A few weeks ago, Melanie Lindell and April Williams were invited to attend the BariSolutions Conference in Dallas, Texas. This practitioner conference is geared toward safe patient handling and mobility for people with obesity.
We had never been to a conference like this, and we were intrigued, knowing that the people attending were the very ones with the most interaction with patients, especially pre- and post-op bariatric patients. We thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce BariNation to people who had never heard of us, and we came away with so much more than we expected.
On the second day, April and Melanie were asked if they wanted to help demonstrate some of the equipment on display so practitioners could "play" with new-to-market lifts, slings, wheelchairs, and hospital beds. But what we didn't know was that, to participate, we would have to wear a "simulation suit" and pretend to fall to the ground and/or be immobile.
April gave an immediate, visceral "no," but Melanie agreed. Below, she shares a very intimate recollection of the moment and her takeaways.
A huge thank you to Melanie, our friend and expert, for volunteering for this experience and for sharing her reactions and realizations with us.
Would you have opted in to this demonstration?
What feelings and emotions bubble up as you watch the video and read Melanie's reflection?
Let us know your own takeaways in the comments on this post.
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When I Put the Fat Suit On: Remembering the Weight I Once Carried by Melanie Lindell
I didn’t expect to shake. I didn’t expect to feel so deeply the onslaught of emotions that flooded my body. I didn’t expect the fear to return with such force that it stole my breath.
Yet there I stood — stepping into a fat suit designed to help healthcare workers learn how to safely lift, move, and care for patients living with the disease of obesity.
A body I once knew intimately. A body I carried for years. A body that shaped not only how the world saw me… but how I learned to see myself.
The moment the suit settled onto me — its weight pressing into my chest, wrapping around my thighs, anchoring my arms — it was as if the past rose up all at once. Not softly. Not with nostalgia. But with the force of a full-body remembering. It felt like slipping back into a version of myself I fought relentlessly to survive.
They asked me to simulate falling to the floor. A simple instruction, spoken casually-But the moment my body met the ground, something deep and wordless stirred. Memory did not arrive as thought — it arrived as sensation. My body remembered. I remembered.
The pain of remembering how difficult it was to rise, how the earth beneath me felt less like support and more like a snare. The ground had never been a place to rest —it had always been a place to fear.
The suit held me in its heavy grief —clumsy, slow, unsteady. The instructors moved toward me with a bariatric lift: metal arms, straps, and a soft mechanical whir meant to help. For them, it was practice —a routine demonstration. For me…it was a haunting. I was back in that before version of myself —the woman who fell and laughed it off to hide the terror that she might never find her feet again. I felt again the burn of shame and humiliation rising beneath my skin while strangers averted their eyes —or stared openly, curious, dismissive, unkind. I remembered how the world kept moving, how I learned to mask my panic with fake smiles and humor, swallowing the shame.
In that suit, the past did not stay distant. It rushed in —not as a story I once lived, but as a heartbeat, as breath, as truth. These were not memories tucked neatly behind me. They were here. Now. Alive in my bones. As I struggled to stand, I felt the old familiar awareness—the kind that once never left me: I take up too much space. I am in the way. I am a burden and living in a world that wasn’t built for me. Chairs with arms that pinched my hips. Seatbelts that disappeared beneath me. Medical equipment that didn’t fit. Restaurant booths that made me choose between breathing and sitting. And the words that were never said aloud but lived in every look: You shouldn’t be here. Not like this. Not in that body.
Living in a bigger body wasn’t just physically heavy. It was relationally heavy. Emotionally heavy. It was waking up every day knowing that the world around me—the benches, the roller coasters, the clothing racks, the expectations—were not made for me. And that to exist, I would have to apologize simply for taking up space.
One of the hardest parts of putting on the suit was remembering what it felt like to be looked at but not seen. To have my body be the only thing people notice. Strangers didn’t make eye contact with me in my larger body. Doors never held for me. Doctors spoke to me as if fatness were my only defining characteristic. People assumed laziness, weakness, and lack of discipline. Putting on that suit brought back how easy it is for the world to stop seeing humanity and only see size.
And as I lay on the ground that day, waiting to be lifted by machinery, I felt that objectification stirring again. The sense of being something that needed to be managed rather than someone who needed help.
When the woman running the conference paused at our booth, searching for a volunteer to try on the suit, I said yes — but only after a heartbeat of hesitation. I thought I was agreeing to a demonstration. I didn’t realize I was agreeing to meet my old ghosts. I never anticipated the surge of fear —the terror, really —that rose the moment I began to put it on. As the suit wrapped itself around me, a cold thought pierced straight through my chest: What if this happens again? What if I gain it all back?
Anyone who has lived in a smaller body after once living in a larger one knows that fear. It is the quiet whisper that settles in the corners of your mind —a constant hum beneath the surface: You’ve been here before. What makes you think you won’t return? But putting on the suit didn’t whisper. It handed that fear a microphone.
My heart leapt into my throat, pounding against old memories —not just of weight, but of the shame attached to it, the self-blame, the bone-deep exhaustion of carrying a body the world insists is a problem to be solved. Even as my mind repeated, This is just a simulation, my body knew better. It remembered. Too vividly. Too completely. And for a moment, I was no longer standing in a conference hall —I was standing inside the life I once fought to escape. That day reminded me: Healing isn’t forgetting. It’s remembering without getting stuck there. But sometimes, remembering hurts.
I didn’t put on the fat suit to shock myself. I didn’t do it to prove something. I did it because understanding matters—and because so many people never get the chance to understand what life in a bigger body demands from a person’s spirit. People talk about obesity like it’s a math problem: eat less, move more, simple as that. They talk about bodies without talking about humanity. Without honoring that there is a person inside that skin trying desperately to be seen.
That day, in that suit, I remembered that version of myself. The one who tried to disappear while praying that someone would notice her anyway. The one who avoided mirrors yet felt every gaze. The one who learned how to smile through pain so that no one would feel uncomfortable. I carry her with me still.
Putting on that suit didn’t offer closure—it provided truth. It cracked open a quiet grief I didn’t realize I was still carrying. Grief for who I was. For what I endured. For how hard it was to exist in a world that never made space for me.
But layered into that grief was gratitude. Gratitude for surviving. For bariatric surgery. For my healthcare team. For the habits I’ve built and fought to keep. For other bariatric patients who speak the same unspoken language of resilience and hope. For the privilege of remembering from a safer place—and for the chance to tell the story now with clarity instead of fear.
In that moment, I saw her again—the woman I once was. And for the first time, instead of shame, I felt compassion. She deserved gentleness. She deserved support. She deserved a world that welcomed her. And she still does. So do all of us.
-- Melanie Lindell, LMHC and Bariatric Patient