Being Fat is Not a Choice

It has taken 24 years for me to write this post, but now seems like a good time to share my thoughts. Let me be clear; I love my body. I love the home it gives to my brain, that it lets me get up in the morning and see, hear and feel the world around me. I love that it means I can go places and have amazing experiences in it. It works well. Yes, there are some aches and pains but it is mostly pretty healthy.

I don't love its size. My fault, right? Should have been more careful, did it to myself, just need to stop eating the wrong stuff and do more exercise, right? Right? Well, no! In the simplest terms possible, you might be partly right, and I might even agree with you. But becoming overweight is not a simple issue. I did not wake up one morning and think "I know, I think I'll put on weight so that I can spend my adult years fat, and ridiculed by strangers".

I was 18 when I started to gain weight. I am not going to go into the contributing factors but I will simply say I went through a series of traumatic events which left me with depleted self-esteem and major paranoia. I didn't gain weight fast - it was a slow, hardly noticeable at first, process. And since I didn't really care about myself then, and I barely ever looked in a mirror, I didn't really notice.

Being fat is not a choice - more like a pit that you accidentally fall into. It's not an easy pit to get out of either. You can't just walk out of it. You have to fight, and dig your way out, and you have to have the right combination of tools too. You have to have to have energy, motivation, patience, self-esteem, encouragement, time, persistence and strength. I have had all of these tools at one time or another, but never all together. I'm still working on that. And I'm still fat. Don't hate me for that - I'm actually a good, hardworking person.

It seems to me that overweight people are the final remaining group that it is perfectly acceptable to publically abuse and discriminate against. It is not ok to discriminate on grounds of gender, race, religion, sexual preference, gender choices or disability, but if you are fat, for any reason, you are fair game - and 'it's your own fault'. When you judge me as lazy, dirty, a fat slob, a blimp or a whale or any other countless assumptions and unpleasant taunts, you write me off. Why is it ok to do that, just because I am overweight?

And yes, I did use the word discriminate, and yes it is a strong word. I am overweight and I'm pretty big, but not the biggest, yet when I travel on a plane, the seat arms dig into my thighs the whole journey. Tube seats are the same (and I can tell when you are deliberately digging your elbows into me, even though I am pulling my arms in front of me in an effort to make myself as small as possible. Passive aggressive much?). I avoid restaurant seats with arms too. And I have done the walk of shame, getting off a fairground ride because I didn't fit, to the sniggers of the other riders. These are just a few examples. So yes, I feel discrimination.

Can we all agree that the outside of one's house is far less important than the inside? After all we spend most of our time on the inside looking out. I don't dismiss the outside, it needs to have some curb appeal, I get it. I don't truly believe that being fat takes all your curb appeal either, though I have to fight my preconceptions on that, based on the constant bombardment of media properganda that only thin will do.

Yep, I'd love to be thinner. And I'm not going to give up trying to get there either, but I am fed up of being bombarded with messages from all angles that I am not good enough, that I should hate myself for being fat, or that it is a choice that I should snap out of, or that I 'just need to eat healthier and start exercising more'. It is not that easy and it is not that simple and it was definitely, never a choice.

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A Bit of a Scare

This is what I looked like yesterday during the worst of an allergic reaction which started very slowly on Friday morning with a swollen eyelid and a line of itchy spots which I though were bites. During the day the itching and spots spread gradually and by lunch time the itching was quite bad. By afternoon things were progressing fast. My back, neck and back of my head were covered with hives and I couldn't stop scratching. A phone call for an appointment to the doctors for an emergency appointment ended in being told to go straight to A&E.

The suspicion was that I was having an allergic reaction to the Amoxicillin that I was taking for my loss of smell and taste (still not returned) following a bad virus a few weeks ago. Untreated this can develop into Anaphylaxis.

After waiting for an hour and a half to be seen at the hospital, the hives had spread and were all over my chest, stomach, top of my head, round my face and even onto my legs. I was checked for wheezing and heart beat to establish that there was no onset of Anaphylaxis, and thankfully there wasn't. The allergy was treated aggressively because it was spreading fast and I was given an immediate dose of steroids and a prescription for more, along with strong antihistamines which I needed to take as soon as possible. I took one of these as soon as I got home. After falling asleep for and hour or so I wok up feeling a lot less itchy and with signs of the hives going down. they certainly weren't spreading any more.

Today I still have slightly swolen eyelids and there are still a few faint hive marks, but I am more or less back to normal - tired but otherwise fine. I have another 4 days of steroids and antihisamines to take and hopefully that will be the last of the allergic reaction.

The only mystery which remains is, what did I react to? The doctor felt that a reaction to the Amoxicillin was unlikely since I had been taking it for 8/9 days. However, I can think of nothing else which I have recently changed. I haven't eaten anything new, my washing powder and conditioner are the same I always use. I have been using my current toiletries and cosmetics for a while now. This only leaves the Amoxicillin. On reading up about it there are a few sources that say that allergy can start at any time, even a week after treatment has stopped. This seems to be the only explanation. I am certainly not going to finish the course I was on.

This was a scary experience and difficult to cope with on my own, particularly that hour and a half in the waiting room as the itching spread. Thank goodness for the support of friends and family via texts and Facebook, not to mention the support of my friends at school who looked after me and covered my class at the end of the day so I could get to the hospital. To all of them, I send a huge thank you.