When I tell people this story, they usually accuse me of lying. I swear it is true.
My youngest aunt died around this time last year, of cancer deep in her spine. She fought it relatively successfully for over a decade and managed to last longer than my mother did with her diabetic complications. But, x-number of years ago, when she was first diagnosed with cancer, she had to have a 20-lb tumor removed from her stomach. She turned to all the women at our family reunion dining table conversation and said, "Thank God it was a tumor. I thought I was getting fat."
That expresses how deep the hatred of fat was in my family. My brothers, even the youngest who followed me like a puppy when we were young, thinks very little of me and mine because of our sizes. Hurtful things have been said since I was five. To make matters worse, they were, and still are, chauvinists. One of my brothers, when my son was ten and beginning to chunk up just a little, told me that he (my son) would never be a real man. He said that my mother's influence and my influence on my son, during the time my husband was in Korea for a year (age 2 for my son) had made my child a wimp who would never fit into the world of "real men." That he pitied both my "------whipped husband" and my "wimpy" son. And, then, proceeded to tell me that his weight would be a double strike against him and didn't I care enough about my child to do something about it.
My nephew, this brother's son, is chunky now. I worry about his mental health because of some of the things he has told me his father says to him.
I was always a big person, big-boned with a strong appetite for everything in life, including food. But, I was relatively normal for a big-boned person until other people became involved. Thanks to the uncle married to the aunt above, my mom put me on a diet at age 5. I remember having seasonal bulimia at Thanksgiving and Christmas - only then, and only from about age 12-14. I remember starving myself at age 16, eating literally one meal per week, to lose weight and then being told that my best weight was never going to be good enough. Even with ALL this unhealthy behavior and abuse, I managed to stay somewhat healthy and relatively normal for a big-boned person UNTIL doctors put me on a low-fat regimen.
Don't tell me I don't have willpower. I stayed low-fat for over ten years and got better and better at doing that lifestyle. Doctors and relatives think I "just wasn't doing it right," but they were wrong. I was doing it right. It just wasn't working. I kept getting bigger and sicker - and, according to them, it was my fault, my failure. Nobody ever said things like, "Oh, you used to be so pretty when you were thinner," because I was NEVER thin enough for them, but they clearly thought I just needed to eat less.
Do you know that my mother went for 8 years without help with her diabetes because every time she went back to the doctor for a check-up, he would tell her to control it with diet alone? She went down to 250 calories/day at one point in her attempts to control her blood sugars with diet alone. When she realized she would literally have to starve to lower them, she finally had the strength to FORCE her doctor to help.
Atkins was my last hope before surgery, but I didn't even know about it, or low-carbing - none of it - prior to a few years ago. Furthermore, having dieted my whole life, there was no reason to believe that THIS diet would be any better than any of the others. Most people consider Atkins a quack - why would I try another diet by another quack?
Those of you who think, still, that each person has control over their own destiny, consider please that sometimes the key to our destiny is out of reach. My key was Atkins. Was it my destiny to wait 41 years until I was sick as a dog to find that key? Obviously, the answer is yes because it happened that way. But, did it HAVE to be that way? If doctors had been more informed, more open-minded, mightn't they have saved me a LOT of pain? Saved my mother a few more years? I truly regret that I didn't find Atkins sooner, but it wasn't for lack of willpower.
Before you blame the victim, before you look at that 400-lb person who "doesn't care about his looks," before you accuse anyone, find out if they have the key to their own survival. Without it, everyone is doomed.
I'm giving my key to my children. It's not too late for them.
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