I’ll Gladly Purge on Tuesday for a Hamburger Today
It’s been said that inside every fat person, there’s a thin person, trying to break free. I would add and additionally argue that there’s also a fat person inside each fat person, whose sole job is to grab the potential thin escapee, and then sit on him or her in an attempt to halt the body image jailbreak. At least that’s how it seems in my case. I’m not the usual fat person that the media loves to embrace. At thirty-four years old, six feet, and three hundred fifty pounds, I was happy with my looks—not at all the portrait of sobbing self loathing that made for great teaser clips on daytime talk shows and reality TV makeover shows. I was in a comfortable skin. I’m what most people would call a geek—a couch dwelling junkie who seeks regular fixes of adolescent-intended entertainment: comic books, anime, pulp and media science fiction, and gaming—role playing, collectible cards, and electronic. With my body’s size, I had the raw uniform necessary to fit into such groups with ease; all I needed to do was accessorize with a ponytail of several years’ growth, a thick beard, novelty T-shirts, and glasses whose thick lenses gave my eyes an almost comic quality of enlargement to them. And as my inner fat person grew over the course of my life, he too donned a similar look and worldview—my own little inner Comic Book Guy, of The Simpsons fame.
My inner fat and thin persons had been waging war since my twenties—two arch foes, locked in desperate, eternal battle: Superman and Lex Luthor, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, Ronald McDonald and the Burger King. The battle itself seemed unwarranted and unexpected, as the thin person seemed resolved to his place in the back of the mind, having relinquished control to the inner fat person sometime in late adolescence. Then, one day, in late 1997, my inner thin person looked to his fat counterpart and simply snapped. It was the snapping that one might expect of sensationalized news stories about mild mannered citizens who go on murder rampages: “I don’t know what happened. He was always such a nice man. It’s a shame he just went off and killed his wife of fifty years like that. I mean, did he have to stab her fifty times?” Maybe it was the narcissistic personality of the thin person, repulsed by seeing a twenty-five year old trying to look and act like a slobbish sixteen year old high school nerd. Maybe it was the health stress that the inner fat person’s influence was bringing to their host body, and the realization that if the host died, both inner psyches would go with it. Maybe it was simply seeing a three-digit weight beginning with three, as in three hundred pounds (three hundred and fifteen to be precise), that set it off. Or maybe it was just a lifetime of self-repression that led the inner thin person to demand attention. There was no definable opening shot—no assassinated archdukes, no bombed military facilities, no bombed commerce buildings, no “he said, she said” tabloid stories—the war just happened, like waking up on the morning of a special occasion to find a large zit on the tip of your nose.
Tensions had been building for years. The thin person had technically been there first. It wasn’t until adolescence that the inner fat person started to exist—culled from the ashes of several failed childhood diets. But once he’d found a foothold in my mind, the fat person’s presence became overpowering and intoxicating, further strengthened by each failed diet.
In 1981, my third grade teacher, Mrs. Olson, took me into a storage closet to perform a mission of mercy. She asked me to stand on a scale while she took a reading, ninety-one pounds. The next day, after a phone call home to my mother, I was on my first official diet. A year earlier, in second grade, my parents had decided to put me on the Scarsdale Diet, but soon found that the average seven year old couldn’t cope with a restricted diet of seven hundred calories a day—especially not with a cohort of lunchroom peers who were more than happy to share pizza, fries, and hot dogs with him, as all elementary school children were encouraged to share, right? So in third grade, both my mother and teacher collaborated on a means of keeping me in check. In school, I was watched in the lunchroom, and at home, I was kept under careful surveillance. My “diet” consisted of an appetite suppressant (unfortunately trade-named “AIDS,” which would soon rebrand itself when a new disease entered the American vernacular later that year), followed by servings of pineapple, shrimp, and carrots. Two months passed, Mrs. Olson again asked me on to the scale, and we checked my weight: eighty one pounds. The next day seemed to be all but a school holiday. The principal, Mrs. Southwell, came into the classroom to congratulate me. Mrs. Olson took time out of our day to praise me and hold me up as a model to my peers. One of the class assignments that day was to extend the tradition of making handmade birthday cards for peers out to making cards of congratulations for me.
And at the end of the night, as I hung the handcrafted cards on my bedroom wall, I felt this little voice of pride welling up inside me, cheering me on to continue and maintain my weight.
My inner thin person had been born.
And for the next few years, he chided and scolded me as I would backslide, and he would cheer me on as my parents tried new diets out, trying to keep me at a “normal” weight. It was the early 1980’s, and the United States was in a recession, with families tightening their metaphorical belts and finding new ways to supplement their incomes. My paternal grandmother decided to enter the realm of small business by becoming a saleswoman for the Cambridge Diet. Cambridge was the health and fitness industry’s response to Tupperware, at lease so far as suburban pyramid schemes went. The diet plan itself was a powdered diet shake and meal substitute, which was later joined by other forms of meal substations (like puddings and diet bars) and other Cambridge-branded nutritional supplements. One person would become a supply node for his or her area, gathering a salesforce who would then go out and either find new customers or new salespeople. I never really knew where Gran was on the pyramid; I only knew that my family seemed to be her only customers. Cambridge was as ubiquitous in my family as old money, corruption, and feigned faith at a Republican fundraiser. My grandmother constantly asked me if I was consuming it, what I was doing with it, and what flavors I wanted next. I never had the heart to tell her that I couldn’t stand the product, and that the cans she had my father buy had the same lifespan as a holiday fruitcake in the cupboards. At family gatherings, my aunts would use Cambridge in all sorts of dishes, and I always found myself pushed over to the Cambridge table, while my brothers, sisters, and cousins grazed on burgers, chips, pasta salads, and desserts.
Yet the inner thin person pressed me on, insisting that I could again regain that moment of glory from third grade—both thin and celebrated. In the summer of 1986, he got his ultimate validation.
I was shipped off to the fat farm.
Weight Watchers ran diet summer camps for obese youth, and there happened to be one conveniently located in Tampa, at a residential boarding school named the Vanguard School, dubbed Camp Vanguard by Weight Watchers. For two weeks, I followed the Weight Watchers plan, while taking part in physical activities and other more clichéd camp activities. For the rest of the summer, after returning from Camp Vanguard, I continued on the plan, getting exercise by riding my bike to all points in Jupiter, Florida, all the while being cheered on by my inner thin person, who enticed me with visions of my first day in high school, when I returned to my father’s residence in Michigan for the upcoming school year—thin and attractive.
As the euphoria of high school wore off, so went my Weight Watchers and exercising. By the time Michigan was covered in its first blanket of late autumn snow, I’d regained my summer weight loss, and found that I’d made a new role within my class. I’d officially become the token “big guy” in my cohort.
“Big guy.” The phrase itself was almost intoxicating. The big guys of my youth were the ones who were celebrated, the ones who were feared, or the ones who had power. Everyone loved John Blutarsky from National Lampoon’s Animal House, and his animated namesake was always a threat to Popeye. In the cartoons of my youth, the fat character always seemed to be the casual and relaxed one—Tiny, sitting on a couch, eating burgers, as the rest of G-Force listened to a mission briefing on Battle of the Planets. And as I continued to think about it—filling that niche in the adolescent social orders in which I walked—I heard a new voice, insisting that I dive deeper into that role.
My inner fat guy was born. The inner thin guy shrunk away, defeated. In 1987, my inner thin guy all but faded away.
With a new voice, I quickly found comfort in food, and had a mechanism of rationalizing my gluttony—aspiring to be that model of oafish obesity that I figured I was destined for. And better yet, when I did face spite or criticism for my growing weight, what better a soothing mechanism than food? By tenth grade, I was attending a small private school that had no cafeteria, so students could either bring their lunches, or go to nearby fast food establishments and return to campus to eat. It was in tenth grade that my inner fat guy cemented his place in my life, and that I came to realize that for me, fast food mascots were my pimps and pushers. A pusher uses addiction as a means of hooking a customer into purchasing substances. A pimp rations out forbidden pleasures for a price. The scowls and snipes I took from my father for bringing home bags of hamburgers certainly seemed like forbidden pleasures at the time. I knew that he’d certainly voice his dissatisfaction when he saw me with a double cheeseburger, but somehow, the greasy meat patties, warmed cheese and bun, and sweet-tartness of condiments would make it go away, at least for the moment.
Ronald McDonald, the Burger King, and Wendy were my personal attaché of dealers and pimps. And with fast food within a short bike ride from my house, I was rarely far from a fix when I needed one. With Michigan’s bottle return law (and my father’s own Diet Coke addiction), I almost always had money for at least a cheeseburger, if not a full blown Whopper with fries.
Then, in my junior year, once I had a car and part time job, I was armed for greater levels of gluttony. Ironically enough, my first job was working for McDonalds, where I had access to all the free food, I could eat, and an automobile to get me to a grocery store when I wasn’t feeling like burgers and fries. Moreover, by my junior year, I found that I could get peers to pay for my lunch simply by engaging in acts of trained gluttony—eating multiple cheeseburgers or soft tacos, and trying to avoid throwing up for a defined period of time.
Replacing clothes was almost like a badge of honor, and the inner fat guy seemed jubilant with each new pant size and each move up the shirt racks. I had my pre-college physical in July 1990, and got the first word of warning from a doctor about my weight, then at 250 pounds at the age of seventeen.
In college, my weight continued upwards, and the inner fat guy enjoyed his time as the dominant personality. Campus dining halls were buffet-style dining, and I would spend many hours pouring over books, as I equally poured over plates upon plates of food. My part time job was delivering for Dominos pizza, and I would often bring home excess pies. A Chinese buffet in Tallahassee had my description and name on a banned list.
By 1997, my weight had started to take a toll on me. I was feeling tired, and my knees were starting to ache from daily movement. That Fourth of July weekend, flying to a convention in Albany, New York, I had to request a seat belt extender from a flight attendant for the first time, because I’d outgrown the standard seatbelt. But requesting the extender was an act of mixed emotions. For all the jubilation, the elation, and the glee in the epic victory dance from my inner fat guy, I felt a little streak of revulsion in my mind. My inner thin guy had stirred from his ten-year coma. But later that weekend, when I found that I’d been sought after for romantic attention because of my weight and size, my inner fat guy promptly threw a pillow over the face of his counterpart, in an attempt to stifle any potential insurgencies. However, the inner thin guy’s awakening continued later that month.
My doctor referred me to a sleep specialist, suspecting obstructive sleep apnea—a condition wherein the victim’s breathing is blocked during normal sleep. I wasn’t at all surprised to discover that I had it (and that I had what the sleep study technician described as one of the worst cases he’d seen in his career, where my breathing would stop about every forty five seconds), but I was surprised when I stood on a scale and saw the number.
Three hundred and fifteen pounds.
Again, my inner fat guy performed a victory dance. I was there. I was at “that” level. I’d finally hit a number that shocked people, that got attention. But at the same time, my inner thin guy finally threw the pillow from his face and rose up. Three hundred pounds was too much. Even seeing it, I remembered the mixed feelings—the elation tinged with revulsion, tinged with almost fear. For the first time I saw my weight not as a source of pride, but as one of concern. I was twenty five and three hundred and fifteen pounds. What if the weight trend continued? How long was it before I was moving around on a scooter, or worse, how long before I was immobile? How many “save the fat guy” shows could Jerry Springer do in a year, if Oprah wasn’t available? Could I really tolerate becoming one of Richard Simmons’ pet projects? My inner thin person pounced on the self doubt, and the real war began to brew.
My inner fat person didn’t take kindly to this incursion and territory challenge. For the rest of July and all of August, the two circled each other, sizing one another up—my inner fat person’s slobbish, Blutarsky-esque Edward Hyde to the prim, proper, straight-laced façade of my inner thin person’s Henry Jekyll, the angelic and devilish figures poised on each shoulder, casting dirty glances and thoughts as each tried to take control. I would try to start a diet one day, only to retreat for Double Quarter Pounders the next.
The war officially began on a day in early September, when I learned that an obese mutual acquaintance had died while working out, trying to lose weight. Little more than a decade my senior, I saw in his death, a very possibly ending for myself—that I might reach a point of no return on my weight, where even healthy activity could prove deadly. The inner thin guy charged in and quickly pacified his counterpart. I dieted. I exercised. I rode through periods of cravings and binge attacks like a junkie, locking myself in my apartment as a metaphorical means of tying myself to a bed. By May 1998, my weight was down to 225, the thinnest it had been in my adult life.
Yet that was just one battle in the larger war. By 2002, I’d grown back up to 300 pounds, and my inner fat guy had reassumed control. Size was power and competence. Food was a comforting agent. My body was very quick to fall back into old habits of edible self-medication and gluttony. By 2004, I’d all but learned to shut the inner thin guy out. I knew that what I was doing was unhealthy. By thirty two years old, there was no fooling myself. I needed no means to bargain or convince myself into letting my weight go. I’d actually reached a point where I liked what I saw. I was comfortable with it. Being large, with the beard, ponytail, and thick glasses had become my “normal,” while the idea of me as thin was clearly an other now. I couldn’t even comprehend it.
…However, when I stepped on a scale in September 2006 and saw three hundred and sixty five pounds, I had a hard time tuning out my inner thin person, and I braced for the inevitable.
War is hell.
Every fat person has both an inner fat person and inner thin person. The inner thin person tries to represent reason—preaching the benefits of looking thin and living healthily. The inner fat person takes a more hedonistic approach, valuing pleasure, comfort, and immediacy over the long term. For twenty years now, I’ve been watching them play battles out, with my body as their battleground. When I’ve sided with one, the other conspires to regain my favor, and the fight begins anew…
…and I truly fear that their fight is going to take me down with them before it concludes.
I was happy with my looks-not at all the portrait of sobbing self loathing that made for great teaser clips on daytime talk shows and reality TV makeover shows. I was in a comfortable skin–what most people would call a 
