What it means to be "morbidly obese"

In the olden days, overweight people were categorized as fat, overweight, or obese - and those are the nicer names.  Now the terms being thrown around include "morbidly obese" and "super morbidly obese."  Lovely.  With a Body Mass Index ("BMI") of 43.9 at 306 lbs., I was in the morbidly obese category.  BMI takes into account your height so if I was shorter, I would have easily been in the "super" category.  Here's for being tall!

Being obese, in my opinion, is a form of slow suicide.  It affects every aspect of your existence negatively.  There is no benefit whatsoever to being obese - except maybe no face wrinkles because you've blown up like a balloon!  It kills your spirit and your soul.  It erases your confidence, your self worth, your goals, your desires, and your future.  It stops you from trying new things or engaging in new relationships, not to mention the dread of running into old acquaintances (especially romantic ones) who didn't know you got so big.   

Finding clothes to wear becomes a chore and you always feel ugly and big no matter how cute the new outfit might be, but, frankly, how cute can an outfit be in a humongous size anyway?  Eventually it gets to the point that you're just grateful you found clothes that fit regardless of whether you like them or not.  You pay more for your clothes because you're limited where you can shop.  Even shoes become difficult to find because your feet swell and now you need wider shoes which are hard to find - not to mention that now you can't wear the pretty pumps and heels you want to because these become uncomfortable and painful.  Thanks to the internet though, shopping for big clothes and shoes has become easier.

Being obese means you present your failures and personal issues to the world every time you walk out your front door.  You can't hide it, like perhaps you can with alcoholism or drug addiction.  The mirrors in my house lie, either that or I was delusional when I saw myself in them.  I knew I was big, but nowhere near as big as the world saw me to be.  This would become clear whenever I caught a glimpse of myself in store windows, glass doors, public mirrors, or worse yet in a photograph someone took.  It was horrifying!  This is what I really look like?  Good Lord!  I learned to never look at anything that reflected my image in public and I learned to never, ever allow a photograph to be taken of me.  If I couldn't stop it from happening, I would put myself in the back of a crowd or strategically place myself to minimize the horror.  But, of course, you can't hide obesity no matter how hard you try.  It's in your face, in your arms, your hands, your body.

Obesity is isolating.  If you continue to gain weight, you eventually isolate yourself from the world because it's just easier to stay home rather than venture out and risk being embarrassed or proving your limitations, especially to others.  You begin to categorize life into the "I can'ts" as in "I can't do that because I'm too fat."  You may never in a million years utter this out loud, but you're always thinking it.

  

It's a slow progression where eventually you get stuck in a vicious cycle:  you're unhappy for being overweight, you gain more weight which makes you even more unhappy, and you overeat to feel better which leads to gaining more weight and so it goes on and on until finally it's too overwhelming to change.  I knew I was stuck in this cycle, I just didn't know how to jump out of it once and for all.  It seemed every time I tried, I got sucked into it even deeper.

It's humiliating to be obese.  As if you're not already self conscious about how you look, there's always someone to throw it in your face and make you feel worse.  That's the beauty of human beings, some people think it's their job to embarrass, or be cruel to, other people who may not be considered "normal."  Or they're just so completely oblivious about how someone might feel about a specific situation, that the results are the same as if they intended to be cruel.

One of my most humiliating events (there have been many through the years) happened when I was 27 years old.  My new job required me to attend a training class that included physical fitness, and so the first week we reported, we had to get weighed in.  The dreaded scale.  The gym was huge because it was a training center and it was always crowded.  There was a large scale that had a big dial on top, encased in glass.  In my mind's eye, the scale was red.  I remember it was located at the top of a small ramp next to a glass wall to its right (an Olympic size pool was on the other side) and a metal banister to its left.  The scale faced the gym and I guess they put it on top of the ramp to ensure EVERYBODY could read the dial without any trouble.  My only saving grace was that our class wouldn't be using the pool so I didn't have to worry about putting on a bathing suit.

When you stepped on the scale, the big black dial behind its glass would swing to the right until it reached the number indicating your weight.  I'm sure my memory has exaggerated the size of that scale (as our mind's eye tends to do with time) but I remember that dial being so big that it could be read from at least 50 feet away.  In any case, 48 of us lined up in front of that scale and as each student stepped on it, 47 other students were standing behind or nearby and could easily watch that dial swing until it reached each person's weight.  If someone couldn't read the dial, that was okay because one instructor on the left of the scale would read the person's weight out loud and the instructor on the right would repeat it in a question as in, "Did I understand correctly?" and the instructor on the left would repeat the weight to confirm it so that the instructor on the right, who carried a clipboard, could write it down for prosperity.  Why they needed two instructors, both male by the way, to do that or why the weight had to be called out and repeated and confirmed when it could clearly be seen by the entire gym is beyond me.  But that's what they did.  Almost 30 years later, I still remember that day. 

My turn comes and I step on that scale.  I, along with hundreds of people behind me, including my 47 fellow students, could watch the dial swing all the way to 211.  The instructor on my left called out "211!" and the instructor on the right asked, "211?" at which point the instructor on the left repeated, "Yes, 211!"  My turn was over.  My humiliation was not.  In my class of 48 people, not only did I weigh more than ALL the females in that class, I weighed more than most of the men, too. 

When I told my best friend, Joyce, about my scale experience, she was horrified.  She understood.  She told me many years later that whenever she's embarrassed about something, she'll think of "that scale story" and suddenly her present situation isn't nearly as embarrassing in comparison. 

What I didn't know then is that despite that moment of utter humiliation, for the next 13 years, I would gain/lose another 95 lbs. over and over again until I finally reached a weight of 306 lbs. by the time I was in my forties!   

I knew my weight was out of control for years (how could I not know!) but the realization was particularly obvious when I had to start worrying about fitting in places, such as booths in restaurants, a turn style, or God forbid, an airplane seat.  Even in my own car, I knew that if I gained any more weight, fastening my seat belt was going to be a problem because the strap wouldn't be long enough soon.  I couldn't fit comfortably in restaurant booths any more - and in some restaurants, I couldn't fit in them at all, so I just got in the habit of always asking for a table with chairs.   

As for airplane seats, oh, the horror!  Coach airplane seats are 17 inches wide.  If you're lucky, you might get their deluxe size of 21 inches.  If you can afford first class, the seats are wider (as much as 30 to 35 inches) but most of us can't afford that.  I was at a point where sitting in an airplane seat was incredibly uncomfortable and even painful.  Not only were my knees pressed against the seat in front of me because I'm tall, but now my hips were so wide that I would be crammed into the seat and the arm rest would dig into my hips or my body would push the arm rest up (arm rests on the aisle lock into place, but the rest do not) and I had to spend the whole flight pushing them down with my arms if I had someone sitting next to me on either side.  If the seat next to me was empty, I could thankfully just pull the arm rest up and out of the way. 

In 2008 I flew cross country without buckling my seat belt because it wasn't long enough to fasten and I was too embarrassed to ask for an extension.  I draped the seat belt over myself and covered it with my shirt so that it appeared to any flight attendant passing by that I did, in fact, have my seat belt buckled.  I'd rather get hurt if I came off my seat during a turbulent flight than be humiliated in a plane full of strangers.  I was at a point that if I gained any more weight, I'd have to buy two seats.   So I stopped flying.  My dream of going to Italy and England (my dream for years) was shelved in the "I can't do that because I’m too fat" file.  It wasn't just the flying part that I couldn't do because of my weight, once I got to Italy or England, then what?  I couldn't walk very far, I couldn't do much.  Would I travel half way around the world to sit in my hotel room?  I didn't bother putting in for out-of-state assignments at work just because the idea of flying was too much of a burden, not to mention being judged by new people I'd meet at my destination. 

The idea of flying was horrifying because there were stories of airlines forcing people to buy two seats or kicking them off their planes for being too fat (Director Kevin Smith in 2010 is one such case), and wanting to weigh passengers the way they do our luggage and charging by excess body weight (Samoan Airlines actually implemented this policy in 2013 and it's only a matter of time before other airlines do the same).  Talk about complete and utter humiliation!  It was easier to stay home. 

I don’t understand why airlines just can't install a row or two of wider seats and charge more for them without having to humiliate people publicly, especially when these people are already sensitive about their size/appearance.  It's bad enough that there's no leg room on planes for those of us taller than 5'8, what is the need to embarrass larger people, too?  Why isn't it considered discrimination?

Now that I've lost so much weight, I'm really curious to see how I fit in those tiny airplane seats.  I'm dying to go to the airport and ask them to just let me in a plane for a minute to try the seats out.  I only need a minute, that's all.  I wish they had samples of airplane seats somewhere for people to try them out without actually having to go inside a plane!

Another humiliating event was when I needed to get a breast MRI at a hospital.  I knew those machines are narrow so when I made the appointment at the hospital my doctor referred me to, I told them that I was obese and was concerned whether I'd fit the machine.  They asked me my height and weight, I told them (300 lbs.), and the person on the other line said it should be fine.  It was embarrassing enough to have to tell a stranger over the phone, but I had no idea how bad it'd actually turn out to be.  When I got there, there were three men I had to deal with:  one technician and two young men whose job was to make sure my body was positioned properly on the machine.  I was already embarrassed because I was only wearing my underwear underneath a small thin hospital robe that didn't fit me properly (opening in the front by the way) and I was there to get a breast MRI to boot, in front of three men.  I won't explain what having a breast MRI entails, but trust me, it's embarrassing.

I  laid down on the table as instructed, face down with my feet facing the opening of the machine, and they pushed the table with me on top into the machine.  It immediately became obvious that I was too large to fit properly because my hips and behind touched every side inside the machine.  I was crammed in there.  They pulled the table out and told me to get up because I couldn't have an MRI.  As I'm standing there talking to the technician in front of the other two men, he said in a brusque manner, "I don't know what we can do.  You just don't fit," and he turned around, went into his booth, and slammed the door in my face, literally.  It was a Sunday and he seemed very annoyed that I had disturbed his day, particularly when I wasn't able to have the MRI done after all.  It obviously never occurred to him how I might be feeling about the whole situation.  I was left standing there, half naked, trying to hold a robe closed that was too small for me, embarrassed, defeated, and humiliated.  By the time I drove away from the hospital, I was in tears.  

Eventually my doctor found an MRI place that supposedly had larger machines.  I went in there with much trepidation expecting the same horrible treatment, but my experience there was a joy.  The staff at this second location were all women and everybody was incredibly thoughtful and respectful, plus their machine was larger and I had no problems.  I wondered, however, what a larger person than I would do if they needed an MRI.  Would they just not be able to get one at all and their doctors wouldn't be able to diagnose them properly?

So fitting places became an ever present issue for me.  It was always in my head.  I'd watch movies where someone trapped or being chased escaped through a small opening and I'd think to myself, "If that happened to me in real life, I'd just have to die because I wouldn't fit."

I never believed it when people said that obesity can be fatal.  Yes, I understand that it can cause some medical issues, but death?  Seriously?  Come on!  Doctors told me for years that I had to lose weight, but none ever really explained to me what obesity can do to a body.  In any case, I probably wouldn't have listened anyway.  As it was, all I heard was blah blah blah, the same old one-sided conversation.  I once had a 20-something skinny female doctor tell me I should eat poached chicken and steamed rice.  Thanks, I'm sure eating this for every meal for the next 40-50 years was going to be great.  Another time I had an obese female doctor who was bigger than me telling me to lose weight!  I don't know how she said it with a straight face.  I just sat there looking at her, thinking, "Seriously?  If YOU can't do it, how do you expect ME to?"  I often thought of cancelling doctor appointments just because I didn't want to hear the same old song.  I'd go in with a cut that needed stitches and they'd want to weigh me first.  Why?  How does my weight have a bearing on the cut?  I always refused to get weighed and usually they wouldn't push it.  A few times, however, they insisted and I had no choice.  

I was lucky because my vital signs (blood pressure, heart, etc.) and blood work were always normal.  In fact, my thin coworkers and thin friends who watched what they ate and worked out regularly had much worse numbers than me.  A good friend of mine who ran 5 miles a day had high cholesterol and was on medication.  Even with his medications, his cholesterol measured at 210.  Mine was 150 at the time despite being about 250 lbs., sedentary, and eating an unhealthy diet.  I had thin friends who had diabetes whereas my sugar levels were normal.  I thought I was healthy.

I've heard obese people often say that they're healthy.  Of course, it's ridiculous.  What they don't get - just like I didn't get it either - is that yes, they're healthy at this moment, but in the long run the weight starts wearing down the body unnecessarily and eventually, as we get older, obese people will suffer some type of ailment, anything from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, achy joints, acid reflux, cancer, or anything else from a long list of horrible medical issues.  By the time you start experiencing any of these, you're seriously pushing your luck.  At the very least you'll end up taking a bunch of medications for ailments that came to exist only because you're obese.

With all of this in mind, WHY do we do this to ourselves?  Life is too short to make it so miserable for ourselves while we're here.  Why do we continue to restrict ourselves from enjoying life?  I used to walk around thinking that this world is made only for thin people and I resigned myself to realize that I could never be part of it.  Why did I limit myself to such degree?   

I wish I could bottle up how great I feel now and pass it along to everyone who needs to lose a lot of weight because this feeling is intoxicating and absolutely motivating!  Losing weight goes beyond my physical transformation, it affected my entire being:  medically, spiritually, and emotionally.

If you need to lose weight, don't wait until tomorrow or Monday or next month or after your birthday or for New Year's, start NOW.  Just a few changes here and there to your lifestyle will benefit you in the long run.  Start slow and build up to a new lifestyle.