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tempestsreach-blog · 3 years ago

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Fuck Diet Culture

This is going to be long. It’s going to be rambly. It’s going to be sad. It’s going to be angry. There’s going to be language some people don’t like. I can’t NOT talk about it though.

Fuck diet culture. Let me say that again. Fuck. Diet. Culture. It has taken such a huge chunk out of my life. I have lost pieces of myself I’m not sure I’ll ever get back. The only way to heal is to go through. I can’t go back. I have to move forward. But I can’t do it quietly. I can’t hide. I can’t live in the same shame I’ve spent the last 40 years in. Literally. 40 years of my life wasted to this. I can’t bear to live the back half of my life in the same way. What the hell is the point? I’m not going to write this in any particular order because all of the thoughts and feelings swimming around are snapshots of things in my life that diet culture has broken in me or stolen from me. A lot of you aren’t going to agree with me. That’s okay. Truly. This is about ME. This is to help ME heal. You can talk to me about your struggles, your diets, your ups and downs, your successes and whatnot. I am here for you in all of it. But I won’t diet with you anymore. Never again.

Currently I am having severe knee pain. One knee is worse than the other, but both are bad. I should go to the doctor. I should have gone to the doctor years ago for it. Want to know why I didn’t? My weight. I have injuries from overuse and over exercise and I am terrified that I am going to go to the doctor and the first words they’re going to say are “Well, if you lost 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds, it probably wouldn’t hurt so much.” instead of listening to me, examining me, scanning my knees and HELPING me. I don’t feel this way irrationally. This shit happens. I am in pain. I don’t know how to get help without being told to go on another diet that will not work.

Because diets don’t work. Not long term. I am excellent at losing weight! I’ve done it over and over and over. Then I stop restricting, counting, starving, and pushing myself. Then my body says “What the fuck were you doing?” and puts it back. I lost the ability years ago to know whether I’m actually hungry or not. I eat too fast when I do eat because if I snarf it down super fast I can get it in before my brain says “You’ve had too much. Did you count those calories? How many miles on a treadmill will you do to make up for that? Did you actually earn this meal?”

Every time. Every meal. Every morsel.

I have never been officially diagnosed with an eating disorder. Only been told by therapists and psychiatrists that I definitely engage in disordered eating.

No shit.

Every diet under the sun. Cabbage soup. Phen Fen. Weight watchers (MULTIPLE TIMES), TOPS, Noom, My Fitness Pal calorie counting, intermittent fasting, and every whacky bullshit thing in between promising results. I’ve purchased fancy scales. I’ve even tried one that wouldn’t show you your weight, but the color of your progress in the app. Here’s a hint… if you gain, your color is black like death. I’ve failed a million times and I’ve blamed myself. I am the failure. So I hate my body a little more every day and I stress about how I’m going to NOT pass my disordered eating and my food issues onto my kids. My stress levels are through the roof and 98% of it is diet culture related. What the fuck is that about? Every time I start a program I hit it hard. Last time I tried anything involving tracking or counting I was so starving by the time I got home from work that I almost ripped a child’s head off (not literally OBVIOUSLY) but I screamed at her at the top of my lungs because she hurt my feelings. It wasn’t until after finally allowing myself to eat another morsel of food that I realized I was hangry.

Why is living in a larger body not acceptable? We all talk about diversity and equality as though we believe it with our whole hearts, but that doesn’t cross over to fat. Or skinny if we’re really being honest. How many times have you heard or seen online “Oh my god, she’s so skinny. Feed her a damn cheeseburger! She looks anorexic.” I know I have. I know I’ve said those words. I will punch myself in the gut if I ever say them again.

Every body is different. We are supposed to be. Let’s not BLAME genetics like it’s a bad thing. Let’s realize that it’s what nature has intended. My father is over 6 feet tall and a large man. He’s just a big man. He went on Nutri System when I was young, lost a ton of weight, and put a bunch back on over the years because he is a big man. My mother was not tall, but was always large. I hated her body because HER PARENTS told her all the time she was fat and unworthy and cautioned me not to grow up to be like her in any way. Even when she was poor and homeless she was still large. That was the way her body was. I wonder how different her life might have been if the size of her body hadn’t been a factor in the way she was raised or treated. How might that have made my life different?

I know a lot of you are probably rolling your eyes at me right now about being vocal about another health plan or saying to yourself “just because you have trouble with diets doesn’t mean they don’t work” I know there are people close to me thinking “She just always gets excited when she discovers a new diet, that’s probably what this is.” NO.

This is me finally realizing that I can heal and healing doesn’t mean I need to weigh 157 pounds. (That’s the weight limit for women my height to enter the air force when I did in 1992) This is me finally realizing that I’ve been lying about the weight on my drivers license for 30 years because gods forbid anyone saw my real weight on that document. This is me realizing that I’ve spent my life trying to live up to other people’s ideals of what I should look like because I assumed they wouldn’t like me otherwise. This is me realizing how much unintentional harm I could have been doing when sharing another diet, another idea, another bout of “well this is working really well for me!” with people I care about. This is me realizing how much damage I’ve been doing to myself living with this level of shame for 40 years. Hiding what I’m doing. Suffering in silence. Hiding food. Restricting. Binging. Over exercising to compensate. Spending money on one last diet. Spending emotional energy on one last hope. We were in Las Vegas for what was supposed to be a fun vacation last week and I was so hot and miserable and so steeped in hating my body because my painful knees were betraying me that my internal monologue was a never ending loop of “I’ll hit weight watchers REALLY HARD when we get home and get rid of this weight, then I’ll figure out my knees and work on maintenance” Let me say that again, clearly. I struggled to enjoy my vacation because I was obsessing about restricting food AFTER my vacation. One last time. One last meal.

BULLSHIT.

We walked by shops with weird and pretty fashion dresses. (I freely admit I don’t understand fashion) the husband and I would both point out ones we thought were pretty. My brain would get stuck on “Yeah, but they don’t make them in my size” or “Yeah, that would NOT look good on me. It looks fine on that size 0 mannequin” Pretty on other people. Other people are pretty. Not me. Diet culture is pervasive and all consuming. In big ways and little ways. I’m 5 ft 9. I’m not a tiny person at any weight. I’ve always been told I’m too big. Even when I sit, I slouch a little and/or tuck my legs and feet up under me to try to make myself appear smaller and less invasive. This is subconscious. I don’t always realize I’m doing it until my knees remind me. Most of my life has been things that get in the way of my diets. “I should start the diet today, but it’ll have to wait until next week because so and so’s birthday is this week and I want to be able to enjoy that.” or “It’s late fall, I should just start now but first there’s my birthday, and then Thanksgiving, and December happens and there’s all kinds of treats then. Better wait until January, but not the first because that’s new year’s...maybe the following Monday.” or the ever popular “I already had a bad eating day today, I’m a failure. Why bother? Fuck it. I’ll try again tomorrow.” That one was always followed by binging because of the last supper mentality. If I’m starting a diet tomorrow I better eat EVERYTHING NOW. This is how I’ve lived my whole life. The time not spent dieting was just the time in between diets where I was planning my next diet. So much life wasted. The only time I was not actively dieting or planning the next diet or suffering from “I’m just too exhausting to put effort into food right now” was during my 4 pregnancies. I let myself eat whatever and whenever because I was nauseous all the time anyway and something in my brain made me fuel my body for the babies. When the youngest was born and the on call doctor who delivered her told me I was too fat to have my tubes tied I definitely started planning diets again in that moment. I believe now, years later, that my diet and diet culture ruined mind and body is part of what kept me from being as successful at nursing the kids as I wished I had been. I assumed my body was broken and not good enough for my babies. The last time I lost a LOT of weight it was because I didn’t want to ruin someone’s wedding pictures. True story. This was nothing that person felt or anything they told me. IT’s what my brain said to me. It’s how I de-valued myself. There are very few current pictures of me now because I’ve been stuck in a place where I feel shame when I see them. When I’m dead, memories and pictures are all my kids and grandkids will have, and I hate myself too much to let anyone take them. That’s not okay.

I dream about food. I daydream about food. Food I “shouldn’t” eat. Food I “should” eat. When to eat. When not to eat. Every spare ounce of energy is spent thinking about food or hating myself which leads to more thinking about food. I am not in a place where I can prepare dinner for my family right now because it’s too hard to put that much energy into food. I force myself to pick the recipes from the app and get the shopping done via instacart so all anyone else has to do is pull up the recipe and make the food. If I’m looking at the ingredients or trying to prep anything I stare at every individual thing debating whether or not I “should” eat it. This is going to take me a long time to break free from. Today I finally feel like I CAN break free. There is nothing wrong with being in a large body or a small body. Food is not good or bad. Food is food. I have to say these things. I have to repeat them to myself or I fall down the rabbit hole again. None of this is work anyone can do for me. I have to live it. I have to work through it. I have to figure it out. If you read this far, my statement stands. If you’re on a diet, I will listen to your woes and hold your hand and I will not judge you for it. This was very hard to write because I am certain some of you who believe in diets, ways of life, and wellness eating may block me now because I spoke my mind. I’ve clung so tight to the people I love and refrained from being honest and speaking my mind for fear of abandonment. I’ll have to live with it if that’s the case here, because people sometimes need to do what’s best for them. Airing this out is one of those things for me. It’s a scary thing for sure. I also want to say that I’m happy for this to lead to discussion. I’m not going to shut anyone down for wanting to talk to me about this. I am always open to learn new information and see different perspectives. Just know that if I’m emotional and feeling a lot of strong things about how my life has been up to this point, and I am entitled to believe what I believe just as you all are. I’m happy to share sources and books I’ve been reading on the subject. They are not diet books.

Here’s to doing better from here on out.

Here’s to finally being free.

#intuitive eating #anti diet #mental health #fuck diet culture

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cinematicnomad · 4 years ago

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hi kat, what are some good and bad things about living in dc? (i know you technically commute buuuttt...). what are the general dc vibes like?

oh man, hey anon! yeah i can totally answer this.

so first things first, as you already mentioned, while i work in DC i actually commute from northern virginia (colloquially called NOVA). basically i live in the washington metropolitan area known as the DMV (which stands for DC-maryland-virginia).

second thing, i’ve been quarantining down in south carolina since mid-march because that’s where my parents retired (for who knows why?? we had no family or other connection to this state before they moved here in 2016) and my siblings wanted someone down here with them.

but anyway! back to your question.

i really love DC? i don’t know if it’s from growing up in a bunch of european cities, but i don’t really like HUGE cities like manhattan or LA. they tend to feel overwhelming to me. but cities like boston or DC are just the right size for me. and DC has the benefit of building height regulations?? so there are no massive skyscrapers in DC. here’s a little history lesson: back in 1894 the cairo hotel was built and it was 164 ft tall and basically it pissed everyone off. so in 1899 the city issued height regulations limiting their height to 90–110ft (depending on if it’s residential or business) OR to the width of the street in front, whichever was smaller.

but i digress. anyway, i’m a fan of the look and feel of DC. the metro system is in no way the best i’ve ever been on, and wmata has a shit ton of issues, but i do love that i can get from maryland to virginia or anywhere else in the DMV region by hopping on the metro for a couple bucks. if you’re ever in the area download the app MetroHero bc it gives you so much more information about what’s going on on the metro—it’ll link up to twitter so you can see if people are tweeting about your line, it’ll tell you if the train has stalled somewhere, and more. one major bummer: wmata used to have later hours until a few years ago when they started doing all this upkeep and repairs on the metro (which they put off for literal decades) so if you live outside of the city and want to stay out late you either better have a place to crash or be willing to spend some money on an uber home.

DC also just has a lot of shit for you to do? there’s always something going on in town—a new exhibit at one of the museums, a street festival, restaurant week, what have you. last year my friend called me up on a random saturday morning and was like “hey you want to go do this independent bookstore crawl that all the DC bookstore’s are participating in??” and i said yes and spent the entire day hopping between different neighborhoods and different bookstores until we wound up in georgetown at like 10PM and wandered into a bar we knew to eat a late dinner and down some fancy cocktails. like i’m rarely bored in DC when my friends want to get together and do something in the city.

DC’s a big brunch city btw? that can be annoying if your’e not into it but i just feel like you should know it’s A Thing. it also has a big drinking culture. like that’s just a thing, it’s definitely a “let’s go to happy hour” type of city. drive like 15 miles out of the city and suddenly it’s not like that at all. (i worked at a major public university outside of DC and i think i went to happy hour like...less than 5 times the entire 4 years i was there, and then i started working at a university in DC and it’s like...an all the time thing). i have friends and coworkers who don’t drink and it’s definitely a thing they’ve noticed about DC.

be aware rent is pricey. obviously that’s why i live outside of actual DC. you can swing it if you have roommates or a partner to split the cost with but it’s something to keep in mind. the people i know who can afford to live alone make way more money than i do or don’t live in DC proper. or they’re willing to make certain sacrifices: i knew a girl who lived off of adams morgan by herself and she didn’t have a washer or dryer? and her apt building didn’t have one either bc all the other apts in her building had their own in-house units. and the closest laundromat to her was like a $15 uber ride away. so sometimes you gotta make sacrifices if you want to live someplace specific.

honestly there’s probably more to say but i’m kind of blanking at the moment so! if you have any specific questions i can def try to answer them.

#ask #anonymous #it's obviously also a v political city?#i've gone to a lot of protests #my student employee left work early a few weeks ago to go protest for BLM in front of the white house #but obviously there are also people protesting things i don't care about #like ugh this past winter there was the dumb march for life #and i had to sit on the metro next to catholic high school kids on the way to the march #while they talked about 'which city murders the most babies' for some spreadsheet they were filling out #and also there's always someone screaming about trump or what have you #and living in or around a city with a baseball and hockey team with the color red?#gives me some serious whiplash every time i have to do a double take and figure out if it's one of THOSE red hats or just someone showing s #(it definitely has been one of THOSE hats before and usually someone yells at them on the metro)

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