The Guilt on My Plate

A decade of being called ‘the fat girl who eats too much’

Photo by Truong Tuyet Ly on Unsplash

I feel guilt whenever I eat.

And no, it’s not because of remembering starving people (I remember them too), but this guilt has to do with myself. I feel like I’m doing something bad to my body. Thoughts like—oh, Amara, you are overloading your system with carbohydrates and sugars. Your insulin is already protesting, your love handles are getting thicker, your double chin is growing a third one, and you have the guts to eat.

I used to be a slim girl until my SS2 (second year of senior secondary school). After an incident that made me stay home to recover, I suddenly gained weight. It was so rapid, and I had barely been having any solid meals. From then on, sixteen-year-old me began gaining weight. What’s funny is that I barely ate anything at the time.

Fast forward over a decade, and I’m known as a chubby lady. One time I posted my childhood pictures, and someone messaged me to say they didn’t believe it was me. To prove them wrong, I posted one where I was 14, and it blew up. They told me they’d pictured me as a chubby baby and teen.

I was never a chubby baby. In fact, my mom was once accused of not feeding me. She told me how it hurt her, how she’d cried and begged me to eat. I disliked food as a child.

“Is it how you like food that you couldn’t even wait a while?”

Chubby me is used to being viewed as a glutton, even though I know I eat what a normal-sized adult would eat. I like to think I’ve grown a thick skin to people’s snickers, but now and then, it still gets to me.

One time I’d had lunch at work, and I hated the way the last spoonful of fish and leafy vegetables tasted in my mouth. It annoyed me because the food had been good until the very last spoonful, and I was left with that taste even after drinking water. Usually, I have mint sweets or chewing gum in my bag, but that day I didn’t have any.

So I went and got biscuits and began eating so their taste could replace the one in my mouth. A colleague saw me and said, loud enough for everyone to hear:

“Huh! Amara, you who just finished eating food, are already eating a biscuit? Is it how you like food that you couldn’t even wait a while?”

I was offended, but I felt she didn’t deserve an explanation, so I simply said it was dessert and looked away. This is someone who eats chips all day. She has a slender figure, so I guess she rarely puts on weight.

Another day, I was eating and realized I couldn’t finish my food in one sitting. I ate half of it and saved the rest. This was around 11:30 a.m. at work. By 4, I decided to finish the leftovers so I could wash my plate and put it back in my bag. Mind you, I hadn’t eaten anything else besides that food.

While I was eating, a male colleague also spoke up, asking me how many times I would eat a day. I asked him how many times he had seen me eat that day. He said in the morning. I asked him what time it was now. Seeing my angle, he quickly changed course, telling me that I was in the office and should only eat once—that I was putting on weight.

I told him I never knew there was an eating curfew at work, and that this was the remnant of my breakfast. Then I asked him to bring out his plate. He’d eaten by 1 p.m. His plate was the same size as mine. I’d watched him eat — he’d wolfed down everything in one sitting, and his food had clearly been pressed into the plate because it must have been overflowing.

When I pointed all this out, he glossed over it with a nervous laugh.

Then I announced, for everyone in the office to hear, that I liked food a lot — and that while I’m eating, I’m already thinking of my next meal, so they should feel free to buy me food anytime. The talks have since died down. I was fat before I started working here, and I’ve added no considerable weight. He just wanted to talk.

The stereotype doesn’t hold up

It’s true, though—I do like food now, and I think of my next meal while eating. But thinking about it doesn’t mean I actually carry it out. And yes, I know the office promotes a sedentary lifestyle, but I get my steps in on the way home. I walk a lot. Even with all my weight, I walk faster than the average 5’10" person when I’m not in heels. I’ve been told to slow down more times than I can count.

I’ve also been medically diagnosed twice with PMOS (formerly known as PCOS). One symptom of PMOS is unexplained, difficult-to-shed weight — most of it being water retention. Chubbiness runs in my mom’s family too.

I don’t work out. I long to, but I’ll admit I’m lazy. I would have loved to have an accountability partner, but people around me are slim and have no interest to work out. I also have a painfully slow metabolism. My body stretches every bit of food I eat, making sure nothing leaves unused. I used to joke with my uni friends that if there was ever a famine, I would outlive those with high metabolisms.

But all in all, it makes me sad that I can’t eat a plate of food without feeling bad about myself. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s okay to eat — like today. I shared my lunch with my cousin, eating half a shawarma with half a bottle of soda (I saw Limca and got one for nostalgia’s sake). This evening I decided to eat rice, and suddenly felt the guilt. Then I remembered I’d had no breakfast and only half a shawarma for lunch, so it was okay to eat this plate of rice. Which is what led me to write this post.

What I’ve actually cut out and what I haven’t

I’ve cut junk food and soda from my diet. I’ve never been a sugar addict anyway. I prefer savoury and spicy foods. Also, no matter how many sugary snacks or junk foods I eat, they never really satisfy my hunger. My body doesn’t recognize them as food, so I’d just keep eating them regardless.

It’s the same with water. If I’m thirsty and there’s no water around, the only alternative I reach for is cucumber. Anything else just dehydrates me further and plunges me into more thirst. It still shocks me when people say they were thirsty and drink Coca-Cola instead. Are you sure you were water-thirsty or sugar-thirsty?

Even bread, as much as I love it, I’ve had to give up for over two years now. I only eat it when someone buys it for me, and even then, I’m very cautious about it.

All in all, I’m really jealous of people who can eat and not gain weight. Being a victim of it myself, I also hate the stereotype that every fat person eats a lot. I’ve seen what some normal-weight people eat, and I can attest that if I ate such portions, I would die eating.

Author’s recent picture

Choose your words carefully

Sometimes, when I look at older pictures, I don’t even look so fat. But I was bullied for being fat. I currently wear a size 14–16, depending on the clothing type and material—heck, I even fit into some size 12s. And I love to dress beautifully.

And please, when pointing something out to people, choose your words carefully. My colleagues may not even remember these conversations, but they’ve stayed with me. Imagine if I were someone with an already dented self-esteem—I might have plunged into depression. As much as I consider myself strong, I still can’t deny that it subconsciously affected me, to the point where I now stare at my food, first wondering if it’s okay to eat.

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