Ann Austin's Story

I’ve always been “pudgy”. I was even born big – 9 lbs, 8 oz., and with a head so large that the obstetrician nicknamed me “Cantaloupe Head” as I squished my way through the birth canal. My mother was so furious by the taunting that she managed to free one leg to kick the doctor yelling “don’t call my baby fat!”

The next 24 hours got worse. Lost in the shuffle of a busy baby-boomer delivery ward, I wasn’t taken to see my mother to nurse. I suppose I got by on the sugar water the nurses used to quiet crying babies. Thinking that I was deformed (big head and all), my mother finally mustered up the courage to ask for me after 24 hours had passed. A very shocked nurse reunited us and I latched onto my mother as if I was eating my first and last meal (my mother’s words). Hence, an appetite was born.

Eventually, my body caught up with my head and I was a normal sized kid. In high school, I started riding the roller coaster of weight. Never really fat, but never really at normal weight, I just kind of went through periods of being pudgy. My father was an engineer and my mother a nurse, so family fitness consisted of things like badminton, model airplane flying and bike rides… to the library. I never played organized sports and was denied dance lessons (despite my begging) because “we weren’t gypsies” and running off to join the circus wasn’t in the plan.

Mom cooked really big, fatty meals and constantly rode me about my weight. Food was definitely a reward – typical of so many post-depression era families. Straight A’s and birthdays could yield a steak dinner “out” at a restaurant if dad was having a good year and mom was in a good mood.
As I aged, I put on the obligatory ten pounds for every decade and by the age of 40, was 30 pounds overweight. In the late 1990’s, I was diagnosed with Narcolepsy the outlook of which looked something like this: Life will get worse, you will sleep all the time, put on weight, will struggle to keep your job and you may need to go on disability.

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