Photo by Erin Patrice O’Brien
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How’d I Get So Fat?
By Anne Krueger, January & February 2005
Ballooning from svelte to supersized over 25 years was a piece of cake. Now comes the hard part—fighting the flab
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I am like the "before" picture in every one of those weight-loss
ads. Tiny head, big body. For 10 years I have been battling the bulge and now,
as I approach 50, I am officially obese. And as I try to zip up my pants, as I
take my meds for high cholesterol, as I puff up my basement stairs with
creaking knees, I keep asking myself, "How did this happen?" I was a
seven-pound baby. Average for 1956. I was a skinny, knobby-kneed kid and a
flat-chested teenager. I weighed 110 when I married in my 20s and didn't
tip the scales over 120 until I was 30. I got through my 30s with highs and
lows revolving around two pregnancies but always assumed I'd "get back
into shape" when the kids were a bit older. Well, they are a bit older, 12
and 14 years old to be exact, and since I hit 40 my shape has gotten rounder
and rounder until, to be blunt, blimp is the first word that comes to mind
these days when I catch a horrifying glimpse of myself in a mirror.
The fact that I'm not alone, that nearly 130 million Americans are in
the same overweight boat, doesn't make me feel any better. The fact that
obesity has gotten to the point in this nation where its repercussions are
potentially deadlier than smoking and may lower life span averages (five to 15
years off your life, depending on whom you're talking with) makes me even
crankier. I don't smoke, rarely drink, don't have a lot of other risky
behaviors—but because of this fat problem I'm in trouble. Not to
mention that, as much as I make light of my plight, I am depressed about the
risks, depressed that I let myself get this way, depressed about its
repercussions on my family, and depressed at the miserable things I'll
probably have to do to try to fix the problem.
I also have another reason for suddenly being desperately hungry for
information and understanding about food issues and weight: I have a
14-year-old daughter with anorexia. Her illness, which is serious enough that
she spent several months in an out-of-state residential hospital being
tube-fed, has been a devastating wake-up call for me. It forced me to look at
food and health and life in a whole new way.
From 1976 to 2000 obesity increased from 14.4 percent to 30.9 percent of
the U.S. population. The fatter we get, the higher our risk of diabetes,
stroke, heart disease, breast cancer, arthritis, hypertension, gallstones, and
other diseases.
When I tell friends that I'm writing a story about how fat I've
become, they get really uncomfortable and tell me what they think I want to
hear: "You're not fat." After pressing the issue, I get one
friend to open up a little more: "I don't think of you as fat, maybe a
little matronly," she says. To say I'm aghast would be an
understatement. I've been forced to come to grips with the word
fat—but matronly? Matronly is a state of mind. Matronly is dumpy clothes
and helmet hair. You're old when you're matronly.
Okay, I've thought about it and I've figured out why someone,
perhaps not a very bright person, but someone, might think I look matronly.
These days anything I put on to camouflage my fat tends to look like something
Ma Kettle would wear. In spite of the fact that the average dress size was 14
in 2002 (compared with size 8 in the 1950s), it's becoming harder and
harder to find clothes I'd actually want to wear. As an aging (and
widening) baby boomer, I was relieved to read that the Gap parent company is
launching a new brand for the over-35 crowd. Perhaps it'll offer clothes
that actually fit us boomers with, er, bigger booms.
Problem is, even if I don't look matronly, in the future I'll still
be fat. And that just doesn't jibe with how I see myself—as a skinny
25-year-old who never exercised, ate junk food all day, and drank beer all
night. If I had gained only the average 10 pounds a decade that a woman
typically gains after turning 30, I would still be somewhere around 140, a nice
nonobese, not-even-overweight-for-my-height (five feet four)
number—instead of heading north toward 200 with an unhealthy body mass
index (BMI). The BMI, in case you don't know, is a measure of body weight
relative to height. A BMI of 30 or above is considered obese; my BMI is 33. [Calculate your BMI
with AARPmagazine.org's free, easy calculator.]
I suppose I could look on the bright side of things and celebrate that
I'm not morbidly obese (defined as having a BMI of 40 or more). Almost 5
percent of the population is—which puts them at extremely high risk for
almost every ailment, not to mention making it very difficult for them to live
any sort of normal life. In 2004, it's estimated that more than 140,000
morbidly obese people opted for bariatric surgery (also called gastric bypass),
which shrinks the stomach and shortens the small intestine. That's an
eightfold increase in such surgeries in the last decade.
I'm not a candidate for bariatric surgery and hope never to be. Still, I
have to do something about my own level of obesity. As much as I try to make
light of my fat, I'm finding it tough to laugh off or accept this
problem.
As of 1997, 46 percent of family food expenditures were spent on meals
outside the home, with 34 percent of the total food dollars spent on fast
foods. The typical fast-food burger weighed about an ounce in 1957 compared
with six ounces in 1997. Now half-pound burgers are all the rage.
It just so happens that I live in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennessee is called
the Volunteer State. I'm not sure why—perhaps because we volunteer
for seconds? It would seem so: Tennessee ranks in the top 10 states nationally
in numbers of obese and overweight residents, according to the American Obesity
Association.
Why does that not surprise me? Almost all the restaurants in Knoxville are
fast-food franchises of one sort or another, serving up whopper-size versions
of fat-filled grub. We like our fried fish and fried chicken down here, and I
don't mean in those little deck-of-card portions recommended by the American Dietetic Association.
Tennesseans aren't alone, of course, when it comes to eating out and
eating too much. Indeed, increased restaurant-going is the main reason
we're a nation of chubs, says Greg Critser in his book
Fat Land (Mariner Books, 2004). Dining out used to be a rare treat, a time
to splurge a little and not worry about calories. But, uh-oh, now we eat out
almost every day, Critser says, and all those treats add up. In fact, women
take in an average 335 more calories a day than they did 30 years ago, and men,
168 more calories a day, according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
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| Photo courtesy of Anne Kreuger |
As someone who spends most of my time butt-glued to my office chair or the
driver's seat of my car, I am like all those other sedentary slugs who have
a hard time ignoring (especially with kids in tow) the inexpensive, already
cooked, good-tasting, fattening food singing its siren song from every
drive-through. It's no wonder that as Americans' daily calorie counts
went up, so did the needle on our scales.
A child with overweight parents has a 40 percent chance of being
overweight; with two overweight parents, it's 80 percent. Research shows
that those genetically susceptible to obesity may have a stronger biological
drive to eat.
Like millions of Americans, I am eating more and exercising less. But some
days I suspect there has to be more involved than that. Lots of people
aren't calorie counters and heavy exercisers, and they're not all
packing on the pounds like I am. Could I be genetically inclined to fat?
Researchers now say that genetic makeup may play a part in how much people eat,
how much they burn off, and how much weight they gain. I know that I've
inherited high cholesterol from both of my parents, but neither of them was
obese. That doesn't mean that I couldn't have inherited genes from a
two-ton Tillie who lived three generations ago, but I somehow doubt that
genetics is to blame for my condition.
Then again, I wonder if I've inherited my aversion to exercise. My
parents were very antisports and didn't do any regular exercise. We
weren't a family of bikers or hikers. Poker I can play, but exercise just
doesn't come naturally to me. Those people who go jogging by my house in
little shorts and with big dogs mystify me. And what is with people who get
"high" from exercise or who can't live without it?
So, there you go: I don't exercise, don't eat right, and, as it
turns out, don't eat for the right reasons, either. When I meet a deadline,
I reward myself with food. When I need a little break for myself, I eat while
reading a good mystery. When I miss a deadline, I eat. When I am worried about
something—my sick daughter or my elderly father—I eat, eat, eat. On
the run? Let's eat. My eating is often mindless and totally unrelated to
whether I am hungry or full. It is emotional eating at its worst. And, more
often than not, I eat in an unattractive style that my mom used to call
"inhaling your food."
Thirty-four percent of adult women are obese, compared with 28 percent of
men. Women have up to 15 percent more body fat than men and burn fewer calories
at any given time.
Inherited or not, my bad habits have contributed to my weight and health
problems. But I feel that as a woman of a certain age, the deck is stacked
against me. A woman's metabolism typically slows down as she ages (a 2 to 8
percent decrease per decade beginning in her 30s), so that even if I ate the
same amount I'd gain weight. Then the hormonal imbalances that come with
menopause do their dirty work, the main culprit being the thyroid, that fickle
gland that regulates how quickly cells burn calories.
"During menopause the thyroid is already functioning less
effectively," says Keith Berkowitz, M.D., founder of The Center for
Balanced Health in New York City. "If you cut fat and carbs to extremely
low levels, as dieters may be inclined to do, you can further inhibit the
thyroid from functioning appropriately, in addition to inhibiting the
production of sex hormones." So, though I need to eat less to lose weight,
I can't each too much less or my thyroid will mess with my metabolism. No
wonder I am getting fatter by the minute.
I also recently learned why my fat is in my belly. During menopause, which I
am experiencing, a woman's predisposition for tummy fat becomes even more
dangerous. Abdominal fat is visceral fat, the kind that's more active
metabolically and can wreak more havoc by contributing to higher cholesterol,
higher blood fats, and higher blood pressure. In the ongoing Iowa Women's
Health Study, women with the greater amounts of tummy fat had higher rates of
diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Even with a low BMI, a woman
with belly fat is more likely to die early. That's bad news for somebody
like me who has a belly and a high BMI.
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