What emotional abuse did you inflict on yourself when you were at your heaviest weight?
Janice Taylor: Every night I felt bad about myself. I would be like just the sinking bad feeling. I didn’t believe in myself; I didn’t like myself just because I was letting myself down every day.
Every day, "Tomorrow I am going to lose weight; tomorrow I am going to take care of myself essentially.” What does it mean to lose weight? It’s about a whole slew of things. It’s not just about the weight, and so every day I let myself down.
It’s depressing. I know I felt badly about myself, and I know if I said to myself, “Do you like you?” I would say, "No, I don’t like you," but I didn’t call myself a fat pig or that, but I would hit a bad feeling. It’s more of a feeling state. I’d look in the mirror and I would say, “Uh.” So I didn’t say, "You’re disgusting," but I’d go "uh."
So I’d say, “Uh.” It would be more grunts, moans, and just this feeling of despair, really. There’s a wave that washes over you. You say you’re not going to eat something and you have it, and the wave of defeat comes in. I felt more crushed than anything.