If Sonya ever forgets that she is fat, the world will remind her. She has stopped taking the bus, she tells me, because she can sense the aggravation of the passengers squeezing past her. Sarah, the tech CEO, tenses up when anyone brings bagels to a work meeting. If she reaches for one, are her employees thinking, “There goes the fat boss”? If she doesn’t, are they silently congratulating her for showing some restraint?

Emily says it’s the do-gooders who get to her, the women who stop her on the street and tell her how brave she is for wearing a sleeveless dress on a 95-degree day. Sam, the medical technician, avoids the subject of weight altogether. “Men aren’t supposed to think about this stuff—and I think about it constantly,” he admits. “So I never let myself talk about it. Which is weird because it’s the most visible thing about me.”

Again and again I hear stories of how the pressure to be a “good fatty” in public builds up and explodes. Jessica has four kids. Every week is a birthday party or family reunion or swimming pool social, another opportunity to stand around platters of spare ribs and dinner rolls with her fellow moms.

“Your conscious mind is busy the whole day with how many calories is in everything, what you can eat and who’s watching,” she says. After a few intrusive comments over the years—should you be eating that?—she has learned to be careful, to perform the role of the impeccable fat person. She nibbles on cherry tomatoes, drinks tap water, stays on her feet, ignores the dessert end of the buffet.

Then, as the gathering winds down, Jessica and the other parents divvy up the leftovers. She wraps up burgers or pasta salad or birthday cake, drives her children home and waits for the moment when they are finally in bed. Then, when she’s alone, she eats all the leftovers by herself, in the dark.