I wake up before my alarm most days, not because I’m energized, but because my body has its own schedule now. I weigh a little over 800 pounds. Even writing that down feels strange because it’s both a hard fact and a number that doesn’t translate well into lived experience unless you’ve carried it.
The first thing I feel is the weight itself, like gravity has a personal relationship with me. Getting out of bed isn’t a single motion; it’s a sequence. I brace, I shift, I pause. I breathe. I try again. It takes minutes, and it hurts. The pain isn’t dramatic in a cinematic way. It’s joint pain, pressure, pulling, that dull ache that sits in your hips and knees and lower back like a permanent tenant. If I rush, I pay for it. If I go slow, I still pay for it, just in smaller installments.
People assume someone my size can’t do anything for themselves. That’s not true, but it’s also not false. The truth is a messy middle. I can wash myself and I can use the toilet. I can work. I can have conversations and laugh at stupid jokes and get invested in the news like anyone else. But there are ordinary, quiet tasks I can’t do anymore, and they add up until your day feels like a series of negotiations.
Shoes are a good example. I can’t tie laces. I can’t clip my toenails. I can’t reach the angles you need to reach when your stomach and thighs are no longer just “in the way” but are, functionally, part of the landscape. I wear Crocs or slip-ons, and they’re two sizes bigger than what I used to wear because my feet and ankles carry weight too. That sounds like a small detail, but it’s one of those humiliating little realities: your size changes the size of everything, even your feet, even your expectations.
Walking is another negotiation. I can walk, technically. But “walking” for me is not “going for a walk.” It’s twenty steps and sweat beading instantly, my breathing turning shallow, my heart hammering like I’ve sprinted. Twenty steps is about my max before I’m dripping and dizzy and needing to sit. If I’m going farther than a few feet, I use a wheelchair. Sometimes a walker inside the house for short transfers. I measure distance in furniture: bed to bathroom, bathroom to shower, bed to the edge of the room. That’s my geography.
My shower is a wet room with a bench because standing for long is not realistic. I use a handheld shower wand and a brush stick to reach what I can’t reach. I’m capable, but not completely. I can handle most of it, but there are areas—my back, certain lower parts—where I sometimes need help. I used to feel ashamed admitting that. Now I feel more tired than ashamed. When you’re this big, you eventually run out of energy for pretending.
The toilet situation is similar. I have a bariatric toilet that can handle my weight and size. I also have a hose attachment I activate with a button. It’s basically a custom solution. It’s not glamorous, but it’s dignity. People don’t realize how much of dignity is engineering.
There are other things that don’t translate well when you say them out loud. For example, I can’t fly. I’m not “a person who needs two seats.” I’m the width of a three-seat row. Even if an airline wanted to accommodate me, I couldn’t fit down the aisle, and I couldn’t use the bathroom. It’s not a question of comfort; it’s physically impossible. I used to travel. I even went to Singapore once, and the hawker food still sits in my memory like a bright, spicy postcard from another life. I can’t do that now. Now travel is the inside of my house and, occasionally, the inside of my car.
I don’t fit in most cars anymore, either. Until about last year I could drive, but now I’m too big. My wife drives me. We have a people carrier, and we’ve taken the seats out. I sit in the back on the floor because standard seating doesn’t work. My thighs are so thick that sitting “normally” puts me too high up and forces my neck into an awkward bend, like I’m folded incorrectly. It’s uncomfortable, it’s unsafe, and it reminds you in a very direct way that the world isn’t built for you. Not emotionally. Literally.
Public spaces are full of those reminders. Restaurants, trains, theaters, even waiting rooms. Chairs with arms might as well be locked doors. Booth seating is a joke. Bathrooms can be impossible. It’s not just inconvenience; it’s exclusion disguised as normalcy. So mostly, I stay home. Not because I’m hiding, exactly, but because leaving the house requires planning, assistance, stares, and a kind of emotional armor that I don’t always have.
People have a strange way of treating you when you’re this big. Some people are cruel in ways that still shock me even though I’ve lived it. I’ve had people spit on me. I’ve had cars pull over so someone can shout abuse at a stranger they’ve never met. It’s surreal, like being the target in a game you didn’t agree to play. Other people do the opposite. They avoid looking at me entirely, as if eye contact is dangerous. I think some of them believe they’re being polite, that they’re sparing me the feeling of being stared at. But it can make you feel like you don’t exist.
That part is harder to describe than the mobility issues. When you were thin, people smiled at you without thinking. When you’re my size, it’s like your presence interrupts their day. I’ve noticed that if someone simply smiles at me in a store, it lands like a gift. Not pity. Not charity. Just recognition: you’re a person, not a spectacle.
At home, my life looks ordinary in some ways. I work remotely in consulting. My wife works in law. We have routines. We talk about normal things. I read. I listen to music. I like learning languages. I keep up with current affairs. I love cooking, which is both a genuine joy and, if I’m being honest, part of the problem. Food is not just fuel for me. Food is the thing that quiets my brain.
That’s the part people often misunderstand. It’s not that I don’t know what “healthy eating” is. It’s not that a dietitian could walk in and say a magic sentence and I’d suddenly become someone else. My problem isn’t only poor choices. It’s volume. It’s compulsion. It’s continuing past fullness like I’m on autopilot until I’m in pain. I can feel full and keep going anyway, the way someone can feel tired and keep scrolling, except my behavior has a visible consequence.
On a “normal” day, I might start with breakfast around 7: bacon, eggs, toast. Not two eggs. Six eggs. A pack of bacon. Five slices of toast. A big carton of orange juice, at least most of it. Coffee. Maybe chocolate pastries. Then mid-morning, chocolate bars, more coffee, crisps. Lunch might be a baguette sandwich with chicken, bacon, mayo, plus doughnuts and Coke. Dinner might be pasta, and then later I’ll order pizza. Sometimes my wife will make me a milkshake with cream before bed.
I’m aware how that sounds. It sounds cartoonish. It sounds like an exaggeration. But when I describe it, I’m not trying to be shocking. I’m trying to be accurate. Sometimes I eat less. Sometimes I eat more. And the frightening thing is that the amount that would make most people feel unwell doesn’t always make me feel “done.” I can finish two 12-inch pizzas and still want more. Hunger, for me, isn’t just an empty stomach. It’s a mental noise, constant and persuasive.
I think of it as something close to addiction, even if the analogy isn’t perfect. The worst part about food is you can’t abstain from it. You still have to eat. So the thing that harms you is also the thing you need to survive, which makes every day a minefield of decisions.
When people ask how this happened, the honest answer is: slowly. Over about fifteen years. When I started university, I was around 200 pounds. In my early twenties, I became obese, and it snowballed. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to become this person. It was an occasional binge that became more frequent, then became normal. A gain here, a gain there. You get used to it. You adapt. You buy bigger clothes. You stop doing certain activities. You do a little less. Your world shrinks, and because your world shrinks, your movement shrinks, and because your movement shrinks, your appetite and cravings feel even louder.
Once I got over a certain point—around 300 pounds—everything accelerated. My appetite went up. The cravings got stronger. Exercise became harder, and not in a motivational-poster way. It’s like walking a few blocks feels like sprinting a marathon. Then the distance where that happens gets shorter and shorter until you start avoiding movement because movement hurts and exhausts you, and you start living your life from the places you can manage.
I do a lot from bed now. Work. Reading. Hobbies. It’s comfortable, and it’s also a trap.
Medically, I’m not pretending it’s fine. I have sleep apnea and use a CPAP. I have asthma. I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I’m pre-diabetic, surprisingly not diabetic yet, but I know I’m standing on a cliff edge. My blood pressure was around 160/100 last time. Resting heart rate around 100. Sometimes I use oxygen during the day if I’m especially short of breath. Sometimes I use oxygen during the day if I’m especially short of breath. I get chest pains sometimes, but it’s hard to tell what’s “danger” and what’s just another ache in a body that aches constantly.
And then there’s the mental trick I play on myself: I try not to think too hard about what all of that means. Cognitive dissonance is real. It’s not stupidity. It’s survival. If you constantly stare at the reality—your risk, your lifespan, the ways your body is straining—you can drown in it. So you focus on the next hour, the next meal, the next show, the next distraction.
People ask about my wife a lot. They wonder if she’s overweight, if she’s enabling me, if she misses having a more “normal” life. The answers are complicated. She’s fit and healthy, around 65 kg. She works out a couple times a week. She does miss things, yes. She misses restaurants, theme parks, travel, spontaneous days out. I can leave the house, but the logistics and the attention make it rare.
Does she help me with things? Yes. Shoes, certain care tasks, driving. Does she assist with food sometimes? Yes. But I decide what I eat. I don’t think it’s fair to dump my responsibility onto her. At the same time, I’m not naïve: relationships adapt around patterns, and patterns can become systems. I love her. I also know my size changes her life, not just mine.
When people ask if I want to lose weight, the truth is I go back and forth. Some days I want to. Some days I feel resigned. When you get to this size, you start to feel like the damage is already done, that you’re already living in the late chapters of the story. In darker moments I think, maybe I’ve got ten years. Not because I’ve calculated it like a spreadsheet, but because I can feel my limits tightening.
And still, I’m not constantly miserable. That’s another thing people don’t expect. I’m generally happy. Not because everything is okay, but because humans normalize what they live with. I have good days and bad days like anyone else. I laugh. I get interested in ideas. I enjoy music. I feel proud when work goes well. I get comfort from my wife. I’m not a monster or a cautionary tale. I’m a person.
If I could make people take one thing away from my life, it wouldn’t be “don’t get fat.” It would be: don’t dehumanize the people you don’t understand. The cruelty is obvious, but even the polite invisibility has a cost. Look at people. Smile sometimes. Let someone feel seen.
Because when your body gets this big, the hardest part isn’t always the physical pain.
Sometimes it’s the moment you realize the world has decided you’re not really in it anymore.