Chapter 5: Slap in the Face

I survived the semester and was so excited when I got to go home for Christmas break.  It was then that I started talking to my parents about my having weight loss surgery.  Mom, and now my older sister had all had it done and it was going great so far for them, and dad was having it done in a month or so.  It was a family affair that I was being left out of.  I realized I’ll be the only fat one, and that thought terrified me.  So I started researching and pulling up medical information that was needed for the paperwork for the surgery.  It was around 2am one morning, and like always I was still awake.  I was browsing the internet hoping I would find a quick, magic pill to lose weight overnight…I never found it, but what I did find was a medical website dedicated to weight loss.  There was a link/section of the site where you could figure out your BMI (Body Mass Index).  This number basically told you how fat you were.  It also put you into, what I call a “fat category”.  The categories were as follows: Underweight, Normal, Average, Overweight, Obese, Morbidly Obese, and Super Obese.  Without even typing in my stats yet to get my BMI I knew I was know where close to Morbidly or Super Obese…those words just sounded horrible.  I figured I was probably either Overweight or simply Obese.  I typed in my height and weight to get my BMI.  The little chart read 47 and underneath it were two words I’ll never forget, “Morbidly Obese”.  My mouth dropped and I just sat in front of my laptop, shocked.  Then it happened.  The tears came.  I had never really been emotional about my weight, until now.  I was Morbidly Obese.  Not fat. Not Obese.  Morbidly Obese.  I had always told myself it was ok to weigh 200 something, just as long as I never got into the 300s…well at 290lbs I was almost there.  It was a slap in the face.  I cried for almost thirty minutes because I couldn’t believe I had let myself get so overweight.  I decided to just go to bed and start anew the next morning.  There was nothing I could do at this point anyway.