I was a chubby kid. I got bullied a lot for it. In my early teens, I developed an eating disorder and lived off frozen veggies and protein shakes. I lifted weights and ran constantly after school. Eventually I burned out, and by my mid-teens was overweight again.
I again lost weight in my early 20s. I put it back on in my mid-20s. Now in my late-20s, I’m nearly 15kg down from 103kg. Chronically poor relationships with both food and exercise aside, my weight has see-sawed more than anyone else’s I know.
Having been both fat and skinny multiple times, I’m fully aware of how different it is navigating the world and its stereotypes with different sized bodies. People do treat you differently when you’re fat, and you don’t even have to be that big to see their attitudes change. Even being slightly overweight opens you up to assumptions and people being hurtful, often under the pretence of being “concerned for your health.”
If you’re bigger, you catch people giving you the side-eye if you have the audacity to eat a burger. Have back pain? Period pain? Headaches? Insomnia? Broken ribs? Childhood trauma? Your doctor might just tell you that losing weight will fix it. Your experience bounces between being invisible and condescended to.
If you’re skinny, you find that people are more courteous in retail interactions, doctors take your complaints seriously and the general level of common decency you receive improves exponentially.
People do treat you differently when you’re fat
People tend to either be cultishly in favour of body positivity, or viciously derisive towards it. Many studies , but the assumption that a bit of cushioning equals overnight heart disease and that thin people are inherently healthy is counterintuitive at best, actively harmful at worst. The reality is far more nuanced.
My most dramatic instance of weight loss was between 2013 and 2015, when I lost a massive 52kg over the course of around 18 months. I had dropped from 112kg (while regularly powerlifting and exercising) to a sedentary 60kg.
I wasn’t bulimic, but I vomited every day involuntarily. I spoke to a doctor about it, who said that it was Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome that had been brought on by my (at the time) daily marijuana usage. Since then, this disorder has been named , and is caused by interactions between THC and the digestive tract.
On top of daily and involuntary vomiting, I was taking MDMA every weekend, sometimes twice a week. Juggling a crippling drug problem with university and a brutal full-time line cook job created a perfect storm for the unhealthiest kind of weight loss. While I’d successfully lost weight with diet and exercise in the past, I hadn’t even been trying to this time.
I looked “healthy” enough to represent a clothing store
Although I am not tall, I have higher than average muscle and bone density. Even lean, I should not have weighed 60kg for my frame. I had stretch marks and loose skin. My cheeks were hollow, my face was gaunt. I was generally pallid and weak, and I looked it, too.
Imagine my surprise when I went to the 21st birthday parties of several friends from high school that year and was told by many of my old classmates who’d last seen me at 100-plus kilos how healthy I looked. I hadn’t slept or eaten in three days. I looked healthy like Kate Moss looked healthy in the 90s.
Not long after that, I was able to destress significantly by quitting my awful kitchen job – and getting one in retail. After years of rejection from similar retail positions, I dropped 44 per cent of my bodyweight from drug-induced vomiting and all of a sudden, I looked “healthy” enough to represent a clothing store.
It wasn’t long until I had kicked my daily bong habit and, in this less stressful job, very quickly put 15 kilos back on. Following that, I broke my collarbone while skateboarding. Immobilised while healing, I gained another 15 kilos. I lost five again training hard, but then Covid happened and suddenly I was back up to 103 kilos.
I am approaching 30, in a comfortable relationship and career, without a care in the world for what I look like in the mirror. What I care about is being fit enough to run around after my future kids, and to be alive for them for a long time.
So, I began training again, and harder. I’m down to 90kg, which is still considered fairly overweight for my height. However, I’m the fittest I have ever been. I can run longer and lift bigger, and my blood test results are exceptional. The numbers say I’m the picture of health – and not one person has told me how healthy I look.
If you need support, contact the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 334 673.
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