‘Since I lost six stone, I’m no longer seen as messy, needy and lazy’

After years of struggling with my weight, I realised that I had a medical problem which required a medical solution

I am sitting on a plane in the middle seat and wishing I were in the aisle so I’d only annoy one passenger instead of two. My safety belt, I have noticed, has very little slack left in the system. The passenger destined for the window seat looks at me and rolls her eyes. She has to sit with a fatty, and I’m the author of her pain.
When I get home, I change my trousers one enormous leg at a time, seated of course, in case I lose my balance, and fall over. Looking at my bed, I notice that one side has what looks like a crater. Some of the slats holding up the mattress have split and cracked. I sit in the chair, miserable, defeated. And as I flop down on the bed, I utter the sound that goes with all movement these days: “oof.” 
As of 2018, I am 49 years old, 5ft 10in and weigh 20st. This is the lowest point of my struggle against my own weight, and it has been a very long war indeed.
Since the age of 10, I resented and feared the bathroom scale. I was born in upstate New York, where my Jewish mother had always led me to equate food with love. Every time I was feeling sad, lonely, or bored, food was the answer. And unfortunately for me, she was a very good cook. She grew up in the South, and the family had a knack for southern fried chicken, but she made a mean spaghetti, and for some annoying reason, never seemed to put on an ounce. Before long I was the fat kid in the class.
My mother tried to be supportive in her way. She was once a principal ballerina and valued thinness a great deal, but her suggestions were often emotionally painful. Instead of giving me a cuddle, she suggested I wear vertical stripes, helpfully mentioning that they’re “slenderising”, and sent me to school with a packed lunch of two apples and nothing else.
At the age of 12, I remember visiting my paediatrician (in America, all the kids have paediatricians). My doctor left the room for a moment, and I found myself checking his handwritten notes. There, I read that I had “a penguin-like build”. My mother and I would laugh about this for years: “penguin-like build”. I learned to use humour as a defence mechanism, and fortunately that defence mechanism would become a career in comedy writing and theatre.
From childhood onward, I would oscillate between the euphemisms – from “chunky” to “a bit on the heavy side”, from “big-boned” to “could lose a few”. Doctors and friends and family were trying to be nice, but frankly, I preferred “penguin-like”. I was generally a happy child – or jolly, as they call fat people who are also happy – but I can’t say I had any confidence with girls in high school. 
But during high school, I met the woman who would become my wife, and during our courtship I started losing weight rather rapidly and well. It turns out that self-confidence and affection are a great substitute for food. My wife never seemed to care what weight I was, but that wasn’t an issue in my 20s, when I was a “normal” size.
Being obese keeps you from achieving. People assume you’re lazy or have weak character, and they really don’t like being around fat people very much. We take up too much space, too much air, too many resources, can’t control our movements – honestly, we’re a lot of trouble. 
We always look like a rumpled mess because our clothes never fit us, because we’re always going up and down in weight. Fat people don’t have one size, they oscillate between a set of sizes, making every morning an ordeal where you have to try on a range of clothes. 
Throughout my 20s and 30s I had kept my weight mostly under control, at around 14st. I was able to shift my diet to mostly lean meats and a lot of vegetables. I had discovered weightlifting and boxing. But that grace period was over when my children were born. Like a lot of parents, I finished what my kids left on their plates – macaroni cheese, spaghetti. I shoved it down regardless. A terrible American pasta chain once offered bottomless bowls of spaghetti – I promise you, I could have put them out of business.
Being a parent was often a thankless business, and the pounds came roaring back. I wasn’t going down without a fight, though, and throughout my forties I tried everything – intermittent fasting, high protein, CrossFit, ballet, boxing, everything except closing my mouth. I committed to losing weight, and then found myself in front of an enormous plate of pasta. I was in constant battle with my own brain. 
By now, my doctors were looking concerned. One grabbed my growing rolls and said, quite clearly, “THIS is your problem.” My cholesterol, triglycerides and sugar numbers were inching past “elevated” to “dangerous”. Even my video game system started to get in on the action. I had bought a Wii Fit to do some exercise in my basement, and after I stepped on the scale and it measured my weight, a cloyingly cute creature that resembled a Pokemon told me, “You’re obese.” Thanks, Wii Fit.
At the age of 43 I was on statins, the ADHD medication Adderall for the brain fog, testosterone gel because being fat robs your body of the male hormone, and a lack of testosterone robs your body of muscle mass. All this caused me to put on weight faster than ever. I was prescribed antidepressants. Antidepressants? I shouldn’t be depressed. For the first time in my life I was a professional success: a play I had written was about to go to Broadway. 
But I was fat, and fat people don’t move as much as they should and a lack of physical activity makes you depressed, so there I was taking two different antidepressants. 
But in 2018, at the age of 49, at the end of my tether, I asked my doctor what else could be done. He suggested that gastric band surgery might help me. Unlike other more invasive surgeries like gastric sleeve, this was suggested for people who needed to lose between five and 10st, right in my zone. I wasn’t upset or scared: I’d tried everything else, so this was it. 
And so I began the four-month-long journey towards weight-loss surgery; in my case, the gastric band, an inflatable tube they wrap around the top of your stomach, fooling your brain into thinking you’re fuller than you are. This tube would have to be filled with saline as I lost weight, as my visceral fat and stomach shrank, to keep my appetite down. 
Before such serious surgery in the US, the doctors have to make sure you’ll abide by a doctor’s cautions, that you’re not anorexic or have some body dysmorphia problem. Hence, I visited a psychologist for a few months to establish that I really wanted this and wasn’t a danger to myself. It wasn’t long before my therapist asked me what took me so long to seek this help. 
It was decreed I would have to begin an all-liquid diet for a month. This surgery requires you shrink your liver down so they don’t injure or kill you when moving your enormous foie gras out of the way to install that tube around the top of your stomach. 
The operation, which took place in February 2019, took a few hours, and it took me a good week to recover from it, but I was up and walking about within 48 hours, and back to solid foods within two weeks.
Then – magic seemed to happen. After surgical recovery, I ate… normally. I didn’t need seconds. I could hardly finish my firsts. My kids’ leftovers looked like poison or garbage, not food. And the weight kept coming off. There were some negative side effects – even to this day, I must chew my food religiously, or I need to throw up. Such medically-induced bulimia would lead to all sorts of other medical issues I don’t want – esophageal scarring, tooth decay, malnutrition. So, chew chew chew. 
Some may say the surgical approach is cheating, but I really don’t care. I had a medical problem and that sometimes takes a medical solution. 
At my thinnest, I lost seven stone. I have rebounded from the bottom of it a bit, and have stabilised at a 6st loss from my heaviest. I now clock in at about 14st. 
Over the past five years, I have noticed people treat me better. I’m no longer “messy”, “needy” or “unkempt”. I noticed that people told me I was “getting it together”. “I love those new trousers”, and “you seem so much happier”, they said.
And maybe these people were always nice to me, but I started noticing it more once I liked myself. As my self-esteem increased, my wife and I – already becoming distant over the years – continued to grow apart and eventually separated. Neither of us were prepared for the new guy that was hiding under all that lard. People who are considering radical weight loss should be aware: it changes you. Now, almost five years after my surgery, I am happy in a new relationship and am moving to London.
These days, I’m almost never hungry. If a meal is delayed an hour, I don’t need a snack, and if I did, a snack would suffice, it doesn’t become a second dinner. Small bags of crisps can be thrown away after you’ve finished half a portion, and those remaining crisps just don’t look like food anymore, but leftovers. Leftovers! I finally have leftovers in the fridge! I hadn’t had leftovers in the fridge for years.
I only eat two or three meals a day. Generally a single omelette with vegetables, a small dinner, a glass of wine or two, and occasionally I’ll have a dessert. I don’t count calories, I just stop when I’m no longer hungry, and I’m not hungry for very long. If I eat just a bite over a normal human portion, I start feeling sick.
My health metrics changed, too. I don’t need the medications anymore; my cholesterol, sugar and triglycerides are much lower, my digestion and energy levels are much improved, fuelling a positive (and literal) cycle. The more in shape I feel, the more I feel like exercising, and I no longer commute on the train if I can help it – I bike everywhere I can. Whether in London or New York or Los Angeles, I love those electric-assisted bikes you can rent, as they provide me with an hour of light exercise per day. I feel happier, more in love with the world.
Obesity is a medical problem, and it demanded a medical solution. For me, medical weight loss was one of the best choices I ever made. I used to cringe when people told me, “You’ve lost weight.” I prefer what they say when they see me now. “Oh my GOD: what happened to the rest of you?” The rest of me has gone away, and I’m proud of the man who remains.
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