Something Is Always on Fire

by Measha Brueggergosman

  This disconnect from my body no doubt factored in to my struggles with my weight. By age twenty-eight I was morbidly obese, hovering between a lofty 350 to 370 pounds. As a student living in Victoria College at the University of Toronto, I focused on my studies and those bottomless buffets offered by my meal plan. I would go on to live in Germany, where my “food as sport, not fuel” eating philosophy continued—not through self-hatred or displaced emotion but through denial, distraction and neglect.

  With my elementary school nickname figuratively nipping at my heels, I thought I was fat even when I wasn’t. I hardly even noticed the pounds creeping on. I was married to a man who loved me unconditionally, my career was humming along and I was enabled by a profession with a tradition in which big voices came in big packages: It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. If I had been pursuing a career on the operatic stage specifically, I would have potentially been forced to be more athletic, requiring a pretty large suspension of disbelief; but with concerts it was just me—park and bark—in front of the audience. I routinely heard myself described as “larger than life,” and in one review of the uproariously awful opera Aeneas in Karthago, I was described as “a bright, well-nourished soprano.” Hilarious, because I chose to believe they were describing the quality of my voice, not the amount of physical space I took up.

  I believe now that I was more tormented by my weight than I was willing to admit. In the early 2000s I could shop in only about three clothing stores. I sat on banquettes instead of chairs. I felt humiliated each time I had to ask a flight attendant for a seat belt extension, no matter how lighthearted I seemed when I made the request. When you’re fat, you’re always somehow apologizing for how big you are, in an effort to distract people from the obvious. Whenever my father broached the subject out of concern for my health, I became extremely defensive because, although his words were not off, I just wasn’t ready to listen.

  So many people suffer over their weight. For some the pressure point triggering change is an aesthetic one. For me it was practical. I saw obesity as a form of inefficiency, and I prefer efficiency. Even though I’m not what you would ever describe as a math whiz, the numbers just didn’t add up. The amount of food I was eating wasn’t balanced by the amount of exercise I was willing to do, so I had to get this situation under control. Beyond that, who I wanted to be and the places I wanted to go, coupled with the greatness to which I felt destined, were all in jeopardy if I didn’t start telling myself the truth about my health and how big I was. I didn’t want to be emotional about it. I wanted to lose weight as a good investment.

  I started with the Atkins low-carb diet, combined with a running program. I lost fifty pounds. For someone with more than a hundred yet to lose, that didn’t seem like a good enough payoff for the effort. What’s worse, after this initial taste of success, I started to gain the weight back. I struggled through two Master Cleanses, subsisting for ten and then fourteen days on water flavoured with cayenne pepper, lemon juice and honey. This transformed me into a raging bitch. And I cheated the whole time.

  From denial of my weight problem I switched to obsession.

  A few sample journal entries from when I was living in Augsburg, Germany:

  December 4, 2001

  Well, how cliché! I’ve started a healthy-living journal. The key is moderation not torture. Does getting healthy include chocolate fondue? There was that fruit! Well, I’m determined to walk to school tomorrow . . . I will only weigh myself once a week. I read today about this diet where veggies and fruits don’t count for anything, and you can get bonus points for the more exercise that you do.

  December 5

  Today I’m a little down, a little bored. I’ve always wanted to live life to the fullest without restraint. I guess that’s how I got fat.

  December 10

  I’m about to weigh in, and I’m trying not to make a big deal of it, but by virtue of that thought, it must carry some weight in my mind. Here goes—317 pounds. Last week I was 323 pounds. I feel good . . . Measha, God is with you and He wants you to be happy.

  December 13

  Failed attempt at an all-liquid day.

  December 16

  315. Not a huge difference, but my doctor said I should lose 2 pounds a month and I’ve done more than that. Not gaining weight is going to be hard at Christmas . . . Do I really want to live in a state of perpetual unhappy motion toward a goal I don’t believe I’ll reach?

  December 28

  Didn’t write—why? Ashamed? Futility? Lazy? All three? I’d like to think this is just a slight stumble.

  January 6, 2002

  319. Well, the holidays are over and I think I escaped quite well . . . This journal goes a long way toward keeping me honest.

  May 19

  320. You’ve got to be kidding me! I weigh the same as I did on February 3?

  October 2

  331 pounds. Where have I been? Eating, that’s where. It’s discouraging to be an official yo-yo dieter, but I’m not going to give up. I honestly don’t know how to find a regimen that works on the road . . . I want to be able to walk into stores and buy whatever they have on their shelves. I hope to be a consistent size 18.

  October 13

  330. The good news is that I’m not gaining weight.

  Ugh. Dieting is the worst. Not just because of all the reasons the doctors tell you about it being bad for your health to shock your system with an unsustainable life change but because your mind stays exactly where it was while you force your physical self to pretend it doesn’t have a brain or a memory. Think about it. By forcing the body to act differently (and hoping the mind will follow), we revert to the childish, dismissive reactions of I don’ wanna! or This is sooo stupid! and Why am I even doing this? At least, I did. The point is, after prolonged disappointment I was adamantly opposed to setting myself up for more weight-loss failure, because I had a feeling a steady diet of this (heh) could lead to a demoralized, deep-seated disbelief in myself. I didn’t have time for that. I needed something effective enough that I would only have to do it once.

  I began researching the option of gastric bypass, also known as bariatric surgery, which markedly reduces the functional volume of the stomach. I researched it thoroughly. This included attending informational seminars for bariatric patients, recommended by friends who had had the surgery. I liked the idea that I could be helped by something physical, by my body working with me while I dealt with whatever psychological factors perpetuate addiction. Of all the surgical solutions available in 2005, the mini-gastric bypass seemed the most minimally invasive, with the highest success rate. I put that together with research on doctors who had the most operating room hours, which led me to choose a medical centre in North Carolina specializing in bariatric surgery.

  Since my body is my instrument, I had to ask myself if losing weight would affect my singing voice. But this was the wrong question. The right one is, What would be the impact on my health ten years down the road if I didn’t lose weight now? How could I expect to live my life to the fullest while every step and every breath I took was weighed down by my extra 150 pounds of fat? Additionally, being morbidly obese was weighing me down psychologically. I just knew I had to be proactive.

  I jumped through every hoop and loop and filled in every piece of required paperwork. My family doctor, the intrepid Dr. Edward Pomer, completed endless forms and wrote me a referral for a psych evaluation. The psychiatrist asked me about my childhood and what I thought surgery would do for me, looking to see if I expected realistic results or a miracle. I had no trouble convincing her my motives were sound.

  Next I had to find a two-week break in my singing schedule for the operation. (This may have been the most challenging part.) My surgery was eventually set for February 10, 2006. No one outside my immediate family knew. They trusted me to do my due diligence and make the most informed decision. I didn’t even tell my agent. I thought it was too private to share.

  My mom, who had seen my dad thr
ough his quadruple bypass surgery, travelled with me to the hospital in North Carolina. The only pre-op hiccup was my blood pressure. It was so perilously high when I arrived that the medical staff considered refusing to operate. I’ve come so far. Will the door be slammed in my face?

  They intravenously administered me medication for hypertension overnight and were successful in lowering my blood pressure, and I had my operation. Everything ran smoothly, and for the months that followed I steadily lost weight through portion control. It might be more accurate to say that my behaviour toward food was sharply and immediately corrected by the punishing hand of a restrictive digestive system that would consistently (and sometimes painfully) reject any portion of food that was too sugary, creamy, fatty or large. To say that certain things “disagreed” with me would be to say that Superman has a “slight aversion” to kryptonite. To this day I do not find it worth the sprint to the privy to stray from the plan: I stick to eating plenty of salad and meat or fish, and I drink tons of water. This way my super powers aren’t threatened and no air freshener is needed.

  By September of 2006 I had lost fifty-six pounds, taking me down to 297. I started to stress: Had I hit the dreaded weight-loss plateau? The scale had yet to petrify to a number, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue to drop weight through portion control alone. Many uninformed people mistakenly believe that bariatric surgery is a quick fix. The easy way out. But if you don’t change your lifestyle forever, you will gain all the weight back. I knew I would have to start exercising (damn it), and again, what I was looking for was an efficient, one-stop solution: none of this weight-lifting, cardio-jogging, spinning, music-blaring, annoying-pep-talk business. I like to exercise in a group, but I don’t want anyone yelling at me.

  As I was grappling with this problem, my mind travelled back to a horrible experience I had had in September 2005 before my surgery, when I was still regaining the pounds I’d lost on the Atkins diet. To motivate myself, I had gone power walking while working in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was there to sing in the newly renovated Hill Auditorium. Mid-stride I happened to see a sign for something called Bikram yoga. Since I was willing to do pretty much anything to end the hellish monotony of my walk, I went to investigate.

  Bikram yoga, I soon learned, consisted of a ninety-minute series of exercises in a room heated to 42 degrees Celsius. And I walked in to the worst of all possible set-ups: I was late, I was wearing a track suit, I had a face cloth for a towel and only a small foam cup of water. I will never forget how flippin’ hot it was. I would have cursed every half-naked person in that room to hell, but clearly, they were already there. It was sooo hard. I saw my life flash before my eyes, and I vowed that if I got out of there alive, I would never go back. Not for a gazillion dollars times infinity.

  Well, never say never. I would come to understand that Bikram could be my solution for muscle development, flexibility, endurance, discipline, focus and detoxification. So . . . about nine months after my mini-gastric bypass, and a year after that first nightmare of a Bikram class, I found myself at Vancouver Opera singing Madame Lidoine, in Poulenc’s Les dialogues des Carmélites, which meant I would be in one spot for six weeks. I had no excuse. I had to go back to that cursed yoga. It was the most efficient solution.

  After my second class I knew I would become a Bikram teacher.

  By the end of my contract in Vancouver I had most of the cast attending classes with me.

  By February 2007, a year after my surgery, I had lost about 150 pounds, and the media had grown justifiably curious. That same month I was to appear onstage at the National Arts Centre for the Black and White Opera Soirée, held annually to raise money for the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the now defunct Opera Lyra Ottawa. When journalists questioned me about my transformation, I gave the credit entirely to Bikram yoga while keeping quiet about the bariatric surgery. I thought it was private (apparently, it wasn’t). Plus, I didn’t want to go through the same media and collegial “whispers” that opera singer Deborah Voigt had been subjected to after her surgery. I was trying to avoid all the judgment I would get for my decision to skip all the yo-yo dieting.

  Well, I got away with that for about a year, despite some skeptical murmurings that grew even louder after a cover story for Chatelaine, published in early 2008, during which I stuck to my half-truths. Eventually, to end the controversy, I decided to “confess” in a letter that ran in the April 2008 issue:

  Dear Chatelaine,

  I try to walk a very thin line whenever the subject of my weight loss comes up in interviews. I cherish my right to privacy, while still understanding that by choosing to be in the public spotlight, I automatically release anonymity with regards to my personal life.

  I do understand that extreme weight loss is a hot topic and I completely support the battle against the false public perception of the fat person being fat due to lack of willpower. It is not my intention to revive this stereotype . . . As a person who has lost a ton of weight, I hope to provide inspiration but want the public to understand that what those of us who are suffering from morbid obesity really need is a medically supervised plan based on our individual need . . . I would never want to use my position in the media to influence a decision that should be made under medical supervision.

  For me, weight loss wasn’t the transformative, hallelujah moment that some people experience—I’m too pragmatic to have had many of those. It was a housekeeping item offering many benefits, with health at the top of the list. It gave me a sense of empowerment; it freed up more energy that I could put to good use. It wasn’t until after my loss that I realized how much being obese had affected my motivations. It didn’t mean I suddenly became this super-efficient, incredibly confident person devoid of insecurities who liked to walk around naked without a care as to who saw me. It simply meant that I could check “lose weight” off my to-do list. Now I’m a manageable size, and I’ve maintained that weight. I don’t eat everything I want when I want to. If I did that, I’d be in considerable discomfort and back to 350 pounds. On the other hand, it’s hard to find me not eating—I like to graze and I choose snacks that allow me to satisfy my oral fixation but not balloon back to my old size. Raw almonds are my jam.

  I don’t obsess over my weight and I don’t weigh myself—that number has nothing to do with my health, so my scales have gone dark. If my clothes didn’t fit, that would be my red flag. Having less weight to push against when I sing has required me to find new, more efficient, ways to use the muscles supporting my diaphragm, and my Bikram yoga practice has more than adjusted for that.

  When someone loses as many pounds as I did, I think it’s necessary to adjust to a different body image. Although I believed that I now looked the way I was supposed to look, my mind’s perception of being fat remained. It was a major learning curve for my mind to catch up to my body’s new reality.

  I’m still surprised to discover I take up less space. Though I know my dress size when entering a store, I’m still surprised when I try on something in that size and it actually fits. I’m still surprised when I catch a reflection of myself and she’s not perfectly round. I’m surprised at how my individual parts look; I used to have a big rack, but I don’t anymore—didn’t even when I was pregnant.

  In my profession people see me before they hear me, and I believe my clothes can speak before I even make a sound. My stage persona and costume could best be described as “high-class drag queen.” I love makeup and I love clothes. I always knew how to look my best, no matter my size, but having a more conventional shape has invited different designers to use me as their muse. I also feel more comfortable appearing on fashion shows like Project Runway Canada, as I did in 2007, with designers challenged to create a performance look for me. My weight loss inadvertently led me to the wonderful duo of Cathy McDayter and Angela Mann of Magpie Designs (now Call and Response Clothing) in Toronto. They design and hand-make the high-glamour, low-maintenance gear I sport onstage and off.

  Losin
g weight has also helped me to understand the power of conventional beauty. Like it or not, we are all of us influenced by aesthetic. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t believe losing weight made me pretty. Pretty can be accomplished at ANY weight. What I mean is that by allowing myself to be unencumbered by fat, I liberated the part of my mind that busied itself with compensating for that. I was free to more wholly focus on whatever task was at hand. I also know that it has helped me professionally.

  In the spring of 2008 I performed Elettra in Mozart’s Idomeneo for Toronto’s Opera Atelier. Set against the backdrop of the Trojan Wars, the opera is a love story, with Princess Elettra as a jealous rival. When Colin Eatock, writing for the national Canadian daily The Globe and Mail, asked Marshall Pynkoski, Opera Atelier’s co-artistic director, if he would have hired me before I had lost weight, Pynkoski was quoted as saying: “No. I wouldn’t have considered her capable of the role of Elettra when she was heavy. I don’t have a cutoff point for weight, but I need people who are comfortable in their own skin.” Sometimes the opinions of the “never-been-fat” can be annoying, but I understand where Marshall, a movement specialist, was coming from. Having been one and then the other, I know there is a marked difference between being confident in your own skin and being comfortable in it. I wore a mask of confidence, but now I comfortably inhabit a shell that is working with me, not against me. At least for now.

  It’s not every day that you have the chance to shed the weight of an entire adult from your own body, and the process of dramatic weight loss—160 pounds—is an experience I truly cherish. It did something to my self-confidence. It felt like I’d literally dug myself out of a hole, because there is something subterranean about being morbidly obese. In some respects, you feel swallowed up by yourself and have to methodically trust that all your efforts upward will in fact lead to daylight. I’m not saying forces at work don’t do their part to make things harder, because they do. Any person who’d rather be even twenty pounds lighter knows that those pounds are essentially made of quicksand, weighing you down and taunting you at the same time—like your big brother sitting on your chest, spit dangling perilously from his mouth above your face. Multiply that sentiment by how much weight I lost and you’ll have some idea of how good it felt for me to dodge the bullet of a lifetime of morbid obesity. I was literally set free.