chapter 4

It is about a year since I last wrote and I have now turned twenty eight. Unsurprisingly during that time I have continued to put on weight. The last time I stood on the scales I registered 387 pounds, the heaviest I have ever been. My weight gain has not been consistent. I consume roughly the same amount of food, bingeing when I can, simply because I enjoy it, but sometimes I stay the same or even lose a couple of pounds and then when I have given up hope the pounds seem to arrive and generally stay. The way I am living and eating I suppose I can expect to become heavier with time. That is not a prospect that worries me at all. In fact I welcome it.

While I certainly enjoyed the process of becoming severely obese, there is something even more satisfying of having arrived so to speak. People no longer comment on my weight, except my mum that is, and they do not seem to notice that I have put on more. In their eyes I am just very fat. Even my family has learned to accept me in my current shape. I tend to wear my clothes loose so that I do not look as if I am growing out of them. I am well into 5Xl sizes, which I mainly buy on the internet. Most regular clothes shops do not carry these sizes. The only problem I find with these larger sizes is that they are generally made for people much taller than I am, being some five feet nine inches, so they are quite long in their length and in their sleeves. Not that this is too much of a problem as I abandoned trying to be fashionable long ago and dress in what I can find that fits.

Changes in my physical abilities is really not that noticeable. A year passes by and you realise that picking something of the floor is more of a problem than before and dressing and washing is a bit more laborious but I manage well enough. Perhaps I sit more and walk less distances. Maybe I am out of breath more frequently. I am not sure. I suppose I have slowed down a bit. What I do feel is the heat much more so the endless British summer has not been the same boon to me as to others. In fact it has been a relief that the cooler weather has returned.

Having been morbidly obese for some years, I have become used to a world that is simply not designed for people like me. I have often wondered why this is. I read that 3% of the adult population in the UK is morbidly obese and a growing proportion of school children, from primary school onwards, are obese. Also, as we tend to lag America, this is likely in the next few years to rise to 5%, which is the rough percentage of the morbidly obese there. Rather than haranguing larger people, I think it would be more productive to design with them in mind as there are going to be more and more of us and far fewer who are not over-weigh or obese, which already includes two thirds of the adult population. Now I am even fatter this seems to make little difference to the inconveniences that I encounter. Seating is restaurants is still cramped. Public transport or transport of any kind is not designed with people like me in mind. The inconvenience is everywhere but it does not seem to get much worse, although I probably bump into people and objects more frequently because I cannot help it. At home accommodations have been made for my weight. I now have a special bed designed to take my weight. Seating is much sturdier and not so low to the ground so that it works for me. I have reconfigured my bathroom. The bath has been removed as I am too big for it and the shower cubicle greatly enlarged.

Attitudes towards someone with my build have not changed either. I can still sense the looks of pity or condemnation when I arrive somewhere; pity because it must be so terrible to be my size; condemnation because to be in this condition shows my complete lack of self control. But I am used to all this. It goes with the territory and it is a territory in which I not only choose to occupy but yearned to do so for years before I even dared to take the first tentative steps towards it. At the time I had not appreciated that it would be a journey from which there would be no escape. It seemed that everything was in my control and that I could stop or retrace my steps whenever I wanted. I know that is no longer true. I am what I wanted to be and I am powerless to change it. May be those critical glances are deserved. The self control I thought I had was when tested an illusion. In taking the deliberate steps to gain as I did, it baited a trap that would catch me and from which there was no escape. I know as a matter of certainty that for the rest of my life I will always be severely obese.

My body has changed a little too. My belly used to stand out but as it has become bigger it has started to sag down much more. It is now more comfortable to wear trousers that come over my stomach rather than allow my stomach to hang over my waistband. My moobs have sort of morphed into a roll of fat that extends under my arms. My thighs have expanded considerably; another reason to wear trousers that go over the belly rather than under it. Overall the rolls of fat become larger and overflow more. My arms and thighs rub more as I move so the skin has become hard on the inside of my thighs and my underarms.

If anything my relationship with food has become more intense and my cravings and hunger stronger. As I have mentioned, when I started out on this journey I thought that I would always be fully in control. If health issues arose or my job was in jeopardy I would be able to temper my eating and trim down a bit. Somehow that was wishful thinking. Eating they say gives you an appetite and the more I eat the compulsion to eat more increases. It is not something over which I feel I have full control. Even when I have eaten well and plentifully it is not long before the pangs return and I start to feel hungry again. But while I am eating I obtain an orgasmic pleasure out of it that drives me on to eat more. In this state I have little discipline over my eating. It is relentless and compulsive but at the same time ecstatic so I am driven on to consume more. So it is incredibly enjoyable and dangerous at the same time in the sense that I have no control any longer over what I am doing. I do not think that I am describing it particularly well but this is what drives me onwards.

In addition to my heightened enjoyment of food, my size brings with it another advantage: some men find me physically very attractive. That never happened when I was skinny. Then I was passed by as a bit of a nerd. Now I can feel that to some, even if it is a small group, I exert considerable attraction. So my sex life has never been more active. So through both eating and sex, my life has become much more enjoyable and more arousing which confirms what I have done is completely right for me.

I am only about a couple of stone away from another landmark: 420 pounds. I always thought that I would reach this landmark by the time I was thirty but on my present trajectory I may be there well before that. I will keep posted you of progress if you are interested.