[Diary of an Expat Bride] Weighty issues

When visiting friends and their families at home for dinner, I would be stuffed to bursting by the teyzes who had cooked the delicious meal, and then my weight would be a discussion and make the fantastic meal feel sour and heavy in my stomach. As the years passed and I learned to brush off these comments and dodge these conversations, my skin toughened. It also helped when I lost almost 25 kilos by eating healthy and exercising regularly, something actually quite easy to do in Turkey. Buying fresh, seasonal produce regularly at the bazaar and taking long, regular walks by the Bosphorus made the kilos fall away easily. In those days, I didn’t mind the constant talk about weight, as it usually centered around the fact that I was losing weight and looking great.

In America, conversations about an individual’s weight are pretty much taboo unless the person has lost weight. I was raised with an “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all” type of mentality. Telling someone they looked like they gained weight would hurt their feelings and so should not be discussed. In Turkey, however, according to my husband, such topics are routinely and honestly talked about. Why ignore the fact that someone is overweight? It’s best to talk about it because it might offer him or her help and incentive to lose weight and be healthier. Like all health issues, this too is an open book. I tried in vain to see the positive, communal spirit that this type of conversation may have been intended to bring but failed entirely. Like many expats, though, I am still exasperated by weight conversations even after seven years of living in Turkey.

The situation only grew worse when I got pregnant. The first three months I was very ill, and my diet was limited to rice and starchy foods I could keep down. I was also taking extra hormonal supplements, which strangely enough made me gain weight even though I was ill. I started to isolate myself from people who would start a conversation talking about how much weight I had gained so early on in my pregnancy. I felt angry that this was the first question asked, rather than the health of my baby, which was my primary concern given the difficult circumstances of my pregnancy.

By the second trimester, I was feeling better, no longer on hormones, and the baby and I were basically in the clear. I started to take better care of myself both mentally and physically, once again able to enjoy healthy produce and exercise such as yoga. I continued to gain weight but normally now. I felt relieved mentally to know that the baby was doing fine, and I started to enjoy my pregnancy for the first time. My husband and I gloried in every transformation my body went through during this time, reveled in feeling the first kicks and excited about my burgeoning tummy. Since I had gone back to working full time at a school that mainly hired foreigners, conversations about weight gain rarely occurred. I could retreat into my expat bubble and enjoy the reprieve. My doctor during this time was also silent about my weight gain, merely recording the number on the scale at my monthly visits without comment.

Around my eighth month, everything changed. Suddenly my doctor seemed concerned about my weight gain and claimed I had gained the most of any of his previous patients. I did the math and realized I had gained 25 kilos total during this pregnancy. I told my doctor that my body had gone back to my weight of 10 years ago quite easily. Test results ruled out pre-eclampsia and my blood pressure was normal, as was the baby’s heart rate and development. The appointment had made me paranoid, however, and I immediately got on the phone with doctors in the US. All of them assured me that my weight gain was fine, that the baby was not too big, nor was I. As long as my test results were fine and my pressure good, I should not worry about any complications for the remainder of my pregnancy or my birth. I was angry then at my doctor, who had previously said that I should not be stressed too much these last two months. Well, didn’t making me freak out about my weight constitute unnecessary stress?

I began to once again be hypersensitive about people asking me how much weight I had gained during my pregnancy. Everyone from friends to even the occasional waiter when we were at a restaurant seemed curious to know how much I had gained. I developed a tactic of smiling and responding that both the baby and I were healthy, and we thanked them for their concern. The person would be a bit flustered, thinking I had misunderstood their Turkish, and repeat the question again slowly. I would also repeat my same answer slowly, and we would be at an awkward impasse until they changed the subject. Maybe it was the hormones, or maybe my shell had just gotten a bit thicker. Whatever it was, I had developed a good defense for this rude (according to my culture) question.