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This Is What Life Is Really Like When You Weigh Over 400 Pounds – HuffPost

Feb 22nd, 2020

I am an infinifat person. I prefer this term than the medically meaningless, and offensive, morbidly obese most would use to describe my body. At almost 44, I have spent nearly three decades weighing over 300 pounds. My lowest adult weight was 325 pounds in June of 2000. It took extreme food restriction, plus a lot of walking (I lived in New York City) to get me to that number (from a starting point of 380 pounds roughly 18 months earlier). There was also a lot of weight cycling (AKA yo-yo dieting) during that time.

My behaviors were far from healthy, despite my weight loss being lauded (by the people who even noticed it) as evidence that I was working to be healthier. Ha! Not so much. I was working to be thin, and if you dont think theres a difference, you are deeply mistaken. Thinness at any cost will not make a person healthy, but thats exactly what society wants from fat people.

In the nine months that followed that one-off sighting of 325 on my scale, I gained 75 pounds back.I am currently at 445 pounds.

That was just one example of my many years of dieting successes. I will never be thin, and I am so done with being asked stupid, insulting, ridiculous, invasive questions about life in a fat body, as though I am an object of lurid fascination.

In an attempt to shame me into a smaller body, Ive been told that Ill drop dead from a heart attack any moment now (Ive been hearing that one since I was 15). Bodies that look like mine are apparently a bigger threat than even terrorism! Do they think well all explode? I say this with a certain amount of laughter mixed with derision, but its also incredibly alarming to know that a Surgeon General of the United States would make such a statement.

Ive been directly told to just kill myself in order to spare the taxpayers the cost of caring for me and to spare my loved ones assuming anyone could love me, har har!That insult happened in the comments on a YouTube video I was in. And if youre thinking dont read the comments, I urge you to read what the anonymous writer Your Fat Friend has to say about that especially if youre thin.

And sure, much of the time this shaming is couched in concern for our health. Yet, it frequently comes from people who have proven repeatedly that they do not give a damn about the health of someone who looks like me people who, in fact, are perfectly happy to shatter our physical and mental health to try to make us smaller (looking at you, Jillian Michaels), especially when doing so makes them rich and famous.

Its so important for voices like mine to have an outlet. The shame is constant. It comes from everywhere. Family. Friends. The nightly news. Doctors. Trolls on the internet. People with powerful platforms like Oprah (yes, even if shes claiming healthy to be the new skinny as she shills for Weight Watchers).

This shame is without equivocation, harming me and those who, like me, live in very fat bodies. These are our homes. Does anyone really think its healthy to be told over and over and over again that youre essentially on the verge of death every moment of every day?

In early 2007, I thought about starting another diet, but I just couldnt do it anymore. Instead, with the help of an eating disorder therapist, I embraced Intuitive Eating,an eating plan that is based on what your body intuitively knows is good for it.I am ashamed to say that if that therapist had looked like me, I doubt Id have trusted her, but she was thin, and she was telling me it was okay that I wasnt that it was okay to love myself just the way that I was. I wish it hadnt taken validation from a person who had never been fat to get me to realize this.

Suddenly, my world had changed. I was so ready, after so many years of hating myself, to just feel neutral about my body for once. It wasnt even that hard for me to embrace it at the time. I took it for granted something that would later come back to haunt me.

In 2016, while on vacation with my husband (weve been married almost 16 years. I am fat and I am loved, despite hearing for years no one could possibly love me looking like I do), I fell. We were eating in a very small cafe. People were crowding in the vestibule as they waited for tables to open. I grew increasingly anxious about having to navigate through a crowd, both from the perspective of being somewhat claustrophobic and because moving my fat body through a crowd is never fun; I dont think most people enjoy trying to push our way through a crowd its worse because I dare to take up space by simply existing.

Courtesy of Thomas JamesJuliet James on aLake Michigan beach in October 2016.

My husband sensed my growing anxiety, so we quickly finished lunch and got up to leave the restaurant. I had failed to remember the steep step into the building from the sidewalk and in my haste to get out I stumbled down it. I held on to the door, foolishly trying to remain upright. It is bad enough to fall in public. It is worse when youre roughly 520 pounds and wearing a bright kelly green shirt.

Im pretty sure I was in shock. Its believed I tore my right bicep by holding on to the door believed because an MRI or other scans were not an option at my size. I knew this, so I didnt bother to go to the emergency room. When we got home, I had major bruises, and my arm hurt like hell. I went to my primary care doctor, who advised me to rest my arm for 16 weeks,use ice and take anti-inflammatory drugs. After that, it was going to be as good as it would get. I still regularly have muscle spasms from even minor movement in that area.

Sixteen years earlier, while working at a New York City daycare center, I fell on the job. That time I braced my fall with my left hand. Seriously, dont try to brace a fall unless youre on the side of a mountain or something. I partially dislocated my shoulder. This was an on-the-job injury, meaning workers compensation had to be involved. It took them five weeks to approve physical therapy, but by then permanent damage had been done. Ten years later, I somehow managed to dislocate it again in my sleep (what can I say, Im talented). The permanent damage means my range of motion in that arm is extremely limited and it makes further dislocations more likely.

Ive written extensively about these injuries and my fear of future health issues going undiagnosed because, despite the rampant concern for the health of fat people, we are still denied access to care afforded to our thinner peers. These fears were entirely valid, as fat people die regularly from diseases that go undiagnosed.

For instance, around this same time, my grandmother was being treated for cancer. She had to get repeated PET scans, among other tests. As an infinifat person, these tests are off limits to me. What if I got cancer? Suddenly, I felt trapped. Not by my body so much as by a medical community that would not provide me access to quality care and that would then shame me for my injuries or illnesses that came about as a result of that lack of access.

No matter what injury or condition I was struggling with, I knew traditional dieting wouldnt help me; it never had, and I always gained back more than I lost.

Courtesy of Thomas JamesJuliet James "glamping" in Moab, Utah, to celebrate her 15th wedding anniversary in April 2019.

In March of 2018, I had a vertical sleeve gastrectomy. During that surgery, roughly 80% of a fat persons stomach is amputated in an effort to make them smaller. And while, yes, I was able to regain some mobility Id lost over the years, most of the time, I still wish I hadnt done it. The reality is, I am far less healthy now than I was before my surgery. My mental health has suffered. As it turns out, though we were never warned of this during any of the pre-op counseling, theres a significant increase in mental health issues among patients who undergobariatric surgery, including self-harm and suicide.

Post-op, you can forget about Intuitive Eating. How can you eat intuitively when youre literally never hungry? Or, when after months of starving it, your body decides to fight back, and youre ravenous?While my surgeon made a weight goal number for me to hit following the surgery, it was unrealistic.I knew better than to believe these predictions. But what about his patients who dont?

When you see my body, youll have questions. How did she get so fat? What does she eat? How does she wipe? Can she have sex? Whod want to have sex with her anyway? Youll make assumptions about me. She must eat all day long, non-stop. Bet she loves McDonalds. She doesnt care about herself. She must be so sad. Shes clearly miserable.

If you see me daring to live my life on Instagram, where I share travel adventures and my love of makeup pretty regularly, you might think, another fatty glorifying obesity! Trust me; whatever youre thinking, I can almost guarantee Ive thought it or worse about myself. Well, aside from the truly absurd things (like the glorifying obesity B.S.).

Fortunately, Im strong enough to not listen to this type of trolling. I was bullied as a kid, too, but the way my brain is hardwired, it never really bothered me much. This is something I view as a privilege. Its not a skill. Its just the way I think. Not everyone has this privilege. Sometimes, Ive intentionally engaged trolls just to distract them from another, possibly more vulnerable, target, but just because I can handle it doesnt mean its fun. Spoiler alert: Its not.

I am deeply, profoundly tired. Ive spent almost three decades hearing how I am a ticking time bomb, told all the time Id be dead by 30 (which later changed to 50 once I passed 30). I was hospitalized for seven weeks at 15 for non-purging bulimia. Ive been suicidal. Ive been 100% able to accept my body, and Ive been unable to accept it at all. Right now, Im somewhere in between, but its irrelevant because its the only body I will ever have.

I just want to be happy, but no matter how wonderful my life is, I cant be. Not completely. Not when the world refuses to bend. When it views me, and those who look like me, as a problem that needs to be not just fixed, but outright eradicated. When eating disorder behaviors are lauded as self-control or discipline, and caloric content info is in 20-point fonts on the fronts of boxes. I have to turn nutrition labels away in the cabinet to prevent a lapse into moralizing my own food choices or lapsing into eating disorder behaviors Ive worked so hard to conquer.

My body size is not going to change in any significant way. However, my life, and the lives of other fat people, could change. If only the world would accept that bodies come in a variety of sizes, our lives could be so much better.

Infinifats like me make up a pretty small percentage of the population, but were here; were not going anywhere. We fall in love, we get our hearts broken, we have great sex, we have bad sex, we laugh, we cry... in other words, were just like people in much smaller bodies, and we deserve the same privileges afforded to others: access to attractive clothing, comfortable seating, and good medical care (including imaging). We deserve basic human dignity and respect, and we do not owe you explanations for our bodies.

So yeah, Im tired, but I am determined to spend whatever of my incessantly ticking time bomb of a life I have left to try to fix the real problem: Fatphobia.

Juliet James is a queer, bisexual, fat babe who writes about mental health, eating disorders and the social and emotional challenges of being fat in a thin-centric culture. Born in New Jersey, she spent six years living in New York City, where she completed a BA in anthropology at Hunter College. She currently resides with her husband and their dog in the mountains of Colorado. Her hobbies include traveling with her husband, spoiling her dog, reading, music and makeup. You can follow her on Quora or read more of her work on Medium. Youll also find her on Instagram and Twitter under the username @IAmJulietJames

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