1. I have no idea what my bodyās natural size is. This feels silly to type, because as a culture we pretend that body size is a choice ā that some of us get āluckyā and others have to āwork hardā and others have to starve.
2. My body, particularly my belly, has grown larger since Iāve started eating all the foods that I was consciously and unconsciously restricting. I am trying to reprogram all the narratives that autoplay about how ābadā this isā what my doctors might say, what my āfriendsā might be thinking on the other side of what platform is hosting this. Honestly, some days, feeling gratitude for my energy and my ability to speak in full sentences is enough. I praise my ability to walk from The Cabin to Trader Joeās in the 100-degree heat is enough. Other days, I need to surround myself with the voices of other fat folks who are figuring it out ā I only want podcasts, books, poems, Instagram photos from people of size. I need a drip line of hope to counter the fear that Iām making some horrible, irreparable decision.
3. But I remember the exact moment diets stopped working for me. I worked out five days a week plus Patrick and I took long bike rides every weekend and I was eating such a pitifully small number of calories but still more than the number I remember from my momās Weight Watchers days. According to MyFitnessPal, I should have been losing two pounds a week. Instead, the scale stayed at the same number for 12 weeks, then I passed a kidney stone that was perhaps a result of heredity and the stress of overexercising, though no one was going to say that.
4. I read Intuitive Eating for the first time that same year, and while I was ready to reckon with all the ways diet culture had consciously ruled my life, I didnāt have a way to loosen its unconscious grip.
5. Because Whole 30 isnāt a diet, right?
6. Itās hard not to go back and ask questions. Like, was it controlling my gestational diabetes with diet that triggered all of this? Would it have been less stressful to just take the Metformin? What if I view this latest bout of restrictive eating as a side effect from that? If I have another baby, maybe that baby wonāt get stuck if Iām taking Metformin and B12 and generally feeling less freaked out about what I was putting in my body? I canāt know, but this imagination definitely will influence my future thinking.
7. Itās hard not to go back and ask questions. Like, for a long time I thought grad school would have been easier if I was aware of my ADHD, but what about the fact that I measured out the amount of yogurt and dried fruit I could have in the morning, the hummus and veggies I ate for lunch? And then I would run 26 miles per week and sometimes walk 45 minutes from Sarah Lawrence to my apartment and I would always binge in the evening and felt ashamed of this but thought everything else was normal. But maybe if I had been eating it would have been easier to focus on school.
8. Okay, so maybe diets really stopped working when I was still doing all of this when I moved to Boise and gained back all the weight plus some and even though I had read the Fat Studies Reader I really thought my desk job was going to be the end of me.
9. These days, itās really hard for me to be around people who are trying to lose weight or who moralize about food. I want to get to a place where I can shrug and say ātheyāre on their own journeyā but really I want to shake them and say āI felt like absolute shit for six months and no one, not even me, thought it could be because of what I wasnāt eating. Watch what you donāt eat!ā And even as I type this, I question myself: I canāt know that it was JUST that. I also started meditating again, maybe I could have continued my diet at that point and have been just fine. But Iām not sure that my satisfaction is something I want to gamble with. How does this narrative serve me? Is it good to keep it in my back pocket if it means Iāll insist on getting the care I need? If it means liberating this body / all bodies? You donāt have to believe me.
10. Iāve ordered every cheap black stretchy shirt, dress, leggings available on Amazon. I like not having to think about how to dress myself in the morning, about whether the same belt that accentuates my waist will strangle my digestion by noon. I deserve to be comfortable, and to get out of the house in a timely manner. I deserve to write about this in the bath, and write a million blog posts about this until Iāve sorted out how this relates to my overall liberation, or happiness, or simply being a person who takes up space in the world.