Last night I was tired when I posted about someone calling Jillian fat. Today I would like to talk a bit more about that incident.
But first-
Like many of you, I have been skinny and I have been fat and everywhere in between in my life. I was a little chubby when I was little. Back then they called it ‘baby fat’. When I hit my pre-teens I lost my ‘baby fat’ and was a normal weight for a time. Then I hit my teens and started to want to look like the models and famous actresses that were so thin.
I started to diet and exercise. I ate 1 sandwich a day with 1 slice of meat and 2 pieces of bread. I found out that dill pickles only have 5 calories each so I ate LOTS of dill pickles.
I exercised almost constantly when I was home.
When I was on the phone- I exercised.
When I watched tv- I exercised.
I lost weight. I got skinny.
And yet I still wasn’t happy and thought that I needed to lose more. My Mom was only 5 foot 2 inches tall and I am 5 foot 8 inches tall. Yet I lost enough weight that I could wear my Mom’s clothes. My bones stuck out and sitting was no longer comfortable so I kept moving more.
I didn’t know it then but I found out years later that my Mom was worried about me.
Back then we didn’t know about anorexia and bulemia like we do now.
Part of the problem that started that whole ball rolling was that the boyfriend that I had at that time told me I was fat. He continued to do so until my bones stuck out so bad that he couldn’t stand to have me sit on his lap.
When he complained about my bones sticking out then I realized that I was too thin.
Luckily I was able to start eating more normal and after a time I was back to being a normal weight and was fairly happy and healthy.
I was always the thin one of most of my friends- even at my normal weight. Who would have guessed that I would one day be ‘fat’?
I was in my early 20’s when I fell hard on cement and damaged my knee caps severely. I didn’t think that I would even be able to stand and for a long time just walking was a chore and very painful.
I iced my knees and did my exercises that they knee specialist recommended. Still, it took a long time for them to heal where I could walk without aid.
I believed for a long time that I would never run or dance again. I felt that I would be lucky if I was able to just walk normal again.
During that time I started gaining weight. I wasn’t able to move around much and when I did it was very difficult and painful. I became depressed. So I ate.
Eating was something that I COULD do without any problem.
I became chunky again but this time it wasn’t ‘baby fat’. I didn’t like it but there were people a lot bigger than me so I convinced myself that I was ok.
Then one day we went out to eat at a local fast food restaurant. I didn’t have a lot of food, just a sandwich, French fries and a drink. Yet I remember a young guy mooing at me. Seriously he mooed. And there were even at that time people a LOT bigger than I was. I don’t understand why he picked me to do that to but I was horrified, I was embarrassed beyond belief.
After that I didn’t want to go anywhere for a long time. I seldom left the house and I started wearing black all the time.
I had read that black is slimming and I thought that it would help me to look thinner.
It also was easier to color co-ordinate my clothes.
So this was my life for a time.
Then I had my son. He was 2 months premature. I had spent weeks in bed at home because of spotting and after suffering 2 miscarriages I did not want to lose my baby and would do whatever necessary to be sure that he would be ok.
At Christmastime I was finally able to get up and about a little bit. I still had to be careful but I managed to go in the stores a couple of times to pick out Christmas gifts.
Then in January I started leaking amniotic fluid and had to be rushed to the hospital.
That first night was HORRIBLE!!!
I was so worried about my baby and because they were concerned about emergency childbirth and the possibility of an emergency c-section they had me on this hard thing all night. It was almost impossible to get to sleep between being so uncomfortable, the worrying and the moniter they had strapped around me to keep track of my baby.
Every time I would finally doze off I would bump the wires and an alarm would go off. The nurse would have to keep coming in and fix it.
I was also hungry as I hadn’t had anything to eat all day in case they had to do emergency surgery.
We got through the night ok and managed to spend the next 6 weeks in there leaking amniotic fluid the whole time. I could get up to use the bathroom and a shower but that was it.
I went through 12 roommates while I was in there and if I hadn’t of had my son when I did I would have had roommate number 13 the day that Josh was born.
Because of how early he was he had to stay in the hospital for weeks and with all of the running back and forth I quickly lost all of the pregnancy weight that I had gained, and then some.
I wasn’t skinny but I wasn’t so overweight any more either.
Then my husband began to drink and use drugs. Domestic violence is a HORRIBLE thing and no one should have to live like that.
During this time I lost weight again. A LOT of weight and though I wasn’t skinny I was at a pretty much normal weight again for the first time in a long time but what a way to do it?!
My husband refused to admit that he had a problem and get help. I refused for Josh and I to live like that and despite all of the death threats and the fear that he actually WOULD kill us, I divorced him.
Being a single Mom is not what I had planned for in my life but we have gotten through and living as a single parent is much preferable to having the person that professed to love us refuse us food, medical care and threatening to kill us.
Luckily Josh was little but what memories he has of his father are not good ones but he is a happy, well adjusted person now and I have done my best to be both Mother and Father to him. I have also tried to put positive male role models in his life. NO NOT by dating! Make relatives and friends of the family.
Anyway, so I went through a period of time where I was of a normal weight and then…. my Mom died. My Mother was both Mother and Father to me as my Dad died in a car accident when I was a baby. I never felt that I missed out as she was always there and we were close. Mom was not only my Mother but my best friend. Losing her was one of the worst times of my life.
I became depressed. But I knew that I needed to be here for Josh and so I pushed through. I also started to eat more to shove down those emotions.
I gained weight.
Thus began a period of 10 years of losing loved one after loved one. I cannot tell you how many people we have lost in the last 10 years due to cancer, old age and accidents because to sit here and think about it would be just too depressing.
We are still dealing with the lose and pain of finding our cousin dead in a pool of blood. She had fallen down her basement stairs and hot her head on the cement floor at the bottom.
To find her like that and to lose not only our cousin but one of our best friends AND my job all at once was another one of the worst times in my life. I have gone through a LOT of bad things in my life and yet I keep going- without using alcohol or drugs as they don’t help your problems they just make things worse
From all of the stress and just the toll of living my life and pollutions and such- I ended up with 2 lung diseases and other health problems/
With all of my health problems- my back, my knees, my hands, my lungs and more- I couldn’t do all of the things that I used to do. There have been times that I could barely move.
There was another problem. Eating to shove down emotions and yet unable to move enough to burn even a portion of those calories.
I got to the heaviest weight I have even been in my life. I quit getting on the scales a long time ago because I didn’t like what I saw.
Then last year I discovered a combination of 2 things that had me losing weight so easily that I didn’t even realize that I was. I was just concentrating on getting healthy.
By the time my weight loss was brought to my attention my clothes literally hung on me. My son tells me they look like clown clothes on me.
After several months of using my method I quit it order to test it to see if I would have lasting results, or if like so many other weight loss methods the weight would come right back.
It has been over 6 months and the weight seems to be staying off.
I know now that if I would start to gain the weight back I can just use my method again.
I want to lose some more weight but for the sake of testing my method I am waiting a while longer.
But, for the first time in a long time I do not worry about my weight. I concentrate on making a better life for Josh and I and on us just being the healthiest that we can- which is why we are busy trying to enlarge our garden to try to grow most of our own food, We have chickens and are thinking of raising rabbits, turkeys and maybe some mini cattle as well as anything else that will help us to be more self sufficient.
We want to put a house roof over our trailer as it keeps wanting to leak and we have used roof coating but we have a couple of cats that like to get up there and when they do it sounds like a herd of cattle. All of that weight makes the metal buckle and get cracks. Also, I have to go up every winter and shovel snow off and with my health I will not be able to do that for too much more.
We would also like to have a greenhouse to grow food year round and a storm shelter/root cellar to store food in and to go in case of a storm as you know that trailers are not a good place to be during storms.
Anyway, sorry about getting of track there. My point was that we all tend to believe that we should be model thin. That’s not true nor is it healthy.
We should all strive to find a weight that is healthy for us and then just concern ourselves more with eating healthy and BEING healthy instead of wanting our cheek bones to stick out and to be so thin that we disappear when we turn sideways.
Calling Jillian fat is simply the mentality that so many are in anymore. We think that anyone that weighs more than the models do is overweight or ‘fat’
That’s not true and it isn’t right.
Let’s all worry more about our own business, being healthy and helping our fellow human beings.
To the person that called Jillian ‘fat’? You need to work on your image of what a woman should look like. If you think that Jillian is overweight then you have some issues you need to deal with.
You may be thin now but one day you might not be. One day you may not have your looks, your youth, health or your hair. When that happens I am sure that there will be someone just like you are now that will be quick to point it out and at that time maybe you will realize how many people you have hurt by your harsh words and inappropriate attitude toward women
You also do not know what got them overweight in the first place. It may be health reasons or some emotional one. I do not believe that most people that are overweight got there just because of laziness.
So before you put someone down because of their weight you might want to think about what got them there and how easy it might be for YOU to be where they are.
‘But for the grace of God go I’
Well, that’s enough of my rant for today :0)lol
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