Intervention
My first formal intervention about my weight happened when I was 12.
My grandmother and my mother conspired to get me to go to Weight Watchers. My grandma would come with me for moral support. The talk was emotional and full of tears on everyone's parts; the logic for this, as presented to me, was that it's really hard to be an overweight teenager- my mom was too- and that they wanted to help me. I was hurt by the implication that people don't like me as I am, especially boys, and also glad that my family cared about me, at least.
We didn't even pretend that this was about being healthy. It was not about health at all. My mom lost weight through a combination of exercise, restricted eating, and water pills. She hadn't been to a doctor since my youngest sister was born. She didn't hide her disdain for her body, though she was now a size 6, or mine. This was about appearances. Mine, specifically. I'd been pudgy my whole life; I enjoyed food and treats; my genetics do not favor thinness. The elderly aunts always used to speculate that I'd "thin out" once I hit puberty, and I'm disappointed to report this was not the case. I'm not sure how a surge of hormones was supposed to improve the situation; if anything, I gained weight.
And so, off to the meeting in the basement of the local mall, near JC Penney.
I recall the leader being a very eager man who had lost a substantial amount of weight on the program. My first department chair vaguely reminded me of him- passionate, proper, optimistic. I was the only teenager. I hated weighing in, hated weighing my food portions, hated going around the room and talking about the week with women 20 or more years older than me. I did lose weight, I don't recall the total. I don't remember how long we went to the meetings. As a treat for losing weight, my grandma would take me to the frozen yogurt bar in Hudson's. It was our little secret. It didn't strike me as odd at the time, since food was typically used as a reward, but in retrospect...holy shit. Really? Does that make any sense at all? Why not buy me new pens (my office supply fetish already in full effect at 12) or a new shirt or a new book? Nope. Food. Food rewards for losing weight. My grandma half-assed the program; she was really just there because my mom and I fought all the time and there's no way I would have agreed to go with her, whereas I adored my grandma and would have done anything she suggested.
I know in my heart that my grandma and my mom were trying to help me because they love me. I know they themselves were products of the diet culture and had complicated relationships with food, weight, and their appearances. I also know that this experience set up many, many bad habits and false beliefs that have only been overcome through years of therapy, pharmaceuticals, and that precious healer, time.
Obviously I'd never have a boyfriend as an overweight teenager. Boys don't like fat girls. I wanted to lose weight to get a boyfriend so badly, but never could quite pull it off. I had a couple of potential interested parties, and basically shrugged them off because obviously something was already wrong with them if they liked me. One of my overweight friends had two babies in high school, so there were definitely guys willing, but I was a snob about those guys, who were not particularly good looking, smart, or even nice. My first real boyfriend, the man who is now my husband, was awkward and not very experienced and kind of a big dork when we first started dating- I went for it because he was in my league. As it turns out, he was a fabulous find, a true diamond in the rough- kind, smart, funny, caring, encouraging, who gets better looking as he ages.
Obviously I needed to be hilarious and smart and kind and generous and try to look the best I could with my meager physical resources in order to convince others to be my friends and overlook my fatness. I found other fat girls to be friends with, and we alternately practiced overeating and dieting with one another. I wasn't friends with thin women until college, where we seemed to have grown up a bit and cared less about the rules of high school. I never had male friends until college, either- boys were either love interests or cretins who made fun of me.
The food reward set-up was the foil of every diet I tried. Years of therapy, moving 700 miles away from my family, and my foodie friends Nate and Christina helped me change that relationship, to see food as fellowship and enjoyment, as part of our Sunday night dinners and HBO viewing. Then I had babies and terrible post-partum mood issues and had to learn those lessons all over again, this time without the benefit of those foodie friends, who had graduated and moved on by then. I still miss them terribly, and not just because they modeled healthy eating for me, for perhaps the first time in my life.
After Weight Watchers, my mom and grandma would vaguely mention diets, but there were no further interventions from them. I had interventions with myself all the time, though. I took myself to the gym in college, became a vegetarian for a while. I wanted to lose weight for my wedding, but I'd bought my dress early, and couldn't afford a new one if I lost a bunch of weight, so I waited until after the wedding to sign myself up for the liquid diet weight loss clinic. Which worked smashingly well until I started eating real food again. Then more exercise and food prep plans, with varying degrees of success. Now Boot Camp and my quasi-paleo diet, which I'm cautiously optimistic might be the last intervention, because I have a supportive community of women and the plan is flexible and I've done the work to be ok with whatever weight I am as long as my health is good and I'm enjoying my activities and feeding myself well.
I'll always struggle. I'll always need to come back to myself and remember that I am loved as I am, that food is not the answer to life's hardships, that I am perfectly capable of doing whatever physical activity I enjoy. I might need more interventions, from myself or others, because I'm human, because I carry some small part of all my past experiences in my psyche always. The best I can do is learn and forgive and keep the motion headed in a forward direction.
My grandmother and my mother conspired to get me to go to Weight Watchers. My grandma would come with me for moral support. The talk was emotional and full of tears on everyone's parts; the logic for this, as presented to me, was that it's really hard to be an overweight teenager- my mom was too- and that they wanted to help me. I was hurt by the implication that people don't like me as I am, especially boys, and also glad that my family cared about me, at least.
We didn't even pretend that this was about being healthy. It was not about health at all. My mom lost weight through a combination of exercise, restricted eating, and water pills. She hadn't been to a doctor since my youngest sister was born. She didn't hide her disdain for her body, though she was now a size 6, or mine. This was about appearances. Mine, specifically. I'd been pudgy my whole life; I enjoyed food and treats; my genetics do not favor thinness. The elderly aunts always used to speculate that I'd "thin out" once I hit puberty, and I'm disappointed to report this was not the case. I'm not sure how a surge of hormones was supposed to improve the situation; if anything, I gained weight.
And so, off to the meeting in the basement of the local mall, near JC Penney.
I recall the leader being a very eager man who had lost a substantial amount of weight on the program. My first department chair vaguely reminded me of him- passionate, proper, optimistic. I was the only teenager. I hated weighing in, hated weighing my food portions, hated going around the room and talking about the week with women 20 or more years older than me. I did lose weight, I don't recall the total. I don't remember how long we went to the meetings. As a treat for losing weight, my grandma would take me to the frozen yogurt bar in Hudson's. It was our little secret. It didn't strike me as odd at the time, since food was typically used as a reward, but in retrospect...holy shit. Really? Does that make any sense at all? Why not buy me new pens (my office supply fetish already in full effect at 12) or a new shirt or a new book? Nope. Food. Food rewards for losing weight. My grandma half-assed the program; she was really just there because my mom and I fought all the time and there's no way I would have agreed to go with her, whereas I adored my grandma and would have done anything she suggested.
I know in my heart that my grandma and my mom were trying to help me because they love me. I know they themselves were products of the diet culture and had complicated relationships with food, weight, and their appearances. I also know that this experience set up many, many bad habits and false beliefs that have only been overcome through years of therapy, pharmaceuticals, and that precious healer, time.
Obviously I'd never have a boyfriend as an overweight teenager. Boys don't like fat girls. I wanted to lose weight to get a boyfriend so badly, but never could quite pull it off. I had a couple of potential interested parties, and basically shrugged them off because obviously something was already wrong with them if they liked me. One of my overweight friends had two babies in high school, so there were definitely guys willing, but I was a snob about those guys, who were not particularly good looking, smart, or even nice. My first real boyfriend, the man who is now my husband, was awkward and not very experienced and kind of a big dork when we first started dating- I went for it because he was in my league. As it turns out, he was a fabulous find, a true diamond in the rough- kind, smart, funny, caring, encouraging, who gets better looking as he ages.
Obviously I needed to be hilarious and smart and kind and generous and try to look the best I could with my meager physical resources in order to convince others to be my friends and overlook my fatness. I found other fat girls to be friends with, and we alternately practiced overeating and dieting with one another. I wasn't friends with thin women until college, where we seemed to have grown up a bit and cared less about the rules of high school. I never had male friends until college, either- boys were either love interests or cretins who made fun of me.
The food reward set-up was the foil of every diet I tried. Years of therapy, moving 700 miles away from my family, and my foodie friends Nate and Christina helped me change that relationship, to see food as fellowship and enjoyment, as part of our Sunday night dinners and HBO viewing. Then I had babies and terrible post-partum mood issues and had to learn those lessons all over again, this time without the benefit of those foodie friends, who had graduated and moved on by then. I still miss them terribly, and not just because they modeled healthy eating for me, for perhaps the first time in my life.
After Weight Watchers, my mom and grandma would vaguely mention diets, but there were no further interventions from them. I had interventions with myself all the time, though. I took myself to the gym in college, became a vegetarian for a while. I wanted to lose weight for my wedding, but I'd bought my dress early, and couldn't afford a new one if I lost a bunch of weight, so I waited until after the wedding to sign myself up for the liquid diet weight loss clinic. Which worked smashingly well until I started eating real food again. Then more exercise and food prep plans, with varying degrees of success. Now Boot Camp and my quasi-paleo diet, which I'm cautiously optimistic might be the last intervention, because I have a supportive community of women and the plan is flexible and I've done the work to be ok with whatever weight I am as long as my health is good and I'm enjoying my activities and feeding myself well.
I'll always struggle. I'll always need to come back to myself and remember that I am loved as I am, that food is not the answer to life's hardships, that I am perfectly capable of doing whatever physical activity I enjoy. I might need more interventions, from myself or others, because I'm human, because I carry some small part of all my past experiences in my psyche always. The best I can do is learn and forgive and keep the motion headed in a forward direction.
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