big boy — SHAIN OF FOOLS

“I've always juggled two negative eating patterns: binging to lose control and starving myself to gain it back.”

Body positivity is a movement and a hashtag that has been making the rounds the last few years, letting thick people know that they can enjoy some of the spotlight. For anyone who has ever dealt with weight and body issues, visibility has been a sign of hope.

My body has naturally always borderlined fat with a homebase of chubby. I remember in elementary school I had to buy a special kind of jeans that were called husky. Growing my dad’s side of the family was almost all fat. Fat was in my genes (and even labeled on my jeans) and I always felt like it was my destiny. My home town, Stoneboro, was working class and the food was rich and heavy, not a lot of people watched what they ate, especially in my family.

I've always juggled two negative eating patterns: binging to lose control and starving myself to gain it back.

The first time I remember using food to cope with trauma was in second grade. My teacher was really hard on me. I had severe dyslexia, but I was too embarrassed to get the help I needed. She was relentless and made me go to a special-needs classroom during spelling class. Some of the other kids saw me leave, and you can imagine how that turned out. That same day when I got home, my mom had gotten a huge basket of strawberries and a container of Cool Whip. She could see I was down so she loaded up a giant strawberry and covered it in Cool Whip. I fucking loved it. The chemical sweetness, that dopamine hit.

Later that night, I woke up in a panic about having to go back to school. I walked downstairs, and, in the late-night light of the refrigerator, I ate the entire container of Coolwhip. Within A few minutes, I started violently vomiting and felt such relief. Even as an 8-year-old, I understood that I felt too comfortable with gluttony and punishment. Trying to drown myself in a dopamine rush to counteract my anxiety.

The small western Pennsylvania town I grew up in was fueled by survival. Very few people leave. Life there isn't so much about living your best life as it is surviving the one you were given. Due to my untreated learning disability, I never felt smart enough to succeed through the traditional route. Still, I knew college was my only way out of Stoneboro.

I decided to major in basically creative handjobing (interior design then photography) at an Art Institute. As cliche as this sounds, no one really ever told me I was worth anything more than what I was able to bring to the table.

My parents loved me, but they didn’t understand me, and not until much later did they support me. In my mind, my only real option was to find a man to take care of me. But in order to do that, I would have to have a body that men would worship. This is where my obsession with my body really started.

I was very active my senior year, and I managed to shed most of my baby weight. So when I moved to Pittsburgh, I had a pretty strapping boy next door figure.

Less than a month after I left the 52 acres I grew up on, I found myself on a bar in a thong full of dollars. Finally, I could put an exact worth on my body: $302 as a sex god or $65 as a fat piece of shit. When I started stripping I got super skinny. Partially due to living on my own and away from my mom’s snack cabinet and partially to cocaine and boys. I would eat some junk food during the day—white Reese’s, Pringles and a Gatorade—and then bland chicken breast and broccoli with three spoonfuls of cottage cheese for dinner. The control of a calorie deficit was addicting.

The way I looked was the currency I put on my worth. Grinding your starved body above a fat sweaty man for a dollar really distorts your self-love capabilities. I was a stripper for about five years. It was honestly the best business school I could have attended. I learned that there was a part of the job that was at face value, but the real earning potential was in your charm. Don’t wait for the attention, flip it and give the customer all the attention. Use your eyes, use your face, and make that nasty motherfucker feel like the only man in the room. Take his money, let him know you’ll be back, and do it all again. I never had a perfect body, most nights I was actually the chubbiest guy in the room.

But you know what, I took everyone’s money. Most nights, I brought in the most.

I tell you this because I still hated my body; because I never saw a guy on TV or a billboard who looked like me as the sexy lead of anything. My body was always still soft. But listen, to this day I take the things I learned from stripping with me, and I’ve been able to turn my stripper charm into authenticity. Now I really and authentically like making people feel like they are the most important person in the room without expecting anything in return. I try to leave people better than I found them. Like I said, stripping was my hard knocks business school.

In my 20s I would use my eating disorders and then supercharge them with my stripper wisdom and this made me a monster. Especially when I used this combo in a relationship. When I was single I would keep my body weight super low to lure in a man. I would catch one and within a few months I would resent him and summon up the binging. My plan would be to balloon up so he would leave me. I would binge everything, just like that Cool Whip. I would eat fast food, whole pots of spaghetti, handfuls of Vicodin, anything so I could instantly feel that dopamine hit and then that overwhelming sense of self-hatred.

My plan never worked, the men always stayed.

I need to say very clearly that when a man offers to take care of you, very little is actually free. Some men require your freedom as payment, other sex and sadly some will take full ownership of you. You’ll pay one way or another.

I wish I could have told myself that I could have left, that I didn't need them. But at this point, I was scraping by for so long that I felt like I was up against a deadline to find this man who was going to support me before my gay value ran out with my age.

In my 30s, I parted ways with the starving and just focused on the binging. I felt lost in my career and comfortable in my relationship. Honestly, I’ve spent the last few years unhealthy and fat. I'm a size 38 waist and an XL shirt (and that's not a guarantee) I went from an average weight of 220 pounds to 272pounds. I have a thick body with huge legs and ass, a strong back and big shoulders. My body generally holds weight well, but it slowly spreads around my body which is great for a little weight gain. But, after about 30 pounds, you’ll start to notice it.

Then, something happened in the middle of quarantine where I had this Ah-Ha! moment that I needed to change. I started doing harm reduction therapy to address my alcoholism, and, in the process, I realized how cruel I've been to myself regarding my body. All the punishing and all the labels I had put on myself. I’d feel too guilty to put sugar in my coffee but then I'd eat an entire bag of Oreos in one sitting. It didn't feel healthy. Then there were the caps I put on my success due to my imposter syndrome and feeling like I'm not smart enough to succeed.

I practiced cognitive behavior skills and worked very closely with my therapist to heal and love my mind and body. Throughout my journey, I've learned that every quick fix leads to some kind of trauma. You have to put in the time and the work. I had to strip back all of the bullshit and work on the trauma of feeling less than. It was tiring and emotionally exhausting. But slowly and surely I started to see my worth.

I swear to you my body started to morph, to blossom. I started focusing on strength and mobility and just getting my body moving everyday instead of my weight. And while the weight didn't fall off by any means, my body got stronger and felt healthy. I was building up a mental habit and seeing physical results.

I realized that there is no end result with your body. Like everything else, it's a journey. There won't be a goal I hit and find eternal happiness. I'm so fortunate to have my health, to have discovered therapy, and practice breathwork. The entire time I was the only one obsessed with my weight, and my whole life I was my real bully. You know what the good lord says, “If you can't love yourself how the hell you gonna love someone else?”