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 accept my body, to love every roll and curve of my body, to be as big in my personality as my body was…to celebrate the space I inhabited and refuse to be cowed because of my fat body.
So, how did I end up starving myself? How did I, the girl who tauntingly ate fruit and bread while my weight obsessed friends lived on that bastard Atkins pork rhinds and diet pepsi diet reduce her food intake to salad and prepackaged dried food?
It was all about health.
Six years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, thanks to crappy genetics, only thing my long-absent father left behind. Every doctor, EVERY DOCTOR, obsessed over my weight:
"losing ten pounds can reduce your sugars by ten points"
"think of carbs as poison…every bite you take is killing you"
Right before I began my diet from hell, my doctor informed me I was to lose weight or go on insulin. I chose starvation.
Again, this story sounds trite to me. It is typical. Every day thousands of men and women are told by their doctor to lose weight for health reasons and go on diets. This is typically where the commercial stops. The thirty pound lighter Danielle runs skipping through fields of fucking daisies swinging her fat pants over her head as small print reminds- results not typical.
Yet we don’t see thinner Danielle’s body begin to revolt. To gain back weight despite her continued dedication to dieting. They call it a plateau…when your body refuses to cooperate with your attempts to lose weight and, no matter how much or how little salad you eat, you can’t lose weight. The weight counselors don’t talk about the phenomenon of weight gain…when you do all you can to keep the weight off but your diet and exercise don’t work anymore.
Two percent. The number of people who successfully keep weight off long term.
Ninety eight percent. The number of people who are failures in the genetics lottery making diet success possible. Ninety eight percent of people who will routinely spend income on the next two percent success rate to come along.
Fourty four point nine percent. My BMI. Morbidly obese my doctor constantly reminds me. Unhealthy she exclaims with judgment in her tone.
Health is the constant refrain of those who obsess over my fat body. Excess weight is bad for your body.
I think starting from this premise is fucked up for several key reasons.
one. two. percent. only two percent succeed. blaming my will power for my lack of weight loss is like blaming me because I can’t win the lottery jackpot or be born a twin. Statistically, ninety eight percent of the fat community did not inherit the thin gene. So, excess weight may not be healthy (and I don’t agree with this by the way) but depriving the body of nutrients and food groups in dieting processes is worse for the body.
two. it is none of your damn business. unless I am using my body to crush you, there is really no direct harm to you. I would harm you more by smoking than being my weight. let’s start with other unhealthy habits that are preventable…unlike my "unhealthy habit” of eating.
three. focusing on my body absolves society from condemnation for it’s fat phobic attitudes…I can’t fit in your seats or shop in your stores…so make your seats bigger and your clothes wider. Your stares and judgment impact my health to a greater degree than my weight. Mental health impacts physical health, so if you are truly as concerned about my health as you say…foot my medical bills and stop staring at me when I eat a carb in public.
We frame weight as a personal choice, absolving the medical industry from its role in perpetuating weight based discrimination. Rather than hating our bodies we should be focused on living in and loving the body we have been given.
your obsession with my being on a diet is slowly killing me and other fat people. With only a two percent chance that dieting will work, there is a ninety eight percent chance diet attempts will produce greater weight gain and major stress on organs. We don’t know how many of the conditions attributed to being fat may not be caused by a fat body but the perpetual stress of constant weight loss and gain and mental stress of social rejection.
How did a fat activist who knows the risks and pitiful success rates of dieting end up starving herself for a year?
Her doctor told her to.
3,000 dollars later and 30 plus pounds gained back my doctor still calls me to tell me I need to lose weight…but I don’t answer the phone. I am busy dancing, eating, living live. I have one again embraced the battle cry of the Fat Underground, Fat people of the world, you have nothing to lose!
