My Story (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Body)
I was a skinny little kid until I was about seven. I was a picky eater--I preferred not to eat at all rather than eat something I didn't like (my mother learned this the hard way when she found the bits of petrified hot dog stuffed under the sofa cushions). Then, when I was in the second grade, I came down with some sort of infection (they never told me exactly what it was, if anybody ever really knew--they don't tell a sick, scared 7-year-old very much) and wound up in the hospital for four days. They did discover, however, that I was anemic. So there I was, dangerously sick, and there were the (educated male authority figure) doctors telling my mother it was partly because I wasn't eating right--which of course, according to her traditional Southern upbringing, meant that she had failed utterly as a mother and a woman. It scared the hell out of us both. My mom began to make damn sure that I ate, and I wasn't so hard to persuade anymore. My second grade picture shows a thin little face with lots of cheekbones. By the next fall, when they took the third grade photos, my cheekbones were getting lost in my chubby, healthy-looking cheeks.
I went on my first diet at the age of 12. It was after a depressing shopping trip when I couldn't find any pretty clothes in size 16. The diet was one I found in a magazine, most likely Seventeen. I ate five minuscule 200-calorie meals (many of which consisted of a single piece of chocolate) a day for about four months. I went from 165 pounds to around 135, which wasn't as much as I wanted to lose, but I did manage to keep most of it off for a couple of years. Still, I never stopped feeling fat. I remember when I was 14, crying on my bewildered boyfriend's shoulder, wailing about how fat and ugly I was and refusing to believe him when he said I wasn't. I was almost 5' 7" then, and I weighed about 142 pounds.
By the end of high school I had dieted my way up to a little over 200 pounds. Most of the diets worked for a while, but eventually my willpower faded and I went off the wagon. And every time, in the end, I seemed to gain back all the weight I'd lost plus a little bit more. Still, I kept trying--T.O.P.S., Overeaters Anonymous, Nutri/System, Dr. Atkins, Ayds candy (got to love that name!), diabetic exchanges, Fat is a Feminist Issue support groups, hypnosis, I did them all. The craziest one was a diet that a friend of mine found when we were both nineteen. It was called Dr. Linn's Diet, a.k.a. "The Last Chance Diet" (from his bestselling book by the same name). It was the forerunner to Cambridge, Optifast and other liquid diets that are still around. But on this one you consumed 100% protein--no fats, no carbohydrates at all--in the form of a thick, nasty-tasting liquid made from processed cowhides, sold under the uninviting name of "Predigested Liquid Protein." I did this with my family doctor's approval and his minimal supervision (his only comment when I first asked him about this diet was "Well, it's starvation, but a little starvation won't hurt you--it's better than being fat.") For five and a half months I consumed not a single bite of solid food, just the liquid protein, vitamin and mineral supplements, and diet soda and black coffee by the gallon. I lost 84 pounds and went from a size 20 to a size 7. I also lost over half of my hair, which fell out in handfuls. I had fainting spells, constant diarrhea, and sudden, intense attacks of nausea and vomiting. My skin got dry and flaky and I was cold and shivering all the time. But most of my friends and family couldn't stop talking about what a wonderful thing this diet was, and how great I looked (my mother, who hadn't seen me for a couple of months toward the very end of the diet, burst into tears when she finally saw me again, but she was in the minority), and what a grand and glorious change I'd made in my life. I also was flunking out of school and developing a significant drug problem, but it seemed like all most people could see was the weight loss. At the time, I never even questioned myself whether it was worth it; on the contrary, I was thrilled. And, really, it could have been worse--my friend who'd first told me about this diet, and who was under the same doctor's care all the while, wound up in the hospital with non-infectious hepatitis caused by too-rapid weight loss. It left her with permanent liver damage. I didn't have any problems that drastic while I was on the diet, or afterwards when I started eating again, even though I gained back 30 pounds the first month (nobody told me then, but I've since learned that this is actually the most dangerous time, when many people have serious complications from crash dieting). I was lucky--quite a few people died on this diet.
But within five years I was heavier than ever--and yet my faith in diets was unwavering. I was sure the fault was with me, that if I could just try hard enough, I'd lose weight and keep it off and then, life would be wonderful. So I kept berating myself for being fat, hating my body, and feeling ashamed of all this evidence of my weak will. The fact that I'd proved I was strong and motivated enough to have accomplished a lot of good things--travel, a graduate degree, a successful career, meaningful volunteer work, an interesting and satisfying personal life--wasn't enough to shake my belief that I was a weak and defective person.
But somewhere in my head, I've always had this persistent voice that just won't quit telling me that I'm basically an okay human being. Gradually, almost in spite of myself, I started to listen. The notion that maybe I shouldn't be basing my sense of self-worth on my dress size began to get through. The connection between the $30 billion that Americans spend every year trying to lose weight, and the relentless get-thin-at-any-cost messages we're bombarded with every day, became more and more apparent. I began to wonder if maybe the problem wasn't with all these millions of people who couldn't seem to lose weight and keep it off, but with dieting itself. I began to look around and notice that most of the people in my family--especially the women--are fat. And, I saw that some of them are beautiful. I started to wonder what was really so awful and unforgivable and bad about being fat.
I started to do more reading about body image and health and fat acceptance. I found out that it wasn't just my imagination--research shows that somewhere between 95% and 98% of diets fail (that is, people don't lose the weight they want to, or else gain it all back, usually within five years or less--and quite often they gain more than they'd lost). I learned that there's a lot of evidence that some people are just genetically programmed to be fat, and they are never going to be anything else without a lifelong, all-out battle against their bodies' natural tendencies (and even then, most people who attempt that battle still lose it). We are not all meant to look like Barbie--in fact, none of us are!
I also learned that fat doesn't automatically equal unhealthy. At least some of the supposedly fat-related health problems (high blood pressure, heart problems, and gall bladder disease, for instance) in some people may actually be due to yo-yo dieting (there are so few fat people who haven't dieted repeatedly, it's hard to separate the effects of the diets from the effects of the fat. Most obesity researchers haven't bothered to try). Others (diabetes, for one) may be associated with being fat, but not caused by it--there is evidence that they're simply a set of genetic predispositions often found together with the tendency to get fat. Some diseases (osteoporosis, pre-menopausal breast cancer, and peptic ulcer, for example) are actually less common among fat people. Fat people who exercise regularly are also less likely to die prematurely than thin people who are sedentary.
I began to make a shift in my thinking--now, the problem wasn't with me when I couldn't sit comfortably in a seat on an airplane or wear the t-shirts they were selling at some event--the problem was with the seats that aren't big enough to accommodate the full range of sizes that people come in, or with the event organizers who didn't order shirts in large enough sizes. I began to really believe that I was just as deserving of basic accommodations, nice clothes, dignity, respect, and love as any other person.
It took me a long time to let go of the idea that I'd be thin some day. Still, to this day, if someone could give me a pill that would make me thinner, now and forever, and guarantee that it had no unwanted side effects or significant risks, I have to admit I'd take it. I just don't believe that's going to happen--at least, not in my lifetime. And I'm sure as hell not willing to risk my health and my life with the current crop of unsafe solutions: weight-loss surgery, Fen/Phen, and all the other "miracle" cures. It's clearly not worth that.
I've come to appreciate my body just the way it is. It does most everything I want it to do for me, and gets me where I want to be. I've come to love its softness and its curves. I enjoy dressing it up and playing with different styles and textures and colors of clothes now. I've even dared to think of myself as sexy...and I've discovered that there are other people who think so, too. I've also learned to appreciate photos of myself. I've even gone out of my way to get some taken (as opposed to just not hiding when somebody gets near me with a camera), and I've liked some of the results (here's one).
It wasn't much of a step from there to fat activism. I've done a couple of presentations at ACPA conferences on size acceptance programs on campus. At U.C. Santa Barbara I worked with some wonderful women on a workshop they'd developed called "Taking Up Space." At SCCC, I got involved with a great group of people from the campus and the community who put on an annual International No-Diet Days extravaganza. The first year I was on the evening news, here and in Portland, smashing a bathroom scale to smithereens with a sledgehammer. We also got a big picture in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, interviews on several radio stations, and a cover story in the National On-Campus Report. The following year Jerry Large, a writer from the Seattle Times, did a great column on us. I've had all kinds of fun with this project. Every year it grows and gets better. More recently, I worked with a group of women that came together to plan INDD one year, and decided to continue. We called ourselves SeaFATtle. Our next project was to organize and host the West Coast Fat Women's Gathering in 1997. Stay tuned for our further adventures!
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