Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: What's ubsolvable? Listeners, It's me Ronald Young Junior, and I
Speaker 2: know it's been a long time, but I'm back with
Speaker 2: a very special treat in the form of my brand
Speaker 2: new podcast, Wait for It. That's spelled wei ght. You
Speaker 2: know that thing that some of us think about constantly.
Speaker 2: I'm bringing you stories about existing as a fat person
Speaker 2: in a world not built for you. Today, I have
Speaker 2: a portion of the first episode, and if you like it,
Speaker 2: I invite you to subscribe to the show wherever you listen.
Speaker 2: Wait for It is a show about the way we
Speaker 2: feel about our bodies. Consequently, each episode may include references
Speaker 2: to gaining and losing weight, eating disorders, weight loss surgery,
Speaker 2: and weight stigma. If these topics are triggering to you,
Speaker 2: please take care while listening. We have links to support
Speaker 2: resources for anyone who may need them in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Wait for It.
Speaker 2: I can't remember a time when I wasn't thinking about
Speaker 2: my weight. I was a kid with a huge appetite,
Speaker 2: and I remember the other kids and some adults would
Speaker 2: always say, you keep eating like that, you're gonna get fat.
Speaker 2: I remember in middle school pe whenever we had to
Speaker 2: play basketball and the coach would yell out shirts for skins.
Speaker 2: I immediately hoped to be on the shirt team. Even
Speaker 2: in college, I remember my friends used to pinch my
Speaker 2: nipples and then laugh when I would get upset, and
Speaker 2: at any of these individual times, I was objectively not fat,
Speaker 2: But with every incident that occurred with my body, it
Speaker 2: firmly put weight in the forefront of my mind. I
Speaker 2: wasn't always certain what it was to have a good body,
Speaker 2: or even an okay body, or most of all, how
Speaker 2: to be okay with my body. I dreamed of having
Speaker 2: the ideal physical qualities, muscular arms. I wanted to be tall,
Speaker 2: I wanted a beard, I wanted abs. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to be afraid of taking my shirt off. I wanted
Speaker 2: to be attractive, but I knew that being fat wasn't attractive,
Speaker 2: so I didn't want to be fat. However, one day
Speaker 2: I got fat. It happened in the last ten years.
Speaker 2: It felt inevitable in a way, like the people who
Speaker 2: said it would happen were profits. They were right about
Speaker 2: my eating habits. I felt ashamed. I tried to cover
Speaker 2: it up with the way that I look and dress,
Speaker 2: even down to the smallest successory anything that draws attention
Speaker 2: away from my weight. Even my personality feels a lot
Speaker 2: like a performance. I feel like I have to have
Speaker 2: a better personality than most people because I'm fat. If
Speaker 2: I'm mean or rude or get something wrong, I know
Speaker 2: the first thing folks are going to talk about is
Speaker 2: my weight. So I try to be funny and kind
Speaker 2: and always put others at ease. I generally make an
Speaker 2: effort to be relatable and agreeable, and a lot of
Speaker 2: that is who I am, whether I was fat or not.
Speaker 2: But because I'm thinking about my weight constantly, the stakes
Speaker 2: of every social interaction feel higher to me. I was
Speaker 2: talking with a good friend of mine, Jessica, and I
Speaker 2: asked her to describe my personality.
Speaker 3: Good question, really warm, outgoing, funny. I think that you
Speaker 3: have a really high level of emotional intelligence. But I
Speaker 3: think that sometimes that can be a blessing and a
Speaker 3: curse because you have really you have your self awareness?
Speaker 3: Is it spans why long? And all of that, And
Speaker 3: with self awareness comes a lot of pain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with great self awareness comes great responsibility.
Speaker 3: So you are a soulmate friend, and you are like
Speaker 3: a lifetalk friend, and you're not afraid to be vulnerable.
Speaker 3: You not only tolerate the things that are uncomfortable, but
Speaker 3: you're like, let's get in it.
Speaker 2: Just as a friend I met as an adult, not
Speaker 2: from school, not at work, but working out together at
Speaker 2: this group fitness gym back in twenty fifteen. We both
Speaker 2: loved cracking jokes and we hit it off pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: At the time, we were both trying to lose weight,
Speaker 2: and we supported each other in our goals. We showed
Speaker 2: up to work out together at the gym and bonded,
Speaker 2: sharing details of our lives. Jess is actually a therapist
Speaker 2: and the type of therapist you'd want to be friends with.
Speaker 2: We often talked about weight and years ago. During those discussions,
Speaker 2: I remember I told her my reason for wanting to
Speaker 2: lose weight. Back then, what I would always obsess about
Speaker 2: was having a perfect moment. And that's because of like
Speaker 2: the kind of the way that love and relationships are depicted.
Speaker 2: Like it's always thin people falling in love, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, It's always like getting ripped falling in love.
Speaker 2: It's about somebody losing one hundred pounds meeting someone falling
Speaker 2: in love. And I feel like for a long time
Speaker 2: and even I mean I'm almost a little embarrassed to say,
Speaker 2: but like to some extent today, it's always about like
Speaker 2: finding that perfect moment, and the only way I can
Speaker 2: get there is if I am a certain size.
Speaker 3: So what happens in that moment.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I'm the right size, and you know
Speaker 2: it's just like a romantic comedy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I just I meet the right person. I got that
Speaker 2: slick new promotion at the job, you know, I'm making
Speaker 2: good money. All of those are aligning, and you know
Speaker 2: it's a romantic enough setting that I'm meeting this person
Speaker 2: like I'm the perfect guy. I look the right way.
Speaker 3: So do you feel that where you are with your
Speaker 3: body and your self image aligns with you finding your person?
Speaker 3: Those are mutually exclusive to you.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: In my mind, if I'm thinking about my weight, then
Speaker 2: obviously others are thinking about my weight too. It's probably
Speaker 2: working against me when they're assessing whether or not I'm
Speaker 2: an acceptable person. And that's why I'm always trying to
Speaker 2: make sure I'm giving good personality. And if I'm working
Speaker 2: this hard thinking about the stakes of social interaction, then
Speaker 2: you can probably imagine that for me, the romantic stakes
Speaker 2: are even higher. After my last breakup, I started spiraling
Speaker 2: even more about my physical qualities. I truly wondered if
Speaker 2: this was happening because I'm fat. I think about weight
Speaker 2: the same way I think about race. In moments of
Speaker 2: rejection or exclusion, as a black person always comes up
Speaker 2: in my mind. It's a regular running background anxiety in
Speaker 2: my head. Did I not get the job because I'm black?
Speaker 2: Are they staring at me because I'm black? What does
Speaker 2: it mean that I'm the only black guy here? And
Speaker 2: after a breakup, the ultimate rejection? There are similar questions,
Speaker 2: but all about my weight. Would it have happened like
Speaker 2: this to a smaller person? Did they give me a
Speaker 2: shot because of my personality and then couldn't get over
Speaker 2: how fat I was? If I weren't fat, could this
Speaker 2: have gone the distance? I'm thirty nine now, and it
Speaker 2: seems like everywhere I look, perfect moments are being had
Speaker 2: by other people. People are finding the love of their lives,
Speaker 2: getting married, buying houses, having kids. And I'm realizing I'm
Speaker 2: not even talking about moments anymore. They look like seemingly
Speaker 2: perfect lives, And of course I want all of those things.
Speaker 2: I think I deserve all of those things. But right
Speaker 2: now I'm really talking about something a little smaller. I
Speaker 2: remember one time I was sitting in the backyard with
Speaker 2: some friends and I was eating potato chips or something
Speaker 2: with crumbs, and I got some in my beard and
Speaker 2: on my shirt, and I was kind of a mess.
Speaker 2: My then girlfriend came over, laughing and confirmed, saying, you're
Speaker 2: kind of a mess. She wiped the crumbs out of
Speaker 2: my beard. Then she kissed me on the side of
Speaker 2: my forehead and put her arm around my shoulders. I
Speaker 2: felt the best I'd felt in a long time, and
Speaker 2: often I think about that moment. We broke up two
Speaker 2: months later. I think breaking up marred the perfection of
Speaker 2: that moment. But at the time I had some hope
Speaker 2: because at that moment, I felt loved in a way
Speaker 2: that I don't feel like I often get to feel loved.
Speaker 2: I wasn't certain that anyone knew would love me again
Speaker 2: as a fat man. Am I even an eligible bachelor.
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 2: I don't remember when I started thinking like this. I
Speaker 2: do see reinforcing evidence all around me. On the TV
Speaker 2: show The Bachelor, every dude that's selected is either thin
Speaker 2: or incredibly in shape, and comments are made about how
Speaker 2: attractive their bodies are on Love is Blind, despite that
Speaker 2: they're actively taking physical attraction out of the equation. Initially,
Speaker 2: the contestants are always trying to figure out how hot
Speaker 2: their potential mate is, or in some cases, how thin
Speaker 2: their potential mate is. And don't even get me started
Speaker 2: on The Biggest Loser, a show that spent years sending
Speaker 2: the message that life didn't even start until you lost
Speaker 2: the weight. From getting ripped, ads with most issues of
Speaker 2: Men's Health magazine to video Vixen's swimsuit models, and the
Speaker 2: countless ads preaching the effectiveness of whatever new weight loss
Speaker 2: method is that can be imagined up. Nearly every popular
Speaker 2: piece of media we consume reinforces the message that we're
Speaker 2: all supposed to be thin at the bare minimum. You
Speaker 2: could be anything you want to be, just don't be fat.
Speaker 2: And as a fat person, I hear this messaging loud
Speaker 2: and clear. Fat folks are seen for their non sexual qualities,
Speaker 2: hence me trying to have a perfect personality. They don't
Speaker 2: get to be just hot. And if I don't get
Speaker 2: to be hot, how will I ever get my moment?
Speaker 2: How could I ever become the perfect man? Having the
Speaker 2: perfect moment? A lot of my adult life has been
Speaker 2: spent waiting, Waiting for everyone not to be paying attention
Speaker 2: before I take my shirt off and get into the pool,
Speaker 2: Waiting for the flight attendant to surreptitiously hand me a
Speaker 2: seatbelt extender, Waiting until I lose a few pounds before
Speaker 2: I buy new clothes. Just a lot of waiting. It's
Speaker 2: felt like waiting to be perfect before I truly start
Speaker 2: to live. This show not only tells the stories of
Speaker 2: those waiting, but of those who can't keep the weight
Speaker 2: off their minds. I'm Ronald Young Jr. And this is
Speaker 2: wait for It, waiting.
Speaker 1: Waiting for it, Wait for it, wait waiting, wait for it.
Speaker 2: All right, folks, if you want to hear the rest
Speaker 2: of the episode, subscribe to Wait for It. That's w
Speaker 2: E I g h T. The entire first episode is
Speaker 2: now available for you to hear, So go subscribe now
Speaker 2: wherever you listen.