Am I too fat? Even though I’m a guy, I worry a lot about my weight. I know what it’s like to be fat, so I’m careful about what I eat

“The typical girl at my high school wants to look perfect. If she weighs 117 pounds, she still thinks she’s fat. If she weighs 110, her butt will be too big. If her butt isn’t too big, her hips will be too big. If not her hips, then her legs. So she and her friends carry water bottles, and smoke cigarettes to suppress their appetites, and nibble carrots and celery for lunch. “Do you think this skirt makes me look fat?” they’ll ask each other. “God, I’m so fat!”
Oh no, not again. It’s frustrating because they’re not fat but they keep saying that they are. I think to myself, “Shut up, you look fine. Stop talking about it.” Then I feel bad that there’s so much pressure on them to look paper-thin.
And I have to admit, I worry about my weight too. But as a guy, I feel like I’m not supposed to worry about it. When I go out to a restaurant, I only drink water. If I go with my friends to a fast-food place, I patiently wait until they finish their orders. Then I whisper “diet Coke,” and I order my burrito without the sour cream or guacamole. On hot days when my clothes seem to stick to me, I feel the most self-conscious. Any time I have to take my shirt off, like when I go swimming, I look around, wondering if anyone is looking at my blubbery belly. But am I really fat? Maybe I can’t see myself clearly, just like the girls at my school. Maybe I overreact. But I know that no matter what, I’ll still be afraid of what other people think.

I was depressed after my parent’s divorce
For as long as I can remember, I have been conscious about my weight. After my parents got divorced when I was 4, I remember going through a tough depression. One morning before school, after I gulped down three bowls of cereal, my mother asked me why I was eating so much. I told her I was sad about the divorce. She seemed to understand. Food was like a kind of cushioning for me, from all the fights and the pulling back and forth between my parents and the loneliness.
When I played soccer, I was slower and sweatier then everyone else. My stomach bulged out of the light blue uniform. The coach hardly put me in the game—I was simply “too big.” The day the coach told me that I walked home crying, hating myself. It didn’t help when other kids called me “fat ass,” “ogre” and “pig.”
At one point I was so big that it was hard to find clothes that fit. Once my parents and I spent all day trying to find some pants. It was a hot day. As I tried to pull them on, the pants stuck to the sweat on my legs. I held my stomach in and fastened the button. The pain from the tight pants was excruciating, and my belly hung over the waist of my pants. Finally we found some gray-black pants with ugly yellow stitching down the side, and bought several pairs. I never even wore them, they just hung in my closet until I gave them away.
When I was in sixth grade a Nutri-System weight loss center opened up near my house. I begged my father to take me to it. He didn’t think I was fat, but after I insisted that I was, he finally agreed to take me. On the way there, I paid a visit to the gas station and got a king-size Snickers bar. I figured that since the pounds would all of a sudden “melt” off me, I may as well enjoy one last treat. The Nutri-System guy told me that I didn’t need to lose more than 15 or 20 pounds. I was surprised that it was so little since I saw myself as a big huge blimp. After starting the program, I began to lose weight and I was eager to go there the next week. But as I was signing in, I noticed that a girl from school had signed the sheet. I panicked and left, hoping that she hadn’t seen me. I never went back.
When I was in the prime of my “fatness,” I thought that all of my problems were a direct result of the size of my belly. My weight was the reason I was a poor athlete, had few friends, wasn’t cool and couldn’t talk to girls.
As I became more self-conscious, I used to race out of bed in the morning and run to the weight scale. I never weighed myself at night because I was always lighter in the morning. My heart would beat as I stood on top of the scale and let destiny take its course. This crucial part of the day set the mood and the tone for the next 24 hours. I was full of glee if I was a pound lighter and satisfied if my weight remained the same. But all hell broke loose in my mind if I weighed more then I did the morning before. “Damn, did I have to eat that Twinkie last night?” I’d be scolding myself all day during class. Sometimes I would cheat a little bit and adjust the scale so the arrow was a little bit below the zero, just so I could pretend that I weighed less.
Growing taller, I started losing weight. Exercising and eating less sweets also helped. Pretty soon people in school stopped making fat jokes and had to look for other things to make fun of. Today I can buy pants with ease, but when I buy shirts I buy large ones so that the outlines of my stomach don’t show. I know what it’s like to be fat, so before I eat something I make sure to read the back to see how many calories and grams of fat are in it. If I eat a big meal, I feel guilty later and plan how I will torture myself with exercise to burn the calories off. And there’s nothing like that great feeling of euphoria after I have a big workout and I “earned” my next meal.
I wouldn’t consider myself fat today. On the other hand, I’m not skinny either. It’s too bad society puts such an emphasis on outside beauty. My heart goes out to the real heavy people, and the ridicule they face. Regrettably, I still judge fat people as lazy pigs, at least initially. Then I feel so guilty. I just have to stop and remind myself that they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.”

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