Today I went to Chick-fil-a … and a major update

(TW: some talk of diets, body image, possible disordered eating/ED)

Today I went to Chick-fil-a to order fries and a chicken wrap, but I only felt apprehension and fear the whole way there.

Firstly, I am writing this both as a journal entry and as a reminder, as something I can show a counselor, but also in case anyone else has felt the same.

For context, I am fat. My BMI is in the morbidly obese category and has been at least overweight for possibly my entire life since adolescence. I was born in the early 1980s so I grew up steeped in diet culture. Fat-free foods and being told weighing more than 120 lbs was essentially a sin was the soup I swam in for decades. It has been within the past few years that I’ve been trying to undo a lot of what was done to me.

When I was a teenager and had crushes on boys, I was also miserable. I remember standing in front of my bedroom mirror, crying, wondering why no one liked me. Why no one wanted to go out with me. What was so bad with me? I am actually proud of myself for a thought I had back then that has persisted to this day, a thought that I believe was ahead of its time.

I assumed boys didn’t like me because I wasn’t thin. I was heartbroken because of this and would contemplate losing weight and different ways to do it. But the thought was this: “no. I shouldn’t have to lose weight to be skinny. If I did, men would only like me because I was skinny and not for who I am. Can’t I find someone to like me like this?”

I knew I was worth more than what the scales told me.

Thanks to comments from family members and society at large I learned to dislike my body and the bodies of others. I don’t feel shame for that. This is a ubiquitous experience in Western culture that, thankfully, people are starting to confront. I do feel regret and remorse, for the harmful thoughts I had about myself and about others.

I have weighed more than I do now, and less, but at the moment I am around 260 lbs. (My peak was 298). I had an experience where in April 2023 I went on a 4 day vacation to Walt Disney World and then a 3 day Disney Cruise. It was on the cruise that I noticed my feet had swollen to the point where I couldn’t wear the flats I had brought to wear for dinners. Even the sandal straps were digging in. It did not get better during the cruise and only once I was back on land and in a hotel was I able to put on my compression socks, sleep, and wake up with normal-sized ankles.

But this scared me. I also earned a blister from walking at EPCOT in a place that was NOT my feet. Disney is important to me, and being able to enjoy my vacations there and elsewhere was important. My size was now affecting the thing I loved most.

So I went to see my doctor. We ran tests and everything was normal. We thought it was due to venous insufficiency in my legs. After anything concerning had been ruled out, I signed up with a small medical practice where I worked with a lifestyle medicine physician and a nutritionist to make lifestyle changes. Their focus from day one was on metabolic health. I made a lot of improvements over time and had more tests done and I was (and still am) metabolically healthy.

Then I came across an account online. He is a coach that has helped lots of people, 90% women, lose weight. I had a phone consultation with him. I had an uneasy feeling as to whether or not to work with him. At the time I essentially gaslit myself. I thought the feeling was more about me being scared to make such large changes to my life, things that would likely make me feel bad for a few days and would be a struggle. But…I was ready to lose weight. I didn’t have any specific goal weight in mind. My whole reason to lose weight was so that it would be easier for me to fly to Disney parks across the globe, to fly anywhere and be comfortable in an airplane seat. To be able to buy clothes that fit, felt, and looked nice to me easier. To not be so nervous when I sit in a restaurant table or booth and wonder if I would fit.

It was never about vanity. It was about being able to live the life I wanted, because the world I live in was not built for someone with my frame.

It was a costly commitment. I was able to financially afford it. I was also ready to focus on weight loss as working with the physician and dietitian did not result in much change in that regard, though they did admit to me that weight loss was not the focus of their practice.

So I committed to 6 months with this online coach.

And I see now that it was a mistake.

The plan was simple: exercise or not, that was not the main goal. The one and only goal was weight loss. To achieve that, I had to radically change my diet. This meant no carbs. No sugar. No starches. No legumes. No oils other than a few approved ones. No dairy other than grass-fed butter. I could have low glycemic fruit but only in the morning. No snacks; only 3 meals a day. Lots of water. Electrolyte capsules.

That’s it.

For someone that doesn’t like to cook, this would be a radical change. Eating outside of my home was not impossible but was very difficult. I was eating several pre-made meals before through Tovala (delicious and easy to use by the way) before this but their meals did not fit these restrictions. I began to eat 3 meals focusing not on calories, as there was no calorie tracking, there was just sticking to the allowed foods. I was not perfect with sticking to the plan but the weight fell off and rapidly. I believe I lost around 10 lbs in 2-3 weeks. That is a much faster pace than is recommended. Odds are a lot of that was from fluid retention, but the weight continued to go down. At the moment (as of yesterday), I have lost a total of 15 lbs in 7 weeks. That’s not so bad.

The problems started to happen gradually. One week I had a Starbucks coffee on the weekend, or perhaps it was two, and maybe even a salad with an unapproved dressing (ranch) but no cheese and no croutons and only grilled chicken, of course. That Wednesday I was scared to get onto the scale. I was scared that since I didn’t follow the plan 100% that I would have gone up in weight. I was also scared that if I went up in weight then I was a bad person.

Never in my life had I had that thought. My weight and my opinion of myself as a person were not related.

Now they are.

I checked my weight and it went down. The relief and elation I felt at that was immense. The next week, however, it went up. “Ok, it’s ok” I thought. I went to the gym and went back to my diet plan. The weight started to slowly go back down.

You should know that on this diet my energy level has been low. I was told by both the coach and from others in the program that this diet would make me feel better. Sleep better. More energy. More mental clarity.

I got none of that. In fact, the only pro’s I got from it were : eating more meals at home, some weight loss, eating fruits and vegetables on a regular basis, less gas, and … that might be it. Oh, and I have drastically reduced my added sugar intake.

But here were the cons: my sleep was worse. My gut was constipated one day (or for a few days) followed by very loose stools/diarrhea. I was having muscle cramps. I was feeling dizzy, even while sitting. My energy was lower and I was struggling at the gym with my weightlifting. There was no change in mental clarity. Some would post “I can tell the inflammation is going down in my body”… I still have no idea what that would be like nor how they’d know that. I was not associating my weight with my self worth.

And then, on Saturday June 29th, I ate rice. At the time I was bored at home and had been bored for some time. It was around 2 PM and I just didn’t have it in me to cook a meal, and I didn’t have anything I could quickly warm up or cobble together. What I did have was a bag of frozen kimchi beef and rice from Trader Joe’s so I said “fuck it”, heated it up, and ate it. Sadly there was very little beef and it was 85% rice. It didn’t taste great and I didn’t eat the whole bag. Then I had a stomach cramp. You know, that vaguely sharp pain near your belly button. Was it the rice? Was it the spices? Who could say. The problem was the thought.

“You could go throw this up”.

Never in my 41 years have I had this thought. Around that same time, perhaps seconds before and certainly afterwards, I was flooded with emotions. Not thoughts so much. There may have been a word thrown out in my mind about what I was feeling, but more than that was an intense, overwhelming, and overpowering heaviness brought on by shame, fear, anger, and a deep and unending disappointment. I cried.

I decided to leave my house and do something, anything. I went to the car wash. I got a cold brew at Starbucks next door. Nothing. The bottomless well of shame and self-hatred was pervasive. It was everywhere. It was everything. There was no stopping it.

I was terrified.

And this was all brought on because of rice.

I had enough mental capacity to hear the quiet still voice say “this is not normal. You need help. This is scary.” I got a text from a friend and I ended up telling her about it. I ended up going shopping. Did I need to? Absolutely not. But I needed the voice, the hatred, to stop more. In that state of mind it was all I could think to do. I did not want to be at home with the kitchen and the scale and the reminders. I wanted relief. Luckily, shopping did provide that relief.

Until the next morning (Sunday) when I sat down for work and felt those same feelings again. Shame. Disappointment. I quietly sobbed so my coworker on the other end of the line wouldn’t hear me, but I knew then that something had to be done. My friend texted to check in on me and I told her that I wasn’t well. In a feat of desperation I signed up for BetterHelp, which is a service I had used before, hoping to get seen quickly and to be told what this was because I knew that if this was the start of an eating disorder then seeing a specialist in that field likely would not be soon. Sadly, I learned that BetterHelp providers cannot provide a diagnosis. The person I was matched with recommended I talk to my PCP. I emailed asking for an appointment and asked another friend of mine who is a counselor if she had any suggestions for who I might seek help from. I also bought a slice of cake from the grocery store. I did eat it. About 3 bites in I didn’t want any more. I also felt guilty about throwing it out, which is something else I can work on in the future, so I scraped off the icing and ate the rest of it. Afterwards I felt nauseated. Was I actually nauseous? Was this my brain making me think I was? At this point I started to question if I could even believe my own body.

Thanks to a stroke of good luck I had to have the morning off from work the following day and my doctor had an appointment available. While I was in his office, I told him my concerns about the intrusive thoughts, the new patterns, my concerns of this being the beginnings of orthorexia or possibly some other ED, etc. He agreed that this restrictive diet plan was not helping me and may in fact be doing a lot of harm. He was very helpful and understanding and I am so grateful to have him. Near the end I had a thought…what if I ate bread? Friends, just the thought of bread made me scared. BREAD. The one thing I loved most. The food item humans have ingested for centuries, that propelled us to settle and grow crops of wheat instead of always foraging. Bread changed the course of humanity and I was now terrified of it.

On the way home I did order a chicken sandwich from a fast-food chain and let me tell you it did not taste good but it had cheese, and a bun, and I ate it. I was amazed and slightly repulsed at just how sweet the bun was. That night I went to the grocery store and bought the same things I’d been eating except this time I also bought shredded cheese. I made my taco salad and yes, I added some cheese. Not much, but it was there.

Tonight I had food at home that I could have eaten. I was bored from being at home and wanted to leave. I wanted to try eating a chicken wrap from Chick-fil-a. I live in a sub-suburb, on the edge of rural America. The fast food restaurants around me do not offer anything healthy or nutritious. The closest I have to that is Chick-fil-a, which was very close to the gym I go to and was where I would often get my salads on the way home (no corn, no beans, no cheese, balsamic dressing, grilled chicken). Since I don’t like raw tomatoes you can see that it was basically lettuce and chicken with low-fat dressing. But not today. Today I ordered on the app a chicken wrap (with cheese and salsa dressing!), medium fries (!), and a Diet Coke. I was almost excited. I didn’t actually want the fries but I wanted to test it, see what it would be like. I even had to drive 15 min to get there and the whole way there I was … scared. Nervous. Hesitant. It felt wrong. Foods that I know aren’t “bad” suddenly have become so. My gut felt hollow. There was no knot, just a sinking heaviness surrounded by a halo of fear. Fear!

I went through the line. I got my meal. On the way home I ate the fries. I’ll be the first to admit that the voice/feeling I had before wasn’t there. The experience of eating the fries was different. They didn’t taste good anymore. I’m not sure that they ever really did. The salt was nice but even that was few and far between. The flavor of the oils used, and the bland potatoes, is no longer pleasant. Once I was home I was able to eat the wrap. It’s nothing special…lettuce, cheese, chicken, flax and flour wrap (which I do like), and the creamy salsa. That was more pleasurable than the fries were, and was really all I’d wanted anyway. Afterwards I felt heavy. Full. The experience had a tinge of negativity to it. That intense shame wasn’t there, but I also didn’t feel satisfied and positive/happy.

I’m not sure where I go from here. I could continue with the restrictive diet and maybe loosen it when I go out with friends or eat outside the home. I do still want to lose weight, to have a smaller body.

I also had another thought.

“I’d rather be fat and happy than be thin and obsess and feel this ever again.”