My Time to Shine

It began with a sweater. A beautiful, white, cable knit, English woolen sweater.

“I don’t understand”, said my new British aunt. “The saleswoman assured me that this sweater would fit a child up to six years old.” She grunted as she tried, for the 3rd time, to squeeze my 4 year-old arm into one of the sleeves. Auntie Ann, as she was now known to us, and my Uncle Sonny had met in London when he was stationed there during a stint in the army. One whirlwind romance and wedding later, and my new aunt was in America presenting all her newly acquired nieces and nephews with welcoming gifts.

This sweater-fit failure was my earliest memory of realizing that I was different. Something was wrong with me. I was fatter than everyone else my age.

And none of my relatives, especially my embarrassed mother, ever let me forget it. Auntie Ann retold that sweater story at every family gathering until her death 60 years later.

And so began my family’s obsession with my weight for the rest of each of their lives. From that moment on, I was made to believe that my self-worth was dependent upon my size. The honor report cards, the portfolio of superbly drawn pencil sketches, the pages of stories I wrote – they were all glossed over and barely given a cursory nod. My family’s attention was, instead, focused on humiliating me into losing weight. I am going to give them one pass on this by saying that very little was known about the psychology, physiology, or emotional component of compulsive eating at that time. They actually thought their bullying was helping me.

What their efforts really did was fuel a burgeoning eating disorder, terminology unknown in the 1950’s. The more they nagged and embarrassed me, the deeper into secret binge eating I retreated. No one at that time, including doctors, had any idea what an eating disorder was. According to everyone, I was the family fattie who simply lacked will power.

My life was a food-related Catch-22. My mother was an expert cook and baker. I was surrounded by luscious, sugar-laden homemade goodies that she baked, but scolded me for eating. Every night was a home-cooked, from scratch, chef-quality meal of which I always had seconds, under the disapproving eye of my mother, who had cooked it.

My memories around food are not happy ones.

At the age of 8, I was excited to be invited by one of my favorite aunts to a luncheon – just the two of us - at a hotel Tea Room in downtown Providence. I don’t remember what the meal was, but I have a vivid memory of completing it and asking to order chocolate pudding for dessert. The entire experience was ruined when my aunt refused to allow me to have dessert. She said I didn’t need it. It would just put more weight on me.

At the age of 9, my mother took me to the pediatrician for diet pills. He actually prescribed them. When they didn’t work, he told my mother to leave me alone. He said that I would lose the weight when I was ready.

At the age of 10, I remember spending an afternoon playing at the home of a cousin who was around my age. At lunch, my aunt (a different aunt than the British one and the Tea Room one) told me that I could not have my tuna salad in a sandwich. The bread was fattening, and I was already too fat, she said. I had to have it on a plate with lettuce and tomato.

And so went my life. Whenever I was the subject of conversation among family members, my weight was the main topic. I was too fat, and what could they do about it? The more they pondered, the more I ate.

I wanted to lose the weight but seemed powerless to succeed. The lure of the food was more than I could resist. I was as addicted to food as strongly as my mother was addicted to the 2 packs of cigarettes she smoked every day. In the 1950’s and 60’s, the addictive power of nicotine was only just being discovered. It would be decades later before food would achieve the same scientific designation and eating disorders would be recognized.

So I struggled. I binged ate and gained weight. I tried dieting but was always too starving to stick to any of them. I binged ate and gained more weight. It was a never-ending cycle.

Until the first week in February 1966. I was 17 years old and received my college acceptance letter in the day’s mail. I can still see myself standing in my living room with the open letter in my hand. Something snapped in my head, and I said to myself – I’m not going to college fat.

The next day I did something I had not ever remember doing. I weighed myself on the bathroom scale. Up until that time I only recall being weighed in doctors’ offices. At five feet, one inch tall, the scale registered 170 lbs.

Having been scrutinized my entire life for every piece of food that I put into my mouth, I did not want my mother or any of the insulting aunts offering diet advice, so I shared my plans with no one. I was going to lose this weight on my own.

Never having lasted more than a day or two on any diet because hunger always won out, I wasn’t sure what was in store for me, but I knew two things with certainty. This was not going to be pleasant or easy and it was ALL MINE. The decision, the implementation and whatever that entailed, the success or failure, and the reason for undertaking the venture were BY ME and FOR ME. NOT because my relatives insulted me into it.

The following day, I summoned inner strength from somewhere unknown, and began what would become my diet for the next 7 months. I drank an Instant Breakfast shake for breakfast, ate one hard-boiled egg for lunch, and a tiny portion of whatever my mother served for supper, along with a vegetable.

A mere two days later, when I stepped on the scale and it registered 168 lbs, I knew that my goal was possible. I was going to make it. Although, as I said, I never expected this to be easy, I did not expect it to be as difficult and painful as it was. Surprisingly, I was not tempted by the delicious smelling aromas of my mother’s previously mentioned array of food and desserts. I was, however, nearly felled by the excruciating, relentless pain in my stomach. It is normal to feel hunger between meals, but when there are 5 hours between an Instant Breakfast shake and a hard boiled egg, the agonizing hunger pangs are mind numbing. 55 years ago, I had today’s “fasting” craze down pat. I ate my tiny supper portion at 5 pm, and nothing else (except water) entered my stomach until my Instant Breakfast shake about 14 hours later. I felt as if the lining of my stomach was being torn into shreds to feed my starving body.

At this point in my story, you must be wondering if anyone noticed my new restricted eating habits and if, when the weight started to drop off, anyone noticed my smaller size.

In spite of my compulsive overeating, consuming food when I first woke up made me nauseous. I always drank a shake an hour or two before I ate a real breakfast, so my mother would not have noticed anything different in my morning habits, especially since she got up long after I did. If she noticed the drastic reduction in food consumption at the other two meals, she for once, had the good grace to remain silent about it.

As for anyone noticing my shrinking size - There’s something called “perception” in relation to weight loss. To everyone at school, I had been the fat girl since the first grade. That’s how I was known and perceived. Regardless of how I actually looked, fat was how I was perceived. When I started my senior year of high school in September, I weighed 170 lbs. When I graduated in June, I weighed 136 lbs. No, hard as this may be to believe, no one in school noticed.

However, when those same kids in my senior class saw me at the beach in August, a mere two months after my graduating weight of 136 lbs. I was now 126 lbs. Every single one of them shrieked and screamed when they saw me. Two months apart had changed their “perception”, and they saw me as I really was – THIN. They thought I had lost all that weight between June and August.

As for my mother – it was at the 20 lb. mark that she noticed and gingerly approached me about it. She had never been diplomatic or careful about speaking to me about my weight, so I don’t know why she was so careful this time. She told me that she thought I looked like I had lost a little weight. Years of her badgering over my weight spurred me to sarcasm as I asked– “So how much weight do you think I’ve lost?”

“Probably at least 8 lbs. I can see the bulges over your bra in the back are gone and your face looks thinner”, she answered.

Her answer sent me over the edge. All that work and pain, and all she could see was 8 measly pounds. “No”, I growled, “ I’ve lost TWENTY pounds!”

She squealed in delight. I had finally done something that no high grade, college acceptance, or art exhibit of my work had been able to do – garner her praise. Because, after all, being thin is all that matters, right?

By the time I finished my 2nd week of college, more starvation, which had become the norm for me by now, and the hills and stairs in buildings without elevators at the University of Rhode Island shaved another 11 pounds off my now tiny frame. 170 lb. February Joan was now 115 lb. September Joan.

I loved being thin. I loved the ease of movement. I loved wearing stylish clothes in size 5 (which by today’s sizing would equal a size 2). I loved being asked out on dates. I loved being normal, for once in my life.

But what I loved most of all was the sense of accomplishment that I had done it BY MYSELF, FOR MYSELF. My true nature of setting and accomplishing a difficult goal was inside of me all along. It took wanting something more than food to liberate it.

My true self wasn’t my thin self. It was my goal orienting self. My weight loss accomplishment showed me that I was capable of setting a goal and doing the hard work it took to achieve it.