Herself speaks.
I have slightly difficult relationship with food.
-----
I remember that certain campers at the all-girls sleepaway camp I attended as a tween, were supposed to go up to the main cabin after the mandatory rest time midday, to have milk and cookies. These were the skinny girls who apparently were judged in need of extra calories, in contrast to the campers who were all assigned to the "diet" table in the dining room. There was a nebulous pride around being a milk-and-cookies girl, and a much more distinct shame in being a diet-table girl. How early we start policing girls' bodies, I think now.
-----
I was a milk-and-cookies girl. I was a scrawny, buck-toothed thing as a tween. My body was perfectly acceptable to me, though -- it worked just fine, I had no complaints. I was a child. It could climb trees, swim, canoe. It was good. I ate when I was hungry. That was all.
-----
I remember standing on the back porch as a teenager, as an adult relative hissed at me, "I know you are anorexic. I wish you'd get help." I had no response, because I did not have an eating disorder, and in fact had a relatively healthy sense of self for a teenage girl. I just shook my head.
-----
My body continued to be fine throughout my teen years. Puberty was no worse for me than it was for any other of my peers. I developed some curves, but remained svelte. I ate when I was hungry. That was all.
It was fine in college, and in professional school too -- all that walking around campus, and not keeping snacks in my dorm room, meant that I stayed essentially the same shape-wise. Not quite milk-and-cookies, not diet-table. I ate when I was hungry. That was all.
Somewhere along the line, though, things changed.
-----
I remember being pregnant, and so hungry, and the cravings, and having to step on the scale every month, every week, every day. And nursing babies, and being SO HUNGRY, and having to figure out what shape I was supposed to be post-partum and as a mother. This body was a little foreign -- it had been through a battle, and I needed to re-learn how best to care for it.
-----
Being a young mother is so difficult on the body. Not just the growing, delivering, and nursing of the baby, but the messages we got from the media, and somewhat shockingly, the myriad comments from other people on our shape and our weight and what we were doing or not doing, eating or not eating, throughout pregnancy and nursing and well into parenthood.
Add to that, working and trying to care for the family, and somewhere along the way, I lost the ability to tend properly to my body. Eating on the fly, eating baby's leftovers, feeling exhausted and sad. Feeling a momentary comfort in food.
That might be where it began.
-----
"I was SO GOOD, I didn't have any cake." I stare blankly at the speaker, wondering when not eating something tasty became a Good. And then -- discussion of Keto. Intermittent fasting. Middle-aged women comparing diets. Suddenly food was no longer safe -- it was a guilty pleasure, an indulgence, a moral failing to eat more than one 'should'. And at the same time, the culture of wine and "treat yourself".
-----
Now, as I try to navigate this middle-aged body, it finds new ways to remind me that I should not eat certain things. Having high cholesterol, as well as food-triggered migraines, has caused a renewed concern about what I do and do not eat; and that does not even begin to address the fact that I need to lose ten pounds before I am no longer considered medically overweight. Every meal is a tiny bit fraught. Can I balance what I need, with what I want, to eat? And why do I want to eat that, anyway? Am I just eating my feelings? Oftentimes, yes. I need not to do that.
-----
"Just eat big salads. And jump rope." -- the thyroid doctor
-----
As we enter the holiday season with its pies and fresh breads and seasonal delectables, there is so much guilt over eating some foods, as well as over not eating particular "beneficial" foods. The guilt is compounded by speaking with the people close to me: those who pursue rigorously vegan diets or happily consume a plate of chips without self-loathing. I know that it is a ME problem I have, because their actions -- which are not in and of themselves problematic -- make me feel a particular way about myself, and I do not like how I feel.
Calorie-counting does not help; though it might in the long run facilitate shedding a bit of weight, so closely scrutinizing every morsel lends itself to disordered thinking about food. I wasn't anorexic as a teen; I don't want to go down that road now, either.
As I am, though, being overweight feels like a moral failing. Which is ridiculous. And yet, how I feel -- not for others, but for myself. How have I managed to not even think to judge others for their weight, and yet judge myself so harshly for my own?
I miss those days when I just ate what it seemed like I needed, and that was all that mattered. When the body functioned fine, and I was reasonably happy living in the body as it was.
I need a re-set: a change in how I view food. Food is morally neutral. Body shape, too, is morally neutral. Let's focus on eating nutritious meals when the pangs are hunger pangs, and on not eating when the pangs are feelings.
Maybe I should start with taking the time to just feel the feelings. That might be difficult.
It's going to be an even bigger challenge as we enter the holiday season.
One day at a time.
\
*
No comments:
Post a Comment