Donuts, diets and body image – what’s the skinny?

Everyone wants to lose weight these days. Call me a rebel, but just give me a jelly donut or really fat fries with garlic and I’m happy. What a world. People starving to death all over the globe and Californians are on diets. What’s up with that?

I just wonder how much stress we put on ourselves sometimes. Can’t we spread it all around? The pressure to be thin is wearing me thin in all the wrong ways.

I admit I feel better now that I have lost weight. But I still feel the media is too heavy about it. I used to weigh 300 pounds once. People’s mouths usually fall open when I tell them. They say, “You’re kidding. Really?” I kept writing at midnight through it all. (….these were my emotional hairballs.) I found that deep in the bowels of my journals, I was eating to stuff my emotions but more importantly my needs. And actually that was the beginning of my writing career.

Eating compulsively or refusing to eat is something a lot of people don’t understand. They say, “Oh, just quit, cut back,” or, “it’s a choice.” For me it was agony every day. So I write about it to stir empathy for people with weight issues, but also to encourage us all to question: how important is being slim? There is significant evidence to show that overweight and mildly obese people live longer and have a decreased risk of dementia. Debates run rampant these days. What’s the real skinny?

I tried everything, hitting a big bottom with a big bottom. I tried Overeaters Anonymous, jogging, dieting, fasting and meditating in India. I replaced food with sex and ambition. I tried everything – you name it. At the end even Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies couldn’t do it for me. (What happened to those hot cookies anyway?)

I no longer long for food all day. I don’t think about food, much beyond what I want. I dive into chocolate fudge sundaes or curly potato chips with almost no guilt, oh, OK … a little. No buts about it, it was tough. I learned about nutrition and exercised, got in touch with emotions, and soothed my anxieties.

I think the biggest part of losing weight was learning to identify and voice my needs instead of stuffing them.

But even though I lost pounds, I was jumbled inside because I hated the culture’s pressure to look a certain way. I couldn’t stomach it. For a while it was Marilyn Monroe, then Twiggy. I was sick of the media and manufacturers.

In France recently, health minister Touraine supported the ban on overly-thin models in an amendment to her health bill. “Models who fall below a certain weight will face a fine or up to six months in prison.” Oh those French people are so sexy!

Anyway, one night I stared into a cold refrigerator with the door open. It took everything I had, but I knew from my therapy that I needed to talk to my inner kid. I whispered, “If you want all that food, you can have it, but are you sure this is what you want?”

She was upset, “give me everything in there.” I gulped, “OK, whatever you want, from now on I will listen. Are you sure you want that cold pizza?” I will never forget that moment. With a shaky lip, she whispered, “I just want my flannel pajamas, milk and crackers.”

That was the end of a hellish five years of squeezing into extra-large jeans. It was not easy. But, finally I listened to her.

Nowadays I am as comfortable as any woman gets from worrying about eating donuts. And I still try weird diets. I question what the next fad will be and societal pressure. But, my God, I never thought I’d feel this free.