Fat and Happy or Thin and Depressed?

I’ve talked about this before and I try not to dwell on it here or anywhere in my life because it is what it is. I can not get back the time wasted on self pity or wallowing. There are many more productive things in life to do with my time. However it does creep into my head too often and I must always remember to push it away and try to keep those thoughts down.

This morning I saw something on television that made me cry. I understood this woman’s plight. My issue wasn’t depression but it was a symptom of an illness and we both had no control.

This woman is a very successful woman. She is a psychologist and writer. She has also been a ghost writer for many famous autobiographies.
She wrote an article for Self Magazine that explains it very well.
Her choices were to be Fat and Happy or Thin and Sad?
She suffered from depilating depression. She suffered for years. Unless anyone has actually gone through depression it is hard to understand the dark depths of it all.
I know I never did. I used to think you could just snap out of it and stop wallowing in your self pity and get up, get dressed, and move on….until it hit me!

But even if you haven’t been clinically depressed you can try to empathize and understand it. She talked about how she had been on so many different kinds of drugs, none which really helped her until she was given this one drug. This one drug was the only one that after so many years actually worked. It made her be alive and love and live life again fully. But it had a pesky side affect – an 80lb weight gain.

No matter how much you tell yourself it shouldn’t matter but it does.
I have told you about my illness and the weight gain here in the blog before.
Last year I almost died and yet there were times when I cared far more about losing the weight than being healthy and well. Then one day I realized that while I want to hide I can’t do that anymore it’s not living. I have a wonderful life to live and I have to embrace it as much as I can.
I do Pilates and walk 3 miles a day. I eat a gluten free diet which eliminates most bad carbs making that pretty easy. I no longer even drink tonic with my love of gin because it has sugar. So just chilled gin became my new normal.
I live on veggies and protein….with the occasional Cadbury Easter Egg and Kool-Aid with a nature sugar substitute.
But that doesn’t stop the weight as I have shared. I hate that people assume I am sitting at the buffet shoving down potato chips and pop. I hate that people assume because of my new size I am lazy and do not partake in physical exercise on a regular basis.
I hate that I am now invisible to most people because of my new size. I hate the way those skinny bitches in Saks and Macy’s look at me. I hate that if you were a size 14W your clothes are in the very very back of the top floor of their store so no one actually has to see you or those clothes. I hate that the clothes are ugly.
So I completely understood this woman’s decision to go off her medications and go to a very dark, dangerous and scary place over having to be fat.

She was on the Today show this morning and Matt Lauer told her she was brave. And I too think she is brave. Because to be overweight is considered despicable in America, it would be easier if she said she spanks her kids. Because most people get there via pizza and junk food no matter what you say to them. They think anything you say is just an excuse. It is very brave of her to go on TV and talk about this. That and the fact that she has a mental illness that in America is only whispered.

But isn’t that a terrible choice to have to make? She can be depressed beyond belief and have scary dark thoughts but she’ll be a size 4.
Or be happy and mentally happy but be a size 20.
What would you choose? Not a great choice is it?
I am not sure what I would do.

The only thing worse than being fat in America is mental illness to most people. For some reason if you have a health issue with your heart or your liver no one tells you to snap out of it. It’s an organ and it isn’t functioning well so you seek medical help and you get medication and there is no stigma. But if the organ happens to be your brain there is a big stigma. To me it’s an organ in your body that isn’t doing what it should and getting help and medication shouldn’t be a stigma anymore than your heart.

So this poor woman has it coming at her from both ends. Mental illness and Fat.
What lousy choices she has to make.

What do you think your choice would be?
I feel terrible that I actually was thinking, I wish I had this choice.
Yes, vanity is something I am always working on in my self enlightement journey.

So let me know, would your prefer fat and happy or very depressed and skinny?