Ana M Soriano

www.obesityhelp.com/magazine

http://www.obesityhelp.com/magazine

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Anything To Be Thin

and

by Ana M Soriano

I remember when I first realized I was fat: I was standing in my parents’ room while my mother looked through her closet to find the perfect dress for me to wear to my elementary school graduation. She pulled out a beautiful sleeveless lacy pink dress. I was overjoyed, because it was a fat girl’s opportunity to be a princess.

I heard my father open the front door. I remember feeling tense and fearful. He walked into the room and said, “I hate the way you look; you look so fat.” My mother and I stood there in silence, not knowing what to say or feel. My father had the final word in our family. From that moment on, I hated myself for being fat. I thought the unhappiness in my family was because I was fat. My heart and spirit were broken, and I spent the rest of my life trying anything to be thin.

I have always struggled with issues of low self-esteem, shyness, resentment, depression and self-hate. For years, I tried to cover up my feelings so people could not see through me. It was easier for me to devote energy to covering up my feelings than to muster the courage to look inside myself and identify my problem.

In 2006, I underwent weight loss surgery. Before surgery, I weighed 236 pounds at 5’1”. For years, I had gone on strict diets, bought exercise videos, befriended other people who wanted to lose weight and even hired a personal trainer, but nothing really worked. I knew that gastric bypass surgery wasn’t an easy way out, but it was a means to an end, and that was good enough for me.

The few moments of minor pain I felt in the hospital were nothing in comparison to what I was getting in return. I felt like I’d been given a “get out of jail free” card. I had the illusion that many of my problems would disappear: I would suddenly become more attractive to men, I would have more opportunities in my career, and most importantly, I would be free to love myself in a fat hating world. I wanted to fill my life plate with happiness and replace my side dish of fat with a side dish of more life.

I've lost a total of 100 pounds. The weight seemed to just melt off with very little effort on my part. I started noticing the changes in every aspect of my life. People started to respect me for maintaining my weight loss and men started going out of their way to help me. I went from being invisible to visible in the world. The weight loss was exciting, new and a success I had never achieved before. I felt like I was a part of the “in crowd,” and I never wanted to be out again.

When I finally hit my plateau, it was hard for me to accept that I could gain weight back. I didn’t want the honeymoon phase to be over, when I’d eaten whatever I wanted and it didn’t affect my weight. Then, as I started going in reverse and gaining a few pounds back, it became easy for me to eat more food. I hadn’t changed my old eating habits entirely, and I suddenly had to deal with the same problems again. My ride came to an end, and I didn’t know what to do.

I have come to find that there are many reasons why a person overeats. I am a compulsive overeater: I eat when I feel stressed, depressed, bored, happy, nervous or feel almost any other emotion.

Gastric bypass helped me take most of the weight off, but it has become clear to me that the rest of the process is entirely up to me. Many of the materials I read before the surgery said, “The surgery is just a tool, not a cure.” I remembered reading that, but those words suddenly had more meaning. I realized at that point that I had to work with my tool if I wanted to set a healthy tone for the rest of my life. I also had to look at my emotions, what triggered my overeating, and what I could do to fix it.

Growing up in an unhappy home, food was the only thing that gave me comfort. Cake made me feel happy and whole inside. As an adult, whenever I felt vulnerable, my broken heart and spirit were back in my parents’ room, not knowing how to feel. So, as the years progressed, food changed from a source of enjoyment to an emotional necessity. The reason why I ate food in the first place became blurred. I ate whenever I felt any kind of emotion, and with the urgency that it would no longer be there tomorrow. Little did I know that I was setting myself up for an endless cycle of compulsive overeating that would affect many aspects of my life.

During the past year, I realized that while I was enjoying my weight loss, I should have devoted more time to exploring the initial problem that was causing me to rely on food. Today, I feel like I am coming closer to helping myself. Although it took years and courage to look inside myself, I have found that speaking and writing about my experiences has helped me recover.

Gastric bypass surgery was one of the best choices I have made in my life. The surgery pushed me in the right direction and provided a tool to help me maintain my weight loss. I now feel like I have some positive control over my bad habits. Whenever I feel an emotion come on, I try to separate myself from the situation. I ask myself, “Am I really hungry, or is there something else I can do to help me right now?” Separating the issues has helped me, because I feel I have a better understanding of why I eat emotionally. Being human means sometimes being rejected, and since I cannot change other people or the world, I have learned to change myself and how I respond to rejection. I am finding less comfort in food, and I realize that my goal cannot be perfection. If I have a setback, the best thing I can do is learn from it.

Today I find comfort in exposing my flaws, because I had to learn to love my flaws and imperfections. I take ownership of my emotional scars, because if I had not battled through them, I would not be the person I am today. My problems have not changed; my attitude has. If I overcome the mental part of losing weight and refuse to feed the “head hunger,” food will become less threatening over time. I am slowly letting go of the hurt feelings I experienced as a child in my parents’ room. I have learned to understand my feelings and I now make the choice to love myself instead.

January 2008