Literally No One Asked About the Fat Girl
Nearly every fat person I’ve known has wished that they could wake up one day and not be fat. Let me tell you… it’s not as wonderful as it sounds.
I lost 45 kilograms over about eighteen months, almost entirely by accident. This isn't the story of how I did it. If you're looking for diet advice, I'm the wrong person. In fact, the first twenty kilograms disappeared before I even realised they had.
When the weight loss first started, people commented, as people are known to do. Everything from subtle comments through to outright congratulations and everything in between. At the time, this made me hugely uncomfortable. I wasn’t trying to lose weight, it was just happening—and the fact that I wasn’t trying and that it was just happening made me worried there was something genuinely wrong with my health. My first stop was the doctor, who took me seriously, and made referrals, ran bloods, did all the doctor things. Everything came back clear or within normal ranges; essentially, nothing to worry about.
Like many fat people (and fat women in particular), I’ve had my share of bad doctors who treat weight loss as both diagnosis and cure, regardless of why I made the appointment. The worst was the time that I went to the doctor to ask about a menstrual issue, and was told to cut all sugar out of my diet for at least six months and come back to her. Needless to say, I didn’t. (And at the risk of TMI, the problem still exists. Spoiler alert—it wasn’t the weight.) I will admit that I’m still wary of doctors, although I think I’ve found a good one. But my wariness now comes down to being female, which is not an issue I can fix.
The thing is, I identified as a “fat girl”. It’s not that I loved that that’s who I was—it’s just that that’s who I was. I’d been fat all my life. I’d tried diets all my life, and sometimes these led to disordered eating and exercise patterns. I had enough self-awareness that I realised that my thought patterns often turned quite ugly, full of self-hate, when I was dieting. And that’s precisely why I stopped dieting, and exercising for the point of exercising, and even worrying about weight loss at all. I was a fat girl, and I knew how to be a fat girl. I was going to make the most of my life how I was, because trying to change it left me in a bad place—and the weight never stayed off anyway.
The mental adjustment, however, was something else. I spent the better part of a year trying to figure out who I was. My clothes didn’t fit, so I gradually bought smaller sizes. Then I shrank out of those too. Because I didn’t trust that I would stay smaller, my relatively humble closet became a menagerie of sizes. I’d buy a new dress and love how it looked on me, only for it to be hanging off me four months later, making me feel frumpy all over again.
As I continued to shrink, I also started butting up against the lower edge of the plus-size stores where I normally shopped. Even when they carried my size—euphemistically labelled ‘small’ or ‘extra small’—the clothes no longer sat properly, because they were cut for a body shape I no longer had. For the first time, op shops became a realistic option; previously, they so rarely stocked anything I both liked and could wear that I had largely ruled them out. Over the past year, as my size has settled into a new normal, I’ve finally started investing in decent-quality clothes that fit and make me feel good. Even that has required a leap of faith. Rebuilding a wardrobe is expensive, particularly when most of your shopping has to be done online and you still don’t entirely trust that your body will remain the size it is.
Clothes are obvious, however. There are so many things that aren’t obvious that come with weight loss, particularly unexpected or unintentional weight loss.
I went through a period of almost feeling dysmorphic. Now that I was losing weight, I didn’t know who I was. I wasn’t a “weight loss girlie” because I wasn’t trying to lose weight. I wasn’t a “gym girl”, because I still don’t like sweating. If I wasn't the fat girl anymore, I didn't know what I was instead.
It’s taken some time to get used to who looks back at me in the mirror. Logically, I know that it’s me. It’s roughly the same face, the same hair, the same lopsided smile that I’ve always had. It’s the moments when I see myself when I’m not really expecting it that are the most jarring. I saw myself in the gym mirror once, and had to do a double take.
It was the first time that I saw myself as I was, rather than as ‘the fat girl’.
Reflections or unexpected mirrors are similar; there’s a moment when it doesn’t land, and I see myself as others do. It’s no longer the fat girl—now it’s just someone who blends in within the normal range.
Movement, and sometimes the lack of it, has been a whole new experience. Suddenly, sitting for long periods of time actually hurts. Similarly, I find I have much more incidental movement than I used to. After all, it solves two problems at once—sitting in one place hurts, and moving is easier overall as well. A trip across the house, or from one building to another at work, no longer feels like a conscious effort. It’s just something I can do without thinking about it. I still like plenty of sedentary activities; that part hasn’t changed. I just need to get up occasionally during a long session, have a quick movement break, and then get back into it.
I’ve lost the sheen of invisibility that I used to have. Fat people often describe feeling invisible. I never knew whether that was true for me, because I rarely experienced the dramatic stories people talk about. But after I lost the weight, something changed. Suddenly, shopkeepers were eager to help me. People held doors open for me. Strangers smiled at me passing on the street. It’s subtle, but it’s there—I am legitimately ‘seen’ more now than I was then. I’m treated like I matter more now that there’s less of me.
Getting comfortable when I go to sleep at night is suddenly much harder. When I lie on my side, my knees knock together in ways they never used to. Although I was a tummy sleeper when I was younger, before my last two pregnancies, I can’t seem to make that work anymore either. Rolling around in bed is much easier, but actually finding a comfortable position is significantly harder.
One of the longer-lasting issues is the feeling of performing. That is, most fat girls will know that there’s a sense of being a “good” fat girl or a “bad” fat girl. Eating a salad in public = good. Exercising = good. Eating whatever you want (particularly if it’s not ostensibly diet food) = bad. Sometimes, just eating in sight of others is bad. My mother—also fat most of her life—once had a group of young men shout at her from another car.. Her crime? Eating in her car. While I know that this is largely an internal struggle, I still sometimes have to remind myself that I’m allowed to exist. I’m allowed to eat when I’m hungry. I’m allowed to move if it makes me feel good; and similarly, I’m allowed to have a particularly lazy day if that’s what I need. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m doing the right thing as a fat girl to be allowed to be at least somewhat accepted by society.
At the same time, my tastes have changed. I still have my vices—anyone who knows about my morning Red Bull habit knows that. Most fast food just doesn’t hit the spot anymore. I can legitimately tell the difference between empty calories and something that makes me feel good both inside and out. I’m far from perfect, but I’m not trying to be perfect. I’m just trying to live my life in a way that makes me feel good.
The strangest shift in my identity came when we moved to the opposite end of the country. It took me weeks living in our new place before it occurred to me that absolutely no one would think of me as ‘the fat girl’ or even ‘the fat girl who lost weight’. Nobody in our new area knew that I’d been bigger.
Literally no one here saw the fat girl.
The whole process happened unexpectedly, and honestly, it really messed with my head. As time has passed, however, I’ve grown to accept that this is who I am now. I’m also starting to like it. The world is not made for fat people, and although I believe that society should generally be more accepting of fat bodies, I have to admit that it’s much easier being in a smaller body. If I wake up one day and find the weight has come back, I know I’lll survive it. I already know how to live in a larger body. What surprised me is learning that I could eventually feel at home in a smaller one too.