Wendy Shanker wrote in her book, “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life,” - and I’m paraphrasing here - that if there’s anything you want to know about a diet, you don’t ask a skinny girl, you ask a fat one, because if they are any one of the hundreds of fat girls that have been socially shamed about their size, then they have most likely tried every diet imaginable. This line made me laugh loud and long because it’s so damn true. I could write books about everything I’ve seen and heard about dieting. I could probably recite the South Beath Diet book to you in its entirety and I haven’t even done that diet. That’s how preoccupied I’ve been with size: I want to know all the ways to lose weight, even though I know that I will not lose weight on them.
I bring this up because Body Weight Set Point Theory has been on my mind a lot lately. I’m very intrigued by this idea that your body knows where your weight is supposed to be, and if you just get out of the way, i.e. give it good stuff to eat, exercise, and rest, that it will steer the ship and take care of the rest, leaving you at exactly the weight your body wants you at. I like the idea that my body can take care of itself. I like the idea that if I’m taking care of business with food, water, exercise, and rest, that my body will get me where I need to be and I don’t have to apologize for wherever that “be” happens to end up. And then when someone asks me why I can’t be bothered to lose the weight and be “healthy,” I can just say, “Well, my body has other plans so just fuck the fuck off, mmkay?”
The problem is that my body and I are having a serious disagreement about where that set point should be. I think a little lower on the bell curve would be nice, and my body seems to think that it doesn’t matter where on the curve I end up so long as it’s a big curve. Sigh.
Here’s the deal: I have been the same weight, with normal fluctuations of a few pounds, for a year and a half now. It’s kind of amazing because for the 15 years previous to that my weight did nothing but climb, climb, climb. So there is some kind of balance being maintained, and I’m cool with that. I don’t have a scale at home, so the only places I’m weighed are at the Emily Program and the doctor’s office. It doesn’t happen all that often (the weighing, I mean), but every time I step up on to that scale, I’m scared to death that I will have gained, and I’m also more than a little hopeful that I will have lost weight. (Eating disorder? Who, me?)
Recently I was at Planned Parenthood doing the birth control tango (and let’s take a brief moment to applaud the awesome work with reproductive health and choice that Planned Parenthood does everyday), and as a new client I had to go through the whole height/weight/allergies thing. I was already on an anxiety roller coaster when the nurse called me and so I ended up doing this awkward and pathetically funny little dance in front of the scale before I finally decided to step on backwards. Ms. Nurse didn’t pick up on my choice to not know my weight, and proceeded to sit in front of me and write it down on my chart. In very large numbers. That I could see clearly. Right near the box on the paper that I checked indicating that I have an eating disorder.
GAH!
I wasn’t bothered so much by the fact that Ms. Nurse could have gotten the same reaction out of me had she just hit me over the head with the damn scale, as I was by the number itself. It was the same number. The same number that has been following me around for a year and a half.
My brain could have taken a few courses at this moment: 1) “Great! I’m maintaining! That’s fantastic news. It must mean that I’m doing good work!” or I could go for 2) “Ah, fuck! I haven’t lost anything. It must be my fault because I’m not eating perfectly and exercising perfectly” or I could try for, 3) “I’m maintaining. I’m not eating and exercising perfectly, and I’m maintaining. Does that mean if I DID eat and exercise perfectly that I would lose weight?” or last but not least, 4) “Geez. I’m maintaining. Is my body trying to tell me something? Is this where I’m supposed to be?”
First of all, I’d be curious to know what your brain would say in a situation like that, but if you guessed response #4 for this FatGrrl, then you were dead on. Well done! In fact, I was freakily afraid that my set point had made itself known and I’d better get with the acceptin’ ’cause it ain’t going nowhere no time soon.
This is incredibly sad for me. I don’t want to stay this size. I don’t like it. But I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to beat my set point in to submission through excessive exercise and carrot sticks. Sigh. For the love of all that is fucking holy in this world, why can’t I just accept myself??!?!
Rock, meet hard place. Hard place, this is rock. Pleased to meet you.
Posted: May 4th, 2009 under BEDhead, Fat(Riot)Grrl.
Comments: 12
