Your Stories

What Shapes Us
In our size conscious culture any man or woman who has perceived himself or herself as larger than the acceptable norm has stories to tell.

These are my stories (Ellen Shuman, founder of A WEIGH OUT). These are some of the experiences that influenced and shaped my attitudes about my body, about who I was and who I could and couldn't be if I was overweight. These are the seemingly small experiences of an overweight child and adult…experiences that apparently had a rather large impact on my self-esteem and sense of self-worth. As I have spoken to thousands of men and women over the years, I have come to believe that experiences like mine are not at all unique.

Read the my stories below or click here to submit stories about What Shapes You.



The Stories

On Willpower…
I always knew there was more to this weight problem than willpower. I had willpower! I was a good student. I put myself through college. When I was ready for my first job as a TV news reporter I sent out 188 color-coordinated resume packets and had a job the day I graduated. I had determination… and willpower!

I lost weight …over and over and over again, only to gain it back, over and over and over again. How come I could accomplish so much in so many other areas of my life, but not lose weight and keep it off? It just didn’t make sense to me back then.


The Message I Got As a Child…
The message I got growing up was this, “If you don’t lose weight you’re going to be unhappy when you grow up.” But, I was already unhappy. It felt like my family took note of everything that went into my mouth. Clothes shopping was a nightmare! In my child’s mind, the message was this: “Thin people are happy. Fat people are not”. Therefore, it seemed that all a person had to do to be happy was get thin. I actually believed it would be that simple. That is, until I got thin and nothing changed about how I felt inside.


Weigh-In Day At School
Do they still do public weigh-ins at school? If so, they should stop. I remember those weigh-in days in elementary school like they were yesterday. The whole class would line up in the nurse’s office. The nurse would weigh each student as he or she came to the front of the line. The teacher held the clipboard and recorded your height and weight as the nurse called out the numbers “OUT-LOUD”. Even the skinny kids in my class hated that day.


A Teacher’s Comment Hurts To This Day…
It happened in my 5th grade enrichment class. I was in a Hogan’s Heroes skit. I was playing Shultz-the Rotund prison guard who always said ‘I SEE NOTHING, I HEAR NOTHING…’. The skit went well! I was feeling happy and rather pleased with myself.

I had my back to the two teachers when I took off my costume: a raincoat and belt I had borrowed from my 6’3” Father… I had two bedroom pillows anchored in front of me to add girth. The moment the coat was off, I heard one teacher, Mrs. Newman, snicker to the other teacher, “She looked so big, I thought she had pillows behind her, too.”

I wanted to crawl under the desk and die. I wondered how many other people had heard her comment. From that day on I said nothing in that class. I never looked either teacher in the eyes again. I felt so ashamed…Today I know that it was the teacher who should have been ashamed. But, she was the adult and I was 11 years old. I was devastated. Don’t people know how much words can hurt?


Ever Look Back At Old Pictures?
Years ago I bought this greeting card. On the cover it had a cartoon of a woman sweating her heart out on an exercycle. Inside, the card read,

“So here I am…desperate to be as thin as I was, at the weight I used to be when I thought I was fat!”

Almost every woman I know feels that way when she looks back at old photographs. Why is that? Are we’re never O.K. just the way we are?


I Lacked Credibility Because I Was Fat?
I was in an acting class my freshman year of college. I was doing a scene from “All About Eve” that included a kiss.(my partner was really cute). After the scene, the class critiqued our work. Most people were quite complimentary… All but this one guy. He said he didn’t find me at all believable in the part. When the teacher asked him why, he hemmed and hawed a bit. Then he said it was because I was “too “stately to play a love scene”. I was 18 years old at the time. (Maybe a size 16). That year I let that comment play over and over in my head and heart. I played it every time some guy I liked didn’t ask me out. I allowed that comment to reinforce and exaggerate my fear that I wasn’t attractive enough to be loved. What a painful waste of my 18th year.


Why Do Doctors Keep Prescribing Diets?
Years ago, at a lecture on “Sizism” (prejudice about size), I heard a speaker connect three facts of everyday life; diets, their high failure rates, and our cultural bias against people of size. She said something like this, “Where else in health care do health care professionals continue to prescribe, as the treatment of choice, a treatment that has a 98% failure rate (i.e., dieting), and then continue to blame the patient for the treatment failure? “ On a gut level, I always knew that the diets I tried had little to do with my problem. But, for years, I just didn’t know what else to try instead. So, I kept trying diets, and I kept failing. What a trap!


“When Is Your Baby Due?”
It was the question I dreaded most. I wasn’t pregnant. I had just gained a lot of weight. Why is it that people, who normally have good manners, don’t seem to have any boundaries when it comes to commenting on a person’s size? When a person goes out in public, it’s as if their body doesn’t really belong to them alone. Over the years, even comments about my weight losses (many losses) felt like an intrusion. I believe a person’s body is his/her business.

Today, I never presume to judge or comment on someone else’s body… not to that person or to anyone else. And, as my friends and family will tell, you, I also chastise them if they comment on anyone’s else’s body. My goal is to raise a little consciousness. I may in fact, just be ticking off my friends and family, but that’s O.K., I’m not going to stop.


Was I Willing To Face the Pain, Any Pain?
I was in treatment at The Willough, in Naples, Florida. To prevent myself from “feeling” anything, I was using my favorite defense: I could “intellectualize” anything, even treatment. Or so I thought.

One day a therapist suggested that everything was going “right over my head”. She said, “Maybe you don’t really want to get well”. My first reaction was, “How dare she say that?” Then, I got scared…really scared. Maybe there was some truth in what she had said. What would my life be like if I didn’t have food to think about all the time? What would I look forward to? What would I do instead of thinking about food and eating? What feelings would come up if I didn’t have food to stuff them down? For the first time I was in touch with the fear. I was in touch with a “feeling”. For the first time in treatment, I allowed myself to cry. And, amazingly enough, I didn’t fall to pieces or wind up as a puddle in the middle of the floor, unable to function. That’s actually what I had feared would happen if I ever let myself cry, even a little. My recovery from an eating disorder started that day.


Some Theater Seats Are Smaller Than Others…
That’s a fact only a person of size would notice…In an effort to get more seats into a movie theater (and to have all the ascending rows come out even on the aisles), some movie theaters use seats of different widths, in the same theater.

Recently, at a movie, I told this to a friend. She looked at me skeptically. But, I know it’s true. So does every person of size. How our backsides do, or don’t fit in the seat is all the proof we need.


Her Seat Belt Didn’t Fit…
“I was on a flight home to Boston, to visit my folks. I buckled my seat belt and felt tremendous gratitude that it fit. I wouldn’t have to spend this flight with the seatbelt cutting me in half, as I’d experienced so many times in my past.

Just then, I looked up and noticed a young woman across the aisle, about two rows up. She was struggling to close her belt. Quickly, she gave up. I watched her strategically place her purse over her stomach, an attempt to cover the gap left between the two unfastened ends of the seatbelt. When the flight attendant did the pre-flight walk down the aisle, the woman was caught. One attendant called to another, “Hey Tom, could you bring a seat belt extender from the front cabin.” The young woman didn’t say a word. She just stared at the back of the seat in front of her as the attendant rigged the extension and buckled her belt.
As the plane took off, I cried silently for that young woman…and for me.


BLIND DATE
Years ago I had a blind date (my last one, ever!). We had to wait for our table in the restaurant. As my date walked away to get us drinks from the bar, I noticed he had had darts sewn into the waist of his blue jeans. I remember laughing right then and there as I thought, “Any guy who put darts in his jeans to make his butt look better wasn’t going to be a big fan of my butt”. I was right. Within days of our date, I heard from someone who knew him that he had enjoyed my company a lot, but, “he liked his women petite and he thought I was a little overweight”. At the time I was a 5’8” tall and a size 12.) Poor guy. It’s tough to be that obsessed about your own backside!


We Choose Our Thoughts?
In the early ‘90’s, when I was still a news reporter, I interviewed an educator who had started a program called “The Power of Positive Students.” During our interview, he told me something I’ve never forgotten. He said 80% of us will go to our graves not knowing that we are solely responsible for every single thought that goes through our head. That was a totally new awareness for me at the time.

Today, I understand what he was talking about. Today I know this. While I can’t control what happens around me, I am responsible for how I react to events and to people in my life. This has been a process. But once I finally understood this concepts, my life became much more peaceful, my relationships much more rewarding…and emotional eating became much less of an issue.


Today, Life Is Good!
Life is good! And I’m not “skinny”. Imagine that! It’s likely I’ll never be thin. (Apparently I take after my Aunt Molly on my Father’s side). And that’s perfectly O.K. with me these days.

The message I got growing up in the 1960’s was wrong. It turns out you don’t have to be skinny to be happy! Happy is a Choice! And I get to make that choice every singe day of my life, no matter what size blue jeans I’m wearing!



What Shaped You?
I'm sure you too have stories to tell. We would love to read your stories and, through this website, share your experiences with others. If you'd like to contribute a story, please email us by clicking on the What Shapes Us button below.