In a heart breaking and infuriating way, I know this story isn't unique. Women everywhere have similar feelings and stories to mine. But I need to start changing my narrative.
I remember being about 9 years old when I was first aware that I might not like my body. I got teased by some boys in my class who poked my arm and laughed as they said, "Look how it jiggles!" I went to my teacher crying and he told the boys, "We never make fun of someone for being fat." He glanced at my face and hastily added on, "Especially when it's not a problem!" I knew what he was thinking, that I really was fat. I grappled with my body image and cried to my mom about it as the doubt crept in. And my body also changed a lot throughout puberty. At 13 my best friend told me I had the perfect body and I knew it was the ultimate compliment. My weight fluctuated throughout high school and I started my first diet at 15. Through watching others, I knew that the positive feedback from losing weight was always desirable. My high school boyfriend once told me that "his friends" said I was fat, whatever the hell he actually meant by that. By the time I was 18, I knew for sure. I was definitely supposed to hate my body and I certainly needed to change it.
During my freshman year of college I experienced the high of exerting extreme control over what I ate and seeing the steady results of doing so. I was fixated on that feeling but despite dropping 35 pounds, my feelings about my appearance never changed. It could always be better and it was always bad.
Not surprisingly, the restriction didn't last and would swing toward binging. With the privacy of living away from home, I could keep any guilt and shame I had around food to myself. I've been enduring 7 years of a pendulum of restriction and falling off the wagon, losing and gaining, and constant self loathing. The only affection I had for myself was in successful restriction and regimentation. But the greatest product of it all was exhaustion.
I'm so tired. I'm tired of diets. I'm so tired of losing weight. I'm so tired of gaining it back. And I'm just so tired of hating my body. So I'm done. I'm so done. When I wrote out at the beginning that I was 9 years old when this feeling began, I realized that this bullshit has been going on for 19 years. Outside of the relationships with my family, it's been the most consistent and longest term force in my life. What the fuck?
Whole 30 was my last attempt at restriction, even though it was different, in that I didn't count calories. It was another effort in controlling my weight and appearance. Of course, I swung back afterwards. But it taught me a lot about how food made me feel and how I should feel when and after eating. It helped me transition from a focus on calories to a focus on nutrition. While I eat predominantly paleo now, I won't even do a round of Whole 30 again. I'm not going to do another fucking diet. I'm not going to fall off the wagon again because there is no stupid wagon. Maybe I'll gain weight. Maybe not. I'm too tired to care anymore. Maybe it's unhealthy, uncomfortable, and difficult in our to be overweight. But it's also definitely unhealthy, uncomfortable, and extremely difficult to be perpetually self-loathing.
I know that I need to love myself and it can't be conditional. I'm still not sure how to do that but I'm a hell of a lot closer than I've ever been before.
