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I know how I got fat. Why is more complicated, but how is pretty clear.
I did not become fat as an affront to anyone's eyes or a perceived offensive on their health insurance premiums.
It was not so that I could have flashbacks for years to boys laughing at me at parties, like when they turned on "Big Girls Don't Cry" minutes after I walked nervously into their crappy grad student house, what I could tell by their looks and my roommate's embarrassed expression was a ritual on the rare occasion when a fatty lumbered in.
I did not get fat so that I could think things like, "I could always lose weight whereas those boys couldn't fix mean or stupid." I didn't plan on getting really comfortable on the defensive or hating photographs of myself before I even saw them or God forbid of being the jolly party entertainment.
I did not get fat so that my ballet teacher could tell me on costume measuring day when I was seven years old that I could only bring half a sandwich to school, while the other girls could bring a whole. I didn't plan on the pressure early on to apologize for myself, or to stuff down my feelings and rage and societally-sanctioned, self-designed shame every day of my life until I gave it up.
These were all bewildering, poisonous, unexpected side effects. And they, along with what I'm seeing as a trend of people increasingly discussing how people become fat and how they feel about people being fat and how they shouldn't be fat and should stop being fat are the reasons why I write about it on the Internet at all.
It's not that complicated, really. I became fat because I was a sedentary child who lived mostly in my head as opposed to on a ballfield or on the playground other than to swing, for circumstances that can't be fairly blamed on anyone. They are another story, but anyway, it unfolded that way and I just know that no one -- especially I -- had any idea that when I turned 13 everything would seem to go sideways and my body would become the epicenter of an endless debate about what went wrong and how to fix it.
Truth? I also stayed fat because I like food and wine and have an unassailable appreciation for things that taste good that doesn't always mesh well with a body that picked up weight -- and kept it on -- earlier in life than most. Also once I embarked on my first attempt at dieting, I almost immediately learned to be crazy on a path that began with Weight Watchers at 13 and peaked most horribly with Jenny Craig my junior year in college. The damage piled up so that I cannot markedly restrict my eating beyond the most balanced guidelines, not without psychological strain and weird behavior that maybe only someone else who has that reaction can understand. Still, I don't eat junk very often. I watch my fat and salt, but I like to eat, can't lie.
And no one -- no matter how well-educated or intentioned -- can tie this up in a tidy blog post. Even you. Even me.
That's how I got fat mostly. It's simple on its face but not so much when you know more about it, from inside your skin. I got fat because of things I did and choices I made, genetics and emotions and what I'm guessing is a touch of weird wiring. And I'll tell you, for some of us walking down that fat track is super easy when it starts, and for a long time, actually, until the first day it's not and then you think, "holy shit, what do I do now?"
I stay not-thin for other reasons, some of them tied up in the whys and some distinctly different. I walk through life with the transactions of food and exercise on an endless loop in my brain, as obsessed with both as a supermodel, just ultimately unable to for whatever reason to make my body and mind cooperate with the math. I try, though. I try and try. I know a lot about calories and serving sizes and how many points are in what I just ate. I try and stay consistent with exercise. I try and try and try, except on the days that I do not. I am a terrible fat accepter. I've never been capable of it.
