Yesterday I had a call from a mental health worker. I was
sure she was no more than 25, just out of diapers, near-emaciated and no issue
worse than an ingrown hair from her bikini wax.
“Do you recall Roberta
SOandSo? I’m reviewing her obesity history and I know she saw you a year ago
and I still don’t have a clear idea about how she became obese.”
Roberta was in the process of securing her permissions for
weight loss surgery. There always has to be a reason when you’re fat. It’s like
being a drunk or addict—those psychologist’s need to turn you inside out to
find the splinter in your fiber, shake you up and down to get the pebble in
your sole; because you have to be fat for a reason. Rest assured if you are being
interviewed by one of them, he or she will think they can pin-point the exact
hour, time place and circumstance by spending weeks sorting through your
personal history (at over a hundred dollars an hour).
Other than
overeating, psychology still doesn’t know why you are fat. I preferred to
think that I had a normal appetite but was under-exercising. Had I run a
marathon each week there would have been nothing wrong with my diet. Today
psychology can only tell us that you have low self-esteem, low self-worth, more
depression, emotional issues, less satisfying sex and relationships. But it’s
the chicken and the egg problem and we don’t know what drives what.
The truth is no one can figure out why we overeat. If we
could, we’d have a cure. We might be able to find some triggers, but no solid
reasons. And there lies the biggest problem with treating obesity; we all took different
paths. Over the years I’ve seen it all; clients whose parents forced them to
clear their plates of friend chicken, potatoes smothered in margarine and then tackle
of apple pie. I’ve had the closet-eaters who regarded food as precious as
crack. My rule is and will always be: if you were obese as a child you have many
more issues. But science and doctors don’t care how you got it, like the early
Aids epidemic, whether blood transfusion or through sex—you still got it.
Most of us got fat slowly. Roberta’s poundage crept up. Five
children later, an extra seven or eight pounds each year for fifteen years. I
calculated it to be equivalent to an extra scoop of ice-cream every day. For
that atrocity her doctor sent her to the nutritionist and told her that he
wouldn’t see her as a patient unless she lost 20% of her body weight. He told
her to get psychotherapy for her food addiction. After that therapist delved
into her life, linking pot-lucks with pot-bellies, I like to think I saved her—I
don’t know about now.
Roberta had come up with a more believable reason she was
fat. At least she did not admit to being sexually abused, in the midst of a
divorce, or break-up—that might take you off the surgical table. No one cares
if you have a face-list, body-makeover or nose job—but God forbid you have WLS
to begin a new life.
The child-social-worker wasn’t buying the extra scoop of
ice-cream hypothesis. She was looking for more: the sexual abuse, rape, beating
with a belt, divorce . . . yes, I recalled Roberta might have come from “divorce.”
It’s so sad that I had to assist Roberta in coming up to a
more believable legend for her size.
