…Eventually food turned on me. I thought I was happy with my best friend, but I still felt that I was “wrong.”
I was becoming so very aware of exactly how unacceptable I was. It was frequently pointed out to me. Diets were first. Then came the insults, the jokes, the strategies…
“Fatty, Fatty, two by four, can’t get through her own front door!”
“She doesn’t have to be on our team, does she?”
The old saying is true: “Kids can be cruel.” Getting picked last for games, snickering, name-calling, and the shunning were all part of my daily routine.
I once heard about a study of young children. They were asked a question: “If you could choose either an overweight person to be your friend or a person who’s missing an arm or a leg, which would you choose?” The kids in the study all chose the missing limbed candidate. Fat, according to the kids then, was unacceptable to be around and befriend.
I came home from school each day and eased my pain with a stack of Oreo cookies, peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, potato chips and milk. I could feel better with my “true friends.”
Insults and jokes from adults were different though. Weren’t they supposed to know better? Comments like, “You’re looking a little pudgy lately,” and “Be careful, honey, you don’t want to get much fatter now” came from my family and neighbors. During a popular cereal’s “can’t pinch an inch on me” campaign, they could and did pinch an inch on me. All I wanted was a hug.
I hated one comment most of all. It mainly came from family. In a patronizing, sickly sweet voice, someone would say to me, “You have such a pretty face, if you’d just lose some weight…” There! So my body was what was wrong with me after all! It hurt even more because this comment dangled the hope of beauty, and yet placed the blame on me, a little girl, for not achieving it. It was my fault.
Dressing joined dieting as a new strategy to “fix me.” I never really paid much attention to clothes until it was pointed out at seven years old that I needed to “cover up.” I remember my first attempts at dressing in a “slimming” way. I’d wear tight clothes, in dark colors, (slimming you know), and suck in my stomach. I’d wriggle into tight jeans and try to keep fat rolls from spilling over the waistband. It was both an athletic feat and an “interesting” look. I couldn’t breathe very well, but I was successfully “held in.” I was also successfully acquiring kidney and bladder infections, due to the restrictive clothes’ pressure on my organs. It took my doctor two months to treat these infections. Eventually, I tried another strategy—camouflage. Basically, I wore a tent, anything loose that wouldn’t reveal my shape—a big, fat apple.
I became increasingly aware of what my father was and wasn’t to me. He was distant, unresponsive, angry, disappointed, and ashamed of me. He wasn’t close, involved, happy with me, or proud. I believed that it was entirely my fault because I was an ugly, bad, fat little girl. I needed to be ignored, fixed, and punished. I didn’t know that my Heavenly Father felt differently about me. By age ten, I knew only self-imposed hatred, blame, and shame, not my Abba Father’s love.
I desperately wanted my dad to notice me. I learned very quickly that one surefire way to do that was by winning awards. When I won something, I wasn’t completely worthless or useless. I was productive; I was “earning my keep.” I set impossible standards for myself. Try as I might with award after award, I’d eventually disappoint everyone, including myself, proving that I wasn’t worth anything after all.
My perfect attendance record in school is an excellent example. For three years in a row, I did not missed one day of school, knowing that I would win a perfect attendance certificate, tangible proof on paper that I was worthwhile. It became a standard I had to maintain because my dad seemed pleased in my performance. Of course, he never said that he was proud of me, but he did lay off the criticisms briefly. So for the next few years, I went to school with colds, sore throats and influenza. I remember going to school once with a temperature of over 101, sitting at my desk, on the verge of throwing up, yet only thinking of that certificate.
When I reached junior high, I became so sick once I had to stay home. I felt defeated and anxious. My dad, who had never really been sick with so much as a cold, was unsympathetic to my condition. With each passing day I stayed home from school, the tension mounted. Three days at home, according to my dad, was enough. He became upset at my mom for being “such a terrible mother.” After three days home, he had enough. He decided he would take me into school to make sure I got there.
On the way to school, he was fuming and I was scared to death, but my fourteen-year-old mind wanted to know something. We’d never had any father/daughter talks about anything, much less about the existence of a loving relationship, but I got up the nerve to ask him, “Do you still love me?” His answer? “If you do this again, I won’t.”
His answer proved it. It was my fault. I had to prove myself in order to be loved. I wasn’t the cute, good little daughter he should have had. If I could just look right and act right, he’d love me. All I have to do, I decided, is be perfect. That’s all.
“…then shall you feed, on her sides you shall be carried, and be dandled on her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you…”
—Isaiah 66:12-13
Nothing worked. I never did achieve perfection. I never got the attention and love wanted. The scales, numbers, pounds, and inches continued to increase. However, I put on more than weight. As my size increased, so did my shame, defeat, and failure…I was, after all, just a fat girl…
…To Help You Work Through Your Thoughts
Name three things (that exclude your size, appearance or weight) that are precious and loveable about you. (Isaiah 43:4)
How does food make you feel? What are your emotions when you eat?
Complete these statements concerning what and how you eat and feel.
When I feel stressed I eat (list foods)
And I feel (list emotions)
After eating I feel (list emotions)
What is one harmful thing you learned from being on a diet as a child? How can you let God heal that for you now?
Name three things about yourself that, according to Psalm 139:14 makes you “fearfully and wonderfully made?”
Make a list of what you consider to be “good or safe foods” and what you consider to be “bad or dangerous foods.” Explain why you see them that way.
Why have you gone on a diet? What’s been your motive for dieting/losing weight? Read Proverbs 16:2. How do you think God sees your plan? What can you do to include God in a healthy plan now?
Matthew 6:25 states that life is more important than food. List what is more important than food to you…
Copyright © 2025 by Sheryle Cruse
