Born To Be Fat

I'm fat. There is no other way to call it. I've been fat since I was six years old and my parents and I returned home after two years in Brazil where I had been ill most of the time. Seriously ill. We came back, and wham, within half a year I was no longer the thin, fragile little girl but a roly-poly maggot. No one bothered about it. I was healthy again, and that was all my family cared for. Then my little sister was born and attention drifted from me to the baby.

When I was nineteen I starved myself into a moderately thin figure, but it did not last. I just could not keep the weight no matter how hard I tried. And NO I was no couch potato. I cycled, did sports, went dancing. And still I was fat.

I tried to hide it as well as I could. Wide clothes, practical clothes, flat shoes and a spike of guilt every time I put something in my mouth. And I only went to a doctor when I could not crawl anymore, afraid they would tell me I was too fat and needed to lose weight, when I never wanted anything more than that.

I wanted to wear something like this.



Be able to walk in these.



And I wanted to be an eye-catcher, but not because I had the widest butt on the street.

I'm a very sensible eater. I used to walk stairs whenever possible, rode the bike even during my pregnancies until I was nearly due. Granted, sports are not my favorite pastime, except throwing an American football or playing Badminton.

And yet. There are MASSES of people out there who eat way less healthy than I do, a lot more, too,  and don't work out and still are slim.

Two years ago I got sick and was diagnosed with a couple of auto-immune diseases, and the unthinkable happened: suddenly I was firmly in the clutches of doctors and hospitals. And while still no one was very interested in why I was fat, once they had started on their gazillion exams and test and found out everything about me there was to find out I thought, "What the heck, I might as well ask them why I am obese!"



A far cry from that girl in the lovely gown, right?

So they drew blood, prodded, tested, scanned again and came up with - nothing.

Now I'm in a very lucky position. My son is a doctor, and so he knows my lifestyle and how and what I eat, and he agrees I really should be WAY thinner. He is, in fact, the one prodding my GP into doing all those tests.

Last Friday I had my latest appointment at my GP's. New results, and he tells me I'm perfectly healthy - except for those auto-immune diseases - and he really sees no way of helping me reduce my weight. I broke out in tears.

He looked me up and down and said, "You know, you should be glad your metabolism is so slow. If we had bad times now you'd survive and I would die of starvation." I nearly smacked his mouth. When he saw I was upset he patted my shoulder and told me he had heard it was quite normal for women of Arab descent to put on weight when they got older. AFTER, mind you, telling me what HE ate during a normal day. And here I am, living on tomatoes and cucumbers and lean chicken, just like a Supermodel, listening to my slim doctor listing his three sandwiches for breakfast, three plates of lunch and how hungry he is at night... yeah thank you. He really, really tried to comfort me. But in effect he told me I was born to be fat, and do myself a favor and accept it.

Well, I'm not. And I'm also not going to eat the lovely fresh bread hubby just brought home. So there. Tomatoes and cucumbers it is.

And yeah, why am I telling you all this? I'm telling you because I'm going to fly to the States this summer, and my biggest fear is they won't let me on a plane because I'm too fat.