The first time I really remember being concerned about my weight was in 2nd grade. It was fitness week and while my classmates were excited to show off their athleticism and beat their last record, I was worried about getting weighed. Yes, I was a kid, but I wasn’t dumb. My teacher could see the stress on my face walking up to the scale. She didn’t have to make me feel better about my weight and make excuses for it, but she tried anyway. She told me muscle weighs more than fat and since I dance so much, that’s why I weigh more than everyone else…Ok.
I think I became conscious of my weight way too early, but our society shoves it in our face so much that you’d literally have to be living under a rock to not be affected in some way. I never was a skinny kid, but when I started to notice how I was different I was consumed with wanting to be “normal” but not knowing how to change. So lets take a quick run through of some weight related events I remember from my childhood:
4th grade, I got my first boyfriend. Don’t judge me lol. We hugged, so of course that made it official. Our budding relationship lasted 1 day, at most. As we sat next to each other in class I remember he leaned over and asked, “when are you gonna lose weight?” … That was the end of that.
6th grade, I got bullied for the first time. The girl kept picking on me, called me plenty of names, but of course the only words I really clung to were “fat ass”. That was when I got into my first fight. My friends tried to make me feel better, but at the end of the day I agreed with the girl. I was fat.
8th grade, I started talking to a boy that lived nearby. He was older and went to a different school so I was excited. We stopped hanging out as much because he became interested in a different girl, and I immediately got “friend zoned” before there was even a term for it. The new girl he liked? None other than the skinny girl who bullied me in 6th grade for being fat. Perfect.
9th grade, I remember accidentally overhearing my friends talk about my size once. Other than that, I wasn’t really bullied and I’d started to create an identity for myself. I was the dancer. I was the freshman good enough to make the Varsity dance team, so I clung to that because my name was now affiliated with something positive. I hung out with some of the “cool kids” and I’d started finding other groups of people to hang out with too. I almost floated from one group of friends to another but I still had my core group and I was still the oddball, the shortest, the heaviest, the darkest, and in my eyes; the DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend). Side note: a movie was even created about us DUFFs lol. But back to the story, high school was high school. My friends began to date more. I didn’t. I felt like I would forever be just a friend. At a time when you start talking to boys more and you share just as many clothes as secrets with your friends, I felt like I had no boys and I couldn’t fit any of my friends clothes. Basically, in my 14year old mind, I was losing.
Things got better as I got older, probably because the older you get the less you’re really concerned with others, but for the most part I was pretty consistent and used to being the outsider, no pun intended, and by “outsider” I mean, “the friend of the cute girls.”
So what changed? At my heaviest, in my sophomore year of college I participated in a dance show where we had to audition for certain pieces. This specific dance I was asked to be in had partner work. It was too hard for most of the boys to lift me so I ended up being taken out of that section. My professor had to get performance evaluations from the choreographers and grade us accordingly, so she had the special task and responsibility of relaying mine. The choreographer told her I had a previous relationship with her when I used to tap as a kid but she had no idea that I did other styles too. She thought I was very talented, but I would never be successful dancing unless I lost the weight.
So it begins.
I felt embarrassed at first, but then I looked at it as a challenge. After all, there were very few things that I wanted and couldn’t get. With no real plan in mind, I started doing what I thought was right.
Step one: I stopped eating meat. I was kind of tired of it and I’d started seeing more information on the meat industry so I decided meat wasn’t that important to me. My experiment started as a month trial and continued. It wasn’t that hard since I wasn’t a dedicated meat-eater in the first place, but with the only food options in Ada, OH being the buffet in the cafeteria, McDonalds, and Taco Bell, finding a variety of healthier food proved to be a task within itself. I mean who wants to eat salad every day? No thanks lol
Originally I’d stopped eating meat all together. Not vegan because I still ate animal bi-products, but nothing that could look back at me on the plate. When I went home for summer break I got yelled at by my mom lol. I never told her what I was trying to do. She was not a supporter of being vegetarian, because she felt I needed protein and if you know my mom, you know she does not hold her tongue haha. She would however feel better about not eating meat if I at least ate seafood, so that’s what I did. My dad made veggie/bean burgers and salmon for our 4th of July parties, my sister would make baked beans with no meat, and my mom would make things like greens with no meat just to support what I was trying to do. It was a team effort. I tried to start working out in addition to my dancing and realized very quickly that I love dancing but I hate working out! Needless to say the gym lasted for a good week and that was it, until the next time I got a motivational boost. I actually started losing weight! I don’t weigh myself, so I can’t really give you exact numbers, but I can say my clothes began to fit differently and people weren’t treating me the same. Since I was seeing some results, I wanted more and I decided to make more changes.
Step two: I stopped drinking pop and juice… for the most part. I mean what else was I supposed to mix with my vodka lmao. Now this was hard. Ginger Ale is my favorite. I even love the more unconventional pops like Root Beer and Dr. Pepper. If it was fizzy and sweet I’d drink it, but I heard they were bad for you so they had to go.
I continued with my no meat, no sugary drinks life and about a year a few months into it I got my first overt validation that I was doing something right. Celebrating a friends birthday at a club one night, a cute guy sitting at a booth tapped me and said, “hey tell your fat friend to stop bumping into me.” Asshole I know. The girl was in our group, but I didn’t really know her and clearly this guy was over her touching him so I had to figure out a way to move this girl away from him without hurting her feelings. As I’m doing so I realized, I’m not “the fat friend”. Win.
My body slowly continued to change throughout senior year and into my first year out of college. I joined a dance team and it seemed like they were obsessed with weight. Their nicknames for people were “Phat ___” or “Big ___”, they talked about how wide members were (to their face), etc. One girl was vegan and really into clean eating, so I started to absent mindedly take tips from her. I began eating grapefruit, I started limiting my dairy intake (but I love cheese so cutting that out was dead lol), I started doing ab exercises while I wasn’t doing anything. I’d made progress with my weight, but all of a sudden, being around this team made me feel like I hadn’t accomplished anything and I was embarrassed about my weight all over again.
In 2013 I started dating this guy that I admittedly thought was way out of my league. I’d never felt anything like this before. He made me feel so comfortable with myself, with my body, with my way of life in general. I still had my doubts about my body in the back of my head but it was like he made those parts seem bearable. I wondered what it was that he could possibly like about my chubby insecure self but when I was with him my thighs were the last thing on my mind. He’d sparked a new confidence in myself which is bad to say that it took a man to do it, I get it, but he did so whatever. Soon after, I left to go to flight attendant training, he moved, I gained some weight, and our relationship crumbled. A few months later he told me he cheated on me. I began to wonder if some of my weight gain caused it, but no he was just insecure and weak. I was emotionally and physically at a low point so once again I was back to square one. This time, I felt more alone than ever, I’d just moved to California, land of the avocado toast and cosmetic surgery, I didn’t really have any friends to hang out with, and I was trying to pursue a dancing career, so I became more obsessed with losing weight than ever before.
I felt as though I wasn’t succeeding as quickly as I wanted to in the dance world and the main reason was my weight, because as the guest choreographer in college said, I will never succeed unless I lost the pounds. A few months later I decided to set a goal for myself. I wanted to see how much I could lose by the date of a specific audition and see if it changed anything.
Step Three: The day after Thanksgiving 2014 I decided to restrict my diet even more. Liquor: No, Sweets: No, Eating less than 3hrs before I go to sleep: Nope. I began reading the ingredients on almost everything. If I couldn’t pronounce what was on the box or if it had more than 5-10 ingredients it was out. I drank a lot of green tea, I drank my coffee black, I used coconut and almond milk, I limited bread and cheese in general, I ate a lot of soup, I ate a lot of oatmeal to satisfy any sweet cravings or if I was hungry but it was too late for me to eat, I added cinnamon or cayenne pepper to my meals and ate a slice of lemon after each meal because I felt like those things would help to speed up my metabolism. I would go out to eat with my friends after the club (which I never drank in) and while they were eating burgers or pancakes (I love pancakes) I would look the lowest calorie thing I could find on the menu. Sliced tomatoes. That’s depressing lmao. I was on a mission and you couldn’t convince me to do otherwise.
Two months later came the audition. I made it further than ever before. Affirmation that I’m still doing the right thing. I’m not sure how much I lost since I don’t weigh myself, but looking back at pictures I can see the difference. Parts of my personal challenge turned into habits, so even though the audition passed I still kept some of my dietary restrictions. I was happy. I still had parts of my body I wanted to change, but I’d made more progress than ever before and it distracted me from everything I was unhappy with in my life. I didn’t think anything about my weight loss being too much until family and friends started making passive aggressive comments. At first I brushed it off thinking it’s just different for them to see me this way, but then it started to make me mad. I feel like its taboo when you’re fat and no one wants to say anything, but when you start to lose weight all of a sudden everyone has so many opinions. Although I’d honestly thought about it (I don’t have the balls for it and I didn’t want to be that dramatic girl like in the movies lol), I wasn’t doing anything dangerous so I ignored all of their concerns. Now looking back at some pictures, I can kind of understand why they were concerned. KIND OF.
Fast forward to today, a few years later, I still catch myself reading the ingredients on labels by habit or going through time periods that being skinny is all I can think about. I’m a firm believer in the saying that weight loss is 80% what you eat, 20% exercise (I think those are the numbers). Through this whole process, I really only changed the food I was eating. I’ve always had some form of exercise, but clearly my food choices were too much trash for any physical activity to have an effect. I think I burned myself out. It’s exhausting being that restrictive, and I decided it’s not that serious. It’s still a giant kick to the stomach when a famous choreographer tells me, “you’re great, but If you want to work, you need to lose weight.” Yes this just happened last month, and I almost fell back into ALL of my old habits because of her status and I know she just wants to help, but at this point I’m over it. If you like me, you’ll like me regardless of what my body looks like. All I can do is be the best me I can be. I needed to learn to be confident with what I have to offer and stop seeking satisfaction from others. I will always be a short curvy girl and that’s ok. I’ve gained enough weight back mostly to fill out my face, but I still freak out on my “chubby” days as any other person. It’s a process. Overall, I’m just taking life as it comes, living how I want, keeping the good, trashing the bad, and finding the joy in navigating my world being MY best, genuine, unapologetic self.
xo,
Kaylah
