My Story

"I wish I could take this knife and cut that fat off of you."

This was said to me when I was about nine years old, by my mother. It's no surprise that after hearing this I began to have recurrent nightmares about her trying to kill me!

Now, it's very popular these days to lay the blame for everything at the feet of one's parents, and it's something that I don't necessarily ascribe to. But like many people who are discovering the size acceptance movement, I have looked back over my life to gain enlightenment about who and what I am now -- and there are many moments like that one.

My name is Tove Foss, and presently I am a thirty-nine year old woman. Frankly, I have no idea what I weigh, as I forswore scales about two years ago. I wear a size 22 dress. I am six feet tall, and wear a size eleven/twelve woman's shoe. I have an extra large frame for a woman, and have always been powerfully built, with a tendency to heavy muscling. At times when dieting has made me underweight, I still had to wear "plus size" clothing. I'm just big!

My mother is five foot five and weighs about one hundred and thirty pounds. My father is six foot four, and weighs in the neighborhood of two hundred and eighty pounds. He weighed more than three hundred pounds during most of the last forty years. When I was born, in 1959, I was a healthy full term infant and weighed eight pounds, six ounces, which was considered a bit larger than the norm at that time.

It was evident early that I was going to be a large person, as I was always tall for my age. I was not particularly heavy, but was always sturdily and solidly built. I don't remember any particular restrictions being placed on my eating when I was of preschool age, and it wasn't until I entered kindergarten that I began to hear the word "fat" hurled at me.

I've looked back at the photographs of myself at that age -- four to five years old. I WAS NOT FAT! But I was larger than the other children in my class -- at least a head taller and far more sturdy and powerful. I was the one who always sat at the back of the room, stood in the back row when pictures were taken -- and kids called me fat, even though I wasn't. Those kids didn't know of another word to describe someone who was large, so they used phrases like "fat elephant" and "fatty, fatty, two by four" to taunt me. I tended to be shy and sensitive, and had been taught not to hurt others. This treatment was a terrible shock to me, and when kids know that their cruelty is hitting the target, unfortunately, they become more cruel. It wasn't long before I was left out of games and social circles at school.

At that age, of course, I didn't understand these kids were acting out of ignorance and prejudice. I thought there was something wrong with me. I wasn't worthy of being included in games and groups because I was fat.

When I told my parents that I was fat, they told me I wasn't. But the taunting stuck. I was not a particularly active child. Years later I was to find that I have exercise induced asthma, and the tendency to get so breathless that I felt and frequently was sick, combined with the hot and humid weather of Louisiana, where I grew up, was more than enough to discourage me from a lot of strenuous activity. Still, I rode my bike, and loved to roller skate, though I avoided running whenever possible!

I was at that school for four years, and I was always the tallest kid in the room. The "fat" bashing continued, frequently in the hearing of teachers, without any sort of check. I was glad to change schools in the fourth grade.

It was in my new school, when I was in fourth grade, that I first met a child who was very obese. For once I wasn't the largest kid in the class, because there was a girl there who was already "supersized". I never taunted her, but most of the other kids did, cruelly. They were never stopped, though the teachers heard it. I was occasionally teased, but was no longer the upper end of the spectrum. I enjoyed that year of school very much and made a few friends, though I was far from a social butterfly.

I changed schools again, for fifth grade. This was during the sixties in the South, during the time of forced integration. School populations were constantly being shifted in an effort to achieve racial balance, and I was put into different schools each year until I entered high school. This in itself was handicapping, as I was always a "new kid", but another factor had presented itself as well.

I had grown to be five feet, eight inches tall, and was the youngest kid in the fifth grade. Additionally, I was entering puberty, and was just starting to develop, at a time when most of the other girls were still slender little girls. I wore a size ten, D width women's shoe, and since I was so tall and sturdy, I needed women's clothing -- but it didn't really fit right, as I was still child-shaped! By this time I was very sensitive about my clothing in general, as it was usually very difficult to find anything that fit -- clothes and shoe shopping were an endless nightmare of salespeople who stared at me like I was a freak or made rude remarks about the size of my feet. My mother had more than once had to resort to buying boy's shoes for me, and the kids at school caught onto that right away.

The taunting and torment was endless, and for fifteen years I had no memory of that school year. I had repressed it completely, and when it finally came back to me when I was an adult, I was horrified to find myself bursting into tears! It was at this time also that physical education classes began in the schools -- including the required weight and height measurement. We were marched down to the office, and each child's height and weight were taken. The children who were in the "normal range" for their age had their weights called out. When I was weighed, the principal didn't call out the number but whispered it to the woman who was filling out the report cards. She shook her head and wrote it on my report card, which was then given to me.

I didn't have it long. The minute school was out, I was chased down and since I couldn't run for long, it was soon in the hands of schoolmates, and horror of horrors, my weight was known to one and all.

I weighed one hundred and thirty six pounds.

I know. I know, you're saying "at five foot eight, that isn't fat". And I wasn't fat! But I was much larger and heavier than the other kids, and THAT was the norm that I was being held up against. After that, school was sheer hell. I cried a lot, sometimes even losing control at school, which made the teasing even more intense. I was on the verge of puberty, and began to put on the weight that most girls gain prior to menarche.

At this point, my mother panicked. Unbeknownst to me at the time, her own mother had always made weight an issue, and my mother had been an compulsive dieter and eater for most of her adult life. Due to unhappiness and hormonal changes, I started to eat a lot -- and gain a lot of weight. By the end of fifth grade, that one hundred and thirty six pounds had gone up to one hundred and seventy, and for the first time in my life, I was what could have been called fat. I had gone through periods of "chubbiness" and "slenderness" before, as a result of growth spurts (most children put on weight prior to a growth spurt), but for the first time I was really heavy.

So the dieting that was to continue for the next twenty-eight years began.

In the Sixties, "high protein" was the catchword. We were heavy meat eaters at my house. My meals were curtailed, but it was my after school eating that became the bone of contention. I was usually ravenous after school, and miserable as well, and sought to control both the physical and mental pain through food. Mother tried to control what I was eating as an after school snack, and the battle was on. I learned to sneak food and hide what I was eating. I would frequently eat so much that I was full by dinner time, but ate dinner anyway.

But during the summer between fifth and sixth grade, my weight went down. This was a pattern during my school years -- gain during the school term and then lose the extra weight over the summer. However, during that summer, I got my first period, at nine. I was now well into puberty and five feet, ten inches tall. I grew so fast that I had growing pains. I liked to swim, and was on my neighborhood swim team. Because I was so strong and large, I won a lot, but it gave me little comfort, as by now I saw myself as hugely fat and ugly.

Now, when I look at the pictures of myself from that time, I see that I was not fat. I was big boned, large muscled, and at times my weight went up and down to the point where I was fat. But I believed that I was, and despaired of it -- and my mother's close monitoring of my weight and despair over outfitting me in appropriate clothing for my age when I was larger than many women only added to my conviction that I was too big and horrible for words.

Sixth grade -- another new school. I was the only menstruating girl in the class. Someone saw the sanitary napkin in my purse one day, and that was the beginning of complete hell. Still sitting at the back of the room. At this point, I was totally introverted at school, always hiding behind a book. My IQ was in the genius range, but that didn't matter to other kids. On Saturdays I roller skated, or went off into the country on my bike. My younger brother had begun to have retinal detachments as a complication of a birth defect. A lot of my mother's time and concern had to go toward his doctor's appointments and hospital stays. I hated school, and hurried home as fast as I could to escape taunting. I didn't play with anyone any more, but stayed in my room and read -- and ate.

My weight was over two hundred pounds the day my male gym teacher weighed us in and gloatingly roared out the reading to an auditorium full of jeering kids. It has taken me years to be able to face that memory. The reasoning behind these public weigh-ins eludes me to this day.

Another diet. No sugar on my cereal -- instead, I was doled out a packet of Sweet 'N Low, which was hideously bitter. I carried my lunch to school instead of eating in the cafeteria so that my intake was limited -- something else that singled me out as "different". It never varied. A sandwich, usually one slice of ham and one of cheese, and apple and a dill pickle. I began to know what it was to really feel hungry and lightheaded, particularly right before lunch and before I got home from school. Then I would eat. My mother wanted me to have fruit -- well, I liked fruit. I could eat a dozen oranges in a sitting. I ate while I read, never paying any attention to what I was eating. I ate in front of the television. Then I ate dinner.

I hated being a girl and being so big. I wanted to be a boy. Girl's clothing in those days consisted of micro miniskirts and hip hugger jeans, and they were never available in my size. I wore men's clothing a lot of the time, as they were easy to find in sizes that fit. I didn't take care of my hair or skin. I hated what I looked like. I hated my life.

Seventh and eighth grade at that place in that time were called "junior high school" and were supposed to be a transitional stage between elementary school and high school. For me, they were a terrible time. Once again, my school was changed. The children in my neighborhood were bussed to a brutalized all black neighborhood to integrate the local school there. The poverty of many of the kids was appalling. Many of the white kids were from upper middle class neighborhoods, and many of them were immersed in the drug culture at the age of twelve. While I was at that school, three boys died of drug overdoses. A number of girls became pregnant while I was there. It was my first experience with the complete cliquishness of "cool". If I thought I had been outcast and tormented before, it was nothing compared to the situation at this school. I was definitely NOT cool. I was definitely among the pariahs. And once again, I gained weight.

I couldn't wear anything that was cool, but lived in stretch pants with the sewn in seam down the front of the leg or mens slacks and jeans. They were almost always too short. I thought the "cool" kids, who continually disrupted classes and didn't do any work, were jerks-- and that is largely the truth! Kids like me who did the work and showed interest in what was being taught, were not considered cool, and we were tormented and bullied continually. Additionally, the black kids resented the "white invasion" of their school, and also targeted us. I hated going to that school. I began to suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome. My weight skyrocketed and my mother put me on another diet -- this time a version of Weight Watchers. My periods were irregular and painful, so I paid my first visit to a gynecologist. He prescribed amphetamines for me to lose weight. They made me sicker, and I cried all the time. After a while, they were stopped. My weight did go down, but I began for the first time to know what real hunger was.

My mother had found a type of bread that had only thirty calories per slice -- by dint of each slice being only about a quarter of an inch thick! My sandwiches usually fell apart! I was still having one thin sandwich for lunch, with a pickle, celery (sometimes something very weird, like cut up raw squash) and an apple or pear. I had one small bowl of cereal for breakfast. Dinner was usually a small portion of meat, vegetables and a tiny amount of starch. I tended to pig out after school, but not so much, because now I was concerned about my weight too. My physical activity had fallen off greatly, because I no longer felt healthy, between the bowel problems, headaches, dizziness and tiredness, the weight and what I now know was depression.

I was lightheaded to the point of nearly fainting before meals, and sometimes I would want to vomit because my stomach was a boiling vat of acid. I was hungry. My stomach was empty. Sometimes it would growl so loudly in class that other people could hear it. Sometimes I thought I was going to faint when I stood up -- my vision would go dark and my head would spin. When I could get at food, again, in the afternoons after my hour and a half long bus ride, I ate compulsively.

I lost forty pounds in eighth grade. I was at my "right weight". But I couldn't find clothing that fit -- not the cool stuff that other kids were wearing, because I still had to wear plus sizes, just because of the sheer mass of my body.

This time the weight went on after my diet faster than it had ever come back before -- and more than I had lost! I went to another school after junior high -- to high school. We had moved to another neighborhood that was even more cliquish, and from day one my brother and I didn't fit in. I'd had high hopes for that school, but they were quickly dashed. While it was not so brutalized as my junior high school, it was very sports oriented. Football is a religion in the South! I didn't care for it, and knew very little about it. I didn't realize that I had basically dug my own grave when I didn't join the Boosters or go to the games. Showing interest in academics was another big mistake! And at this point I really was heavy -- in excess of two hundred pounds.

Ninth grade passed without any real dieting, but it began again in tenth grade. I began skipping breakfast, to cut calories and because I felt sick on the bus if I had eaten before leaving home. By the second half of tenth grade, I didn't eat lunch either, trying to lose weight. I still ate the bulk of my calories when I returned from school, but I had cut that back as well. I ate dinner, frequently losing control and taking seconds (of course, I was starving myself). I was consuming about a thousand calories a day -- and I was STILL growing. In tenth grade, I topped out at the height that I am now -- five feet, eleven and three quarters inches. I just go ahead and add the extra quarter of an inch and say that I'm six feet tall!

The Dr. Atkins Diet featured prominently in my life while I was in high school. You may remember it, or have heard about it, and how dangerous it was. No carbohydrate whatsoever -- no rice, bread, cereal, vegetables, fruit -- all the things that we need as the bulk of our diet. Instead, you were to eat meat, cheese, eggs and milk -- a very high fat diet that resulted in your body developing a condition called ketosis, where you literally cannibalize your own cells. Of course it is preferable that you use up your fat cells first, but the body doesn't differentiate that much, and will use any cells that are "easy acces" -- including the cells of your heart, liver, kidneys and brain. This is a dangerous condition, sometimes suffered by diabetics whose blood sugars are out of control, and is no laughing matter. This diet made me sicker than anything else I ever tried, but thank God I had the sense to discontinue it after weeks of headaches, dizziness, trembling and severe constipation followed by explosive bouts of diarrhea.

But I continued to diet all through the rest of high school, and by the end of it, was eating only five hundred calories a day to maintain a weight of about one hundred seventy pounds. My "goal" was one hundred forty, which I finally attained in my senior year of high school -- right before I got good and sick and had to have some medical intervention because I was underweight! Now, when I look at the pictures of myself, I looked ghastly -- sunken in some places, bloated in others. My hair started falling out. My periods stopped. But people congratulated me on my weight loss all the time -- and when the weight started to go back on, commiserated and expressed their regret that I "couldn't discipline myself to keep the weight off". I'd like to see any of them starve for years like I did!

I attended college, still starving at about one thousand calories a day, and worked at a women's clothing store, as well as working as a musician. I was interested in clothes, but was always disappointed to find that I still couldn't wear anything but "plus" sizes -- if I really dieted, I could wear a size fourteen, which is the low end of "plus" sizes. In 1977, size fourteens were pretty matronly, and I didn't care for much of what was available. Still, I amassed a pretty nice wardrobe. My weight fluctuated between two hundred twenty and one hundred eighty while I was in college, which is actually within a good range for me -- but I felt that it should be lower! So I alternately dieted and dieted more stringently, sometimes lowering my calorie count to five hundred a day.

Right out of college, I married my best friend. Big mistake. Still, we made the marriage last fifteen years, which we shouldn't have done. I weighed one hundred and eighty four pounds the day I was married and looked wonderful. I knew within a year that the marraige was a terrible error, and had a complete emotional breakdown. After that, the weight went back up. I couldn't seem to get it down again, no matter how hard I tried. I found that I have polycystic ovarian disease, which causes sterility, menstrual irregularity, hirsutism and obesity. My weight went up -- and up -- and up . . .

I saw a Dr. Feelgood when I was a young adult. He was prescribing amphetamines, thyroid hormone (whether your thyroid was deficient or not), Lasix (a strong diuretic) and potassium (to counteract the negative and potentially fatal effects of the Lasix) for people. I lasted for five months on this regimen, and lost about thirty pounds. The amphetamines made me very very crazy, so I discontinued my visits to Dr. Feelgood, particularly when a doctor nearby who was doling out the same treatment had two patients die. And the weight went back on, plus another fifteen pounds.

After a couple of years we moved to New Orleans. Then to New York. Then to Pennsylvania. My husband changed jobs frequently. Money troubles. Family troubles. My parents divorced. My husband was in a serious auto accident. I had a series of nightmare jobs. I eventually left the work force to homeschool our adopted son and run a small family farm to offset expenses. I kept getting heavier, but it was a gradual gain so I didn't really notice it. Our son turned out to have severe emotional illness -- then diabetes -- then we found that he had Fetal Alcohol Effect. Our barn burned down with all our animals in it, destroying five years of hard work. My husband lost his job, and went back to school. The next summer, drought finished the farm.

Back to New Orleans, so my husband could finish graduate school. He changed his major to a field that would not result in any sort of viability as far as a job was concerned. Our son had to be continually watched so I couldn't take a job. We were living far below the poverty level. My weight was still going up, but I had long since stopped watching it, and lived in a homemade skirt and two t-shirts.

My husband had revealed to me some years before that he was "bisexual" but claimed that he could live as a heterosexual. Now, he told me he was gay, and wished to lead a gay lifestyle.

I discovered the Internet, and made a website -- and met Brian.

And fell in love with Brian.

And realized that I weighed more than four hundred pounds.

And was suddenly hit with pneumonia, gall bladder stones and shingles all in one fell swoop.

Have you ever thought you were about to die? I thought I was about to die just about every moment of the week that it took for the gallstone to pass. I was at home, without medical care because we had no medical coverage. I was far too ill to get to a doctor or even ask to be taken to one. I was finally managing to sit upright, with the gall bladder pain so bad that I couldn't hold back the moans of pain, when I looked at my husband and said "I think you're going to have to call . . .", knowing that I had to get to a hospital or die.

Then the pain changed -- it was still there, but the nature of it shifted from "I'm killing you", to "not this time". And I knew I was going to live.

And I knew I had to do something about my condition.

As soon as I could, I started to walk. I had been very sedentary for some time. I also cut most of the fat out of my diet. I was appalled to find that I couldn't hold myself on my hands and knees, or rise easily from a chair. It had been a long time since I could buckle my car seat belt easily. I could still do it, but barely.

A good bit of weight came off. For the first time in my life, I gave myself permission NOT to eat everything on my plate. I let myself enjoy walking and riding a bike. My strength slowly began to come back, and my weight went down. But for the first time, I was not really trying to lose weight -- I was trying to regain health. Weight loss was an inevitable side effect, but it wasn't what I was after!

My husband and I decided to divorce, and my son elected to stay in New Orleans with him. I went to New York to live with my mother and get to know Brian better -- and prepare to join him in Australia, once I had raised the money to do so. I continued to eat a healthy diet and be moderately active. It took nine months to get everything together and move to Australia.

"AHA!", you're thinking, you're telling a weight loss story! This is supposed to be about size acceptance! What gives?

This isn't about weight loss. It's about the particular series of events that led to me becoming a very heavy person, some of them within my control, some of them beyond it. I did lose some weight as the result of changing my lifestyle to one that was healthier, after years of declining standards, to the point where I nearly died.

I am not a slender person now. I never will be. I will never be a "skinny Minnie", but am what my dearest Brian describes as "plush". Most people would describe me as "fat". And I am. But I'm healthy with it now, instead of dying! And I'm happy to be this way, instead of continually striving to reach some phantom goal that will make my life perfect!

How do I feel about all of the above? Well, at this point, at peace with it. People who hurt me, deliberately or not, have long since been either forgiven or forgotten. I know that my mother's efforts to have me lose weight were an attempt to help me, and that very little, if anything, was known about the deleterious effects of yo-yo dieting at the time. The thinking in the Sixties and Seventies regarding diet was very simple, though erroneous -- you went on a diet, lost weight, and all was well. Now we know that isn't the case.

In many ways, I feel fortunate. I never submitted to some of the harsher measures to lose weight that others have, stomach stapling, intestinal bypass, liposuction. I refused to attempt any liquid protein diets, though it was suggested, and I didn't spend a great deal of time using "diet pills" All in all, I escaped relatively unscathed -- if you can consider the fact that my weight was driven higher than it probably ever would have been by the continual yo-yo dieting. I also suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and hypoglycemia, though I have learned to control these conditions so that they don't impact my life to any great degree. My gall bladder is definitely touchy, and keeps me in line regarding fats! I've attained a degree of peace with myself, my body and the fact that I will never fit society's "norm" of the slender and perfect woman.

But, sometimes when I look at old pictures of the child and young woman that I was, I grit my teeth -- because in so many of them I WAS NOT FAT!!!!! I was big, large framed and powerful, but so often, I was not fat. And sometimes I think that if I had been left alone and allowed to develop in the way that I was intended to -- I wouldn't be fat today.

Big, yes, the way I was genetically programmed to be. Nothing was going to change that -- no diet, no pill, no exercise program. There was no way at all I was going to fit the "cookie cutter" image that I tried to attain for so long.

But not fat.

Actually, it doesn't cross my mind that often, because I'm too busy living! And greatly enjoying it. I'm happier now, at nearly forty, than at any other time in my life, and a great deal of that happiness is due to acceptance of what I am at this time in my life.

So that's my journey. Let's go on from here!

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