Diet Talk

It's-a me!

Slowly melting into my armchair.

Zonked.

One of the few things I miss about unemployment (along with sleeping in) is being alone. While I enjoy the company of other people, I’m still an introvert at heart. I’m quite happy being alone for the majority of the day. Being in a small office with several other people is fine, but it’s definitely an adjustment for me. And my least favorite thing is the diet talk.

Even before I discovered Health At Every Size and Fat Acceptance, I disliked dieting. My mother has spent most of her adult life dieting, same with my father. Not surprisingly, neither of them have kept the weight off. Seeing them go through the cycle over and over, constantly beating themselves up over not being able to get thin, pretty much convinced me at an early age that dieting didn’t work. Even at my fittest (when I was in middle school they got me a personal trainer, true story), I was big. Slightly less fat, but solidly built, with big bones and big muscles. And looking back, I was a pretty cute kid (I have a picture of myself back then that I like very much, but it is a non-digital photo and in storage, so I can’t post it).

I’m fairly lucky, really, that diet talk has never been especially triggering for me. Many women (of all sizes) have dealt with eating disorders in their lives, and hearing diet talk can be very damaging for them. Some of them have to zone out the number of calories something might have, because they have dealt with obsessive calorie counting. So I’m pretty lucky not to be in that category. Still, diet talk isn’t fun for me.

There’s always a sort of weird peer pressure thing about diet talk. Even women who are naturally skinny and don’t need to diet feel compelled to swap calorie counts or share sordid details of their last time they couldn’t fit into their favorite pair of pants. And that’s just one of the uncomfortable parts of it. How do you even introduce the idea of fat acceptance into a group of women talking about how fat they are (especially when you’re fatter than all of them) or talking about trying to be “good” (really, food doesn’t have morality, we impose it)? I have no idea, and I’m loathe to try. I’m still fragile enough to feel shame and fear at the thought of being judged for those beliefs. I can just imagine, if I said something like “I don’t believe in dieting”, every woman turning to look at me with “well of course not, fatass, otherwise you wouldn’t be fat” written all over their faces. That wouldn’t be as horrible as I imagine it, but it would still be upsetting. So I keep quiet when the diet talk starts, part of me yearning to share what’s brought peace with my body to me, the other part keeping quiet, knowing that it isn’t my place, and fearing retribution for even that small act of defiance.

Defying the diet culture is hard. Women are bombarded with images and words about how one must always be thin, thin thin thin, rarely ever talking about healthy, because I’ve known some pretty unhealthy thin people in my life, and not just ones with incurable diseases, who sit on their asses and eat cheetos all day and no one judges them because if they’re thin, they must be doing something right. Fat men get some of that message as well, but not to the extent that women do. And it’s hard. It’s very hard to not give in.

I think part of it is the stubborn streak I’ve always had. Practically from birth, if someone told me I couldn’t or shouldn’t do something (without an adequate reason why, such as “you could die an agonizing death” or “you could burn your face off”), I would set my jaw and march off to do exactly that. That’s partly because my older brother is like that too (the oldest more than the middle, although he marches to the beat of a different drummer too), and partly because both my parents have strong personalities, and I was bound to have one too. It drives my mother crazy, but there you are. XD And I’m not always right, of course. I do very stupid things sometimes, but they’re my mistakes to make. So I think I was sort of programmed to rebel and question and reject, from a very young age. Actually, I think it’s fairly common for anyone with intelligence to do that. Think of how many smart people grow up religious, and then end up deciding religion is a crock? Nearly every one I’ve met, really. Or to grow up one political party, and end up another once they’re old enough to give a shit. Questioning the status quo is kind of any reasonably intelligent person’s job. After all, if we were all happy to accept life as it was, we’d stagnate pretty damn quick. Of course, that may be happening anyway, but now I’m about five miles off track. XD

The point is, I don’t like diet talk. I don’t agree with it, I think it does much more harm than good. But I haven’t really decided what I can do, yet. Aside from continuing to bake tasty treats and share them with my coworkers. I can’t help it, I love baking. X3

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