated, we ate out even more and the partying and drinking started in. None of us had summer jobs or anything either, so it was a lot of lounging around during the day and going wild at night. They were some of the best times of my life, honestly. But there was definitely a toll being paid for all the food and drinks flying around. I noticed little changes in the mirror when I’d step out of the shower or brush my teeth in the morning. But I would just do that thing most people do where you sort of block out little negative things about your appearance and pretend like you’re seeing things. I didn’t worry too much about it, but over the course of a few months those little things have a way of adding up. And then the miniscule stuff that you brushed off thinking nobody would notice… well, you can tell that people are starting to notice. That’s what happened to me with my weight gain. I would notice here and there that my belly was sticking out a little bit more, but I would write it off thinking it was due to a big meal I just ate and that it would go away. I kept thinking that night after night, and big meal after big meal, until finally realizing that if I kept eating a big meal every night then my belly problem probably wasn’t going to go away. That didn’t dawn on me until well into the summer, probably mid-August. I would notice my friends kind of look at me differently when I would come out to the pool in my bathing suit. They didn’t gawk or anything, and they certainly didn’t point it out to me, but I caught on that “uh oh, this thing that I thought only I could see is getting obvious to everyone.”

After finally noticing the looks I was getting, I started to really study myself in the mirror at night. It was obvious to me then that I had gained a decent amount of weight. A step on the scale proved me right: I had gained like 20 pounds or something like that. It was pretty jarring. And I mean, it was obvious if you looked at my yearbook picture and then saw me standing on that scale; you could easily see the extra weight on me.

I knew I had been eating and drinking a lot, but 20 pounds in like 3-4 months is crazy. And my friends had been doing the same stuff I was, yet they barely showed any signs of change. Sure, most of them were gym rats, but even the ones that weren’t looked the same as they had when school ended. I was very concerned about what was happening with my body. Looking back on it now, I think I was more in denial about what was happening than anything. Like, “something must be medically wrong with me and it’s not my fault that I’ve gained all this weight. Once I find out what is wrong then it will magically go away.” But really, I was just avoiding the fact that I was 20 pounds heavier. I honestly, in my head, just pretended that I was still 140 pounds and that the extra 20 was just for a few days until I saw a doctor and he would somehow cure it and it would disappear. I was definitely in denial about the whole thing.

I went to a doctor shortly after that to find out what terrible disease I must have had that caused me to gain weight. One of the first things he did was tell me to step on the scale, and even after all these years I can still hear him saying “160 on the nose.” He ran a few tests on me, nothing too crazy, and eventually he told me I had nothing wrong with me. I told him about the women in my family and my high metabolism, and he explained that my metabolism had probably just slowed way down, which apparently is somewhat normal. He was very helpful and everything, but I remember irrationally hating him for telling me I didn’t have a fat-gaining disease.

I remember going home after that doctor’s visit so clearly. At the time I thought the world was ending. I was so crushed to learn that my weight gain wasn’t due to some fluke, and that I was going to have to lose it all myself. It all kind of hit me at once and I just laid face down on my bed, buried my face in my pillow and cried my eyes out. It was childish, I know, but when you’re a teenage girl you treat these things like life or death situations. My mom eventually came in to tell me dinner was ready, and she sat down on the bed to comfort me when she saw how upset I was. My mother and I are very close, so I opened up to her and began gushing about how I had gained all this weight and went to a doctor and all that. She just held me as I cried it out, and told me it wasn’t the end of the world. It was so reassuring coming from her. It certainly didn’t make me fall in love with the extra pounds, but it was comforting knowing that somebody was there for me. We sat there for a while talking about this or that, and I remember at some point she said I was just “growing into my genes.” I felt really close to her that night. Funny how things like that stand out all these years later.