I mean, what the hell caused that?
It certainly WAS of my own doing, but I can assure you I didn’t wake up one day and decide that my life wasn’t complete until I weighed as much as a bear.
I’m not sure I can answer how it came to be exactly. Even to me it's unfathomable and somewhat of a mystery. I look at my fat pictures and I don’t even remember who that was anymore. 480 pounds???!!! DAAAMN right? Oh shit I said 480 again lol. Take another shot people.
How the hell did I let that happen though seriously? How did I get up to 480? I think the answer most likely lies somewhere in my childhood experiences. I'm cringing a little at what I just said because I don't want it to seem like I’m making excuses, blaming others, or not taking responsibility for my actions. My grandma used to say "You ate it." And the sad truth is -
that is an honest statement. No one but me let that happen.
No one locked me in the basement and forced me to eat twinkies…though to be honest that
sounds kind of fun.
Ultimately, I let myself get gigantic. I did. I've punished myself for years over that very fact that it was my own fault that I got so unhealthy. Part of this journey has been learning to forgive and love myself again – still a work in progress I can tell you. Will I ever get over that?
Before I get too far into my own personal "sob story", I do want to just throw it out there that I do not claim to be a spokesperson by any means for all overweight people. Everyone is unique with their own experiences and so I can only speak for myself.
Anyway, are you ready for this journey down my memory lane? Go ahead and get a glass of wine because you really may need it. As for me, I’ll sit back on my couch and tell you about my Mother…literally….we’ll get there.
And I should mention that in preparation for this, you should be vastly impressed (and maybe pity me a little) because I really did my homework here. I broke out my old journals…all 20+ of them and read every single page. (Talk about needing wine!)
I have always been an avid journal writer – it’s actually something of a joke in my family growing up. Where is Holly? – if her nose isn’t in a book she is probably writing in one of her dumb journals.
For me, writing has always been therapeutic. I’ve never wanted anyone to actually read the damn things! They are just full of crap to quote Bridget Jones. And let me just apologize now to my children in advance for all of the boxes containing these books of madness they will one day feel obliged to store in their garage one day. I mean what good are these journals really?
I guess if someone ever holds a knife at my throat and says I’ll die if I can’t name every crush I’ve ever had since junior high school, well then, I’ll be saved.
When I read them now on occasion (which is pretty rare-nobody got the time right?) I’m so horribly embarrassed at how boy crazy and depressed I consistently was. There is nothing productive or meaningful in those pages. I guess I do enjoy the fun memories though. Some of the entries are truly hysterical and prove how very bored we were before iPads and Twitter.
For example, when I was 13 my family drove to Disneyland and I documented every 2-3 minutes of the entire 16-hour drive from Utah. I think I fancied myself Harriet the Spy or something because I detailed what everyone in my family was wearing, doing, and saying the entire road trip.
You can tell when I got especially bored as I would draw landscapes I saw and recorded hamburger and soda prices of places we went. I disgustedly counted each time my Mom had to stop to pee and each family squabble.
But the most treasured entry by far, out of all of my journals is actually during this trip. It started when my sister Laurie was very annoyed that I wrote down that she had to pee in my journal. I wrote how offended I was when she told my Mother that and she responded with “Don’t worry Laurie. No one will read her dumb journal anyway!” This still makes me giggle and is of course one of our favorite family jokes.
Looking through these journals though, besides making me laugh hysterically at myself, has been a wonderful practice in self-reflection. There truly does seem to be a correlation with my weight gain and hardships I was enduring at the time. As we discuss my childhood I’ll be sure to share a few telling entries with you if you can handle the drama. Let me just tell or remind you how boy crazy and dramatic teenage girls are. Oh shit I’m already embarrassed.
As a young child, I was never what you would call thin. I had a very large frame and I was “meaty”. I had inherited my Mother's ginormous legs and voluptuous booty and that was way before J-Lo & the Kardashians, so it so wasn’t cool at the time damnit!
Back then I was fully aware that I was bigger than most of my friends, but it didn’t really bother me too often until junior high. I was super active in soccer and dance. When I was young they didn’t have Xbox and Facebook, so you were forced to get off your ass and ride your bike if you wanted to socialize with your friends. That kept me pretty fit as well.
In those super early years my legs were still big but they were fast, muscular soccer legs - I would race kids in the neighborhood and I usually won! I got the fasted time in the 50 yard dash in elementary school. So, though I was never 'skinny' in my early years, I was happy and very much in great shape. When I was 12, I could run a mile in 9:30. I know that isn’t impressive to you runners out there who do the 6-minute mile, but I’d nearly kill to be able to run a mile in under 10 minutes.
Life got a little more complicated for me at the age of 13 when I had two in-grown toe-nails. I didn't know what it was I had and I was terrified and stupidly hid it from my parents, apparently for a few months. By the time they found out about it, they were nearly gangrenous and I had to have a couple pretty painful surgical procedures.
This put a damper on my physical activities and I started putting on weight. I soon crept over the 200-pound mark. The term ‘fat ass’ and similar names became increasingly more common. I started to become self-conscious about my weight. It was starting to become a problem.
I remember my Mother telling me that when I slept over at my best friend’s house growing up (Jill Davis) that I could only have two pancakes or pieces of toast etc. I remember just being annoyed that Jill could have 4 but I was restricted. Oh the injustice of it! My Mother had struggled with her weight too so I know she was just trying to help me but I remember starting to sneak food when she wasn’t around. I was such a rebel! When she started working outside of the home I started to sneak food just because I could. I was a carb addict already.
My Mother empathized with my weight struggle and helped me go on a hospital diet (the first of MANY diets) and I soon lost 12 pounds.
So I was getting heavier at this stage in life. In Junior High School though, I was super involved in school. I was in a gifted and talented program called Quest. Honestly, I think my mother had fudged my way into that program, I really don’t think I was quite smart enough. She was so proud of my scholastic aptitude and various awards and accomplishments. Her belief in my talents pushed me to succeed and to be an overachiever. I also had a lot of friends in school and really enjoyed my social life. I was practically connected at the hip to my best friend Stacie Mathis who was in nearly all my same classes all 3 years of junior high. Things weren’t perfect or anything, but I was a pretty happy camper despite my weight that was slowly creeping up.
But then it happened. During the summer after 8th grade something happened that changed me forever. When I was 14, my mother died of an overdose. She was just barely 40 and it was such a shock to us. We hoped the overdose was accidental. Her death certificate reads “Inconclusive death” as there was no suicide note or anything. Sorry to play the 'dead Mom card' on ya'll, but as you can imagine, this event turned my world and that of my family – my father and my 3 sisters, completely upside down. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever fully recovered.
We all put on more weight after her death and I personally was soon well over 200 pounds – I think somewhere in the 240’s range. A couple months later I went on the Nutrisystem diet and started lap swimming with my father. I got back down to 208 pounds but that was still fairly hefty for someone my age.
Starting 9th grade a month after she died was incredibly tough. Well shit, isn’t that a tough age for everyone???? I think we can all agree that being around 13 or 14 is just hellish dealing with puberty – all those hormones. Yikes!
And then for me, suddenly I was that kid whose Mom had died of an overdose over the summer. I hated the pity I felt from a lot of kids and the stupid ass comments like “Well you Mom is in a better place blah blah blah”. (BTW please don’t say that to anyone ever-just given them a hug). It was even worse when other kids just ignored me because they didn’t know what to say. Looking back now I totally get it. I didn’t understand my own feelings at the time, how could I expect anyone else to? You just don’t know how to act or what to say when someone experiences a tragedy and so it’s just awkward for everyone.
I couldn’t even write about my Mom’s death in my journal for months because I simply had no words to describe it. It’s just one of those things. My grades started to suffer. Before, nerd that I was I mostly got A’s and suddenly I was getting C’s and D’s and even almost failed Geometry one term.
9th grade was also the year I would have my first official crush on a boy. My first (of many) experiences with unrequited love. That was a big deal back then people. I’m embarrassed to tell you how many entries (and even a few rather terrible poems) are devoted to that boy. Excuse me for a moment while I look for some matches…….The less said on that the better!
Flashing forward to almost a year after my Mother’s passing, my father would throw us a curveball. He decided to get remarried and declared that we would be moving up east to live with his new wife and her children.
Here were my initial thoughts upon discovering this at the age of 15 from my journal:
“I don’t want to move away from my friends. I know I will make new friends, but I don’t want to leave the friends that I have now. I especially don’t want to move away from Christian. I really care about him….I want to die. I have to go to Cottonwood High. I don’t want to. I would rather die than move. Life is gross! I hate it. I am depressed. I miss my Mom. I love her so much. It seems like by moving we are just going to forget all about her.”
So yeah I laugh a little at the drama of my journal entries and that teenage attitude of how everything is horrible and you want to die. But it really does almost bring a tear to my eye that bit about how moving felt like we would forget all about our Mom because I remember that feeling so much and it was so real. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her and our life yet – none of us were.
A few days later I wrote more along those same lines:
“I am beginning to think that I am just always depressed with little happy spells in between.
I don’t want my dad to get married again. I feel as though it’s not right. It seems as though my dad is throwing my Mom out with the garbage. He wants to forget her completely. That really hurts. I can’t deal with this……I want to kiss, hug, or just hold my Mom one last time ….I want to die….I want my Mom back and our old life.…..I love her so much. I wish my Dad still did. He even told us that he thinks he will probably love Diane more than my Mom. That hurts.”
Later in that same entry I mention how at an outing he kept comparing my mother to Diane and telling us about all these qualities Diane had that were better. Looking back though, I can’t fault my father too much for this as he was just ignorant of how we were feeling. I know he didn’t mean to hurt us with those comments at all. He just didn’t understand that although you can consider it moving on with a new spouse, it’s not the same with a parent. Having a spouse die is I’m sure horrible and getting a new one doesn’t make it all better so I don’t mean to imply that, but in a way you are getting sort of a ‘replacement’ in a new spouse. But what my father didn’t understand is that you don’t simply replace your Mom with a new one. It doesn’t work like that.
So just barely a year after my Mom died, we became a ‘blended’ family – like the Brady Bunch with a total of 8 children. 2 more children would eventually be brought into that big crazy family.
This move, the marriage, blending families all of it was incredibly tough – a big adjustment for all of us. Prior to that I really depended on my friends. My social life was everything to me especially after my Mom died, and suddenly I was separated from all of my friends and started high school knowing almost no one. I knew one person to be exact.
This was another serious turning point in my life. I felt lost amongst all the kids in the family and I missed the doting attention I used to get from my Mother. I was no longer the smart kid by any means. My step-siblings were very intelligent – the kind that skip grades and shit and were more confident. And you can bet they weren’t exactly thrilled either to have to share their home with new step-siblings either. I don't blame them for that. I did grow to love and adore all of them, but it was no picnic at first for anyone.
There were definitely some tough times and I became depressed and had low self-esteem.
Another journal entry:
“I hate writing when I’m mad because it always makes me look so foolish. I guess I am a fool.
I hate myself so bad. I am just this lazy, fat idiot. I hate going to school. I don’t really have any friends. I have acquaintances, but no one I could really tell my problems to. Sometimes I feel so alone. I’m praying but sometimes it seems to me that even He would not want to help me. Why was I born? What possible good can I do? I can’t do a single thing. I know they say that you should write the good things about you when your feeling bad, but there aren’t any in my case. I’m serious.
I am fat & ugly, rude, unfriendly. I have no friends and an ugly body. I have a big nose, thighs, hips, legs, and a HUMUNGEOUS butt. I get teased all the time about it cause it’s true. I know that just because your fat you could still be a nice person, but that’s just it. I’m fat and I have no personality. I am so alone and I don’t even have anywhere to go. I do know people I could talk to in West Valley but I couldn’t get there. I want my Mom back. I love her. She was the one who showed she loved me….
Why couldn’t God have made me pretty. And why do I let myself look like a fat cow. I hate me. Sometimes life is so unbearable. Why me? I can’t handle this. Why did things have to change? I need a close friend. Someone who will like me because of me if there is such a thing possible.”
So wow. More drama again but clearly I was having a hard time. Well one of my wishes did come true. No my Mom didn’t come back to life or anything, but I met the awesome Beverly (her nickname was Bungi) who became my best friend throughout high school and we were there for each other through a lot of shit. Thank you Beverly! Shout out to you girlfriend!
In high school when I became suicidal for a time, thankfully my parents got me some much-needed counseling for a time but I would continue to battle with depression and constantly rode the weight roller coaster where I would gain and lost weight over and over again through high school and beyond. I really tried to take control and get healthy with countless diet programs and exercise regimes but I could never find long term success because I wouldn’t stick with anything long enough. I would do great for a time only to stop and gain it all back plus more. Sound familiar? Yeah, I’m certainly not alone in this I know. So many people can relate to this.
In my junior year of high school I lost 45 pounds on the Omnitirition and Slim Fast liquid shake programs, bringing my weight back down to 200 pounds which was seriously cool! It was the most weight I had lost my entire life. I had this whole crazy system where I tracked everything I ate, weighed and measured myself. I had made up this point system where everything I did counted for points and I graded myself. It was pretty complicated and I don’t really remember all the details, but it really worked for me.
Losing so much weight gave me such incredible confidence. I was working at a grocery store as a bagger and there was never a shortage of eye candy for me. For a while I dated quite a lot actually which was awesome but sadly short-lived.
I tried really hard to be active and keep the weight off – I swam in gym class, played volleyball in church, did the Deborah Lee, Kathy Smith, and Buns of Steel workout videos (yeah I was super cool and am so aging myself here), and went walking with my sisters. I tried to eat healthy etc to keep the weight off, but despite these efforts, my weight plummeted back up to 240 pounds in my senior year of high school.
I had the awesome support of my best friend Beverly in high school and made many other friends in high school. I also got along well with my step-mother and step-siblings but despite all of this, I continued to struggle with depression due to missing my mother, my heavy weight, and the fact that I wasn’t dating very much like my friends did. I found that guys wanted to be my friend and sometimes as a make-out partner, but never as a girlfriend which I attributed to my weight.
Here is an entry from this time period:
“Guys really are jerks. If I was a total skinny babe he’d ask me out, but since I’m a chunky person, he won’t. Let’s face it, everyone judges people by appearance. I just want someone to like me who isn’t a total jerk. Is that too much to ask? Can’t anyone look beyond my chubbiness and get to know me?”
That entry is pretty telling and a pretty accurate summation of my experiences and attitude toward men not just in high school but for YEARS to come after that. It’s like I heard once what was said to Pam on an Archer episode – I was like a moped. Fun to ride but you don’t want any of your friends seeing you do it. Ha ha, I’m laughing because I wasn’t letting anyone ride me as I was Mormon back in the day so I would remain a virgin for many, many years.
Anyway, after high school graduation, I again became suicidal when I discovered more about my Mother. I learned that she abused prescription drugs for years and would often drink alcohol. I could not process this newfound knowledge. It was so difficult for me to cope with given my LDS upbringing. As you may or may not know in the Mormon church drinking alcohol, doing drugs, smoking, and even drinking coffee is strictly forbidden.
But I think what I struggled with the most was how this painfully brought back the memory of her death to the surface, along with the grief and other emotions I had previously suppressed. So, combine that with new knowledge of her depression and substance abuse, and I was pretty messed up and couldn’t process it all. My thoughts and emotions were racing rampant.
I simply couldn’t stop thinking about her death and what happened the night before she died. We were all in a terrible family squabble and so she had slept alone on the couch. We never resolved the fight and as I ran down the stairs, I actually yelled at her telling her that I hated her. Oh, just wait, it gets worse. My sisters and I slept in the same room that night and before we fell asleep we all complained how hard it was to live with her. Let’s just say that in my family we all have built up a lifetime of regrets. Not to mention my poor sister who feels terrible for starting the fight.
That next fateful morning my father ran into the room crying in despair – something I had never seen him do before and he was yelling “Mom did it. She finally did it. She killed herself!”
We ran upstairs and there she lay completely motionless. She was dead on the couch, still gripping Afrin nasal spray and Chapstick and her head laid all the way back like she was grasping for her last breath, which apparently, she had.
I’ll never forget the nightmarish crackling sounds her fingers made as the coroners took those objects out of her cold, lifeless hands – food for future nightmares.
I only really remember three other things about that day – telling my best friend that my Mother was dead, my grandmother accusing my father of killing my mother, and then desperately crying into my mother’s pillow for hours which sweetly and torturously smelled of her.
Have you lost anyone close to you? Are you familiar with the pain…the utter anguish that exudes from the depth of your very soul? I know that sounds dramatic but some of you know I do not exaggerate. If you haven’t experienced such loss, I hope you never do. Mere words cannot adequately describe the utmost pain emotionally and even physical. There are such real and raw emotions associated with such a loss.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about the nature of her overdose. I’d convinced myself for years that her death was accidental, but was it? The fact was that she abused drugs and dealt with depression. So did she purposely take those pills to leave us and end her life? Was life with us so unbearable? And if she didn’t mean to end her life by taking those pills, wasn’t it still her fault and not exactly an accident since she was a drug abuser?
I didn’t know what to think and felt horrible no matter what I concluded of the situation. How horrible for me to think these awful thoughts of my own mother!!! I can tell you (and certainly probably Oprah one day – ha ha) it was simply hell not knowing either way whether it was intentional or not. It still is. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty messed up about it.
So at that time, just after graduating high school I also just really missed my Mom oh so very much. I wanted more than anything to see her again, to have her hug me and tell me everything was going to be okay. She was so full of life and had a way of making us each feel so special and was just so caring and attentive. She was one of those super chipper people who would end up being best friends with the checker at the grocery store. She was truly captivating and charming with those big hazel eyes and that big gorgeous smile.
I found a poem I wrote that year – it’s poetry hour ha ha. Yeah I’m not much of a poet but I think its an adequate depiction of my feelings at that dark time in my life:
Reflections
Ranting and raving over foolish problems like a newborn child.
Unable and unwilling to change for the better.
Scared to admit and face up to old time experiences which drain the fluid of life dwelling within your veins.
Ashamed and heartbroken yet another time when nothing matters except all that you desire.
Deeply you sleep in your own little world,
Never to awaken and never to experience the joy of life created for your purpose.
But you keep sleeping and while you sleep the wall around you towers higher
Until you cannot see the top or any light.
Trapped are you by your own doing until you stop blaming and take back your life.
And you keep digging and digging into the mess you have become.
Holly McAffee Holt
Looking back, I can definitely see how at this time I let myself get up to 270 pounds and started counseling sessions once again. I had graduated high school and I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with myself.
And the diet roller coaster continued. I found some short-lived success with my Cardio Glide exercise machine paired with the Cellular Nutrition and Slim Fast liquid diets in July of 1994 and got down to 250 pounds. Sadly, four months later I would soar back up to 280 pounds.
So yeah this is sort of the Groundhog Day part of my saga. Holly gets depressed and eats more cupcakes and gains weight. Holly goes on diet, eats salads, exercises and loses weight. Then she gets depressed again and the cycle continues. I think you get the point. It was exhausting and overwhelming all the diets, all my failed relationships, and the depression.
Speaking of which here is another entry describing how I lonely and hopeless I felt at the time:
“I have never felt like killing myself more than I do now. I feel as though all my dreams are shattered. I have nothing to look forward to. I will never hope again. Never hope for any love because it will never come…apparently no one will care for a detestable specimen such as me. Who in their right mind would like a grotesquely overweight, overtalkative, hot-tempered, lazy bitch like me…..I can’t take it anymore…I have a lot of friends but that’s it Not even one admirer….what is my problem? All I’ve been ever told is to wait and my day will come. I know that is a bunch of shit. That is like the biggest lie I’ve heard in my life. Why can’t people be honest and say that no one wants me? ….I guess I can’t blame guys for not seeing me as anything but nice. I’ve tried to lose weight and I’m a failure at that too. I can’t do anything right. You know I’ll probably go to hell when I die anyway, so why don’t I just end it right now and join my mother who probably just quit too.”
Wow, part of me wants to reach back in time to my younger self and give myself a hug and then a big kick in the ass to snap the hell out of it! Now you have to know that was venting – I wasn’t suicide on a stick walking around every day, but some days were just worse than others. At the time I had been writing to a missionary in the LDS church and really fell in love with him – Jared was his name and then when he came home we didn’t date and I was convinced it was because I had gained wait.
Here’s a not so cheerful poem from the same timeframe: (yeah dark poetry hour – AGAIN)
POEM:
The world spins and spins and I am dizzy.
I am not part of it yet I long to be.
A spectacle, a freak I am
With no one to love or care for me.
I hide in my shell – scared to come out and show my face.
Exposing my heart I cannot do, though its ice is pure and true.
Shoot it to the ground like roaring laughter.
Help it on its way – hide it back from the rejection it constantly comes across
To be itself it cannot be.
It’s ugliness and originality scaring all it comes across.
Longing to love and serve with passion overflowing.
Crying out – Help me! Love me!
I will help you – it cannot and is scared to die.
It is me and I am the end.
Holly McAffee Holt
The next year in 1996 to 97 I served a proselyting mission for the LDS church in Houston Texas. This is what I refer to as back in my religious days for I no longer go to church-they kicked my ass right out – no I'm kidding I just stopped going. But I didn’t quite serve the full 18 months due to some painful bulging discs in my back. I had gotten up to 300 pounds at this point. Never wanting to give up, this triggered me to try the Cabbage Soup Diet (which is a horrible diet by the way) and I also did lots of water aerobics. I lost 17 pounds with this endeavor.
But I just couldn't seem to get over my depression. I hated how fat I was (now at over 300 pounds), my friends were all getting married and I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I signed back up for college only to dropout later when I couldn’t fit in the seats. It's kind of funny thinking back on it now but trust me at the time it was upsetting.
I also had this habit of marrying off my roomates and friends which happened time after time. They often would meet their future spouse through me so I’ve always fancied myself as sort of a matchmaker. I took it pretty hard with a guy named Kelly. I actually had me him in the Mission Training Center which is where you go at the first part of your mission that I was serving for the LDS church and I fell for his snarky sense of humor. That guy was witty and he could play the piano like nobody’s business. He went to Guatemala on his mission (I went to Texas) and we wrote for quite a few months and then he came home and married my roommate Gena. They started dating in secret when I was on a family vacation and for a while Kelly was trying to date us both. When they were officially together they would make out in with eachother right in front of me and were mystified that I wouldn’t go to their wedding a few months later.
I noted the following in my journal in August of that year which is not directly related to this incident but kind of telling as to my level of depression around that time period: (again another not so happy little ditty)
“Have you ever felt so alone that you wish you were dead? When you exist but not really – with no place of your own. With just your pain to keep you company. Do you ever walk around with a constant sob in your throat, never wanting to leave your room?
When you have tried, really tried to make things work, and they don’t and no one cares and no one cares about you – you are nothing. And you want to disappear from sight so they can’t see you.”
The next year, in 1998 I crept up to 311 pounds. Like us all, my life definitely was never short of ups and downs. In August of 2000 my father and step-mother divorced. This was another devastation for me as it felt like as a result that we were ALL divorced or separated from our step-siblings and a darling half brother and sister whom we had been raised with for years. They felt like my brothers and sisters and suddenly it was almost as if they were gone. It got even worse a few years later but we’ll just skip some of that.
This was another kind of déjà vu for me because after my mother had died we lost touch with almost everyone on her side of the family other than my grandmother. At the time, it felt like we had all died to them but I know a lot of it is how many of them lived in different states. More to tell Oprah, right?
The next thing that happened in my life is very difficult for me to talk about and I is of a super serious and sensitive nature. Let's just say that my father was incarcerated. He has since passed so I'm not too worried about sharing that fact.
But to protect others who are still living I will not go into the details, but suffice it to say there were several years of court dates and jail visits. It honestly was the worst thing I went through, aside from my Mother's death. As you can imagine this trial and his time in jail was heartbreaking for me, my father obviously, and for my entire family. I ate away my emotions and ended up 414 pounds by 2004.
I tried many more diets before I met my amazing husband and later married my husband in 2009. My weight went up and down like a yo-yo. I went between 350-400 so many times it is insane to even recount. I got down to about 350 before I got married, but after getting pregnant in 2010, I got up to my very heaviest at 480.
