Skinny Island: Part 4

Xiang

Dear Diary,

I think this journey is turning out to be more meaningful to me than I originally expected and frankly I’m a little surprised at myself. When I first came to the island, it was to promote Body Positivity and maybe even draw some attention to my “Pretty in Pink” plus-size bikini line, but all I’ve been doing since I got here is hanging out with super petite women and hot guys pitching diets and workout regimens. Even worse is the fact that no one has been looking at me; I’ve been looking at them.

Back home it was so much easier to not care about being so big. There were plenty of fat women walking around and we were all just kind of telling each other that we were still beautiful and that out curves were sexy, but that was as far as it went. None of us had boyfriends. None of us could get a date outside of feeders and chubby chasers, and those that went for it just ended up gaining even more weight before the inevitable breakup. We would pay extra for clothes we barely fit into, then post pictures on instagram just to get comments that are 50% fetishy guys being fetishy, 30% other fat girls calling us brave, and 20% fatpbobic trolling. It almost makes you feel like you have to prove to everyone that you can still be beautiful when everyone basically agrees…that you’re not.

Today I went out and hit the beach after cannibalizing fabric I bought from some of the vendors to make something that would cover me up a bit more so that my jiggling belly blob doesn’t hang out everywhere when I walk, but still be small enough to flatter my body in better ways than “fatkini” does Honestly, I think it was a huge success. I have clothes that fit, I’m feeling a little more secure, and even the islanders are starting to notice that I’m changing, little by little.

I don’t remember exactly how much I weighed when I first got to the island; just that it was a lot more than I do now. I’ve noticed that Val and Kelly have been slimming down like crazy too, nut that’s what a Skinny Island diet does to you, I suppose. The best part of my trip so far and what really tipped the scale (no pun intended) for me was that I ran into a friend from one of the BoPo group meetings I set up when I first hot here. …however long ago that was. It’s so easy to lose track of how long I’ve been here.

Anyways.

A girl named Miranda that saw me when I first showed up and came over, gushing about how great I look and how she just like HAS to get me to try her all-veggie diet plan or whatever. She was just like “omg, I can’t believe it’s you! You’ve lost so much weight! You look amazing! Just a little more and you’ll be able to do REAL modeling here!”

(1)

I know I’m not as thin as Miranda and that standards are different here, but it still hurt to think that no one considered what I was doing to be “real” model work. At the same time though….This was the first time anyone told me I COULD be a real model. Sure, plus size modeling is a thing and all that, but it’s exactly how it sounds: plus size. Fat modeling. It’s not real modeling. It’s more about how to make up for being obese than it is being something to aspire to. And even though I’m still porky and hiding my figure, I have people looking forward to my “transformation.”

It felt really good to hear.

(2)

That’s why…..no matter how guilty I feel, I’m excited.

I think I want to lose weight and become an actual model for real. Maybe not here on the island because they’re still too thin for my taste, but when I get home, I’ll be good for mainstream printwork at least.

It’s a rush just writing that. I feel like I have a secret and if I get caught I’ll be in trouble or something. But yeah. It’s true.

I think I’m done being the fat model. I want to be thin.

Kelly

So I went and joined a fitness club today. It wasn’t necessarily out of a burning desire to lose weight but more to improve my health a bit. We’re getting smaller for sure, but it still sucks to be walking around the island and gasping for air because I’m so out of shape. Not that I’ve ever been IN shape, but it still sucks to be wheezing and sweating my ass off (literally) while everyone else is just having a grand ol’ time. I figured it’d do me some good to actually use the time I have to do something good for myself as opposed to standing around and waiting for people to get upset that I exist.

 To be honest, it’s a relief to be able to know that I am doing something about my life and having a goal that doesn’t make me feel like a target for just walking down the street. I never knew how freeing it was to NOT be gawked at by people who aren’t used to seeing a woman my size until I came here to get people to do exactly that. But they didn’t. They just accepted me as I was. I think that maybe I just needed to know it was okay to be me for a change. I’m still one of the three heaviest people on the island and stick out like a sore thumb, but now it’s no big deal. It’s just nice to not have to feel so defensive or to have my guard up everywhere I go. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up enjoying all of this once I can walk a mile without getting winded.

The other reason I joined the club was that I needed something to do. Like yeah, this place is a paradise once you get past all the weight loss ads and fixation on thinness, but if you’re not actively socializing, getting drunk, or doing some kind of physical activity, you’re going to be bored out of your skull until you leave.

So after doing a little research, I ended up signing up for the “Adventure-cise Fitness Club” over in one of the resort vacation centers. They have an indoor pool and gym, but also teach surfing classes, go on hikes in the jungle, give SCUBA lessons, and all kinds of adventurey  stuff. It’s pretty neat to not only be a part of a group that does these kinds of things, but to also be physically able to do it. I barely remember what it felt like to be as massive as I was on day one, but I know for certain that I’m a thousand times more active and energetic. I actually feel good when I wake up in the morning instead of just drowsy and wanting to go back to sleep for a change. So yeah. This is the new me, I guess.

(3)

Oh, I almost forgot.

So after we got back from our morning hike, all the girls went to weigh themselves. Normally I don’t do that kind of shit because it’s culty and weird and not an accurate representation of health or fitness or beauty or whatever, but to these girls it’s like this celebrated daily ritual. Now, I have my reservations about it for obvious reasons. Every time I have ever gotten on a scale it has either made me cry, made someone mad at me, or just made me feel incredibly embarrassed about my size, so I wasn’t all too keen to stand on another with a bunch of skinny women watching me do it.

Still, they were super encouraging and ended up like chanting my name to get me on the scale. I ended up holding two girls’ hands and stepped on it with my eyes closed  terrified of what I’d see. I stepped on, my eyes scrunched up, my hands squeezing these girls’ hands to death, and this little robot voice chirps on and is like “One-hundred. And. Ninety. Four. Pounds.”

I was like “Wait, what?”

When I opened my eyes, I was stunned. Funnily enough, I ended up crying anyways, but this time my group was all applauding me. It was the most amazing feeling in the world. I’ve NEVER been under 280. The last time I can remember being smaller than that was my sophomore year in high school and even that is clouded over like my brain doesn’t want to remember. The girls calculated my BMI and I’m still technically obese. 29.9 is the limit of overweight and 30-34.9 Is Class 1 Obesity, and I’m 30.99.

For me though, that’s incredible. If I lose just 10 more pounds, I’ll just be…overweight. Not obese. Not morbidly obese. Not super morbidly obese.

Just…Chubby. I’m so used to being an elephant that being just chubby put me in tears. All the girls hugged and cheered for me too.

194 pounds.

 It was just…a good day. I don’t regret being here anymore.

Valentina

Day 30.

177 Pounds

I have to be completely honest…That felt good to write. I weigh 177 pounds. I am in the 100s. I weighed myself this morning and almost cried. Admittedly, I haven’t been updating this as much as I’ve been meaning to. A big part of my problem is that I haven’t been finding anything worth writing about on the island when it comes down to how they’re making everyone thinner so fast. The only thing I know that they do. Both Kelly and Xiang agree that we are getting thinner, but they’re mostly just congratulating each other on buying more and more into the island’s brainwashing.

I asked them about what they remember from before coming to the island and for the most part they remember specific events, but they both have a weird quirk. Whenever I would ask them about what they were doing or wearing, they both noticed that they imagined themselves thinner than they probably were. When I asked them if they remember being 300 pounds, they could suddenly remember that it had been a thing, but not what it was like to be that way or even how they looked.

….I’m the same. I can only remember being around 200 pounds clearly, and anything weight related is a fuzzy memory. Still, I guess it’s not a bad problem to have.

Regardless, I still haven’t found anything on the island or it’s management that suggests foul play. I want to go up into the mountains and jungle, but don’t want to be stupid and go alone. I know there are groups that go on hikes, but I don’t know when or where they meet, so I have been sneaking around places that are out of the way, but off the jungle trail. From there, I usually just end up lounging on the beach or collecting shells. It’s crazy how absentminded I am when it comes to anything except my weight lately. I’m hyperaware of how much lighter and more energetic I am, and given my attempts to track how much weight I’ve been losing, it’s almost second nature for me to look at the calorie count of anything I eat.

Speaking of which…I actually had something weird happen to me today. As I was making my lunch, I had totaled up all of my calories I had eaten and planned on eating for the day. The moment I realized that I was actually planning my calories instead of just counting them, I looked at how many I had had the days before. Each of them was somewhere between 900 and 1100 calories for the day. Alarm set in and I looked over at how many I’d planned for the day. I saw the total come out to 1400 and I cannot BEGIN to say how much that bothered me. Something about seeing my calorie count go up made me remember VIVIDLY how awful it’d been to have weighed 380 pounds and suddenly, I’m just horrified of going back to that.

I started wondering if shutting this place down was a good idea until I got to the weight I’d wanted and almost vomited. Every single thing I thought sounded like someone who was buying into the programming, but the more I tried to stop it, the more I would make it worse.  The planning the calories, the desperate urge to remove enough items to reduce my planned intake by 700 calories, the sudden, LITERAL fatphobia, and now bargaining with my goals? That’s like saying “No big deal. I’ll just have a cigarette every three days instead of once a week. It’ll be fine!”

So naturally I freaked and ran out of the hotel room.

When I got down to the beach, I was flagged down by an absolutely GORGEOUS black girl who asks me if I’m a woman of color. So naturally, I’m like….uhhh….yeah? I’m Mexican though, not black or mixed or anything.

(4)

So the girl tells me that there’s a Women of Color GROUP here on the island that caters ONLY to non-white guests and islanders. They apparently set up workouts, tours, and even have a group diet that they all stick to. Even better for me, they took hiking tours up the mountain, so I could finally poke around up there without fear of dying on the side of a cliff or lost in the jungle, getting chased by a starving jaguar for being the fattest thing on the island. So I signed up.

Afterward she walked me around and introduced me to a few of the members that were there and sure enough, the beach was crawling with blacks and latinas! Honestly, I was so impressed to see so many women of color all partying and dancing and stuff together on the beach at the same time that I had forgotten that I was upset when I came out. I ended up walking around for a nit and saying hi to people. Naturally they were all talking about diets and their weigh in that morning, but with nothing else to talk about, it was an easy way to make my way from conversation to conversation with a bunch of potential new friends.

(5,6)

Then after a while, another latina comes up and is basically like “omg hi! I’m the group photographer! Wanna do a photoshoot with me?” She was really sweet and didn’t harp on me for my weight like I’m always worried people will be. In fact, she told me that she’d seen me around and that all the girls on the island are cheering for me and my friends. It was weird to hear, but definitely nice to know we weren’t totally hated for being too big.

I’d never done a photoshoot before either, so having a pro photographer snapping pictures of me in a bikini to and some shorts was kind of nerve-wracking. Still, it was fun. It’s been a long time since I legitimately felt pretty, even if I’m still fat.

(7)

It’s a shame. I’d love for the girls and groups here to  keep being friends and doing stuff together even if it goes under. But that may also be the brainwashing talking. I know I’m affected. I just don’t know how much.