Eating My Way To The Top
I’m going legit!
After 10 years and 3 months of working as an independent consultant, my Super Boss is working on converting me to a full time employee. If all goes well, I’ll be an employee some time in April, which means I’ll have Memorial Day off for the first time since 1996, and my honeymoon will not wreck my budget. At least, not because of my salary.
I’ve been looking for full time work since December of 2004, when my then-contracting employer offered to make me an permanent part of her group. The salary was too low, but as I lobbed the idea around in my head, the idea of going perm and having some form of pseudo-security with a True Employer (vs. with myself), I liked how it felt. I’d be an employee somewhere. I could hang up my Contractor Scum hat and work as a stiff like everyone else.
I began this assignment at my top weight of 251.0 pounds. I dressed in men’s clothes, the only office-appropriate things that would fit me. I worked, head down, too embarrassed to eat in front of my new co-workers. I snuck off to Subway for the meatball sandwich at lunch, and ate at my desk. I only went to the cafeteria in the middle of the afternoon, long after lunch was over, when I was sure that no one would be there to witness me raiding the vending machine for fatty snacks.
My first WW meeting was July 22, and by Labor Day, I had lost nearly 20 pounds. People at work started noticing my shrinking figure and my transition back to women’s wear. I broke 200 some time around Halloween, and my boss suddenly started hinting that he’d like to bring me on full time. He also commented that I was looking ‘healthier’ and sometimes after our work discussions, we would sit in his office and compare notes on my program (WW) vs. his (Atkins).
In January, I switched from All Jeans All The Time to Traditional Business dress at work. I felt better about how I looked, and wanted that reflected in what I wore. My weight continued to drop, and sometime in February, I hit BMI normal and was no longer overweight. My boss started confiding in me about his challenges within the department and sharing his plans for promotions and movement within the group. We were no longer contractor scum/supervisor, but senior staff/manager, and in many ways, we were peers.
I noticed that I got more nods in the hallways when I was in suits and skirts than when I wore my jeans. People around the office spoke to me with deference. They engaged me in the parking lot, on line for food at the cafeteria, and while waiting for coffee in the break room. I noticed further that they beamed when I spoke back, but demurred if I talked too much. Clearly, I was meant to acknowledge them, but not really participate in full-on small talk. I realized, with more than a little humor, that my dress and my bearing conveyed an attitude of Someone Important to these people. Here was a woman in the building, dressed in a suit when everyone else wore khakis or jeans, and she’s in heels (what?!). Who could this be? I said nothing, but secretly, I was pleased with the attention. This is the same place where I’d walked the halls and been stonewalled only a few months before, sometimes by people I knew.
About 3 weeks ago, I had an appointment to present my work to date at the CIO’s staff meeting. I wore a suit the day of the meeting--normally a smart choice, but a daring move in this organization. The CIO is known to ridicule people who show up for his meetings wearing suits. But I’d worn them long enough, and often enough, that showing up to his meeting in my Calvin Klein (size 8!) was no big deal. He merely smiled at me, said hello, and sat down. The presentation went well, and the very next day, he agreed to bring me on as an employee.
I will never know whether it was my work, or my changing shape, or my upgraded dress code that helped to make this real. I want to believe it was my work, and that my appearance played very little into this decision. But I know better. Corporate America is all about image and perception and presence, and I had none of those things as a fat person. I could talk circles around anyone when it came to my work, but it didn’t matter, because no one could see beyond the fat. Or, maybe they could (I kept getting hired, after all), but the fat-people-can’t-control-themselves thing always worked its way into the equation. I couldn’t get past it myself: I have no delusions about others being big enough (mentally) to ignore the fact that I was far too big (physically) to be considered for an executive role.
It’s still acceptable in our society to ridicule fat people, and to discriminate against them. It’s not cool, and it’s not fair, but it is true. And yes, I do still consider myself a part of that group. I’m wearing my size 4 jeans to work today, and I look skinny. Not sickly or scrawny, but thin; really, truly thin. But when I helped clean up from a friend’s baby shower today, and I mistakenly licked my fingers when they touched the frosting, I knew that I was just a mouthful of butter cream away from racing right back up the scales. The pain of denial is with me always, but it is a far, far better pain than that of regret.
For now, though, and hopefully forever, I will be a former fat girl; one who is thin, but who remembers the pain of being too heavy, and also the struggles of getting back to normal. I don’t know how much farther I have to go, and I know these last weeks are a hard, with me losing barely half a pound a week. But I’m so close to having everything I want, that I don’t really mind the battles on these last few miles. After all, I’ll soon be an employee, on WW maintenance, and married to the man of my dreams. I have the greatest, cutest, most wonderful boy ever known to humanity, and now I have the world’s coolest papa-in-training to help me help the little man along his journey. Life is pretty dang great right now.
Gotta get back to work. I’m still hourly for the time being. I’ll save my low productivity days for after I’ve gone on salary.
A the N(early There)
After 10 years and 3 months of working as an independent consultant, my Super Boss is working on converting me to a full time employee. If all goes well, I’ll be an employee some time in April, which means I’ll have Memorial Day off for the first time since 1996, and my honeymoon will not wreck my budget. At least, not because of my salary.
I’ve been looking for full time work since December of 2004, when my then-contracting employer offered to make me an permanent part of her group. The salary was too low, but as I lobbed the idea around in my head, the idea of going perm and having some form of pseudo-security with a True Employer (vs. with myself), I liked how it felt. I’d be an employee somewhere. I could hang up my Contractor Scum hat and work as a stiff like everyone else.
I began this assignment at my top weight of 251.0 pounds. I dressed in men’s clothes, the only office-appropriate things that would fit me. I worked, head down, too embarrassed to eat in front of my new co-workers. I snuck off to Subway for the meatball sandwich at lunch, and ate at my desk. I only went to the cafeteria in the middle of the afternoon, long after lunch was over, when I was sure that no one would be there to witness me raiding the vending machine for fatty snacks.
My first WW meeting was July 22, and by Labor Day, I had lost nearly 20 pounds. People at work started noticing my shrinking figure and my transition back to women’s wear. I broke 200 some time around Halloween, and my boss suddenly started hinting that he’d like to bring me on full time. He also commented that I was looking ‘healthier’ and sometimes after our work discussions, we would sit in his office and compare notes on my program (WW) vs. his (Atkins).
In January, I switched from All Jeans All The Time to Traditional Business dress at work. I felt better about how I looked, and wanted that reflected in what I wore. My weight continued to drop, and sometime in February, I hit BMI normal and was no longer overweight. My boss started confiding in me about his challenges within the department and sharing his plans for promotions and movement within the group. We were no longer contractor scum/supervisor, but senior staff/manager, and in many ways, we were peers.
I noticed that I got more nods in the hallways when I was in suits and skirts than when I wore my jeans. People around the office spoke to me with deference. They engaged me in the parking lot, on line for food at the cafeteria, and while waiting for coffee in the break room. I noticed further that they beamed when I spoke back, but demurred if I talked too much. Clearly, I was meant to acknowledge them, but not really participate in full-on small talk. I realized, with more than a little humor, that my dress and my bearing conveyed an attitude of Someone Important to these people. Here was a woman in the building, dressed in a suit when everyone else wore khakis or jeans, and she’s in heels (what?!). Who could this be? I said nothing, but secretly, I was pleased with the attention. This is the same place where I’d walked the halls and been stonewalled only a few months before, sometimes by people I knew.
About 3 weeks ago, I had an appointment to present my work to date at the CIO’s staff meeting. I wore a suit the day of the meeting--normally a smart choice, but a daring move in this organization. The CIO is known to ridicule people who show up for his meetings wearing suits. But I’d worn them long enough, and often enough, that showing up to his meeting in my Calvin Klein (size 8!) was no big deal. He merely smiled at me, said hello, and sat down. The presentation went well, and the very next day, he agreed to bring me on as an employee.
I will never know whether it was my work, or my changing shape, or my upgraded dress code that helped to make this real. I want to believe it was my work, and that my appearance played very little into this decision. But I know better. Corporate America is all about image and perception and presence, and I had none of those things as a fat person. I could talk circles around anyone when it came to my work, but it didn’t matter, because no one could see beyond the fat. Or, maybe they could (I kept getting hired, after all), but the fat-people-can’t-control-themselves thing always worked its way into the equation. I couldn’t get past it myself: I have no delusions about others being big enough (mentally) to ignore the fact that I was far too big (physically) to be considered for an executive role.
It’s still acceptable in our society to ridicule fat people, and to discriminate against them. It’s not cool, and it’s not fair, but it is true. And yes, I do still consider myself a part of that group. I’m wearing my size 4 jeans to work today, and I look skinny. Not sickly or scrawny, but thin; really, truly thin. But when I helped clean up from a friend’s baby shower today, and I mistakenly licked my fingers when they touched the frosting, I knew that I was just a mouthful of butter cream away from racing right back up the scales. The pain of denial is with me always, but it is a far, far better pain than that of regret.
For now, though, and hopefully forever, I will be a former fat girl; one who is thin, but who remembers the pain of being too heavy, and also the struggles of getting back to normal. I don’t know how much farther I have to go, and I know these last weeks are a hard, with me losing barely half a pound a week. But I’m so close to having everything I want, that I don’t really mind the battles on these last few miles. After all, I’ll soon be an employee, on WW maintenance, and married to the man of my dreams. I have the greatest, cutest, most wonderful boy ever known to humanity, and now I have the world’s coolest papa-in-training to help me help the little man along his journey. Life is pretty dang great right now.
Gotta get back to work. I’m still hourly for the time being. I’ll save my low productivity days for after I’ve gone on salary.
A the N(early There)
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 1:25 PM
1 Comments:
The "man of your dreams" is so very proud of you!!! Congrats on the upcoming "Legit-ville".
While it may have been your clothes and your new size that got them to notice you, it is your skills and abilities that will get you this job. You rock!!!
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