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Illustration by Sarah Farquhar
I open the refrigerator door. Close it. Move to the kitchen cabinets. Open and close them. Over my lifetime I’ve done this thousands of times looking for something to eat, just a nibble, when I’m not in the least bit hungry. I always find something even if it’s grabbing a handful of chocolate chips from a bag that’s been around for months. It’s no wonder I’ve struggled with weight all my life.
When I was 10, I started to keep a diary which I wrote in periodically for the next few years. I still have it. On page one, I wrote, “I’m 10 years old and I weigh 95 pounds. I have to lose weight.” So there you have it. That’s my introduction to the world. That’s the first time I documented my shame.
For years, I didn’t think about being healthy. I assumed if you were walking and talking you were healthy. I lost weight once by eating a cup of canned soup for breakfast and, mid-afternoon a slice of pound cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream every day for a month. I lost weight but I had no clue as to why I hardly had the energy to put one foot in front of the other. All I looked forward to was sleeping. Who knew about protein? Who cared? I looked great though you’d have to come visit me lying in bed to appreciate it.
I was an adolescent in the early 1970s. I was always the chubby one, not overweight enough to be ostracized or mocked, just a girl with enough excess poundage so that I was destined never to be the leading lady.
My mother was thin and pretty and as a loving mother all she wanted for me was to be out of the chubby department when we went shopping. In retrospect I know that she put so much emphasis on appearance because she felt that being pretty was all she had to offer. But as an adolescent I felt the sting every time I had to hear her say, “do you really need to eat that?”
About a year and a half ago I discovered a medical issue that needed to be addressed and despite my healthy eating habits (discovered during the pandemic) old compulsions were too much to fight off and the weight started to come back.
So I joined the ranks of millions who began taking a GLP-1 medication. While the cravings didn’t disappear completely, I was able to exert a kind of control, a kind of normalcy really, that I had never felt before. I embraced the fact that my inability to control these cravings, despite feeling desperate to do so, was an addiction, a biological abnormality if you will, that I had all my life that now might have a solution.
I have not been overweight for a couple of years now. This is the longest ever I can say that. But I’m in my 60s and there’s a kind of melancholy about this occurring so late in my life. I’m angry about all these wasted years feeling ashamed because I was told I was just lacking willpower or being given strategies that would never work. “Tell the waiter to just put half the food you ordered on your plate and put the other half in a to-go box.” As if that were a lifetime strategy. As if I wouldn’t eat the other half the minute I got into the car and feel more shame.
Would my whole life have been different if I could have taken this medication when I was young? I have a long marriage and three children I’m close to. I have a good life. Maybe it would have given me the confidence to take more chances in a career? I wish I could have imparted a better sense of my self image to my children instead of making them the audience to my self-deprecating humour.
I know I would have loved to feel what it was like to walk into a room of people without worrying they were noticing that my belt was closed on the first hole. One thing is for sure, I would have loved not to be burdened with the shame that has proved to be more difficult to get rid of than the pounds.
I’m still vulnerable to the judgment of people who denigrate these new medications, who call it a crutch and compare themselves and their five extra pounds to those of us with a life-long struggle.
For now, one part of the puzzle is solved. I am grateful that science has finally found a way out of the maze of grapefruit diets and boneless, skinless chicken breasts so that I believe I can experience what thin people have felt all their lives – peace in relationship to food.
I am thinner and I am healthier. No doubt that is a victory for me. The part of the puzzle that is still missing is the piece where I wake up, step on the scale and no longer judge myself by the number that I see. At this age, is it too late to change that? I’m working on it.
Phyllis Berger lives in Los Angeles.
