I spent a year of my life dieting, telling my students I loved my body, telling my housemates it was for my health- gleefully watching my body disappear in a mirror, celebrating each night I went to bed with stomach pains, knowing I would wake up and be rewarded for my denial by another pound lost on the scale. The scale- my own personal numeric demon as I obsessively weighed myself after a night of indulging on a slice of pizza…no weight gain! As I excitedly weighed after a day of eating nothing but salad…I gained a pound?! Weighing became a ritual…take clothes off…use the restroom so there is nothing left in your body…
3,000 dollars…30 pounds.
It has been four months and I finally gathered the courage to throw the diet food, and the evil scale, out!
It is a typical story. One I hear repeated constantly by women I meet everyday. I know the statistics on weight and dieting. Almost 90 percent of women are effectively on a permanent diet. My size 2 students who spend every day running nowhere on a treadmill and counting calories attest to this. The women I work with in community theater who share experiences of thirty to forty years of dieting…one who cheerfully admits she would have snorted cheetos if she could have gotten them into her body fast enough are reminders of a diet and body obsessed culture. I spent five years secure in my decision to...
