Chapter 1

“How much do you really like this guy?” my sister Juliana asked me through a mouthful of french-fry mush, as she continuously reached into the giant platter of sliders and fries in front of her, stuffing the greasy strings of fried potato into her mouth, one after the other.

“I can’t be sure just yet,” I answered, “but I think I might be in love with him.”

Juliana stopped in place, her jaw clenched up with a single fry hanging from her lips. She looked up at me with her bespectacled brown eyes, a look of disbelief painted across her face. “Ananda,” she said finally after contemplating what I’d said for a moment, then quickly sucking the errant french-fry down her throat, “you just started dating this guy like a month ago. Do you really think you could fall in love with him so soon?”

Sitting at our favorite local eatery with my sister, I couldn’t help but look at her with a bit of envy as she devoured mountains of cheeseburger sliders and grease-laden french fries, while I munched on an appetizing yet nowhere near as satisfying Cobb salad. The question Juliana posed was a valid one, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I knew the answer. All I really knew is what I felt in my heart, and at that moment I felt an overwhelming mix of joy and uncertainty.

I felt joy because after years of being single, having broken up with my last boyfriend just after college and not meeting Brenton until I was twenty six, I finally felt that I had found someone that I could truly build a relationship with. Brenton, a handsome gentleman in his mid thirties, really seemed to have his life together. He had a great job as an editor for a popular news website, he had a nice home and drive a nice car–not that those things are all encompassing in their importance, but they most certainly are important; at this point in my life I just am not willing to waste anymore time on guys whose idea of getting “dressed up” and going out is finding the cleanest football jersey on their bedroom floor and having a pizza by candlelight while we watch some streaming television show.

Most importantly, Brenton is kind, sensitive and caring. I never feel like I need to beg for his attention; he always seems to put me first, which is something that I love. Being a youngest sibling, and being as short as I am–I’m only five-foot-two-inches–vying for people’s attention has always been the bane of my existence. It’s easy to feel overlooked.

Not only am I short, but I’m short and fat. My family has a weight problem, I guess you could say. Everyone in my family, going back for generations, seems to start life out being chubby and gradually getting fatter and fatter—especially the women. My mother and my three older sisters are all considered morbidly obese, and while I love them all and think that they are all beautiful in their own ways, when I was eighteen years old I made a conscious decision that I did not want to go down the same path as them.

This is when I developed a rigorous work-out regimen, going to the gym at least five days a week or more. I also went to a nutritionist who gave me a very strict dietary plan to follow. It was difficult for me, but it worked. I had been able to stave off extreme weight gain for most of my twenties.

I was still fat though.

The moment I start skipping days at the gym, or deviate even slightly from my meal plans, I know that I will blow up like a balloon. Call it fate, call it genetics, but I know that this is a part of me that will always be there. It’s as if there is a fat woman trapped inside of my chunky little body, aching to get out and be free.

Looking over at my sister Juliana, who was only two years older than me, but also significantly fatter than me, I couldn’t help but feel as though I were looking at a glimpse of what I could be if I’d just let go and allow myself to indulge the way that I truly wanted to deep down inside. Watching her as she lifted hand to mouth, again and again, mindlessly shoveling thousands of calories down her gullet by the second, I couldn’t help but wonder if she really knew just how good she had it.

“Ananda,” she said to me finally, after I had just sat there staring at her silently, lost in my own thoughts, “don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy for you. I know how long you’ve been wanting to meet a nice guy–but is he really worth sabotaging all of the hard work you’ve put in on yourself all these years?”

Another fair and valid question. Was it worth it indeed?

Over the course of our dating, Brenton had made it known that he preferred his woman on the softer side. That is to say, that he likes his women to be fat, and he almost exclusively dates big beautiful women. He considers himself to be something of a “feeder,” which is what one calls a gentleman who will encourage his partner to intentionally overeat and gain weight.

To be honest, it felt really nice and refreshing to be with someone who desired my body, who didn’t mind my curves and rolls and all of my jiggly bits. After so many guys that I’d been out with telling me that I’d be “so pretty if I’d would just lose some weight,” being with Brenton was like a breath of fresh air. Knowing that he not only didn’t mind that I was fat, but that he actually liked that fact that I was fat, it was new territory for me, and I truly felt as though I had found something special.

What did have me feeling conflicted though, was the thought of him wanting to feed me and actually make me get fatter. Sure, I loved the idea of being fed, of ditching the salads and the carrot sticks and allowing myself the pleasure of pigging out whenever I wanted. The only question was, would I be willing and able to accept the inevitable consequences that come with such indulgences? Clearly if I were to give in to the temptation of purposely stuffing myself with delicious and fattening foods, I would quickly become at least as big as Juliana was at that very moment, if not bigger.

When I was a senior in high school, that’s when I noticed that I was gaining weight very rapidly, and by my eighteenth birthday I was just a little over two hundred pounds. On my short little frame, that was really quite a lot. I was getting so big and round that I felt like I was turning into a little ball of lard. After deciding to go on a strict routine of diet and exercise, I had done well to keep my weight just under two hundred pounds ever since then.

Juliana on the other hand, who had maintained her weight at around three hundred and fifty pounds or less for most of her adult life, was beginning to lose control; the closer she got to being thirty years old, the closer she was getting to being four hundred pounds or more. While part of me was genuinely concerned for her, there was another part of me that was incredibly curious to know what it felt like to be that big and that heavy. Some nights as I lay in bed, my stomach growling from being underfed, I thought to myself that I would give anything to know, if only just for a day, what it felt like to be as fat as my mother or my older sisters.

“Listen, if Brenton really loves you as much as you love him,” Juliana said, pausing her eating long enough to look me in the eye and speak to me clearly, “then he should accept you for who you are, and not expect you to change for him.”

“You’re right,” I said to her as I pushed a piece of lettuce around the salad bowl with my fork. “I guess the truth is, that if I am going to let myself gain weight, I’d be doing it for me—the fact that Brenton would like it would just be like an added bonus.”

There was a pregnant pause as the two of us sat there, and Juliana stared at me long and hard before returning to her face-stuffing. “Well,” Juliana said then, her mouth once again full of french-fry mush, “it seems like all of the women in our family are destined to be overweight no matter what we do.”

Again she paused, placing a single hand atop her ample bosom as a small hiccup escaped from her lips, the mountain of flesh wrapped in a too-tight t-shirt jiggling about wildly as it pressed hard into the edge of the table. It was amazing to me that she had even managed to squeeze her massive body into this tight little booth.

“Believe me,” she went on to say after regaining some composure, “I tried for a long time to get my appetite in check and not let myself get too big.”

Juliana pushed the plate away from her, then leaned back in her seat as far as her enormous ass would allow her to, placing both hands on top of her rotund gut, gasping for air as her tongue came drooping down over her lower lip. “I just look at everything that mom’s been through,” she said to me, a slightly somber tone in her voice.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, “she’s gotten so big now, she can barely walk.”

“I never wanted to end up like that, you know?” Juliana massaged her giant tummy for a while before letting out another soft hiccup, then resuming her face-stuffing once again.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“What happened,” she replied sharply, “is that no matter how much I deprived myself, I was still fat. So I figured, if I’m going to be fat anyway, I might as well be fat and happy.”

This made me smile, and I understood exactly what she meant. While I couldn’t say that I was unhappy all those years that I was watching my weight, there did seem to be something very unfair about the fact that I was sacrificing so much of my personal enjoyment and getting such minimal results. No matter how hard I worked in the gym, no matter how many desserts I turned down or snacks I avoided, I was still short and fat and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do that would ever change that.

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” said Juliana as she licked the grease and salt from her fingertips. “Since we all seem to get fat eventually, maybe it’s not such a bad thing for you to just go ahead and embrace this part of yourself now.”

“I’m sure it will catch up with me sooner or later,” I said in agreement. It sounded rather bleak, but I couldn’t help but smile.

Juliana and I didn’t speak about this anymore for the rest of the evening. Having lost interest in my salad, I sat there in silence, admiring the way my sister packed away those sliders and fries, wishing that I had ordered the same thing. Of course, I could have ordered something else if I had wanted to. Hell, there was nothing stopping me from ordering everything on the menu if I really wanted to. I decided I wasn’t quite ready for that. I did, however, order myself a very large slice of cheesecake to take home with me that night. This was something I hadn’t done in years, and believe me when I tell you, there was nothing so richly satisfying as the feeling I had when I got home and tore into that sweet dessert.

The door to permission had been opened, and it felt divine!