CW: eating disorders, abelism, fat-phobia
I was a tiny kid. This is an important fact for you to know.
I was born early and underweight. I was sick a lot as a child, and allergic to practically everything. By the time I was a pre-teen my parents were divorced and we were living under the poverty line. Food was scarce, and my self-esteem wasn’t good. I latched onto things trying to gain some sense of self-worth.
One of those things was that I was tiny. I was skinny. This was a highly desirable and Sexy(TM) trait, although looking back as an adult the fact that anyone told 12yo me that being Sexy was good deeply disturbs me. But I latched onto it anyway. Being skinny made me Good and Desirable and Not Lazy like those other people.
… in case you don’t know that’s a really, tragically awful way to talk about weight. It nearly destroyed me.
Because while I was struggling with the insecurities of being a teen my mother was being treated for a variety of illnesses and her medications gave her intense mood swings and severe memory problems. From one minute to the next I couldn’t tell what my mother was going to do, how she would react, or what she would say. The only constant was that when she was angry she called me Fat.
Fat, I’d been taught, was everything wrong with the world. Fat was ugly. Fat was lazy. Fat was stupid. Fat was the absolute worst thing a person could be other than being a woman who was not sexy.
… like I said, this wasn’t a healthy mindset. I can look back at that now and be appalled that anyone let me think that. I can be outraged that someone told me that and pushed this idea on me. But when I was 13 I didn’t know better.
And I thought that if I somehow lost weight life would be better. Maybe my mom would like me more. Maybe my dad would quit binge drinking and come see me. Maybe I’d have friends at school. Maybe we’d have more money if I just stopped eating all the food…
I became borderline anorexic. Never fully diagnosed, and never fully realized because a part of me *liked* eating food and not being hungry. But I avoided food. I had to fight the feelings of guilt to make myself eat a meal. I felt like the world’s worst monster if I filled a plate.
There were so many good reasons in my head to not eat food. First, I’d lose weight (obviously the correct weight for a teenage girl was something around Zero pounds because teenage girls are the worst and shouldn’t take up space… right? [no – not right – please don’t think like that]). Second, it would save money and food for the rest of my family. My mom was sick, my little siblings were growing kids, obviously letting them have seconds and going to bed hungry was the right thing to do. After all, it’s in every classic book, the leader of the family literally starving to death to save everyone else. Third, I was scared of being Fat, because then everyone would hate me.
Most my teenage years centered around this fear of food and hatred at myself for wanting food. I felt so grossly incompetent when I broke down and ate something.
… yeah, go ahead and unpack that. I was a child who felt guilty not for eating to much, but for eating everything.
It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I started unpacking some of the damage. It took me the better part of a decade to not hate myself for being over a size 4. Gaining weight during pregnancy gave me panic attacks. Even now I tell the doctors not to tell me my weight because it will take months for me to break the cycle of obsession and self-loathing that comes with not being skinny.
For the most part I avoid any conversations about weight, dieting, and everything else like a champ.
It helps that my sister is a registered nutritionist and dietitian so I can run my meal plans past her.
As anyone who has met me or seen pictures of me online knows: I am carrying extra weight.
I’m not skinny.
I put on probably 100 pounds in the past four years since I injured my knee and quit working out five days a week. I physically can not run because of how damaged my knee is. Some days I can’t walk. Working out is a challenge for me and my body type reflects that.
My food choices are generally pretty healthy. Not because I heroically stick to a Healthy Meal Plan approved by the doctor but because I genuinely prefer munching on veggies and nuts to cookies. I blame living in Alaska. After a couple months of not having fresh fruit and veggies I feel like I’ll never be able to get enough.
This works out well, because I will never be the kind of person who can go on a strict diet.
I can’t.
The idea of it makes me physically ill. I know that if I start counting calories or writing down meal points I’ll start obsessing. With the obsession will come guilt. With the guilt will come anorexic thought patterns and I’ll destroy years of hard work.
Guess what happened last night?
I went to a meeting. A friend was teaching a class on mental health and meditation. So of course I went. To be supportive. To be open. To talk about mental health because we need to have open and frank discussions about mental well-being.
And the class was good. We talked about therapy, and depression, and self-care.
It was going really well until the last speaker got up and said she was going to talk about Diet.
I tensed up. Diet is not a word I care to use. But I figured everything else had been good so far and there were a lot of ways to discuss eating habits in terms of mental health. It’s certainly something to discuss because dehydration and hunger can trigger bad habits and bad choices. So I stayed.
… that was a mistake. Next time remind me to go with my gut. ’cause I should have NOPED on out of there like an Olympic sprinter.
The speaker was a well-meaning person. She was genuinely enthusiastic about her topic. She was flustered, the poor thing, probably nervous about talking in front of a group. So maybe that’s why she tumbled through her lecture so poorly and said things like, “Food is bad.” and “You shouldn’t eat carbs or sugar.” or “All you really need to do is run every day.”
On the surface those things aren’t the worst things you can say… okay, “Food is bad.” is a toxic statement that causes eating disorders and no one should ever say that again in any language.
“You shouldn’t eat carbs and sugars.” is a scare tactic.
“All you need to do is run every day.” is abelist.
So maybe she didn’t mean well. Or maybe she didn’t think what her statements meant. Or maybe she didn’t consider that roughly one in ten Americans have or had an eating disorder and in a room with thirty people pitching the whole “Food is bad.” mantra could trigger a relapse.
… I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, which made it worse.
I had to leave this lecture that was capped off by gross abelism and go home to confront being hungry after not eating for six hours. I felt horrible. I called two friends to back me up so I could get myself into the kitchen to eat a small sandwich (200 calories) and half a grapefruit (26 calories).
This morning I had to fight myself to eat breakfast.
I skipped my morning snack out of general guilt even though a 100 calorie pack of cheese, nuts, and dried fruit is what the doctor recommended.
By lunchtime I was ready to eat and I was angry. At myself for listening to lies I had worked so hard to get out of my life. At the woman who callously and casually destroyed years of therapeutic work because losing weight made her happy and obviously would cure everyone’s problems. At the event coordinator who thought this was a good topic to discuss without warning one. At our culture which pushes and pushes and pushes this idea that weight is an indicator of self-worth.
A part of me really wanted to justify this. To explain it a way as misguided but well-intentioned advice.
But… there’s no such thing as a well-meaning abelist.
Either you care enough about your fellow human beings to consider how your words and actions might impact them, or you don’t.
Either you take the time before giving a lecture to consider the implications of your advice and reflect on how it could hurt people, or you don’t.
Either you actually think about the diversity of the human condition and where everyone is on their journey, or you don’t.
There isn’t a place in between. Not when you’re the one doing the educating.
I could have accepted thoughtless statements like that from someone in the audience who didn’t know better or hadn’t researched the topics of weight, nutrition, and mental health. But not from someone who makes a living out of advising other people.
If you want to help people get to a better place in their life you first need to recognize that what is best for you is not best for someone else.
There is nothing wrong with me as I am.
I might have extra weight. I know I can’t run. I am aware that I have a degenerative genetic mutation.
That’s okay. I accept who I am as I am.
I don’t need to be fixed.
I certainly don’t need to be fixed by someone who never considered that healthy doesn’t look exactly like a photoshopped ad in a running magazine.
I am happy as I am. I’m beautiful. I’m healthy. I’m taking care of my body in the best way possible, being aware of and respecting the limitations of my health.
And that’s way more body positive than skipping a meal.