There once was a woman who never gained a pound
she won the 'never fat' game!
I once met a woman who has never gained a pound since she was 16 years old. She is almost 80. It isn’t a strange illness that has kept her in stasis, nor a medical side effect forever freezing her body in time, it is that she has been at war with her body for almost 60 years and she is winning.
What never fails to astound me, so enraptured we are by thinness, is how few people see her for what she is: suffering with a lifelong eating disorder. Her infallible thinness veils everything she does into the equally vague and misconstrued label; healthy. She fills her plate with lettuce! healthy. She was a runner! healthy. Her body never varies no matter what happens in her life! healthy WINNER!
Even in her elder-hood she still receives awe and admiration. Her tiny taught body the recipient of ‘wows’, that are shorthand for ‘you did it! you won the ‘never fat’ game!’ She embodies a perceived answer to a fear so many have, so many of us share; ‘I don’t want to be on the outside. I don’t want to be ‘wrong’. I don’t want to be the other, I don’t want to be FAT!’’
Because that’s what fatness is isn’t it? Given that is has no actual definition, it isn’t actually a number on a scale or a pants size. (we all know a size 2 who calls themselves fat) It is just a word for wrong, like Gay was/is, like every other word tossed around a schoolyard that used to be just a word but now is a cruelty. Anyone different is not the right thing so wrong.
I hope, I HOPE that most of us have moved into a place where we understand it is not bad or unhealthy or ugly or wrong to be FAT. But it is still THE WORD used as an insult, regardless of our size. And it is STILL extremely difficult for a large bodied person to exist easily in our society. Because of all of that it is understandable not to want to be seen as fat. That word still holds power that feels like violence when we receive it.
That is how someone can speak openly about denying themselves satisfaction for 60 years like it’s a baseball score for the worlds longest inning. A statement whose subtitle is, ‘I have protected myself from the worst of all fates- why wouldn’t I? Why aren’t you?’
The sad thing is, she's not unique at all. We all know her. We all enact parts or all of her story. I can't think of a woman who does not have current or historical issues with food. How many of us operate within this self inflicted cage assuming this is just ‘what it takes’ and ‘how it is’ to avoid the most feared thing of all, that word, The Fat.
But she hasn’t won. Her body is losing. She lives there. You can’t win when the prize is burning your house down. She has spent a lifetime warring against the very foundation that carries her. It has repercussions. She is not well physically. Her pre-occupation with food has suffused her days with anxiety and strain for, let me say again, 60 years. It’s not aspirational to be the thinnest, it’s depressing at best and at worst can steal the very vitality from our life. Total discipline has a way of taking every bit of joy along with each cookie crumbs we’ve passed over.
We are talking about FEEDING OURSELVES. We are talking about being alive. Eating is how we live. It is not a weakness, it is a fact.
We are not a number. We are not a look. We are not good or bad. We are not at our best when disappearing, though so many try so hard to make us less. We are not at our best being small, though we spend so much time trying to become the small-est.
The game of never-fat only has one winner; the one threatened when we are living. The one scared when we are exuberant. The one weakened when we are full, expansive, creative, powerful, big. It isn’t self control to deny our hunger, it is control of the Self. It isn’t winning, it’s losing to those who won’t compete on equal ground.
This January, I ask that you enjoy your life, that you invite your heartiness, that you use this season to become a larger more full version of yourself. That you use this year to welcome life and the body you live in with kindness. I ask that you take this fresh calendar to cultivate an inviting kind of discipline, one that directs you towards movement, not restriction, towards activities that bring you joy and people that make you full, towards vitality, not in-line with those who do the work against our living.
This year I ask that you choose to feed your body because it is the choice that feeds your self.
If you enjoyed this piece please consider joining me for my coaching program
NOURISH YOURSELF co-hosted with fellow substacker, food and recipe writer, Christina Chaey.
Our program is a virtual 7 week support system to give you the foundation and accountability to finally learn what your body needs and how to balance that with the variability of life.
Get practical tools to shop, cook and snack with confidence. We will create a neutral plan to feed yourself that you can ALWAYS return to when vacations, illness, stressful events and celebrations interrupt. Finally stop eating with guilt and anxiety.
Early Bird Enrollment is extended! Save $100 when you join us this season.
Please note: this is NOT a weight lost program. Please read the full info to be sure this program is for you.
This program only runs in January. We have a modified version which does NOT include the live virtual Cooking class with Christina in September.