It Was Me All Along

by Andie Mitchell

  I thought of my best friends, how they ate, and how I seemed to eat no differently. After school, we all ate the same Drake’s chocolate cakes with cream filling. We all stirred chocolate syrup into our milk. We all knew which houses handed out full-size candy bars on Halloween. I believed that my body had betrayed me. Unwilling to accept any responsibility, I thought I’d been unfairly stuck with fat for no reason.

  Within a week, I grudgingly began my first diet. Mom had read an advertisement for a voluntary clinical weight loss study being conducted on young women at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She came home with a stack of forms she’d already filled out and signed. “It’s a good opportunity for you,” she promised, her voice soothing and hopeful. She explained that I’d learn a great deal, that I’d have a support system. And though I couldn’t muster enthusiasm or even a shred of confidence, I wanted badly to believe her.

  The study aimed to observe the effects of a new and experimental weight loss medication called Meridia (sibutramine). The drug was an appetite suppressant whose desired effect was reduction of hunger and, in turn, food consumption, thereby encouraging weight loss. This exact medication type has since been withdrawn from the US market by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in several other countries for its potentially dangerous side effects.

  Half of the group of twenty volunteer girls, ages twelve to seventeen, would be administered the drug itself; the other half would be taking a placebo. Neither group would know which pill they took: real or fake. Over the course of three months, the girls would meet every other week to be weighed and measured and to talk collectively with a team of registered dietitians.

  At first, it seemed like a reasonable idea. At our first Saturday-morning group meeting, I met ten girls, each seated next to her mother, and our lead nutritionists. I scanned the room when we all sat down and immediately noted our similarities. We were all big, all squished into chairs with thin metal arms that dug into our thighs, all fidgeting and uncomfortable, all clearly wishing we were somewhere—anywhere—else. I looked around at each of the mothers and noted that none of them was thin. Like their daughters, each carried at least twenty extra pounds. I wondered if they hoped to lose as much weight as they wanted their daughters to lose by enrolling them in this study. I looked to our main nutritionist as she tugged at her gauzy muumuu, readjusting it so that it draped over her belly like a towel over a beach ball. How can she be fat? I wondered.

  Just as I began to dive into the impossibility of a fat woman guiding me to thinness, the meeting began. In the first ten minutes, we introduced ourselves and our mothers. Then we moved on to what the mission of our group would be: to support each other while learning to eat well and move more. It was encouraging to feel connected and on the same path, but I felt embarrassed to have to be part of it.

  Daily, outside of meetings, each of us girls was to take the prescribed dose of Meridia or the placebo and do our best to follow a set of healthy eating and exercise guidelines not unlike the food-guide pyramid prescribed by the FDA. The main guidelines, as I remember them now, included suggestions such as:

  1. Drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day.

  2. Eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

  3. Switch all white flour/refined-grain products to those made entirely with whole grains.

  4. Limit sweet foods composed mostly of sugar (cakes, cookies, pastries).

  5. Move your body for thirty minutes per day (walking, jogging, dancing, swimming).

  After two weeks of diligence, my heart sank as I weighed in, having lost only half a pound. I forged on for another two weeks and when the nurse told me privately that I had gained a pound, I cried alone in the bathroom stall before our group meeting. I had failed. I could almost feel the pound of fat I’d gained, hanging low on my belly, next to all the rest, and I hated myself for it.

  Reflecting now on the way I ate during the first two weeks of the study, I recognize the errors. The foods I learned to be healthy—the foods that are indeed healthy in proper portions—I munched with abandon. A cupped handful of almonds, which I thought to be a light snack, tacked five hundred calories onto my daily intake. The yogurt I asked Mom to buy was the kind that came sweetened and topped with crushed Oreo cookies. The Honey Bunches of Oats cereal that I was certain qualified as health food wasn’t quite so virtuous three bowls in.

  While the dietitians at our group meetings introduced me to a world of healthy food—even going so far as to take us on a field trip to Whole Foods to marvel at the rainbow of produce—they must have forgotten to mention portion sizes. Knowing all that I know now about nutrition, I see how easy it was for me to fail at this diet. As a girl who always ate self-determined, larger-than-large servings of whatever I wanted, I needed to learn that most things in life, like cereal and orange juice, shouldn’t be bottomless. Because few foods are healthy when eaten in third and fourth helpings. Calories should have been part of the conversation we had in those group meetings. Not to make us obsessive counters, but to make us aware that food has value and that too much of anything costs us something nutritionally.

  By nightfall, I’d secretly eaten three packages of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. I plunged the empty wrappers deep into the trash can, below a wad of paper towels so that Mom wouldn’t find them and become as disappointed in me as I already was with myself. If she noticed the missing boxes, she never said anything. In the week that followed, I put in a halfhearted healthy effort. I craved all things sweet so intensely that I continued to eat them, lots of them, in secret. Guilt and Oreos sat heavy in my stomach.

  I wanted badly to be smaller, to be less painfully aware of my size, but I just wasn’t ready to stick to an apple when cookies were the afternoon snack my friends enjoyed. I didn’t feel like moving more. It wasn’t fair that I needed to exercise when my best friends simply walked around the mall en route from Orange Julius to Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. I resented having to live differently just so I could be the same.

  My best friend, Kate, was a bodily enigma. All her life she’d been very, very thin—a lean and bony waif in all the pictures I’d ever seen of her from birth through adolescence. With her long blond hair, she looked like Gwyneth Paltrow—beautiful and delicate. The way she ate seemed no different from the way I ate. If we spent a Saturday together, fresh off a Friday night sleepover, here is how our eating played out: In the morning we’d sit at her kitchen table, and Kate would place two bowls, two spoons, a jug of 1% milk, and the box of Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds in front of us. The very acknowledgment that Kate adored cereal as much as I did, and that she ate it every morning, was enough to tell me that there was nothing wrong with how much I craved it. In turn, I assumed cereal wasn’t anything to avoid and that my eating it was perfectly fine.

  But setting the whole box on the table was contrary to what I’d learned in group. They’d told us we should serve ourselves from the kitchen, take our plate to the table, and eat. If we were still hungry, we could go back for more. The dietitians explained that having the full box there led to mindless overconsumption, that we’d probably serve ourselves more just because it was there. Kate and I poured equal amounts of cereal into our bowls, about a cup and a half. We splashed milk on top just to cover the flakes. And then we ate, chitchatting through the crunchy bites. What I didn’t recognize then—what I failed to notice—was that Kate stopped after one bowl of cereal. She ate so slowly that I was able to fill a second bowlful by the time she’d made it halfway through her first.

  When lunchtime came, we convinced Kate’s mom to take us to Taco Bell. There, Kate would order two crunchy tacos with “beef and cheese only, please,” while I got two Beef Supreme Chalupas. The only difference for our orders, we both acknowledged, was that Kate disliked sour cream, zesty sauces, and soft taco shells. A mere matter of preference, I was sure. And though each of us had ordered two, I now know that Kate’s tacos clocked in at 170 calories each, while mine were a whopping 3
70 calories each.

  Late in the afternoon, back at Kate’s house, after we’d tired of creating binder collages of Leonardo DiCaprio and watching recorded episodes of The Real World: Seattle, we’d head into her kitchen for a snack. She always had Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, and for that, I worshipped her cupboard. Kate pulled two from the package, set them on a napkin, and ate them as slowly as she’d eaten breakfast. I pulled out two at first, but when I finished and noticed she still had one left to eat, I reached into the bag for two more.

  As dinner approached, Mom would come and pick Kate and me up from Kate’s house and take us to dinner and a movie, a tradition we held on Saturday nights. Pizzeria Uno was almost always the chosen spot. There Kate ordered the chicken fingers and french fries from the kids’ menu while Mom and I ordered the same thing in adult versions. Each of us cleared our plates, Mom paid the bill, and then we’d run into a convenience store near the movie theater to grab sodas and candy bars for the show. Kate got a package of Reese’s, and I did, too, along with a Kit Kat. We’d each grab a twenty-ounce Coke from the cold case, and at the end of the movie, Kate would still have a nearly full bottle. Her stomach was so tiny, she couldn’t drink as much as I could, I reasoned.

  After the movie, Mom dropped Kate off, and we returned home. What I know now about those nights was that Kate went straight to bed, while I grabbed an assortment of Little Debbie and Hostess cakes and sat down for an hour of television before hitting the sack.

  A few weeks into the group study, after weight loss had eluded me weigh-in after weigh-in, I convinced myself that I was in the placebo group. I stopped taking the prescribed pills. I was sure that no improvement to my appetite was being made by taking them anyhow. Mom urged me to continue, thinking that something was better than nothing, but I resisted. And though I didn’t say it aloud, I began to resent her for the mixed messages she sent me. I resented her wanting me to lose weight while telling me that I was perfect the way I was. I resented that she encouraged me to eat better but still agreed to drive me through Burger King for a Whopper Meal if I asked her. I resented not only that I began sneaking into the kitchen to eat Oatmeal Creme Pies in secret, but that she bought them, along with Yodels and Oreos, in the first place. I knew she only wanted me to be happy and that, in losing weight, I’d be happier. I knew that she, like me, only wanted to do what was asked of her, by anyone. So she stayed silent when I continued to order the chicken fingers platter at Pizzeria Uno rather than a salad. She bought desserts because I loved them, regardless of rightness. But still, I knew her desire for me to lose weight was there. And I wished it weren’t. The outside world made me feel imperfect enough that I didn’t want to feel judged inside my home, as well.

  I continued to attend group meetings, and I began to hate them more. They were a tiresome commitment. An early-Saturday-morning reminder of how fat I was. In the remaining two months of the study, my weight stayed mostly the same. When it ended, I continued eating as I always had, only now, the taste of the foods I loved were laced with bitterness.

  Through the rest of eighth grade, I gained another five pounds. But Mom? She lost thirty with a combination of walking on her lunch breaks, eating smaller portions, and her tiring work schedule. She’d ask me to go for a bike ride with her, and I’d say a firm no, because I was already running out of motivation; a ride around the neighborhood couldn’t help that. She did what I had only dreamed to do. She did what she dreamed for me to do. She was radiant. More alive, more energetic. She was as light, as bright, in presence and mind, as she was in body. I envied her. I’d watch her wear the clothing from the Gap that I eyed on mannequins. I wanted so badly to tuck my shirt in with such ease. The way she carried herself reminded me of old photos I’d seen of her from the early 1970s, when she modeled. Her confidence became disarming. Her glow dulled me somehow.

  The following winter brought my first formal dance as a freshman at Medfield High School. That ninth graders were even allowed to attend the same dance as upperclassmen was enough to ensure that everyone in my grade bought a ticket. Boys wore well-starched shirts, jackets, and ties; girls wore long gowns and high heels and got their hair done. The whole fall was abuzz with excitement as my best friends and I fantasized about December and dresses and dates. I was almost able to be thoroughly thrilled, except for one thing: it was a Sadie Hawkins dance. The girls asked the boys.

  On one hand, I knew that if the boys had to ask the girls—as it was with traditional dances—certainly no boy was going to ask me. I’d learned early on, at Friday night middle school dances, that no matter how straight I blow-dried my hair, no matter how sparkly my Bonne Bell lip gloss, no matter how hard I made them laugh in English or math or social studies, no boy asked the fattest girl in our grade to dance to one song, let alone fifteen of them in a row.

  But on the other hand, I knew that if I was the one doing the asking, I had a better chance of someone saying yes. It took me three weeks of November to decide whom to ask. And then it took six days of unrelenting anxiety to muster the courage to ask him. When I dialed his home phone number and he answered, I momentarily thought of hanging up and never going to school again. But no. The words came out of my mouth, “Will you go to the Christmas dance with me?” And in the second before he responded, I grabbed a handful of fat on my waist and squeezed it firmly, wanting the pain I inflicted on myself to hurt worse than what I was sure was a more painful rejection to come.

  “I’d love to.”

  I about died. I thanked him, hung up, played my Mariah Carey CD twice through, and kissed my Leonardo DiCaprio poster no fewer than three times. It wasn’t until the next day that the high of having a date settled down into a sort of bittersweet satisfaction. I hated—but couldn’t help—thinking that even though he’d said yes, maybe he’d done it because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I hated thinking that maybe he would still be embarrassed about going to the dance with the fattest girl.

  Still, I was glad to be going. Kate, Nicole, and I went to the mall to look for dresses. After thirty minutes, four horrible dresses, and three turns standing in the large and unforgiving three-sided mirror, I was no longer interested in looking. None of the dresses—not even sizes sixteen and eighteen—zipped. None even came close. What was more embarrassing than having to acknowledge that I couldn’t squeeze into the most matronly of women’s dresses was that Kate and Nicole were simply stunning in everything they tried on. They pulled off the most shimmering of pastel gowns, the salmon-hued silk numbers I’d wear if I could. If only silk loved me even a smidge as reciprocally. They pulled aside the curtains to their dressing rooms, and I noticed wide smiles first. Their hair was thrown casually into messy and unforced romantic, low-slung buns, their shoulders shifted back in confidence, their arms hung like long, graceful frames for a lithe silhouette. The dresses—surely sewn with them in mind—fit gorgeously.

  And there I stood, smooshed inside a two-piece, floor-length taffeta construction that fit my figure so poorly that I had to ask for help getting it onto and off of my body. I saw the flab bubbling over the strapless top where my boobs met my armpits and introduced them to my shoulders. I felt the waist cinching, an antagonizing corset reminding me of my belly. And then I turned to the side to view myself again in that terribly honest tri-fold standing mirror, sucking in my gut with breath held tight, as if a one-inch displacement of my mass was going to make a difference. I judged the dress I’d squirmed into, like all the rest, on a scale of one to five: one being “I’m wondering if that trash bag in my trunk would be a touch more flattering” and five being “This dress does not make me want to vomit and/or write hate mail to the designer.” I winced. I wasn’t unused to this. Years and years of trying on too-snug clothing with best friends had left me knowing that my shape was always more of a hindrance than anything else. Buying anything felt like choosing the lesser evil. Nothing fits as I’d like it to, as magazines illustrate things should, so what can I live with? Which shirt will be more forgiving? Mor
e concealing?

  I left the mall that day with no dress and even less confidence. I decided to try again at losing weight. This time, though, I moved more. I experimented with that place where people went for self-flagellation: the gym. And at the end of a month of an off-and-on, loose-as-a-goose plan, I only weighed more. I went to the dance larger than I’d been in the fall. I had a dress tailor-made at a bridal shop—a purple dress that cost Mom three hundred dollars that we didn’t have. Worse than the small fortune she paid, I didn’t even remotely love it. The empire waist made me feel as if I were wearing the latest in formal maternity. The eggplant hue made me feel like the vegetable itself. When we posed for the professional photo, I stopped breathing as my date stood behind me and put his hands on my hips. I was mortified thinking he might feel the girdle I’d worn underneath my gown—the one that cut off the circulation between my abdomen and my thighs. And when we picked up the pictures at school the next week, I wanted to burn them in a ceremonial hate fire along with that dress and the awful rhinestone studs I’d asked the hair stylist to tuck into my updo. The eight-by-ten alone made my eyes prickle with tears. Sharing half of the photos with my date at his locker felt as if I were giving him photos of me in the nude.

  After the dance, I spent a week gorging on every food I saw. I ate straight through Christmas and clean into the New Year. My self-esteem had fallen to a new and seemingly bottomless low. I realized the food wasn’t making me feel any better, but even still, I stuck with the habits I’d created long ago.

  I promised myself I’d try again to lose weight.

  When winter break ended and ninth grade resumed, I tried out for the girls’ lacrosse team. Thankfully, it was less of a tryout and more of a “we’re going to accept anyone.” After our first practice, where we were instructed to run suicides across the field, I went home and threw up from exhaustion. Running with what felt like a knapsack of fat left my knees in agony. Gasping for air left my throat hoarse and dry and my lungs racked with sharp, icy pain. On top of being terrible at the sport and winded from a light jog to get my water bottle, the uniform was a horror show. The shirt, even in extra-large, barely made it around my midsection, distorting and somewhat obscuring the letters as they stretched to either side. And the skirt. The skirt barely covered the place where my thighs mingled and chafed.