Fat - Fighting It With Every Bite, Every Rep

Welcome to the Good, the Fat and the Hungry. I'm Karla and I have been -- or am -- all those things. Here, I will share with you my lifelong struggle with my weight, and I hope you'll follow along on with my determined attempt to lose nearly 40 pounds. I promise to tell you every win and setback along the way every Tuesday and Friday.

I am a fraud. Not just any old fraud -- I am a fraud of the worst kind. The worst kind in my book is one who lies to herself and believes it. I do that.

In spite of the fact that I am battling my weight with every bite and every rep, I am not as sympathetic to those around me who are fighting the same fight. I have, on occasion, looked at fat people unfavorably as if I know nothing about being fat. What a hypocrite. For whatever reason, I feel a need to distance myself because I am closer to them than they could ever know. Any time I see fat, I see me. And it hurts. It hurts so much from the many, many rejections I suffered, simply because I was fat. When I see someone who is overweight, what may appear as my rejection of them is really self rejection and fear of ever going back. I may regret someday that I have written these words but not today. My hope in being so transparent is that my truthfulness will set me free from my own delusion and fear.

I never thought I would be the one to look down my nose at another obese person. I never imagined that I would be the person on the plane terrified that the person struggling to squeeze down the aisle would be seated next to me. Who am I to jump up abruptly on the subway because big hips make the seat tighter? How can I act this way? Why is it so important to me to distance myself from overweight people as if I never weighed nearly 400 pounds? I do because it makes me relive my own humiliation on planes when I needed a seat belt extender and another seat. Your pain is my pain, but it's killing me so I've got to let it go.

I'm in denial about so many things. The biggest being that I am not fat anymore. I have not accepted normality as a size. Is it OK that I'm not fat anymore and that I vow to never be again? If I can forgive myself for the many years I wasted thinking fitness was a four letter word, I just might make it. Dragging my fat girl past around is extra weight that I can stand to lose. If I can accept this new body and new life, maybe I'll see that the fat girl really is gone, and perhaps I have really grown into the strong woman I was raised to be.

To all the people I have shunned and shamed because of size: I deeply apologize. My repulsion was never about you but disgust with myself. Every fat person is me because I still share the pain that weight rejection brings. I take no joy in saying that I am terrified to ever be fat again. My greatest fear is rejoining the ranks of the morbidly obese. Being obese was incredibly painful. But so is a size 12 when you can't move on mentally from the former size-36 thinking.

Now that I've written these ugly truths about me and released them from my mind, they can no longer torment me. A dark secret can't haunt you in the light. I'm free to change, free to be better and free to do more. I'm just free.

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32 (NIV)