Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Let's Talk About Food (Alternate Title: Fear and Loathing in My Body).

In the year 1988, I enrolled in Home Ec because I was allowed to have a blow-off class, and how hard could it be?

Pretty hard, as it happens. I still can't make divinity.

But that's neither here nor there. I pinpoint middle school home ec because it was the first time I remember consciously thinking that I was fat.

And, brother, there has been no turning back since.

Even as I type this, I feel vaguely hive-ish and distinctly uncomfortable, which is how I felt for most of the 80s, so let's segue back to that little pocket of good times. My home ec partner was this boy, name not important because he's not important, who made a throwaway comment about a new outfit I wore to school one day.

"You look like a cow."

At age 13, I was 5'9" and about 140 pounds. This is roughly the same size I am now, which, if I'm honest with myself, isn't cow-sized. But when surrounded by other students in different stages of puberty/growth, I was noticeably larger than, well, almost all of them.

I was also all puberty-ed up and stuff. So that comment hit me right in the feels. I took it to heart. I BECAME the standard-size cow. I was always food-obsessed. But now my obsession shifted to my body, and the inevitable back-and-forth began.

I lost something like 30 pounds in a very, very short amount of time. My parents took me to the Golden Corral buffet because they were worried.

And I was skinny.

And people commented, favorably.

And I felt GREAT.

Thus began a horrible roller coaster of self-loathing. I stayed skinny until my sophomore year, at which point I gained 40 pounds over a period of maybe six months. My coaches teased me after weigh-ins about the numbers they were recording.

"I can't believe you weigh ___ pounds!!!" *laughing, looking around the crowded room, repeating*

When I was 18 and went off to college, I was overwhelmed with joy that I could eat all the unhealthy food that my parents didn't keep around the house when I was growing up. I lived on white bread and jelly mountains and snack cakes and Lucky Charms. By the end of the semester, I could only wear my DAD'S sweats. I gave almost my entire wardrobe away to my roommate.

That's when the shame spiral commenced. Every day I woke up full of resolve and a desire to "get healthy" and make good choices. By the end of the day, though, I was starving (because I didn't eat) and cranky and it seemed insane that, if I didn't eat anymore, I couldn't eat until the NEXT DAY. That was a whole completely different day! From the one I was in currently! Was that even realistic!? No way.

And as jacked up as my mind was, I decided to try pretty much anything if it promised weight loss. I hated throwing up, so bulimia was out, but smoking wasn't (I managed to get down roughly three half-cigarettes). Or mini-thins. Or 357 Magnums (Safe as Coffee!).

I was always starving myself or stuffing myself. There was no happy medium. There was an EXTRA medium, maybe. There were a lot of elastic waistbands and over-sized sweatshirts. I had my dad and stepmom lock the cabinets, and the fridge. But I had a skinny wrist and a lot of determination. Nothing worked.

The only thing that ever saved me was exercise. I was always very, very sports- and fitness-focused, from an exercise standpoint. First it was aerobics tapes with my dad. Then it was weights, first in our basement gym, then in the one he opened over his office.
I could get on an elliptical for an hour. I could log serious gym time. I loved tennis, and my spring through fall seasons were loaded with it. Later, weights and tennis morphed into yoga, and then Nevada Fitness Club. Exercise saved me.

Food crippled me.

And I couldn't get to the root of it. I didn't have a bad childhood on which to blame my choices. When I was asked about the amount of food I could consume, when people made comments like, "Where do you put it?" I would give my standard reply. Because I thought it was true.

I just love food.

I stayed on the roller coaster of weight throughout my twenties and early thirties, at which point I finally, miraculously, stabilized.

From a weight standpoint. From a mental health standpoint regarding my body image, it was still an "All aboard the hot mess express!"

I was fine, as long as I never started eating. Once I did, it was game over. I had a fairly strong nutritional background, but I couldn't seem to apply even the most basic rules to my own life. I'd read little fitness articles about "Nutritionists reveal their daily food intake" and it would be shit like, "I just have a small handful of nuts to get me through my cravings! Tee hee."

Bitches. Those nuts probably weren't even chocolate-covered.

I still don't know when or why I became like this. I don't blame unrealistic advertising/images of supermodels/celebrities, because it's an ever-present background noise that I can pretty much tune out at this point. My parents didn't fat-shame me; on the contrary, they were always really supportive.

I think part of it is being a woman, with all of the multiple open tabs in the mind that implies, and part of it is that I've been like this for so long that it had become deeply, deeply ingrained.

But, shit, ENOUGH. My number one saying is, "You gotta get there yourself." And I finally, FINALLY, did.

In October, I got rid of all three of my scales, going cold-turkey with my weight obsession. It was brutal. I truly felt like scales were my drug. I kept my eye out for them in assorted bathrooms after giving mine away. I had several mini-panic attacks that my friends text-calmed me through. I imagined that my clothes were getting tighter.

And then, after several weeks, I could suddenly breathe again. It felt normal, not starting my day with a weigh-in. I didn't think about it at all, first for hours at a time, then days.

At the same time, I discovered Emily Rosen, and her very plainspoken way of addressing what it means to have a healthy attitude about food. So it is, now, finally, that I'm claiming a healthy perspective toward food. I'm -SLOWLY- accepting that, just because I eat a bunch of white-chocolate-covered popcorn, I don't have to attack myself for the rest of the day (and the next one, who am I kidding?). I can just move on. It's a thing that people do literally all the time.

Make no mistake, this is a very, very slow process. There are still setbacks, for sure. I still get really anxious when I'm alone with a dessert. Just last week, I fell off the diet pop wagon for the first time in like, three years, and had a Diet Dr. Pepper. And then a whole can of trail mix. And then two chicken sandwiches. In like, the span of a mile (I was driving). And I spilled one of the sandwiches down my front. And side. And part of my seat.

Past Jen would have gone all weight-mental.

Present, still-weird but healing Jen reminded herself that she had exercised for 75 hard minutes that morning, and it was not a big deal.

I'm counting it a win. But, at the end of the day? It still comes down to this...



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