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"I thought I'd be happy when my wife lost all of her weight. I thought we would be happy as a couple. Now all I feel is disoriented. I don't even know who she is anymore. She is not the woman I married. She is rocking the boat of our marriage by her new demands and behavior. She is not the same." The middle-aged husband still attractive with a body just a little bit soft looked confused and lonely. I nodded sympathetically as I recorded his interview, but thought to myself didn't you want her to be thin, wasn't that the fondest wish, most sought after goal for the both of you? Didn't you spend thousands of dollars and years of struggle to reach goal weight? Why aren't you happy? But I knew why.
I am the folklorist of the fat. I collect dieting tales of people in all stages of dieting - newbies (first-time dieters), diet worshipers (those who have a conversion to dieting) diet workers (those who diet 40 hours a week and binge on weekends), and diet professionals (those who view dieting as a career choice). I also interview those who surround dieters - diet doctors, nutritionists, exercise specialists, counselors, and chubby chasers. I consider myself a participant-observer of diet culture. I have been dieting (sometimes succeeding, but mostly failing) since I was 8 years old. When I went to grad school and studied folklore, my peers were out documenting textile workers and blues singers; I was studying my own culture - diet culture.
I have interviews hundreds of people who have lost weight. All of them had life-changing testimonies. We have seen them on television - The Biggest Loser, Bulging Brides, Too Fat for Fifteen, Heavy, I Used to Be Fat, Shedding for the Wedding, and Ruby, to name a few. We cry tears of joy when the scale goes down and the formally fat person emerges thin and energized from the fat cocoon. We watch as their families, who prayed for this day to come, embrace the biggest losers. But what happens afterward?
"A thin wife rocks the boat. She changes to rules of the marriage" admonished Norma Neal, RN who spent her career dealing with obese patients at Duke University Medical Center. "Weight loss changes everything." Overweight and obese people have designated roles in relationships. They are the nurturers, the helpmates, and the cheerleaders of other people's successes. They are the family buffers. They are the good wives, the good mothers, the excellent cooks, and hard workers. Yet, they are not thin. Their concerned husbands and families urge the overweight family member to eat right and exercise for appearance and health. If only she showed a little will power. If only she tried a little harder. If only she were thin, then everything would be perfect. Of course, the chances of that actually happening are about 5 percent. 95 percent of people who go on diets fail, but for those chosen 5 percent, life is never the same. At first, the husband and family are thrilled with the transformation of the newly thin woman. Weight loss is astonishing. However, the honeymoon lasts about two weeks, and the reality of thinness and the demands of life-long weight maintenance set it. Families don't want to eat less and exercise more. They want life to be like it was before weight loss.
Fat people who get thin are reborn. They want all the benefits that thinness and acceptance grants. They know that they cannot go back to their old lives and habits without regaining weight. To be successful they must leave the past behind. Often, they must leave their spouses as well.
I know this from personal experience. At my heaviest, my boyfriend of ten years urged me to lose weight so we could do things together that we could never do while I was fat - ski, go to the beach, go to places without people wondering why is he with her?
When I lost a hundred lbs., my boyfriend took me out to eat to celebrate and was disappointed that I approached food with apprehension rather than pleasure He wanted a girlfriend who could eat like she used to, yet stay slim. We broke up soon after. I kept my weight off for a decade through a strict adherence to diet and exercise. I ate under a thousand calories and exercised four hours a day. Nothing was more important to me than maintaining my weight loss. "You must be a fanatic to lose weight and keep it off" Dr. Kempner of the Rice Diet used to warn me.
I am now married. I have regained half my weight. I spend most of my life losing and regaining those fifty lbs. When I pull out a calorie counter, weight loss journal, Weight Watchers points sheet, Nutrisystem order form, Jenny Craig snacks, Pure protein bars, diet shakes or any of the other dieting paraphernalia I have in the pantry, my husband groans and my son complains that he will miss my Texas sheet cake. They find the burdens put upon them by my dieting too much to bear. Dieting disrupts their lives My family likes the status quo. My husband likes our lives- fat wife and all.
I look wistfully at the scale in my bathroom and the before and after and then before again photos on my refrigerator door and remember how powerful I felt when I was thin, and how I miss it. Before I die, I want to reach goal weight. I feel the water under my boat begin to rise.
