Not Doomed

My name is Alyshia Davies and I used to be doomed. If I were starting a twelve step program for recovering doomed people, that is how it would start.
It wasn't long ago that I was living in Manteca, a place which is so hot in summer you have to keep the refrigerator door open to keep the air conditioner from having a nervous breakdown. In winter, Manteca is bathed in a steady fog so thick any hapless rays of sunshine that penetrate into visibility (about 3 inches from the end of your nose) are so exhausted all the vitamin D has been drained right out. Manteca (which is a Spanish word meaning pork lard) is a reasonably sized city, but surrounded on all sides by fertile, central California farm land, which is, in some place or other in any given wind direction, constantly being fertilized. You probably put two and two together just now, but in case you haven't, the math goes: round-the-compass-farmland+hotter-than-a-dessert-gorilla's-underarms = a smell that would keep the four horsemen of the Apocalypse at bay. Well, at least someone will survive the end times.

What was worse, I had come to Manteca to escape living with my mother after having been unemployed for over a year. I had a job that barely paid the bills and sometimes didn't, and which, when I told people what I did for a living I had to smile extra brightly to distract them from the little wincing motion I involuntarily did with my shoulders (I saw it in a mirror once. It looked like someone had stuffed a small, wet sea turtle down the back of my shirt).

I didn't know anyone.
My family were hours and hours away.
I was, to say the least, utterly devastated.
So I did what every red blooded American does when cornered. I ate. I ate whatever was available, which in Manteca usually amounted to various and sundry fast foods (there is an Applebee's in town but at least at first it was out of my price range).
And if you had asked me back then, I would have told you that I hardly ate at all. I never ate. And I had witnesses to that fact. No one ever saw me eat. I didn't have a single meal all day (I was too busy to sit down and eat); why, it was all I could do to get to the drive through on my break just to stop my tummy rumbling. Sometimes I even had to resort to a candy bar from the gas station across the street. Which wasn't so bad because the people there were friendly and even knew my name. The only thing I could imagine might be a problem was the occasional beer I had with my occasional ice cream which I only had when I worked the late shift which in turn was no more than 4 times a week.
In short, I gained 35 pounds a year the first three years in Manteca. 35 pounds. I was now 105 pounds heavier than I had been when I started, and I hadn't started small either.
I'd never been a string bean. My extra pounds showed up when I was about 10 and hung around all my life. There were one or two at first. Then in my teens I'd been so miserable I'd gone out and found a few more. Pretty soon there were 30 or 40 and they were getting a good party going just as I went off to college.
I immediately went on the have-to-live-off-$72-a-month crash diet and lost all 40. And that stayed good and gone, too, until my boyfriend went off to Germany and I had to wait 3 months to join him. Then a few of them realized how much they'd missed me and started to creep back. I put a stop to that, though. I went on the eat-only-snickers-bars-and-coffee diet. And that showed them.
Then there was the time my boyfriend (a different one this time) decided I needed to be domesticated and decided that a) I needed a whole set of pots for Christmas as motivation to learn how to cook for him and b) I needed to start sitting around the house more whilst he went out with his friends. This resulted in a) another 30 (40? maybe even 50) pound weight gain b) the whole grain cereal and non-fat-milk diet and c) a new boyfriend.
Over the years my weight did this 30 or 40 pound trapeze act with such regularity you didn't need a calendar. In fact no one back home ever needed letters, I would just send them a picture and they could guess with 99% accuracy how things were going. If I was thin, I had a new guy and it was 1998. If I was fat, I was living alone or in a relationship that had seen brighter days and, jeez, where did the time go, it must be 2001 already.
In Manteca though, the 30 pounds turned into an annual 30 pounds, or rather 35. There were no new boyfriends to keep my weight in check. I was just lonely, and depressed (clinically even for a while) and fat.
I was 277 pounds when the "before" picture on this blog was taken.
277 pounds of which about 130 were now giving a bash to beat the band around my hips, thighs and waist. I tottered around that weight for a while, taking off 10, 20, even 30 pounds. But I must have been a heck of a hostess because they just kept coming back. And sometimes bringing friends.

And I, who ate out of misery, put my brave face on, and said all was well. I wasn't unhealthy, really. The achy feet were from my job. The knees, too. The leg pain. The fact that the moment the temperature got above 69 degrees Fahrenheit I started sweating so hard people asked me if it was raining out. It was all because of something else.
And I wasn't unhappy, either. By gum. I'd rather be fat and happy than thin and hungry any day.
I had seen a Dr. Phil episode once where an obese man had said he had no health problems, no high cholesterol, no blood pressure problems. And Dr. Phil had said, "Just because you don't now doesn't mean you won't soon. You will." And I didn't believe him any more than the man in the chair across from him did. And then my blood pressure really did start to creep up. And my cholesterol. And everything. As quickly as if it had been damned up somewhere and was just now starting to flood out.

But it didn't matter. Because I was doomed. In my mind I was doomed. I had had to lose as much as 50 pounds before, and that had been difficult. 130 was going to be impossible. I was doomed. And if doomed, I might as well just wait for the blood pressure and the cholesterol and the joint pain and the sleep apnea and whatever else... I might as well just let that do its work. If I was doomed, I was probably better off dead anyway.

And I was no dummy. That's pretty solid reasoning. The math worked.
And then I moved out of Manteca to live in Amador county, near Gramma.
Gramma, herself a veteran survivor of unbeatable odds, was telling me one day about her upbringing: Poor immigrant family, her father an alcoholic, her mother a cruel tyrant, an untreated paranoid schizophrenic. At 85 Gramma is a stock broker. She went to business school and was a secretary back when that was what girls did. And then she took an interest in finance and got her brokers license back when that was what girls didn't. She's been practicing her trade with remarkable success ever since. Has two kids, a bunch of no-good layabout grand kids, and a husband she's been married to since practically the dawn of time.

I wondered aloud one day how Gramma had beat the odds the way she had, why she hadn't turned out to be a tyrant's victim, perhaps herself a tyrant, or worse.
"I chose what I wanted to be and what I wanted to do."
You never ask Gramma an idle question because you will get a real live answer and that will start you on a life long journey.

At least that is what happened to me. Gramma's reminder that you choose what you want to be, made me realize that 130 pounds, despite being almost impossibly difficult to lose, was not actually impossible. That pack a day of cigarettes I was going through? My choice, too.
And all those things I thought about myself? That I was helpless? I had help. I had Gramma, who was a cheer leading squad, a cooking instructor and overall motivator. I wasn't strong enough? Not strong enough? I carried 130 pounds around on my back all day - If that's not strength what is? I wasn't tough enough, I'd go crazy dealing with all that anguish every time I had a setback. Not tough enough? I listened to people snicker behind my back every time I went out in public. I dealt with the humiliation of not being able to fit in a booth at a restaurant, and having to ask people to push their chairs in so I could get to the bathroom. I dealt with that every day and I wasn't tough enough to face a bathroom scale?
And finally, I had no self control. I was so fond of saying this I had even begun to believe it. But I knew that wasn't true. Every hot day I resisted the urge to go outside in a pair of short shorts. Every weekend I sat home wishing I could go dancing or to a concert or .... out some place where I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen. I had no self control? It suddenly dawned on me, I had self control in spades.

18 months, countless gallons of blood, sweat and tears later I was a 110 pounds lighter, no longer overweight but in now in a healthy BMI range. I was also infinitely wiser. From the beginning I had decided to to this right this time. There would be no $72 budget to help me avoid eating, and at 33 I could no longer metabolize snickers bars and coffee without being awake for several weeks afterwards. I had to do my homework. I went on line, I read books, I talked to people. I researched how to lose weight. And when I was done, I researched how to keep it off.
And I did. Both.
And then I quit smoking as if daring myself to gain the 20 pounds or so smokers usually put on. I lost 20.
And now I wasn't just normal weight. I was kind of hot.

And things went south with my boyfriend. And I didn't gain or lose anything.
And things went south and then north and south and north in other areas of my life as things often do, and none of those things killed me even though I no longer had food or even cigarettes to help me cope. I had learned to cope without them.

And then I decided to train for a marathon.
And next spring I am taking up mountain climbing.
And right now, I am learning to dance.
And I can do anything.
And I intend to take as many people with me as I possibly can.
My name is Alyshia Davies and I am not doomed. And neither are you.