Hearing the click

When I was at my peak weight, I called my sister and bitterly complained about how much I hated shopping and how clothing stores were conspiring to give large women the ugliest choices imaginable. My sister is much smaller than I am, but she lives in Los Angeles, possibly the only city on Earth where she would be considered heavy. She told me that I was taking shopping too personally.

I know what she meant, but clothing is very personal. It's one of the most basic ways to express yourself, but few of the clothes available to me had anything to do with who I was on the inside.

About a year ago, I heard what my friend H. often refers to as "the click." It was the moment when I decided that was tired of being dragged down, physically and emotionally, by my weight. The clothes were ugly. My feet hurt. I felt like shit. While I had been 15-20 pounds overweight for years, things took a turn for the ridiculous after I had my second child and turned 35. I was struggling to fit into sizes that I had once deemed unacceptable.

I feel compelled to say that is about me and me alone, not my judgment of other people who are overweight. It's kind of like parenting. You have no idea what it's like until you experience it, and everyone has their own philosophy. As a black person from the South, I come from a culture that has a ... liberal view of what constitutes an acceptable weight. I know many large, lovely women who have vast stores of self-confidence. Good for them.

According to every weight chart I've ever seen, a person my height (5'4") and age (39) shouldn't weigh more than 146 pounds, so I've got quite a bit of work to do. I don't think I've ever weighed that little as an adult, and I haven't been within shouting distance for at least 12 years. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

Better late than never.