(no subject)
A friend's post on shaming and diet issues has got me thinking. With New Year's so recently past, and swimsuit season rapidly approaching, it becomes hard to maintain a healthy diet without invasive commentary. Last night at the Costco I bought apples, pineapple, green beans, mini peppers, and sugar snap peas. Anyone who knows me will recognise these as the primary elements of my ideal daily snacking habits: fresh fruits and vegetables. As I was debating whether I needed THAT MUCH milk, someone walked by, glanced in my cart, and said, "Must be diet season again." I made defiant eye contact and added a quart of heavy cream to my cart, and I considered going back for a tub of those little cream puffs but thought that would just be reactionary.
Occasionally, I'll be ranging through the produce section at the HEB and a well-meaning stranger will say, "You shouldn't diet, honey. You won't really lose any weight." On the flip side of that are the people who see me waiting at the bakery counter for an eclair and say, "You know those things have about a thousand calories, right?" The answer in both of these cases is the same: I eat what I like, what makes me happy, what makes me feel good. I ask for my salad without dressing because I don't really like the taste of salad dressing as much as I like the taste of raw vegetables -- not to save myself the howevermany calories. I eat cookies whenever I want them because now that I've gotten past "I eat because I am bored and feeling anxious," *and* "I deny myself food because I feel worthless," I want them at a reasonably healthy level.
I also have friends who have pulled back from me over the last couple of years and said, "Well, you're so obsessed with diet that I can't talk to you until you stop hating your body." WHAT? I'm excited because in the last two years I finally took actual control of my dysfunctional relationship with food, stopped using it to validate and punish myself, and started deliberately choosing the foods that most benefited my physical health (veggies, lean meats, fruit, unprocessed foods) in a balance with the things I see as 'joyful' foods (cookies, whole cream in coffee, rich foods). For the first time since I was a small child I don't feel like I'm compelled to deny myself anything I want to eat and I have a relationship with food that has no guilt and no shame, a sustainable relationship I can maintain.
It amazes me how often I'll be sitting there, minding my own business with a piece of pie, and someone, friend or stranger, will shoot me a conspiratorial look or offer a comment that suggests they think I'm *getting away* with something. I am well over thirty; I do not need to sneak food, thank you. A co-worker who's chronically trying to lose weight (and has lost, regained, and lost again about as much as I have over the last two years, on a path of open self-denial) will join everyone else for company Cake Day and sigh about the fact that she is having a glass of water while we all eat cake, because she's 'not allowed' cake on her diet.
Hear me now: the day I decide that being a smaller size is worth watching everyone around me eat cake I'm denying myself, I want you to slap me. All of you. In sequence. I'm not talking about heath, just vanity. If a doctor puts me on a cake-free diet due to high cholesterol, blood sugar issues, or some sort of Happiness Allergy, I'll follow it, but I will never let the size of my ass dictate whether or not I'm 'allowed' frosting.
I tend to think that finding the place where you're healthy, regardless of weight or body shape, is a goal everyone should work on, but that stupid diet culture and its inevitable social backlash screw everything up. On the one hand you have the fitness nuts, who demonize food joy and turn diet into a loveless death march of nutrition. Every fat gram requires a penance, every carb an act of contrition, and gods help you if you indulge in 'empty calories'. They shame fat people with stereotypes about laziness or weakness, driving the cultural ideal of beauty down towards an impossible size 2, and are responsible for dietary 'hair shirts' like fat-free chocolate cheesecake yogurt or low-sugar cookies: foods *just* close enough to what you want to make sure you know what you're missing, so you can be reminded of how much you'd rather be eating something else. Artificial sweeteners, a godsend for diabetics, have been a horrible influence on the diet culture. I had a discussion with a co-worker's wife over the Girl Scout cookies I was buying from her daughter, in which she explained that she uses Splenda, because every calorie counts and it's "good enough." When did "good enough" become good enough, and when did the 16 calories in a packet of coffee sugar become a make-or-break weight loss battleground?
On the other side, I'm not going to cut the Fat Advocates any slack, either. While I'm ecstatic that someone is out there standing up for the right not to be shamed, discriminated against, or marginalised due to weight, it makes me deeply angry when they do it by saying things like "Real women have curves" or "I just look at skinny women and want to force-feed them sandwiches until they look normal." When they tank a friend's diet by insinuating that her healthy choices are 'conformity' and low self-esteem, when they dismiss things like "Hey, every pound of weight you lose takes x pounds (where x is a number I see ranging from 7 to 14) of pressure off your knees at each step," as 'bullshit propaganda' and tell a prediabetic, hypertensive, morbidly obese person, "Your doctor is wrong; you're perfect and don't need to lose a pound or change a thing just to meet some social ideal," they're hurting people, and may be killing some of them. When they decide, "Because I dislike the culture that devalues fat people, I'm going to disagree with your right to choose what you consider a healthy body image for yourself, and sabotage your choices if I can" they cross a line that bothers me.
It is not healthy to carry 150 pounds of fat on your frame. This is aside from the socialization of weight loss, aside from body image or social pressures or whether other people find you attractive or not. This is "you are destroying knees, hips, and ankles that were never meant to support that weight." It is "Your heart cannot do what you are asking of it indefinitely." This is "your continued denial that you're doing anything harmful is self-destructive and dangerous." This is "I am your friend and I love you, and it hurts me to see you killing yourself slowly." There's a range for most of us, a broad range of weight across which it's possible for us to be 'generally healthy'. It's much larger than our 'normal' BMI range, and is determined by family history, risk factors, lifestyle, and environment. If you're carrying around 20 pounds over your 'normal' weight, but your blood pressure, your blood sugar, your cholesterol, and your overall health are good, that 20 pounds may make you technically 'overweight' but it doesn't make you unhealthy. Stay active, eat well, and it will either stay or go, but you'll be fine, and probably live longer for not stressing out about it.
But even that, you know, is a form of ownership. If you really want to carry that 150 pounds, you have the right to tell me to go to hell if I tell you it's unhealthy. If you want to run ten miles a day and rigidly document every calorie, that's ultimately your business. I don't own you, I don't really have the right to criticise your choices until you make them my problem. Once you come to me to complain about your knees, or your many medications, or how your choices are affecting your life, or how you always feel run-down and tired, though, you're getting my thoughts on the matter with both barrels.
I just don't think it's necessary to offer that unsolicited. No one has the right to walk up to someone in a restaurant or grocery store and critique her choices. No one has the right to tell a fat person, "You'd be so much better-looking if you just lost some weight." No one has the right to manipulate a friend into unhealthy choices to keep faith with a social agenda.
Just...be happy, be healthy. Eat what you love, keep active, and let the butt sizes fall where they may.
I love you all.