Living ~400lbs

I have always been fat. Not chubby or fluffy or husky or curvy—fat. As I write this, I weigh 342 pounds and wear a women’s size 26. My body mass index (BMI) describes my body as “super morbidly obese” or “extremely obese.” Although my body is not the fattest in existence, it is the fattest the BMI can fathom. Three years ago, I weighed just over 400 pounds and wore a size 30 or 32, depending on the cut of the clothing. At my high school graduation, I wore a red wrap top in the highest size I could find at the time—a women’s 24.

For me, the size of my body is a simple fact. I do not struggle with self-esteem or negative body image. I do not lay awake at night, longing for a thinner body or some life that lies a hundred pounds out of reach. For me, my body isn’t good or bad, it just is. But for the rest of the world, it seems, my body presents major problems.

Aubrey Gordon, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat