The Colleague of Fatness

Chapter 1 - Beginnings

*NOTICE*

“This story is based on real life events and through my experiences. Some hyperbole and over-exaggeration is used to make things interesting. Enjoy!”

I walk into my work office on a dreary Monday morning, already feeling tired at 9:30am after being stuck in the heart of Melbourne traffic for two hours. It was a sunny day, overshadowed by many clouds in the sky and a light rain shower, which lived up to the name of Melbourne weather, where there were four seasons of weather in one day on a daily basis.

I went through the front door and moaned as I approached the long flight of stairs to get to my workstation, I was already late for work and felt incredibly stressed ahead of what loomed as a busy day at the office. For the past three months, the company I had been working for was severely understaffed, and two of my colleagues that shared my role had resigned to take up more advanced career opportunities. I was an admin and internal sales team member, dealing with customer emails and phone calls for a whole third of my living day, with the inclusion of my favourite time of my working day, lunch. In recent times, I had been bombarded with hundreds of emails with no help at all, and I had been lagging far behind and further with every passing day. I had to sacrifice my time at the water cooler and break times to get things done, but it still was not enough to curb back the email counts and response times to customers.

Feeling overworked, stressed, and lacking in energy, I always resort to my comforting friend whenever my lunch break comes by, food. I would always eat out everyday, considering I can’t cook and do not have time to organise meals without cooking methods, but my lunches had become larger and more dangerously fattening than usual. I used to settle with a burger and fries on a normal day, but throughout my stressful months, I would eat a double patty burger with mozzarella sticks inside, an Oreo milkshake, and a loaded plate of chicken bites and fries, topped with guacamole, salsa and sour cream, downing a whole day’s worth of calories in twenty minutes. With every meal, it gave me immense pleasure and satisfaction, and despite leaving with a smaller wallet and pending future weight consequences, it was very much worth it.

I would then get back to my desk and melt my brain away like butter with answering customers’ inquiries, and leave the office feeling empty, mentally fatigued and deprived of any enjoyment of life. As food would have always given me happiness at lunch, I would go down the same road again and drive myself to somewhere delicious. And it would always be Dominos, my favourite pizza place. Everyday on my way home from work, I make a stop at Dominos and devour an entire large pizza with stuffed crust and extra cheese. I go through all the satisfying emotions again and then I arrive at home, feeling and looking completely stuffed like a turkey at Thanksgiving. Despite feeling full from pizza, I hide my true hunger cues and eat dinner with the rest of my family. And the cycle repeats itself every single working day.

I began to dread that my day would be panning out like this again, my clothes were already feeling really tight and the buttons on my shirts could pop at any moment. In the last three months, I had put on over 10kgs, which had me peaking at my heaviest ever weight at 103kgs. I always had struggled with my weight ever since graduating high school 2 years ago, but it had since reached to a point where my problems of spiralling out of control. I had issues with food addiction, binge eating, and the prospect of having type 2 diabetes.

I slowly worked my way up the stairs, and my belly was struggling to contain itself as it was wobbling uncontrollably inside my shirt. Once I had made it to the top, I was panting harder than I ever had before, and my shirt was messed up. The gaps between the buttons were wider and a bit of my belly was escaping through the bottom gap and sticking out past my belt.

I walked past the company director on my way to my desk, and as I was halfway through apologising for my lateness, he asked me to come with him. He is in his late 60s, is very softly spoken and avoids confrontation and conflict, but this time he could not shy away.

My director danced around with his words for a little while until he asked me if I was eating okay. My heart stopped and I stared blankly into space in deep thought. Words were unable to come to me and I could not verbalise an answer. He begged me to take this in the right context, and completes a sentence that still lives in my memory today.

“Liam, I really want you to be in good health..........but you have put on quite a bit of weight.”

The world stopped for a whole minute, as I was lost in thought and could not feel any emotions inside me. My family have always been worried about my weight, and have been vocal about it for a long time, so I was used to the scrutiny I got from them. But in this case, it was so different. It was my director who openly said something about my weight gain and it hurt a little bit. I did not feel offended however, I knew the words were in the place of worry and utmost care. I was met with reality in a matter of words, and I realised that I needed to change and do something about my health.

My director reiterated that he wanted the best for me and asked if there was anything he could do to help me with my physical and mental health. I pleaded for some time to clear my head and refresh my thoughts and he then announced that there is a surprise, coming up from the warehouse. Being someone who hates surprises, my body started to shake in anxiety. To more things worse, he peeped through the door, and told me the surprise was coming in less than a minute. I continued to panic and I ran to my desk to log onto my computer. I groaned over the computer’s failure to turn on properly as I then started to externalise my feelings and began shuddering for everyone else nearby to hear. I was stumbling around with the switch and the keyboard up until I heard a word from an unfamiliar high pitched voice.

“Hi!”

TO BE CONTINUED