Every Step I Take

In a new column for Canvas, Siena Yates chronicles her path to weight loss surgery

When you tell someone you’re doing something as radical as getting weight loss surgery, they tend not to ask why. The obvious assumption is that you want to be skinny. To be more attractive. To fit nicer clothes and feel better about yourself.

And for some people that might be all it is — and more power to them — but the thing most straight-sized (i.e. not plus-sized) people never consider is that fat people may actually love themselves, be confident and feel beautiful but still need to change their bodies.

For many of us, WLS (weight loss surgery) is a last resort and the only answer to years of physical and mental health issues. Many people have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart issues, reproductive issues and more. Most of us have sore joints, constant fatigue and can’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded.

My biggest motivator, though, is my mental health. I’m about to tell you something many fat people experience but don’t talk about — not even with each other and certainly not with their straight-sized friends. I’ve only had other people agree with me once I was the one to admit it first. And that is that my size and weight are a constant source of daily anxiety.

It’s nothing to do with how I look. It’s literally about my physical size and the force of my weight.

I have anxiety about things you probably never think about.

Fitting in chairs, breaking chairs, spilling out over armrests, generally just taking up too much space, weighing down cars so they scrape on speed bumps, fitting seatbelts, squeezing through crowds, how much things like the bus or the lift move when I step in and out, fitting between spaces like tables in a small restaurant.

I can’t go anywhere I haven’t been before without researching it to death — I Google Map it and obsessively scroll through its Instagram account and tags to see what it’s like inside and whether I will have to worry about moving around and fitting in places. Going to Disneyland for the first time was just a series of well-disguised panic attacks for that very reason.

There are many things I can’t just buy without research. With clothing I have to check sizing and fit based on reviews. With things like exercise equipment and furniture I have to check weight limits.

Same with experiences like ziplining or trampolining. I once took a scenic helicopter ride where we had to write down our weights so they could even out the loads in each chopper and had to stand there like an idiot while they separated other groups to make sure the smallest, skinniest people could be in my chopper.

The same thing happened when I used to do waka ama — and I get it. It’s logistical safety. But it still sucks to be that person making things difficult purely by existing. And it’s not just that I’m making things difficult for other people, I’m making things difficult for myself.

Walking (my version of) too far is a struggle, exercise is a struggle and recovery is stupidly slow. My range of movement is severely limited by my physical size and I can’t even rest my arms comfortably at my sides. Any time I go to the doctor or any other kind of health professional, I do so knowing that they will try to blame whatever issue I have on my weight (and when that fails they revert to pregnancy or hormonal issues because doctors are still dismissing women’s pain in 2020 — but that’s a whole other conversation).

The really crappy thing is I actually really enjoy exercise, so much so I just finished a course to be a personal trainer. I enjoy the escape, the sense of achievement, feeling strong, the endorphins, the satisfaction of getting through something difficult. It’s great for my mental health. But at the same time, exercising is so hard because I have zero energy, everything hurts, I get puffed within minutes, my knees protest, my back is basically on strike, I can’t do things I used to be able to do and that speaks to the raging inadequacy complex fuelling my general anxiety.

And here’s the real kicker: I’m only

30. And I’ve reached a weight that

I cannot come back from on my

Looking cute in a summer dress is not motivation enough. Being fat in a world that refuses to cater to fat bodies takes its toll.

own and that’s science. Your body tries to maintain your highest weight because anything under that makes it think you’re starving and in crisis. Research has shown that in the last 60 years, 95 to 98 per cent of attempts to lose weight fail and twothirds of dieters gain back more weight than they lost. According to the American Journal of Public Health, the chance of an obese woman achieving a “normal” weight is just 0.8 per cent.

I don’t want to spend another 30 years literally watching my every step, worrying about every space I enter and always having “lose weight” on my mental to-do list. I want to be able to exercise and be active without the pain, exhaustion and anxiety that comes with it. I want to be healthy and be able to play with my nephew as he grows up. And the price of that — beyond the thousands of dollars — is surgery, a painful recovery, never being able to eat normally again and a lifetime of vitamins and supplements.

It is not, as many think, “the easy way out”. This is the hardest decision I’ve ever made and will be one of the hardest things I ever do. Looking cute in a summer dress is not motivation enough. Being fat in a world that refuses to cater to fat bodies takes its toll.

So to have some physical space to breathe and some mental space to finally find some type of peace after at least 20 years of having this constant worry in the back of my mind?

That’s what I’m here for.