Like Rebel Wilson, a lot of people I knew wanted me to stay fat

I found out the hard way that not everyone wants to celebrate with you on your weight loss journey

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You don’t have to be “the funny fat girl,” as Rebel Wilson referred to herself in a recent interview, for others to have a vested interest in you not losing weight. The star described this week how her handlers hadn’t wanted her to drop over 70 pounds: She was making millions for agents, managers, and studio execs with her “funny fat girl” persona, she said, and they didn’t want that source of income to dry up.

I have ridden the weight loss yo-yo since age 13. I am now 63. And in my 2009 novel, Fat Chick, the main character’s weight-loss journey is defined more by the reactions of others and how it changes her most important relationships that it is about what she feels inside. I wrote what I knew all too well.

Whereas Wilson got pushback from her team when she announced her “Year of Health” journey, (as in “Why do you want to do that?”), I was met with snickers and disbelief. Growing up on a Bronx block, I was a chubby girl and one year younger than most of my local friends. In other words, I was a double non-threat.

My block friends liked that I was fat. Sometimes, they’d buy chips or cookies as a “fun game” to see if they could tempt me. But then, years later, I slimmed down. Boys who’d never taken notice of me learned my first name and started showing interest. I relished the attention — I was too young and naive to consider how shallow that made the boys in question — and my female “friends” began forgetting to call for me as they passed my building. Needless to say, I found a new crowd.

“I know what it’s like to be a woman who’s invisible,” Rebel Wilson said during her interview. My first career was in advertising in the 1980s, when being asked to go to the client was a big deal and, if asked, you would most likely be the only woman in the room. In order to make the cut you had to stand out — and that often meant physically. I started out overweight, but again lost some pounds with those client meetings in mind. As Rebel said herself, “a woman has to lose weight to get attention” in an industry obsessed with valuing women solely through their looks.

And yet even that weight loss didn’t have a happy ending. Under the heading of “you just can’t win,” I finally got to make a presentation and a resentful co-worker didn’t want to go to the meeting with me because she claimed they’d “buy whatever I was selling” because of what I looked like. She would get no credit for her own contribution, she reasoned. I couldn’t help but feel resentful. Was I supposed to keep my double chin so others would not feel badly?

In my personal life, the results were just as mixed. I had a handsome and strapping boyfriend who I believed liked me for my pretty face and my dazzling personality. But after I lost weight and became happier with my body, his attitude changed. He suddenly felt under threat — like another man might “steal me away” now I was supposedly desirable — and confessed that he’d always enjoyed being the prize of the relationship (as in: “How’d she get him?”) His annoyance with my new look reached deal-breaker status when he wanted me to wear a one-piece to the beach as opposed to the bikini that I was excited to finally be able to wear. That relationship lasted about as long as the one with my block friends.

There’s one set of relationships that Wilson didn’t mention while discussing her weight loss, and that’s family. Though it seems her physical transformation didn’t change much with her parents, losing weight did with mine. Despite the fact that my mom had always gone after me about my eating habits — “How many Oreos are you going to have?” — she reacted out of sorts when she realized I’d dropped my extra weight. I hoped she’d be happy for me, but instead she simply muttered about what a shame it was to have to donate my plus-size wardrobe of “such nice things.” The fact that I had a job and could replace my “fat” clothes with my own money also left her out of the equation. She took my new-found independence personally.

The world is different now to when I was young: there are high-profile and respected plus-size supermodels, as well as campaigns championing body positivity. Although I’m down with loving the skin the you’re in, I’m also wary of the dark side of this sort of activism. Suggesting that people who have lost weight might not be happy in themselves or refusing to share in their pride at their achievement — as some reacted to the singer Adele’s weight loss — is not positive or progressive.

Rebel Wilson clearly had noble goals in losing weight. She spoke about aiming to boost her fertility, have healthy pregnancies and live a more satisfying lifestyle. Her motivation wasn’t to swipe roles from Scarlett Johansson (although I’m sure she could now) but instead focused inwards, as it should be. That’s why I’d wager she keeps the pounds off permanently.

My own motivation for weight loss was always about envy, and there’s no use in pretending otherwise. Today, social media and filters get the blame for disordered eating among women and girls. When I was a young woman, it was glossy magazines and retouching. The truth is that if you want to compare and despair, all you have to do is go to the beach or a locker room to feel bad over someone else’s cellulite-free thighs. And the weight loss journey that’s provoked by that kind of social anxiety is never going to be healthy or permanent.

It’s important to note, however, that 14.8 percent of American teens are obese, and those numbers are only rising. Rather than yo-yo dieting, I would encourage those teens to take a leaf out of Rebel Wilson’s book and concentrate on healthy, slow weight loss. Take it from me: There’s no use waiting until your sixth decade to realize that when you have your health, you have everything.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the upcoming novel THE LAST SINGLE WOMAN IN NEW YORK CITY, to be published in 2022 by Heliotrope Books.