This is based on a post I first wrote in a personal journal two years ago. After writing it I went on to lose 4 stone. I then lost my job and self esteem and fell back into the cycle.

Let’s face it – fat people are funny. I know this because every where I go something or someone tells me so. From the comic relief of Heather Trott on Eastenders to Courtney Cox’s Fat Suit on Friends; from Johnny Vegas’s comic desperation to the cries of “Oi Fatty Boom Boom” by the kids on the bus.

Fat people are also jolly. We take these jokes with good humour. Being fat is – after all – our choice so we must be happy to laugh along with the crowds. Otherwise we’d do something about it right?

Here is a day in the life of me. I’m morbidly obese. I don’t want to claim to speak for anyone else who is also morbidly obese, clinically obese or just a bit chubby. Some or all of these experiences are personal to me. Some will be shared experiences that others may be able to relate to.

I usually wake up later than I should. I am always tired. I don’t sleep that well – I have a condition called Obstructive Sleep Apnea which is connected to obesity, which means that I have pauses in my breathing while asleep, which wake me up. Symptoms of this include loud snoring (check), restless sleep (check) and sleepiness during the day (check).

I also occasionally suffer from Plantar fasciitis. This means that my feet hurt enormously – especially after periods of rest – so I usually have to literally stagger to the bathroom gripping on to the walls as I go. The pain lessens gradually, and I can walk fine for short distances until it returns.

A combination of my tiredness and my lack of esteem for my looks means that I didn’t used to take much care with my appearance. I would  wear clothes that are smart enough to pass muster – though I don’t wear suits as I find them restrictive and uncomfortable. I didn’t wear any make up, and usually tied my hair back in a bun to stop it bothering me I will usually do this while it is still wet, and never use a hairdryer or attempt any styling on my hair. I didn’t wear any jewellery. As part of my attempt to change my physical health problems, I am attempting to reconcile my mental health issues with regard to self-esteem. So I now take the time to put on make up every workday and wear nicer clothes and jewellery. It is still a struggle to convince myself I am worth it, but the habit is remarked upon and my daily compliment quota has shot up, which helps the feedback loop.

The walk to the bus stop from my house takes less than five minutes. If it is a bad day, this will have been enough to induce agony in my lower back. Bad days happen when I am on an eating binge. So they happen a lot of the time. My lower back will feel like it has seized up. If it is especially bad, I will need to lean against the bus stop or the wall to make it go away. If I am on my own, I can make it go away just by bending my back, but I don’t like to do this if other people are around as I realise it looks really odd.

On the bus I am either constantly in everyone’s way, or I feel like I am. Both are true on different mornings. Paranoia is one of the hardest things to control, because quite often strangers are pointing, laughing, tutting at and judging you, so it becomes something you come to expect. I always get a seat, but them have to go through the look in everyone’s eyes as they weigh up their own comfort options of sitting next to me VS remaining standing. I don’t blame them, and no one is doing it to make me feel bad. That’s just a side effect.

When I get to work, I go in via a small shop where every morning I buy a Diet Coke. I am totally addicted to Diet Coke and drink it all the time. I don’t do so under any illusion it is helping me to lose weight, but I like the taste and the caffeine. I suspect I am addicted to it, but with so many other things to sort out, it isn’t my top priority. Sometimes I will buy a sandwich for breakfast. Usually I will wait for lunch. I eat quite late in the evenings, but even so this usually means there will be roughly at least a 16 hour break between meals.

At work I am very sedentary and desk based. Even when I am not, I have never let my obesity get in the way of doing an excellent job. Though I suspect it may have got in the way of my being considered for some excellent jobs. I sit in front of a computer in an open plan office, and do computer based work. Around 1.30 I usually go for lunch, though I have to time it quite carefully as I absolutely don’t want to go with anyone else. There’s a good reason for this. The walk to the sandwich shop. If I walk at my own pace, I can contain the pain to my back, but if I walk faster than I feel comfortable doing, my shins start to burn really badly, adding to the pain. By the time I get there I am in such agony that I can’t really focus on anything else.  I certainly find it very difficult to engage in small talk, and so come across as a bit anti-social and weird. This is the same reason that whenever I am due to meet with people in another part of town, I try to travel there alone, that and the fact that the tube has all the embarrassments of the buses, with the added indignity of the barriers and discomfort of the stairs.

So by the time I come to buy my lunch I am physically a wreck. I haven’t eaten for more than half a day, I am in pain and I am embarrassed and wretched about my general state of being. So what do I do? I overeat obviously. It makes me feel better. Short term admittedly, but when you’ve given up hope, long term is pretty hard to engage with. I buy two items – if I’m trying to be good, it’ll be a soup and a salad, if I’m feeling really bad, it’ll be two large sandwiches. All of which add to the general stomach ache and indigestion I suffer from on some level a lot of the time.

The afternoon continues much as does the morning. I leave work at 5.30 and get the bus home. The humiliations efforts and issues are the same as in the morning so I won’t harp on. My evenings are generally as sedentary as my days. Nik and I take no joint exercise* and our joint passions tend to the sedentary (computer games and television shows). If we are both in for the night, one of us will cook, and here I do get an excellent and balanced meal. I might eat too much of it sometimes, but this is because Nik is a really good cook of reasonably healthy meals. My issues are not with this meal, and my attitude towards it is totally different from the way I eat during the day or if Nik is out.

I am so overweight, that my body is in pain, and I hate myself for it in a million small little ways that never quite manifest in a healthy way such as dieting and exercise.

The reason I am posting such a public display of my insecurities and failures is not – despite how it may sound – to wallow in them. It is more to try and start a conversation about how we treat obesity and the obese politically. I’m an extremely intelligent, highly educated woman. I know I am supposed to eat my 5 a day and get regular exercise. So do most of us who have ended up in this condition. But there are times when the world simply conspires with your self-esteem to drive a woman to chips.

The public policy world refers constantly to the obesity crisis, but I’ve never met someone in public policy yet, who truly understands that individual crisis that we go through. Until we understand that, and if we continue to treat obesity as a disease of laziness or ignorance, it will continue to be a crisis. Unless we understand the root causes of obesity and treat the psychology behind it, we won’t have the successful public health intervention that we need. This might mean a greater investment now in mental heath services, to avoid a catastrophic cost to the health service later on.

* Well yes, that but don’t be filthy!

Tags: obesity, The Personal is Political

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