Walk On Podcast Episode 65 : Diet Culture

fat n loving it, photo by Sarah Lyev

I was 20 years old and crying on the treadmill to Abba’s The Winner Takes It All the day after a break-up. I had just managed to get myself discarded by a boy who used to critique my body as I moved naked around his room after I let him cum inside me. He’d tilt his head sideways and say “you have a beautiful……. shape??? to your body.” I really leaned into my eating disorder while we were together, hitting the gym for about 3 hours a day. 90 minutes of cardio, an hour of weightlifting, 20 more minutes of cardio, stretch, walk home. His mother would ask, as if to say it didn’t show that I spent 3 hours a day in the gym, “really?!? 3 hours?!?!” Her side eye was sharp any time I took seconds.

I was 8 years old when I went on my first diet, 13 when I first tried diet pills (which I continued taking until I was in my 20’s), and 20 years old when I carried myself to the gym the day after a nasty break-up, only to sob, loudly, while I ran as fast as I could.

I would like to tell you that I realized how ridiculous that was and stopped there, but no such luck, dear reader. This went on for four more years. I yo-yoed, a starve and binge cycle which had micro and macrocosms in my life. After I was sexually assaulted by a very close friend my senior year of college, I gained about 80lbs and, considering that nearly everyone I knew took this as an opportunity to gossip about me and make fun of me, I isolated myself and hid out in my room with potato skins and The Office to keep me company. After long, this began another diet pill, starvation, exercise bulimia weight loss spiral. This went on for a couple of years, I lost those 80 pounds, and plateaued. Hard. Cue another montage of me crying at the gym.

I did Insanity, the really intense HIIT workout program, I danced, I ran, I weight lifted, I counted every calorie that ever passed my lips. I was praised, I was rewarded, I was supported and cheered on. I was miserable. I tore up my knees, my ankles, my shoulders, I had a migraine every day from the physical exertion. Without enough calories to function properly, my immune system quit working and I was sick all the time. And yet, still, I wasn’t thin enough.

My entire life fat had been an issue. It was the most hurtful insult a person could throw my way. I knew I was smarter than most adults I knew. I knew I was strong and brave and funny, I knew I could outrun, outsplit, outsing, outdance, outcartwheel any friend I had. But I was way fatter than the rest. And so it became my achilles heel. And boy did people stab at it.

When I was thinking of starting burlesque, my abolute biggest fear was that I would get naked on stage and people would find me disgusting. About a year into it, I posted a photo of all of my 204 lbs in a teeeny tiny underwear set I had made myself. A clearly very unhappy woman commented “this is disgusting. You should be ashamed to post yourself naked like this looking the way you do. Nobody wants to see this on their timeline. It’s gross.”

the “disgusting” photo in question

I had stopped dieting 2 years prior, I had been working on my confidence, my self love, every day, like a meditation. I had reprogrammed my brain to understand that “fat” was simply a descriptor, and was not, in fact, an insult. It was just a way of being. A way of being, by the way, that I couldn’t seem to help. At my adult skinniest, I could never get smaller that 175 (still over weight by my doctor’s standards) and that was proved over and over again. That was only achieved through starvation and excessive exercise. And it was not sustainable. Every time I relaxed a little I would gain and gain until I landed somewhere between 195 and 230lbs. I know it’s a wide spread, but I am a fluxuator, and I have worked to accept that too.

I was shocked when I read this woman’s comments. It was my worst fears come true. It was everything I feared about being a fat stripper happening to me. And it didn’t hurt me one bit. I was shocked at that too. My self-love, my unconditional positive regard for my body, my radical self-acceptance had become an armor. I understood why I would trigger someone. I’d heard it my whole life, when I would go to the beach with skinny friends, modest in their one pieces, while I frolicked in my triangle string bikini, “I wish I had your confidence!!” or more accurately “I have a good body and I can’t wear a bathing suit like that!!” My confidence was triggering. It was calling something out that these people hadn’t unpacked yet, and maybe never would.

a poem I improvised over one of my “self love selfies” I called my hips biscuits, initially derogatorily, but eventually, lovingly

The industry of Diet Culture wants to sell us the idea that we aren't enough. Like all white supremacist capitalist cis heteropatriarchal constructs, this can be deprogrammed. When we practice radical self-acceptance and choose to give up on striving to be "perfect" what's left? Our wounds? Our imperfections? Presence? Healing? Maybe even self-love? All you've got to lose are your illusions. Listen here.