Sarah Blake

The Early Years

I was born in 1976, and following my birth my mother regained all the weight she had managed to lose for her marriage. My memories of her, through my childhood, are of a bounteous woman, good to hug, a mother and protector. I remember vaguely pitying other children whose mothers were thin, because they never seemed motherly to me.

On the other hand, I never remember a time when my eating was unregulated. At an early age I knew I always had to ask before I could eat anything. My mother was desperate that I should never suffer as she had from the stigma of fatness.

I got fat, of course. I don't know why. Partly genetics, of course, following the course of the women of my family. Was my undernutrition just after birth a factor? I was shut in cupboards crying until a doctor finally discovered my mother was making no milk. Or maybe that I was fed on milk formula, which has a different ratio of fats to carbohydrates than that from the mother's breast. Isn't it funny how scientists always know better than nature?

I can't remember when I started my first 'official' diet. It probably isn't important, as I was never really off dieting. Throughout my childhood I was hungry. I may have been eight when, during a teacher's strike, I attended my first Weight Watchers meeting. Nobody made any comment about a child being on an adult diet. They just weighed me and I carried on with my mother's diets.

I must have been twelve or thirteen when my riding teacher raised the issue of my weight. The horses were having difficulty carrying me, she said. I'd have to lose weight or I wouldn't be able to come riding anymore.

Well, I tried. This time, I told myself, I'd have the willpower. And it worked, for a couple of weeks. My teacher would wait for me in the barn with the scales, and every week I lost a couple more pounds. Then one week I hadn't lost any weight - despite following my diet faithfully, I'd put some on.

"But I've been good!" I protested, not even seeing the wrongness in valuing myself by my control of my body. She shook her head. And I was forced to give up the thing I loved. I lied about it to my friends, and relived the humiliation in my dreams every night. I still do.

By the time I went to University, years of prejudice had taken their toll. I was fat. Without willpower. Nobody would ever love me. My intelligence didn't matter. That I had got into one of the world's most prestigious universities didn't matter. I was fat, and that was all there was to it.

And... it stopped. I made friends. I flirted. I stopped dieting. I ate from the kebab vans. And nobody commented. Not one of my friends even seemed to notice my weight. It was as if it had been reduced in their eyes to the same importance as hair colour or height. And so, I gradually realised, it ought to be.

There are two things that stand out in my memory, two small things, turning points in my mind.

A shopping trip with a friend, where she pointed out clothes I would never have dreamed of wearing and made me buy them. And I realised I looked good in them. Away went the tents, forever.

And a discussion with another, bent over in a strawberry field picking fruit for a party. Five words I can still hear. "But you suit being voluptuous!"

And I have never looked back. Happiness is rare for me, and I have come to appreciate it more than anything else. So for the sake of my happiness I accept myself as I am, love my body, the way it moves, the way it feels. I will never go back to hunger and failure.

My mother is still struggling with it. I hope that one day she will understand too.

Back to my BBW area
To my main page