Too fat to live? Maybe....

I spent all day yesterday putting away my Christmas decorations, organizing them for the next time we use them, doing laundry and watching shows about "super morbidly obese" people. I hate the term "morbidly obese". It sounds like the person in question is too fat to live. Watching these shows on the learning channel, however, I realized that some people are too fat to really live. When I was younger and full of self-loathing for my own weight problems, I used to watch those shows with mixed feelings of "morbid" curiosity and some measure of contempt. Last night, as I watched the largest woman to ever have gastric bypass surgery, I felt profoundly sad for her and the other people in her condition. This young woman looked like a young, beautiful face, fully made up, and floating in a mountain of flesh. She wanted her life back, so she was willing to risk it to have gastric bypass surgery, and she survived the surgery, but she had a massive heart attack a few days later. I watched all of the stories about the super overweight people, I was looking and listening, trying to figure out why they kept on eating....and to find out why I haven't been successful with my life long struggle with weight. I have about 80-100 lbs. to lose, and I have lost it many times...only to gain it back.
There were a few things that all of the people had in common. They were either in denial about the actual immediate danger they were in, or they felt paralyzed by their inability to do anything about it. The young woman who died was only 29. She had huge fat tumors growing all over her body, and she said, "I know they're there, but I've never seen them. I don't look down there." She took maticulous care of her face and hair. Her body actually looked like it didn't belong to her...her face was a sharp contrast to her body. There was a disconnect in who she saw herself to be and who she was physically. I can relate to that. I have listened to women of much smaller sizes,and all ages, most of whom aren't fat at all, disown and criticize parts of their body. I also understand her "leaving" her body behind and saying to herself, "That's not who I am." It is impossible to be motivated to change my weight permanently if I don't own my weight and size. So that is why I am going to Weight Watchers....and I am not going to wait until I starve myself and get to a smaller weight.

The other common factor was that each person was carrying around either their own emotional baggage or someone else's and the weight became a manifestation of pain, anger, loneliness, or grief. One young man, a teenager who weighed almost a thousand lbs., seemed totally emotionless. His mother, who had a weight issue herself, ran around providing food for him, talking to him like he was a baby, asking what he wanted to eat. I was immediately angry at her, for some reason. It turned out, later in the show we found out that she had lost her first baby boy at 19 months old. She had this teenager six years later and just poured herself into raising him. I think he was supposed to make up for the other son she lost, and she was literally "mothering" him to death. I just wanted to shake her. She kept crying about losing her first son and how if she lost her second son, she might as well jump into the casket with him. But what about the boy's life? As sad as it was that she lost one son, what sense did it make for her to kill the other one with food? I'm sure a lot of psychological things were going on, but it didn't seem fair that that mother's grief came out as 1000 lbs of flesh on her other son. It wasn't about her...even if she lost the second son. It was about her son needing a life.
He survived the gastric bypass surgery, and he was in such pain. The mother just kept on with her behavior...Unless he got into a healthier environment I don't have a lot of hope for him to survive his mother's grief. The woman had a husband, but he didn't seem to be important to her, even though he seemed to be trying to be supportive. Her grief was overwhelming her and her son. I actually had to turn off the TV at that point. Then I had to ask myself why that bothered me so much. It was that the son was so enmeshed in his mother's emotional baggage that he had no real self, as big as he was. There was a disconnect between this boy and himself...just like the woman who died. The only hope for him would be if his mom owned her own feelings and gave her son room to have his own life. Hopefully they all got some counseling. The boy needed his invisible father, too. It was depressing to me.

Then there was this angry, rebellious, gangster 800 lb. man! He would lose an amount of weight and then just demand and order in food in this rehab center--where he had begged to come. He was abusive to the doctors and nurses who tried tohelp him. He had been rebelled against his father as a teen, and then his father died, and that multiplied this guy's anger. He took it out on the world as well as himself. I didn't really relate to this guy, except for the fact that when I get off of my plan, I feel rebellious against my own rules...which is kind of silly. I say things to myself, like, "Why can some people eat whatever they want, and I have to...." Poor me! I don't think that way for long, because I know that I should be ashamed of myself. Three fourths of the world can't even eat every day. How dare I bemoan my efficient metabolism?

Which brings me to the depressing reality of all of the lives that I saw depicted. What a waste of life. Each one of those people had a unique purpose and potential that only God knows, because their lives were literally consumed by what they consumed, and then their bodies consumed whatever was left of them. I no longer look in morbid curiosity or any sense of contempt. I look with compassion, humility and gratitude, because were it not for my Heavenly Father, His grace and the determination He has put in my heart, I could have become a woman with a pretty face floating in a surreal mound of flesh, totally checked out of my life. I had a mound of pain in my heart when He healed me, and His grace makes me try try try again. So here I am, with the same main goal in 2009 that I had in 2008, beginning again. I have hope--because He lives in me.