Sleevelyf

I’m coming out of the closet. It’s time to get it out in the open. While there are those in my life who are currently screaming ‘I knew it!’ At their screens, that is not what I mean. I am what they call a sleever. #sleevelyf

They are labeled everything from cheaters to heroes and everything in between. Their skinniness and their health are a by product of a major surgery. But let me tell you, it is not the result of major surgery. The weight loss and the fitness are not injected into your body under a general anaesthetic and much to my disappointment, I didn’t wake up from a general anaesthetic with the arse and face of Charlize Theron.

It was in fact the exact opposite. I woke up swollen and fatter than I was before I went under the knife. I am fifteen weeks post-op. For you non-sleevers unfamiliar with the lingo, it means I chopped 80% of my stomach out fifteen weeks ago. In the last fifteen weeks life has been an adjustment. Learning to eat again more slowly, in smaller portions, replacing the energy boosters that used to come in the form of nuts or sugar with protein shakes and cans of tuna, getting it wrong and spending more time than I will ever admit, out loud or in person, with my head in the toilet bowl because that was one spoonful of chicken too many.

When you chop out 80% of your stomach, there are rules. You have to eat the protein first, then the veg and if you absolutely must, you can get to the carbs. You still only eat three meals a day with a protein booster at morning tea and afternoon tea but you are physically putting far less food into your body without the obvious side effects. You still want chocolate, you still emotionally eat, you still want to eat all of the foods in the world but you simply can’t.

It’s been hard. It’s been socially isolating and at times down right embarrassing. The discussions with waiters and waitresses that ‘there is nothing wrong with the food, I’m just full’ shared with their looks if incredulous disbelief that this fatty could possibly be full is akin to someone handing you a wetsuit that’s four times too small and you try to put it on anyway. There were moments where I had to excuse myself from dinner tables while I paced up and down back alleys and foyers of public toilets waiting to cough it up or push it down with tears streaming down my face waiting for the pain to pass. While those moments weren’t an everyday occurrence the conversations about what I’m eating came to be.

It’s amazing that when you’re fat people silently judge the food that goes in your mouth. They wouldn’t dare mention it to your face that you’ve eaten all four of the Monte Carlos that were put out for the meeting but when you start to eat nothing, the judgement is loud, forthcoming and brutal. ‘That can’t be all you’re having?’ ‘Where’s the rest of your lunch?’ ‘Oh how cute is your lunchbox, it’s like the one I pack my toddler.’ It’s like all of a sudden what you do with your food has become fair game and the guilt is mountainous. The ones with the full stomachs and the full plates begin to feel guilty about their sneaky freddo frogs, their giant bowls of Caesar salad and the decision to have chips and an ice cream from McDonalds.

They look at you and your two tablespoons of tuna on a cruskit and then link that with the idea that you’re arse has dropped three sizes in the last three months. Yes my arse has dropped three sizes in the last three months and do you know what food shamers, if you ate two tablespoons of tuna on a cruskit for lunch yours would too. The light bulb moment dawns on their faces and spreads to their forks. They put their forks down, push their plates away and the epiphany breaks loose. She was fat because she ate too much.

That statement is not untrue. I did. For a long time. I ate lots of the wrong things for the wrong reasons for years. And then I tried to make it better in just three years. But investing 33 years in this body and then trying to rectify it in 3, well the maths just doesn’t add up. Getting rid of it was going to take time, and time was something I just didn’t have. But in hiding from the lunch room for a month or two I found something else. I found an online community of fatties that had chosen the #sleevelyf. Trolling instagram over my lunch break became obsessive. There were people out there living this glamorous skinny life and I wanted a part of it because from where I was sitting, tuna and a cruskit and coughing till I spewed felt far from glamorous.

This group of reformed fatties on the internet are hash tagging their way to a healthier life and a bigger bank balance. After spending a life shunned and shamed for their fatness, their loose skin and change room selfies have taken my instagram feed hostage and the fitness community by surprise.

The fitness industry thrives on arse selfies in gym mirrors, muscle men with no necks resting on gym benches and an açai bowl or seven. These sleevers are filling gym hashtag feeds with pictures of loose skinned, saggy necked reformed fatties dancing and deadlifting their way to aerobic fitness. The ‘body positive’ campaign has changed the way most people outwardly speak about body image and in particular that of the fatties. The self talk we give to our daughters about accepting what they have and making responsible choices to live a healthy life seems to be the motto of the moment. It’s a far cry from ‘don’t eat that, nobody loves a fat girl’ that I grew up with but still the reformation sometimes sits uncomfortably.

I won’t stop looking at Andrew Paps’ instagram feed. I won’t ever stop appreciating abs, arrows and well defined biceps that I can only ever dream of having. But between them now is the photos of defined upper arms with enough saggy skin to be mistaken for elephant ears, a distinctive roll of wobbly skin that hangs disturbingly low over a pubic bone and more folds in a neck vagina than an ageing turkey but in time, I’ll learn to love them too. The ‘thin’ may be more visible when well camouflaged in an off the shoulder dress but underneath there, it’s all baby elephant. I can only dilute the fantasy bodies in my instagram with all of the other bodies and set my goals in deadlifts, running and the size of my jeans. We can all learn to celebrate the wins of others and that may be a double tap on insta post or simply just shutting the hell up at the lunch table.

It seems no matter what size or shape you are, we still see ourselves at our worst. The face that you see in the mirror every morning is made up of all the things that we’ve been before. For me that’s everything from a size 24 to a current 16. The 16 version of me appears only momentarily in mirrors and reflections in shop windows. The 24 version of me, well she lives here, permanently and probably always will. She’s a huge (pun intended) part of who I am and without her my personality would not have developed the way that it did. So while she is quite a bitch and filled with self talk that would make a sailor blush, I will always be grateful for the way she helped build me. But sometime soon I’ll make her shrink. I’ll saturate my brain with visions of all people fit, healthy and making better choices abs, no abs, belly tires, and saggy underarm skin. And one day, when I’m eating tuna on a cruskit at lunch time, she’ll whisper ‘Good job lady’ as I double tap that day’s fat yoga post.