I was a celebrity at age fourteen; a big one. An early career in obesity and a little bit of insight motivated an essay on my experiences as an obese adolescent. Published, I had arrived. The television and radio interviews that followed yielded my fifteen minutes of shame. Today, I feel fame.

I remember that first Weight Watcher meeting, boarding the scale in dapper size forty-four slim fit jeans; 286 pounds. That meeting was 8 years ago. At 27, I stand tall and proud in size 32 pants. I used to be a 28 waist at my smallest, and so the adjustment to a healthy body weight continues to merit some work. Health was never my motivating force in losing weight, and now as a health professional, my motivating force is the promotion of healthy weight loss… and the keeping it off that holds the most value.

I accept that part of me will always be a fat boy. The weight may fade into oblivion, but the weight of it stays on; I embrace it. It is why I write to you.

I had spent many years dreaming of the popularity and fashion savvy that weight loss would grant me. The image of an ideal self was very clear, but at 19, I looked in the mirror and couldn’t recognize who was looking back at me. I had lost the teenage years that accord the appropriate life lessons and first kisses. The Slim Fast television commercials had sold me on rehearsed testimonials and new identities, but reality offered a very different proposition.

I had spent so many years feeling trapped by my own body, and for the first time I found myself unencumbered by it. Friday nights found me dancing atop speakers, but Monday’s Weight Watcher meetings didn’t offer me the life lessons in moderation I had never acquired. Perhaps the bounds of consumption are not specific to food.

My weight loss left me weightless in many senses of the world. I had never formed an identity independent of my weight, and though my 20s, I have learned to form one independent of my weight loss. Slowly, I am making my peace with a piece of cake, tasting life and tasting first kisses. Both offer a sweetness I never knew; a sweetness I long for everyone to taste. 

Everyone wants to know how I did it, and the truth is that I don’t know what has made me one of the successful few to have lost weight and kept it off; it’s been almost 9 years. I just know that I wanted to dance like no one is watching.

Come dance with me!

Elliot

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