Chapter twenty-two
Treatment Here :(
Everyone thought the residential college would be a new start and that it'd help me.
Let me tell you it didn't...
They were so focused on weight and having a recommended BMI. Like I said, they'd weigh you frequently, giving you a small card saying your current weight, current BMI; and then saying what your BMI and weight should be.
So it basically told you if you were overweight. Mine always told me that I was overweight.
That wasn't all.. the food quantity was all depended on your weight. So if you were underweight (which they praised) you could eat whatever you wanted and could eat as much as you wanted; while the people like me (the fat ones) would be constantly reminded about how much we could eat.
So for example, if you were underweight you could have seconds and possibly even thirds, while the fat people like me could only have one serving and were encouraged not to have any more. Most of the time we weren't allowed seconds. Plus if you took too much, you'd be judged on that. The staff would comment and let you know, reminding you that there was only so much food and that others had to have some too.
There would be a day where you'd have rolls for lunch and while the thin people could eat as many as they wanted, people like me were restricted to only having two. I ended up getting so hungry after a hard morning working with the horses that I'd lie about the amount that I had had, so that I could eat more.
This went for everything. At dinner time they would often have cake, however people like me could only have one piece while we had to watch the thin people have seconds. Sometimes we'd even be encouraged NOT to have a piece of cake.
At break times, the thin people or the people with a normal BMI could have a sandwich every day; while people like me couldn't. It was hard because nearing the end of the day, I'd get so exhausted and I'd have to watch them eat their sandwich. Some even got milkshake drinks as well.
This may not seem like a big deal but it was too me. We could only have fruit for our break.
Then we would have one day a week to go shopping for supplies that we needed and then we'd stop at a cafe for "group drink", like I said; this was hard because the thin people could have whatever they wanted, so often a drink and a piece of cake. If we wanted anything extra they'd look at us and say "are you SURE you want to be having that..." Or "are you SURE you want that AND that..."
Constantly reminding us that we needed to lose weight and that it wasn't very good for us to be having stuff like that... Being praised every time we lost weight.
Then they introduced the tuck box in. This was a new rule saying that we could have food in our rooms as long as we cleaned up every bit off mess we made and that everything stayed in the tuck box with the lid on.
We were told that we could all have one, however people like me were encouraged NOT to have one; so basically we couldn't have one.
The thin people were always being told that they could buy any kind of sweets, chocolate or cake that they wanted.
So you'd have to watch them looking very happy eating what they bought, while you were limited to just one or the other (a cake or a drink)
This was every week all the time.
Also, the thinner people got the best things and the best treatment.
People like me were constantly reminded about our weight and that it'd affect what horse we could ride. So the thin people got to ride the best fast horses while we could only ride the slow horses; because the other horses wouldn't be able to take our weight.
There was one girl who I knew who was basically told that she was too fat to be able to ride any horse that they had. She was constantly told that she had to lose weight and she was unable to join in with the daily horse riding lessons.
Usually, if you couldn't ride a horse, for whatever reason you'd be on the poo picking job. Collecting every bit of poo the horses did throughout the lesson.
You can imagine that, that was hard, but it didn't end there.