Fat Chance Read Online Free Page A

asking for help with my weight; he had looked at my chart in his elegant hands, a quiet smile threatening as he suggested that I should go on a diet.
     
    I don't suppose it was very nice to flip him the bird and sarcastically thank him for giving me such a great idea. Not my proudest moment, but right then, I had only two choices: lash out, or break down.
     
    "Why thank you doctor," I had raged, choosing to go on the attack, rather than trying to explain all the diets I’d tried. "I can't believe all this time, all I had to do was stop eating entire boxes of snack cakes and washing them down with can after can of soda. Because I clearly could not possibly have tried dieting or even exercising before; obviously I am here to see you because I'm so lazy I just expect you to lose all this weight for me, and I don't intend to make any effort at all, not at all. Clearly I would not have made any personal effort of my own before humiliating myself by coming to you."
     
    Taking in the shocked look he wore, I had stood there with a hot face and watery eyes, shaking with embarrassment and anger. "I'm so glad I came here," I had said to him. "Thank you for stereotyping me so well and having such a humble and compassionate view as a doctor. Let’s not try and see if there might be something medical going on, you know, this being a doctor’s office and all. Gosh, I can't wait to tell all my friends and family about this life changing encounter we've had."
     
    Finished speaking, I'd walked out of the office and never looked back. I may be pretty down on myself, but even I know that I deserve much better than that.
     
    Thinking back to that moment, I stood up from the table, my dinner mostly untouched as the pain of that particular memory rose up and slaughtered my appetite. I chose the same sort of dinner that other people chose; I ate the same types of foods, and in the same average amounts. Why, then, did my food settle on me in such an undignified way, a history of meals wobbling around my hips and giving others the impression that I am without basic self-control?
     
    Well, honestly, if I look around me, that question answers itself. In a country of excess, fat is normal even while we see it as ugly. We drive through fast food restaurants, too lazy to even get out and go order our food, and then we eat far too much of it, judging others who are doing the exact same thing. I guess fat explains itself, to some degree, regardless of health.
     
    Honestly though, I have to admit a hard truth about my weight. The later memories of my battle with fat, even the worst of the emotional scars from Rick are really only surface injuries. The very worst of my memories involving my weight are rooted deep, straight from the start of my life, right from childhood, when I was innocent. I carry within me a lingering resentment for the way I was trained to eat, right from the beginning, training that left me vulnerable to people like Rick in the first place. This is enmeshed with deep, hot, humiliating memories of being teased by my once gentle and affectionate father simply for being what I'd been taught to be.
     
    I started life as a somewhat privileged child, with a small intimate family, my parents and grandparents all living together in the same town where my parents had grown up. My parents were both only children, and I was their only child. I had a lot of attention as the only child in the family, and I spent a lot of time being spoiled by the grandparents. Obviously, this meant I was destined to be a chubby kid; I was well-loved with cookies and lots of other things that children shouldn't have too much of.
     
    With such a great beginning, it hit me hard in the years after I started school, when my family quite literally began to die out. I was crushed when my mother's parents were killed in a house robbery, and I still miss them terribly. I have a lot of good memories of them.
     
    My father's father died of a heart attack a few years