When I was 8 years old, I fainted in the back of my mother’s Nissan Murano because I hadn’t eaten in three days. Not because we were poor. Not because we didn’t have access to food. Not because we had crash landed in the Andes or were recreating the plot of Castaway. I didn’t eat for three days because my mother encouraged me not to.

She never said the words “don’t eat.” She never refused to buy me food or denied me meals. She didn’t have to. There are 10,000 ways to get the point across that she felt my chubby little body was an offense to others around me. It came across in small ways - the way that she fussed at me when we went out to eat or were invited to dinner parties, the thinly veiled admonitions that I had eaten “enough,” the constant picking and critiquing and worrying about clothes to cover my bulk. She would worry and harass and beleaguer for the whole of my childhood on this point, under the guise of “looking out for me.” I think in her own mind she truly believed she was. She loved me - but she grew up as a fat child and a fat woman and, finally, became a fat doctor who had been told from multiple directions that the reason she was lesser (not feminine enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough) was because she was fat. In her own mind, she probably was trying to look out for me in that she didn’t want me to go through the same things she did. Not a bad woman, but a misguided one. But understanding her doesn’t make up for my present and past reality. God, but did she f*ck me up good.

I remember-

I remember growing up afraid to be seen eating in public. You couldn’t pay me to eat outside in a restaurant or eat lunch in the cafeteria when I was a kid. I ate quickly in hidden corners and survived off takeaway and drive throughs on long family trips. I remember being ashamed to wear the mandatory shorts in gym class because my fat thighs were on display. I invested in those tummy control slips and wore them religiously despite the fact that they made my abdomen ache and my chest struggle to breathe. I remember hating the sight of myself in the mirror to the point that I refused to look into one for more than a decade. I ducked out of photos and burned old family albums because when I looked at myself all I could see was a monster. I did everything I could to hide that monster away.

Today, it is a constant struggle to unf*ck myself. Finally, a few years ago, I started going out to restaurants with my friends again. I am confident enough on most days to gladly give the stink eye to waiters who look pointedly at me when I order dessert. When I look in the mirror, I don’t necessarily always see a monster anymore. On the best days, I am even a little charmed by my reflection, having invested in fabulous hip hugging dresses and tossed out all forms of slips and body binders. When a medical school interviewer asked me if it was irresponsible for a doctor to be fat because we are supposed to be “role models,” I went to bat and threw the interview just to give them a piece of my mind. Today, I swim naked in the ocean and will talk to anyone who will listen about the joys of hiking, not caring if they believe me capable or not.

Today-

Today, I am a fat medical student, the only one in my school of 500 students. I stick out like a sore thumb, because I am fat, but also because I will stand up on my soapbox and educate the poor fool who saw fit to crack a fat joke about a body in the anatomy lab. I stick out like a sore thumb because I have a loud mouth and I don’t care enough about my classmates’ affections to let such things pass by.

Today-

Today, I am a fat medical student. Yesterday, I was a fat child. Tomorrow, I will be a fat doctor. I will not repeat the mistakes of my fore bearers. For every time a doctor told me that the ache in my knee was because I needed to lose weight (not the case, I have a congenital abnormality), for every doctor who assumed because I am overweight, I must be sick, I will remember to treat my patients better. Today, when I see a patient recently diagnosed with diabetes, I don’t focus on their weight - I focus on helping them modify their diet to choose low GI foods (weight has nothing to do with it). Today, when someone comes to me with back pain, I get them help via physical therapy to strengthen the muscles to remove some of the strain (weight has nothing to do with it). Weight has nothing to do with it.

I still slip up sometimes. In a world where everyone is telling you that fat equals bad, stupid, ugly, diseased, it is hard sometimes to see through the bullshit. But, tomorrow-

Tomorrow, I will do better.