Til The Fat Girl Sings by Sharon Wheatley

Author:Sharon Wheatley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2011-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Fact. I was shopping in the plus-size department, and the smallest sizes didn't fit me anymore. I was now midway through the plus-size department and was eating my way into the XXX-larges.

Fact. Tony had painted me as Shamu the killer whale.

Fact. A total stranger had just described me as grossly obese.

Sitting there on the bench, I had a moment of clarity similar to the one I'd had with Jeremy. Inside me, that familiar little voice was begging me to justify my fat. But this time I ignored it. Instead, I asked myself, Is this who I want to be? Do I want to be the girl in Tony's painting, the girl described as grossly obese by a total stranger? Am I her? The answer rang so loudly in my head that it almost hurt. No. I do not want to be that person. I am not that person.

The truth was cathartic. This was my moment to attempt to turn the tides of fate. Or, in my case, the tides of weight. Like an alcoholic checking into rehab, I'd hit bottom.

That's why I ordered that fateful chef salad. The beauty of growing up around an Olympic dieter is that no matter how much I'd tried over the years to block out my mother's suggestions of fruit over French fries, a lot of it had seeped in. I knew what to eat to lose weight because it was the food my mother had offered me for years. “Honey why not have a salad instead of a burger?” “If you leave off the gravy, you'll save hundreds of calories!” “How about a peach?” My mother, right or wrong, had filled my head with so many low-calorie options that the day of the chef salad, I knew what to order, with dressing on the side. The hot tea was my own addition; I liked the sound of it.

Even when I ordered the salad, I didn't know if I could diet longer than the meal itself. I picked through the lettuce, trying to ignore the tantalizing smell of the restaurant's greasy kitchen. I lusted after my aunt's patty melt, and coveted my brother's pancakes. As I nibbled my way through greens and lean meat, I was already thinking about the chips I'd seen on the top shelf of the pantry at home.

But I made it through that night and the next and the next, making on-the-spot decisions each time I encountered unhealthy food. Is it worth it? I asked myself over and over, especially when I had the urge to sneak food. Why are you sneaking this? If you don't want to eat it in front of other people, should you eat it at all?

As I started losing weight, I kept it to myself. After so many years of listening to everyone else's opinions on my weight gain, I was unwilling to invite other people's opinions on my weight loss. I'm sure my parents noticed, especially since my meals had changed so drastically, and I'd started to work out in my sister's old room multiple times a week.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.