Eat, Eat, Eat, Pray, Love.

With Apologies to Elizabeth Gilbert, Day 1 of MyFitnessPal

I don’t fit into my body.

I’ve talked about that quite a lot here on Medium. Here, here, and here, for starters. I don’t know if it’s a result of being super large, or, else, some manifestation of my mental illness, but I’ve never been quite able to reconcile the person I would like to be with the truth of what my body is.

I’m an adventurer at heart. I would love to travel the world, visit the great cities and the beautiful sites. In my heart, I would love to wander for hours through the nooks and crannies, visit strange shops, eat mysterious food that I couldn’t recognize, stumble my way through obscure languages that can’t fit in my mouth.

Like a Fat Boy Elizabeth Gilbert.

I think. I haven’t read Eat, Pray, Love yet, though I did just pick it up at a library book sale. But I think the basics of her story have sunk far enough into the cultural milieu for me to get that reference right.

But being that person, and wanting to be that person is at odds with the truth of my body.

I am too fat to get on an airplane.

I can’t walk very far, or for very long.

I get worn out so easily. My ankles start to hurt and to swell into monstrous looking things (and they’re already pretty ugly to begin with). I waddle, more than I walk.

I do not look like an Elizabeth Gilbert-type. I look like a keyboard-dwelling Twitter troll. And, to be fair, I somewhat am. I look like someone who can count the number of times he’s left the house this year on one hand. And, left to my own devices (and with no money), I am.

I’ve lost the best years of my life trying to reconcile the ideal and the truth.

I don’t know why I’m fat. Or, rather, I don’t know what to blame for my being fat. I weighed 50 pounds when I was a year old, way too heavy for that age. My Mom has paperwork from where doctors have had to verify that she wasn’t overfeeding me.

The fat just clings to my body.

As I got older, though, the habits for weight gain have clung to me as well. Part of that is from growing up in poverty, with parents trying their best, but never really having enough for a great diet, as well as making my eating habits complete shit.

Also, no doubt related to being large, I developed Major Depression with Suicidal Ideation at a pretty young age. During my Senior year of high school, I reconnected with an elementary school classmate on MySpace (Jesus Christ, am I dating myself.) and they told me about how I always talked about wanting to die.

Yep, definitely me.

But somewhere along the way, food became a comfort and a shield. But, even more than that, it became something to look forward to. I’ve never had money to do much outside of going to school and coming home, and when you’re stuck at home with nothing to do, food becomes the main event. Food becomes the comfort. Food becomes the one joy in an otherwise bleak day.

Vacations were boring. Weekends were boring. But meals were always something to look forward to.

I suppose I ought to blame myself for being fat. I know that most people, especially thin people, see it that way. And I’m not saying that there’s no element of truth to that: my own actions have determined what I am. The binge eating, the lack of exercise, the months of going without leaving the house — all things that I could and should, theoretically, have control over. Except, do I, really? If I had enough money that I didn’t have to worry, would I drive to a gym, would I eat healthier? I’d like to think so. But I’ve never really been in that position.

It’s complicated: in the habits that we build up, in the way that our bodies automatically react to external stimuli, and the various loci of control.

Now I’m beginning to sound like a psychology textbook. Long point short: this is the real world, and shit is more complicated than calling this “my fault” or “not my fault” would suggest.

It isn’t easy, trying to break a lifetime of habits. But that’s exactly what I have to do.

My ultimate goal is to get down to a weight where I feel comfortable in my body. I know that I’ll never be the 150-pound beanpole that I want to be, but I want to get somewhere reasonable. I’m thinking 250–275 pounds, but that number will get refined as I start meeting with doctors who actually know what’ll be reasonable.

To get there, I’m going to have gastric bypass surgery — Medicaid willing. But that means there’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of work that goes into changing my habits. This is going to be a whole series, but I don’t want to make it all about numbers and crunching. That’s going to be a huge part of the actual nuts-and-bolts of losing weight, but I want my blogposts to be more than reporting numbers.

You always wanted to know what’s running through my head, right?