At 360 pounds, I clung to the myth of thin like a drowning man grasping a life preserver.  It went something like this:

If I was thin, I’d be happy.

What else could I believe?  Life at an enormous weight was a never-ending cycle of rejection, shame, and mortification, punctuated by the all-too-brief ecstasy of eating huge and delicious combinations of sugar, salt, and grease. With pain as my constant companion, I had to believe there was something on the other side, something wonderful, something that would make all the pain and frustration of living worthwhile.

This something was The Thin Life.  It was my version of heaven.

Not having been thin since I was a baby, you might wonder how I knew so much about thin people and their happiness.

I read the J. Crew catalogue. 

From time to time, the J. Crew catalog would appear in my mailbox in New York. (It was addressed to the previous resident.  I never actually went into a J. Crew store until I was 30 years old.)  I combed the pages of the catalogue studying scenes of city, sand, and sea.  Here were the thin men I wanted to be, the thin women I wanted to date, the thin pants I wanted to fit into.  These thin people were laughing and smiling and holding hands as they walked on the beach.  They slung leather satchels over their shoulders and strolled arm and arm as they browsed at the local farmers market. They smiled at each other across a café table as they sipped cappuccino and talked thin people talk.

I wasn’t completely naive.  I knew that pictures in a catalogue weren’t the same thing as real life.  But when I looked around the so-called real world, I saw more or less the same thing that was in the magazine.

From the time I was a young boy, thin people always looked happy to me.  Thin kids loved gym and recess, while I resented it.  Thin kids ate delicious snacks in the cafeteria where everyone could see them.  They didn’t have to hide or feel ashamed like I did.  Thin families laughed and played together, while my overweight family argued and worried.

During high school, thin people played sports, went to dances, and always had somewhere to be on Friday night.  During college thin people went out drinking and experimented with sex.

By the time I made it to Manhattan in my mid twenties, thin people had added jobs, cars, and sophisticated love affairs to their repertoire.  I’d added cable television and Chinese food delivered to my tiny Manhattan apartment.

The Thin Life was all around me—on the streets, on television, in the pages of magazines—and it looked delicious.

If I wasn’t fat, I would be living The Thin Life.

Then I would be happy, just like them.

  — from Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin

        by Allen Zadoff