Content warning: the following post includes personal thoughts about diet/body image.
“I work out 5 days a week. Eat enough protein, not too many carbs, good sleep and on HRT and I’m (not losing weight/still gaining weight).
“
The above quote is a variation on similar ones that I see on various social media platforms. Some days, (in my head), when I see these comments, I think, “maybe that’s the size you are supposed to be after doing those things” (feeling annoyed and smug at the same time)
Then, the next morning on the scale after a good strength day (preceded by a run day) and a good sleep week. “Ugh, why does the scale keep going up.”
Menopausal me isn’t that different from 30 year old me, to be honest. I like to think I’ve moved past my early societal indoctrination into diet culture.
Around age 31, I started running, working out more regularly (quit smoking for good) and, may have even stopped weighing myself for awhile. Trying to silence the Gen X childhood, lookalike daughter to a woman people would joke to about her size. Yes, while she was in a larger body, people would call her “Slim” for “Simi”. She was always on a diet. Eating cottage cheese and pineapple (everything old is new again) and (stressfully, joyfully?) sneaking parts of Michele’s Baguette’s cheese buns on car rides home.
Simi wasn’t into fitness. She tried to get active, here and there (cycling with friends, only to tumble and injure herself, walking on the treadmill, on and off, for years). She became fitter than ever in her late 50s after her first angioplasty and becoming a star student in cardio rehab. So much so, there was a piece written about her in the local newspaper.
She became svelter over the years, sometimes from more walking. Sometimes from less sugar. Sometimes from medications to manage her Type II diabetes. She even switched to GLP-1 to replace Metformin and it made her svelter in her older years. More fitting to her nickname,”Slim”.
In her last couple years, she shrunk to nothing. As is not uncommon, when someone is in the palliative stage, she couldn’t keep weight on. I could still hear the happiness in her voice when she would hear the latest wee size. She had to weigh herself, everyday, so she would know how much Lasix to take, to keep down the fluids in her legs, the fluids weighing down her (giant) heart.
I would hear her exclaiming she was “112 pounds” or whatever. As much as I would give anything to have her stronger, healthier, stature back, the one she wanted more than anything to shrink, I would be happy for her.
I understood how, while her appetite wasn’t as big, as she needed energy to continue to LIVE, she was relishing her ability to eat a bit of ice cream, without guilt. To think about what she wanted to eat that day and, no matter the salt, oil, bread, content, just eat it.
I remember being in elementary school and other students joking about how, on meet the teacher nights, they had to move the desks apart so my Mom could fit through.
I wish my natural reaction was, “so what??!”
I wish my natural reaction had been, “do you know my Mom gives the BEST, “squishy”, hugs? The kind of hugs that I craved for the safe, pillowy-ness, they provided?”
I wish my natural reaction had been to not care, in the ’80s when I lost weight when I had pneumonia, and I beamed at the compliments, from family friends about how thin I had become, in such a short time.
I wish I had focussed on the amazing hugs (which I also liked to give to friends in the school yard when I was in grade 1) and not how I was “little Simi” at the same time that I wanted to be thin and beautiful like the supermodels in Glamour magazine.
I wish that I hadn’t internalized all the love for thin females and the power it seemed to invoke, by starting to diet when I was 11. Sure, I still discovered “double double coffee” around that time and running to the strip mall at lunch for golden fries, salty fries. But, I started counting those fries. I started calculating what I should and shouldn’t eat.
In all honesty, as much as I learned to appreciate what exercise does for my body, outside of weight management – as much as I worked for the last 20 years to try to silence diet culture and, “what I should look like”, I don’t think that ’80s dieter has ever completely gone away.
It seemed to get quieter for awhile. People seemed to talk about getting thin less. I went to gyms with other middle aged women who focus on the strength training and good vibes more than how many calories are being burned.
I’m not the first one to notice that diet culture and thinness are back with a vengeance. Add thousands of Gen X and older Millennials, going on about the wonders of the perfect mix of protein, cortisol reducing potions, exercise, HRT – and GLP-1 and the noise about thinness is bigger than ever.
I’m also noticing some coaches, ones who mean well, ones who will gladly espouse the dangers of diet culture, finding new ways to promote variations on diet culture. I can’t help but think that obsessing about how much protein I am eating every day, tracking food in any form, ultimately does nothing other than feed into the compulsions for orthorexia that are lying dormant. I also see these coaches talking about their past lessons and the reasons why they are promoting these new “ways” as the key to lasting peace with their bodies. With their serenity. When I see these coaches posting about their past struggles and their new findings (that they are selling, of course), I can’t help but liken it to certain religious groups who provide countdowns to the apocalypse, only to start the recount when that date comes and goes without frogs dropping from the sky.
At a time when women’s rights are at threat in grand old democracies. At a time when women have every right to be angry about a myriad of things most people feel helpless about, it seems, the old tug to try to control (probably foolishly) our bodies won’t go away. If not us, who else. If not now, when?
I don’t even feel OK providing advice, because, I am still working on myself. Hopefully, I’ll have the privilege, not afforded to all, for many decades, to continue working on myself. I feel kind of ashamed of that privilege, to be honest. To waste my precious resources on thinking about what size my body should be. At the end of the day, I hope I’ll be able to use this body, whatever shape it is in, for the greater good. For more important things.
Whatever happens, those important things won’t have anything to do with how much protein I eat (or failed to eat) on any given day.
