My Manifesto
The earliest memory I have of knowing that “slim” was desirable, I was probably in first grade. I remember being in a dressing room and giving my mom a pair of jeans that didn’t fit, and she went to go get me a “slim” size. I can still remember the excitement I felt looking at that tag.
First. Grade.
This, of course, was just the beginning. When I was 14 (in the early 90’s), I decided to see if I could stop eating. This decision happened to coincide with moving to a new school where I knew no one. I had joined the drill team hoping to make friends, and on the first day of drill team camp we were lined up and weighed in as part of the tryout process. Our weight was a constant discussion in drill team, as we were supposed to look uniform. And by uniform they meant “skinny”.
The entire culture at the time was all about sacrificing pleasure for thinness. The ultimate thing a girl or woman could be was in control of her own body. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.
So it didn’t seem that far-fetched to me to stop eating.
I lost weight, my mom asked me “how did you do it?”, I lied and said I was making better choices in the school cafeteria, and she was satisfied with that answer because dieting was our way of life. I had grown up with my parents constantly attempting to lose weight, gain it back, lose it, gain it back. My grandmother was involved in Weight Watchers as long as I can remember, and her coffee table was covered in Weight Watchers magazines and cookbooks. She didn’t eat anything without putting it on her Weight Watchers scale first.
In hindsight, I was a barely pubescent girl whose eating disorder was basically sanctioned by the culture around me. I still remember when my Seventeen magazine arrived with a model in a swimsuit on the cover who was in a bigger body than the usual covermodels like Niki Taylor, and the next issue was full of letters to the editor from readers who couldn’t believe they would put such a “fat” model on the cover. [I had to go and find the cover at this memory. Here is the “fat” model.]
I’m 46 as I write this, and every generation of women had their own version of this experience; and the longer you’ve been alive, the more you’ve been exposed to the messages. The societal ideal may always change, but the idea always is the same: conform to society’s beauty standard or become invisible, or worse, be looked down upon.
And my experience was mild compared to some of the women I have worked with. Many were put on diets as young as 6 years old, others shamed and verbally abused for not conforming to the expectation of a “healthy” size.
So am I surprised that in my job helping women heal their relationships with food and their bodies that the great majority of us are completely screwed up around food, obsessing over every inch of our bodies? Not at all. Does it make me infinitely sad? Every single day.
If you’re an adult woman, you’ve been exposed to the message that your body is your worth since you were old enough to understand language. It was reinforced to you everytime you watched a movie where the girl gets the makeover, loses the weight, then FINALLY gets the guy. Or you read an article in Women’s Health about the secrets behind a celebrity’s diet. Or you watched your mother weigh food or get on the scale and curse.
We’ve been taught that the battle with our body is a way of life.
And the evidence of this is how many times a week I sit down with intelligent, accomplished, funny, warm, caring, INCREDIBLE women and hear that they don’t see their own beauty and magnetism and reduce their entire worth down to the size of their bodies.
And although there is at least a conversation happening around this now, fatphobia and societal pressure to conform is not going away.
And by the way, fatphobia and the war on obesity is not helping anything. Even though we have limitless access to information, obesity rates continue to rise, not fall. Lack of information is not our problem.
Diet culture is.
Diet culture pushes the narrative that weight loss should be attempted at all costs. In this culture, food and exercise are simply a means to an end: a better body. This culture is so strong that it has permeated every aspect of our society including healthcare, where patients who are considered overweight are dismissed to just lose some weight, no matter the ailment or symptoms. Weight loss equals health, no matter the reasons or behaviors that get you there (like surgeries, extreme behaviors, or depression).
This societal attitude has destroyed our relationship with food, with our bodies, and with exercise. Food is not just food, it is charged and intense because there is so much guilt and shame wrapped up in it, and so much pressure to eat the “right” ones. With every “bad” meal, we promise ourselves that it will be our last one or that we will fix this sometime in the future, so we eat like it’s going away (because SOMEDAY, maybe Monday, maybe in a year, it is…right?)
Exercise has become this miserable chore we have to suffer through (no excuses! no pain no gain!) if we ever want to lose the weight. It’s a calorie-burning tool, so of course it has to be intense to count – what’s the point if it’s not going to torch the fat?
And our relationship with our bodies is the saddest casualty of all. We mentally photoshop our parts everytime we look in the mirror or see a photo, trying to will our bodies to look “normal”. (Forget that when you go out in the world and look at actual women, there is no one NORMAL, but you’d never know that by looking at tv or movies) We beat ourselves up and cringe at our fat. We compare our bodies to every woman around us and try to assess how we measure up. We bond with other women about how much we hate our bodies and this is considered completely normal. We measure our worth by the size of our hips. It’s maddening.
So what do we do about it?
Well I for one am done with it all.
About 9-10 years ago, I declared an end to diet culture in my life. And although it took some careful navigating, trial and error, and included more than a few setbacks, I’ve been free of the madness for a decade.
And it was the best decision of my entire fucking life.
It was so powerful that I made it my life’s mission to set as many women free as I possibly could in my lifetime. Because when you experience liberation, you want it for everyone.
This is my mission:
To convince women to STOP chasing the societal beauty standards to the detriment of their own mental and emotional health, to STOP participating in diet culture by demonizing foods and glorifying restriction, to STOP seeing exercise as a means to an end, to STOP seeing their bodies as a problem to fix or a battle to win….
And instead to START asking themselves what experience THEY want to have in their bodies, to CREATE a beautiful balance of foods that they can both enjoy and nourish their bodies with without any guilt or shame, to ENJOY exercise in any way they choose, and to START seeing their bodies as their precious vessel to care for and NOT as who they are.
I want to end the chaos and confusion and pre-occupation of food. I want to end the practice of reducing ourselves down to the size of our bodies and putting all our self-worth eggs in the body basket. I want to inject the joy of exercise when it’s for YOU to feel amazing and experience a flow state daily. I want to end the myth that you can’t trust yourself with food. I want to help you see the beautiful kaleidoscope of YOU – the whole picture, not just the body picture. I want to show you how to nourish and cherish your precious body from a place of love, without denying yourself of pleasure. I want you to look in the mirror and smile from gratitude. I want you to have an incredible, decadent, indulgent meal and not feel one hint of guilt.
But you have to CHOOSE this. And you have to take the steps.
Diet culture isn’t going anywhere. Not in our lifetimes. It will be an uphill battle, going against the grain which is against our own human wiring.
But my GOD you guys, it is so worth it. Liberation isn’t a walk in the park, but it’s as amazing on the other side as it sounds, and worth swimming upstream for. Most good things are.
Are you with me? Let me know.
XO
Deanna