I’m pretty sure I started gaining my weight back during the wedding reception. I had managed to lose the weight and fit into my dress and I was feeling pretty cocky. But I no longer had a reason to watch what I was eating because the wedding was over. I was also on the first cruise of my life and anyone who has been on a cruise can tell you that it is one long orgy of eating. Food is available 24 hours a day, every day pretty much, and it is not low fat food. Sure there are salads and fruits available, but there are also tables and tables of meats and breads and lots and lots of desserts. Plus there is lots of alcohol flowing to lower your inhibitions and add to the calorie intake. We did get some exercise going into the various islands we stopped at along the way, but it was nowhere near enough to offset all of the extra calorie intake.
I’d probably put back on about twenty pounds of the weight I’d lost by the time we were back home from the honeymoon. My new husband was a big fan of meat and potatoes and starchy vegetables like corn so it was easy to eat fattening meals. Both of us relaxed into an unhealthy eating regimen. Plus, when I found the person I expected to spend the rest of my life with, I think that in the back of my mind I stopped worrying about having to look good. I think this is a pretty normal reaction for a lot of people. But it is especially dangerous for someone who has always had a love/hate relationship with food.
I think there was also a lot of stress associated with trying to learn to live with someone else full time after I’d been on my own for over ten years. I’d figured that people in their thirties would mesh households more easily, but I was wrong. My husband told me that he didn’t feel stress about it and seemed a bit hurt that I seemed to be more aggravated than he was. And I spent a lot of time wondering why I was having such trouble adjusting and trying to figure out if it was me or what the problem was. I do know that I hated the whole idea of being expected to make dinner for someone else. And we had different tastes, so when I did cook things to my liking, he never seemed too thrilled with it. Eventually, I just stopped making dinner. But we had opposite shifts a lot of the time so it wasn’t that much of an issue. And both of us liked getting take out.
Just after we had our big wedding the stress at work started to mount because the FAA had decided to contract out all Level I facilities. When I’d started at Groton Tower it was a Level II, but it was downgraded shortly after I got certified. So, the big decision we had to make was whether or not we would fight being contracted out or just accept it and hope we’d get a job somewhere decent. All of us in the tower with the exception of one controller figured that if we were going to get contracted out we should agree to go in the first year because we figured that we would have the best chance of going where we wanted to go if we went before lots of people had moved. So they sent out a survey to each of the controllers at all of the affected towers asking if they wanted to be contracted out. Everyone in our tower checked yes except for the one controller. People talked about steaming the envelope open and changing his vote because we were sure that they would take the facilities that were in 100% agreement first. And we figured that in each round our choices would diminish more and more.
But the FAA chose us in the first round. We each got to put in a wish list of four facilities in order of preference and one had to be in our current region. My entire family had moved out to Seattle and Portland by then so I put Seattle as my first choice and Portland as my second, followed by Honolulu and Bradley in Connecticut as my in-region choice. My husband had been out to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Seattle and they were thrilled at the prospect of getting someone without having to pay for his move. The move would come out of the FAA budget instead. Unfortunately, they didn’t need him right away. So I was selected to go to Seattle Tower, and my husband would be transferred to Seattle MSO after about eight months when his billet was up.
During all of the waiting and worrying and stress of whether or not we were going to keep our jobs. (Lots of controllers were angry that the level I controllers might move into higher level facilities ahead of them and many said that we should lose our jobs rather than jump ahead of others) food became my comfort once again. I remember yelling at the union Regional Vice President when he came to visit us to talk about the contracting out. I was pretty frustrated and was under the impression that the FAA was the one that was planning on moving us to new facilities while the union was trying to stop the contracting out. I was worried that if the union delayed it long enough the FAA might change its mind and when they decided to contract out our facilities we’d all just lose our jobs. It was a few years later when I met my new Regional Vice President that I found out it was because of the union (NATCA) that we were being given our choice of facilities and that NATCA had fought long and hard for us even though there were lots of members who were pissed off about the moves. I had always been a union member in any place that had a union, but my love for NATCA was solidified when I learned how they’d fought for us lowly Level I members even though it was unpopular.
Suffice it to say that after all of the stress, and the take out food and the removal of my wedding incentive for losing weight, by the time I reported to Seattle Tower on Halloween day, 1994 I was the heaviest I’d ever been at 267 pounds. Apparently as much as things change, they stay the same.