Some of my earliest memories of my mom, are of her talking negatively about her body; she was always trying the latest “fad” solution to lose weight. I don’t know if there is a diet solution/pill etc. that she hasn’t tried. Does that sound like anyone you know?
At the precious age of 68 – my greatest hope for her is that she is finally learning to enjoy her life – including all kinds of food, and appreciate her body, just as it is. She is more active than anyone I know at her age, but I fear that she still worries far too much about calories, AKA ”fattening” foods. (God I hate that term, as if some foods have some kind of black magic power to make you gain weight…)
I do not share this information about my favorite woman to shame or blame, but I think it’s important to set the stage for my own struggles. Moms out there please listen up:
How you feel about your body and your relationship with food, is passed along to your children whether you like it or not. And moms with daughters, this is especially true… Your daughters are learning how they should feel about who they are in the world, based on how you feel about yourself!!!
So, at the age of 9 when I was being teased for being fat – my mom did the only thing she knew to help; she put me on a diet. Weight Watchers to be exact. I even had to get a Doctor’s permission to do it, which of course they were more than happy to give me. For the most part, the medical community still believes that achieving the “appropriate BMI” is more important than any other medical risk. The most obvious example is the Gastric Bypass. If you haven’t ever considered the risks of that popular surgery, take some time to consider the realities.
The biggest problem with being on a diet at 9, is that I learned immediately that there was something “wrong” with me, and that obsessively controlling my food intake would not only fix my “problem” it would make people like me more, it would make others proud of me, and it would make me normal.
As a 9-year-old girl, all I wanted was to be accepted, liked, and loved for who I was – but I had already learned the harsh lesson that sadly still plagues me today; being fat is very very bad and it makes you a less desirable human being…
What’s more, dieting taught me that my “problem” was all my fault. If I couldn’t “fix” it then it was because I didn’t do something “right” - not succeeding at permanent weight loss meant that I must be lazy, uncommitted, and lacking in self-control.
This was the beginning of a pattern I’m still trying to change in my life today; the deprivation-binge cycle, AKA the bad food – good food game. You’re a player if you’ve ever uttered the words, “OMG that (fill in the blank) is so fattening, or ooh I am so naughty – look what I just ate!” P.S. You don’t have to say it out loud for it to count…
I remember doing a few crazy food control things in junior high – it was common among my female peers to drink diet pop and eat crap from the vending machine for lunch by the age of 13. We already knew how to count calories and deprive our bodies of necessary nutrients in an effort to be more attractive… at thirteen! Wake up America, this is not a new phenomenon - I was 13 in 1987!
Sadly, the message that “thin = beautiful” may start in the home, but it was(still is) being reinforced in every TV show I watched, every magazine I read, and in a myriad of other very present, but subtle cultural cues.
What really got me hooked on the diet cycle was my (apparent) success on Weight Watchers from 2003 to 2005 when I lost 200lbs.
Here’s what a typical day of eating looked like:
- Breakfast = oatmeal cookie and Americano(coffee, I used to drink lattes but eventually had to give up the soy milk to keep my points for other more ‘worthy’ items) OR a lean pocket.
- Lunch = Veggie salad with Fat-free dressing.
- Dinner = veggie patty(has less points than meat), dry baked potato, steamed broccoli (on the weekends I often saved up points to binge drink alcohol)
- Snacks = sugar free jello, or fat-free pudding, sugar-free soda, air-popped popcorn
- 1 pack of Camel Lights(those are cigarettes, and boy did they help with cravings for food…)
I focused on fat-free, sugar-free everything- and I weighed myself all day long. I also got constant praise for how I looked…
I knew that my relationship with food was not healed… It is not healthy to eat franken-foods! There is a lot of evidence that artificial sweeteners, and fat-free products are actually making us fatter! And to be honest, I don’t know if my body will ever be happy at the size I got down to – after all, I was only there for a couple of months and I’ve lived my life as a plus-size girl… Don’t get me wrong, I want to be healthy more than anything – but the cost of being thin is just not worth it anymore.
When my eating feels out of my control, and the pounds come back on (remember that 20 pounds I dropped from “cleansing” a couple of months ago? It came right back on.) I immediately question whether I should be on some kind of “diet” or “plan”… in other words; something outside of me must surely be the solution… But these are the lies that I have been told – and that we are all being told, by a billion dollar per year diet industry. The fact that we are all so scared to embrace - despite all of the evidence is: diets don’t work.
I felt better about myself and my life before I lost(and regained) the weight. Since putting on the pounds again I feel like my life has revolved around taking them back off, and of denying myself any pleasure, love, and most human interaction. I had more confidence at 20, then I do at 37. I blame dieting, and all of the messages that come along with losing 200lbs., along with the messages you get when you gain it all back. More than anything I blame myself for having bought into this bullshit – and I’m working at being much more kind and gentle to me than anyone I know.
So, stay tuned for what does work!
~NOTE~ If you can relate to this article and are tired of feeling like you have to diet your way to happiness, please join me in swearing off of diets forever! Don’t let the diet industry rob the next generation of women of their money, self-esteem, and self-compassion.
