August 31

In early high school I weighed about 125 lbs. I would have been my full height by then (5’6″) – but with that lean coltish look of a not-fully-formed adult. I added about 5 lbs a year til I graduated, filling in a bit. I wore a lot of body suits – that was the fashion in the mid 90s. Body suits and chokers – just like my nieces today.

College did not deliver the dreaded “freshman 15” – I stayed in the low 140s, which became my adult normal for a long while. A lifelong goody two shoes, it helped that I did not drink until just before turning 21 – and then only because my roommates and I wanted to do it together so we would understand what it felt like and could be safe learning together. (We naively did this experiment with EVERCLEAR – baptized by the fire.)

When I lived in Australia at age 21, I was 158 lbs – I thought of myself as embarrassingly fat. My body content was pretty fatty then, actually – very little exercise, a lot of cheap food. But looking back at pictures from then and the next couple years, I see a little puppy fat. Not skinny, not heavy – plush and plumped up with collagen and youth. My Australia year saw little exercise, but every other time of my life I’ve been a runner or weight lifter, and the pounds on my average-height frame have been a mix of fat and muscle.

At age 23, living in England and back down to around 150 lbs, my Australian boyfriend and I decided to get married. Shortly after that, he changed his mind and left me in an immature way (taking up with my good friend) that brought a shock of grief. Not to sound dramatic – as griefs go, this is a typical one that most people go through and I got through it ok. We were too young for marriage anyhow. But it was the saddest betrayal and biggest surprise I’d yet experienced. I stopped eating. I was so sad – I remember the heaviness and confusion so well, it lived in my bones and the memory does still. When I bumped into him again by accident six months after, I had lost 30 pounds – I was back to 125 (too small, but it was validating to see the shocked hungry look on his face when he saw me). Those post-breakup months in England were dreary, but filled with women trying to nourish me. My American roommate, Tracy, hoisting me up to standing from the couch and saying “Come on, I gotta go to the grocery and you’re coming with me and my mom.” (Her mom, her best friend, came often from California for visits that year we lived abroad). Lucy, my English coworker at the pub, bringing over a microwave meal of bangers and mash and making me eat it in front of her, then doing my makeup and taking me dancing at Ripple with her boyfriend and her brother Edd, who hit on me mercilessly (I basked in the attention, but did not let him kiss me). Chrissy – an Illinois native and Christian Scientist living in England for four years while her husband got a PhD, mother of two and the kindest person I have ever known. She walked into the computer lab smiling and nattering on about the foul weather and I burst into tears, and she switched gears immediately. She mothered me tenderly, fed me biscuits and tea and told me stories of her own past heartaches and checked in on me several times afterwards.

(In the 34 years since, Tracy’s mother died suddenly, rapidly, of an aggressive from of breast cancer that took her about four weeks after diagnosis. Edd was murdered, tied to a concrete block and dumped in a reservoir in Cornwall – likely a drug deal gone wrong. Chrissy’s husband, Jeff, had a massive coronary earlier this year and died at 63. Griefs upon griefs upon griefs. We four are far-flung now, but I hope someone in their orbit was there to feed them and take them to the grocery.)

I met the Prof while still around 125 lbs, though the scale was starting to tick back up to a healthier weight for me. On our wedding day I weighed 135 lbs. After Jack was born, I settled in at 145 lbs and that became my adult norm. Liam was born, then Craig, and my belly waxed and waned under my nose, but I always managed to return to 145 or so. Shortly after Liam’s birth I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis – it took almost a year to get someone to diagnose me, as they insisted I was just tired from having a toddler and new baby (yes to that, but add zero thyroid hormone on top – it’s a wonder I finished my second year of law school). I remember shortly after Craig’s first birthday I leapt up 20 pounds to the mid-160s in a matter of weeks. After finding an endocrinologist I had my thryoid meds adjusted and the weight gain stopped but 165 was my new set-point thereafter. There was nothing I could do diet-or-exercise wise to lose that twenty pounds, but I exercised a lot and ate well and figured c’est la vie. I’ve gone from a medium to a large, so it goes.

It was a few years later that I zoomed up to 190, I think a change that happened between August and November. We lived in New Orleans then and it took several months to be seen by a new endocrinologist, who told me I was fat, he would not increase my thryoid med as a shortcut because it’s not a weight loss drug, and “prescribed” exercise. I was working out with my personal trainer by that time – four 1-hour sessions a week – and I explained this but he wasn’t listening. An endocrinologist said this – someone who is an expert in autoimmune disorders. My bloodwork showed that I was thyroid-hormone-deficient, but he said it was close enough and I just needed to lose weight to even out. I can only imagine he looked at me and saw someone fat, and lost interest. Six months later I finally got off the waiting list to see a new endo, who noted my deficiency and increased my dose. I think that was about 2017 or 2018 – I was right around 40 and 198 lbs. With an increased dose I was able to lose a bit of that excess weight but over the next six years, I never got under 185 and at times I got up to 215.

Starting in about 2021 I had very serious gastro issues – even drinking water (let alone anything more spicy!) would make me balloon up with air and kept me from sleeping due to acid reflux, but for years I was diagnosed as “too fat” and “morbidly obese” and nobody did a test. If I lost weight, they said, the gastrointestinal distress would resolve. Finally at 45 I had my first routine preventative colonoscopy and convinced them to do an endoscopy at the same time, which insurance initially refused to cover – but thank heavens I pushed. They spotted a stomach infection (H. pylori) and resulting stomach ulcers that I had probably had for years. I took four strong antibiotics at once over the course of a month, and it cleared up – but I was still about 215 lbs.

Through my mid-forties I continued trainer workouts, then added Pilates 1-2x per week. I was strong but heavy, and doing the mental work to just accept that I would be fat and that would have to be ok. And I was generally ok with myself, but the world created a lot of pressure to be smaller. Once a fellow lawyer – a heavy, older man who I like very much – commiserated about “us” being old, fat and ugly; another time a colleague told me that he and my other male colleagues had all discussed that I was too unattractive to be on camera and in future work video meetings, he advised I turn my camera off. Even in Pilates, my favorite instructor (herself a large woman, 6 feet tall and a self-professed ‘size 18’ and very body-positive) talked about how big girls like she and I could use XYZ tool, while smaller women would probably want this other tool. Try as I might to accept these comments neutrally and not care, of course I cared. I cared because our culture cares.

When the shallow misogynist Trump won the election in November, I knew two things: (1) I must earn and save as much as humanly possible to help my children survive whatever chaos was coming, and (2) in order to do that I would have to be more conventionally attractive. The racist shallow misogynists would be even bolder, and I had no hope during the course of my working life that things would get better for women. I’m pushing fifty – it’s already hard to be a female professional past your fertile years. If at all possible, I cannot be fifty and also fat. So I asked some girlfriends about the GLP drugs, I did some research, and I bought some cheap off the internet (Zappy Health, for anyone interested. Insurance won’t cover it – my insurance pays for almost nothing at all, it’s shocking.)

In early December I started giving myself weekly shots of 2.5 mg of tirzepatide. My fifth week, I went up to 5 mg. My ninth week, I went up to 7.5 mg and almost quit – I threw up and could barely stay awake for three days straight, though the side effects slowly abated. And it worked – it worked astoundingly well. In early December I was 210 or so. January – 200. February 190, March 180, April 170, May 160, and June 150. Within 6 months I was down 60 pounds. I’m still lifting with my trainer and didn’t lose any strength, though now things like pushups and lunges are easier since I am carrying so much less weight. My bloodwork was pretty good before, but a few numbers have improved (cholesterol, mainly). The bigger change has been how people see me and treat me – without doubt people like and trust a size S/M much more than an XL.

Today I weigh 144 lbs. I turn 47 years old tomorrow. I am the strongest I’ve ever been and for the first time in years you can actually see ‘written’ on my body all the physical work I do in the gym. I would like to stay here – maybe even a couple pounds heavier – and I’m experimenting a bit with trying to tweak a maintenance dose. I’m a little worried about what to do when my compounded stuff runs out and I am facing $350 a month or more to pay for it, but I’ve got a few months left in the fridge still and I’m stretching it as long as possible.

Isn’t it interesting that I can tell you the weight I was almost to the pound during most eras of my life. Pardon the pun when I say that my weight weighs heavy on my mind, now, then, forever. This is long enough, so another day I’ll talk about what this ride has been like mentally. That’s what I intended to do here, but I think the bodily morphing journey is important to trace first. Waxing and waning, rising and falling. Growing all the way through.