It's Not What You Think
So, I felt like there was something I needed to talk about after the frenzy of Halloween candy consumption and before the holiday season, with its stuffing, cookies, pies, sweets, and Bailey’s, is upon us. A two-month orgy of savory foods and delicious treats, followed by the self-imposed penance of a resolution and the resulting massive guilt if said resolution is not carried through.
Here it is: Don’t go on a diet to feel better about how you look.
Really, don’t. It doesn’t work anyway.
I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t eat fruits and veggies, or exercise to avoid a blood clot in your leg. I’m not even saying dieting doesn’t work for weight loss – after all, we see success stories all the time in magazines.
It’s just that dieting until you’re raging hangry because you just know you’ll feel better about your thighs, or belly, or butt if only you could fit into size 6 pants…yeah, that might not turn out like you think.
Your…trouble spot will get smaller and the scale will show a lower number, and you will progressively fit into smaller clothes until you pull on those size 6 pants, but…you’ll still look in the mirror and see a thigh with too many dimples, or an upper arm that jiggles more than you’d like, or a tummy plumped with extra flesh and, possibly, scored by stretch marks. You’ll look different, but you’ll feel the same.
Your eyes are not, and have never been, telling you the truth. Making yourself smaller will not necessarily change your perception at all.
Yes, this is an ode to my poor self-esteem – but I’m not alone because every woman I know makes disparaging remarks about some part of her body.
And dieting won’t fix it
Really…I mean it.
I was not a thin or twiggy kid. I was solid, stocky. What some classmates called “fat” or “stumpy,” and rude adults referred to as “chunky.”
In addition to a well-developed musculature, and more “baby fat” than my sibling, I was a big-boned kid. My knee joints are twice the size of most women, and my wrists, shoulders, and rib cage contribute to an overall solid appearance. I have on more than one occasion been referred to as “freakishly strong.”
My mother was tall and thin – 5’ 8” and 120 pounds – with long legs, small bones, and a raging case of body dysmorphic disorder. She labeled herself and her offending body parts as, “huge, enormous, jiggly, and flabby.” She bemoaned the imagined heft of her thighs, her “fat” tummy, and “manly” shoulders. She watched the scale religiously and lamented every ounce gained.
She was a product of a culture that tells women they can never be thin or firm or perfect enough. Despite a physique that met the requirements of most modeling agencies, she was never anything but critical of her appearance and her weight.
If her pencil-thin legs were fat, what were mine? Gargantuan? Hideous? She had a two-inch thigh gap. I had heat rash from crotch to knee since my solid thighs were continually plastered together. Spontaneous combustion was a genuine fear every time I wore corduroy pants. In high school a classmate once remarked, “Why don’t you have long, thin legs like your mom and sister? Yours are so…huge.”
My mother’s legacy was perpetual dissatisfaction with our bodies, shame at our developing hips and thighs, embarrassment at every ripple, dimple, or bulge no matter how thin or fit or strong we were. She gave us the burden of unreasonable expectations and self-loathing that incites women to hate themselves, compete viciously with each other, and relentlessly criticize anyone who might be thinner or prettier.
She did try to encourage me – congratulating my successes in sports and vocally admiring how strong I was. Then she helpfully suggested I avoid wearing big sweatshirts and leggings because it, “makes you look chopped off and chunky.”
And then there was the week my thighs saved my life.
In May 2009 I had a miscarriage at 16 weeks. One minute I was carrying a baby and six pregnancy pounds, then suddenly the baby was gone.
By the end of August, I had managed to chisel off one pound of the baby-not-to-be weight. My pants helpfully reminded me by not fitting every time I tried to put them on, which made me cry.
This was the year of the swine flu epidemic. In the first week of September I developed a raging case of H1N1 influenza, with a fever that spiked to 105 F every two hours and never fell below 103. After five days the fever finally broke and I had lost eight pounds. This is not what you’d call a healthy weight loss plan – I looked sick, sunken, shriveled, wasted.
I’ve read studies about how people who are slightly overweight have a better chance of surviving a major illness than those who are underweight. I never thought I’d get to experience it up close and personal. All the fat and cellulite on my thighs that I’ve spent most of my life hating fueled an awesome fight and kicked H1N1 ass.
In that week I went from trying to lose weight to needing to gain some. I was grateful to my robust thighs for saving my life…but I still didn’t like the way they looked.
Right now, I’m 60 pounds down from my heaviest weight, and I’ve managed to keep it that way, give-or-take five pounds, for a decade. Most men underestimate my weight by 10-20 pounds – which gives you an idea of how ludicrously thin most people think women should be.
I’m trying to raise three girls to be healthy, strong women, with good self-esteem in a culture where they are bombarded with negative messages about their bodies. Eating disorders are at an all-time high, social media is making the problem exponentially worse, and photoshopping women’s bodies is ubiquitous. Expensive, ludicrous, and harmful fad diets are everywhere, and my two older daughters were told they were “too fat” when they were in Kindergarten.
How can I protect them from the body hatred that is so much a part of my self-perception? How do I teach them that dieting, even with drastic weight loss, won’t fix a lifetime of shame about the way you look in shorts, and that anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something?
I gained 64 pounds over five years, a marriage, and a baby. Then, after the second kid popped into the world, a health issue forced me to change what and how I was eating. Specifically, I had to eat less processed food with more – way more – fiber.
Two years later, I had a 40-point decline in my cholesterol, the health issue resolved, and I had dropped back to a weight I had not seen since high school.
And yet, 60 pounds and six pants sizes smaller, I still didn’t feel any different about my thighs. They don’t look any smaller or less dimpled to me.
Objectively, I know my thighs are smaller. They do, after all, fit into smaller pants. However, they will always be short, stocky, and pitted by cellulite. They still jiggle when I walk, and when I jump they applaud my vigor…loudly.
I am aware that if I told another woman I feel chunky because of my fat legs, that I fight to ignore the voice whispering in my head, “maybe losing five pounds will finally fix those thighs,” that I’m embarrassed about the extra flesh bulging over the top of my knee, or I feel bad about the way my body looks, she’d want to slap me.
I struggle to keep my self-esteem issues strictly to myself because I don’t want to harm another woman struggling to deal with her own body issues. I refuse to participate in body-shame bonding where women take turns talking about their fat ass, tummy pouch, or baby weight.
This has not stopped other women from saying casually cutting things to me – including my favorite, “hey, you have mom calves” – because they assume that I have no body issues since I am fit and don’t complain about my own body in public.
Frankly, how I look shouldn’t really matter that much to anyone, but I haven’t worn shorts in 30 years.
I don’t love my thighs, but they take care of me, so I feed them enough to keep them strong, and I tell them I appreciate them whenever I find myself looking at them critically or wishing they were longer and less dimpled.
Most importantly, I never, ever, ever say anything bad about them, or any part of my body, in front of my kids. Which has not stopped them from saying things about my body – from the time my oldest compared my postpartum belly to a dead turkey, to this delightful exchange…
Quokka: “Mom, do you like jelly?”
Me: “I suppose I like it well enough.”
Quokka: “Oh, do you eat a lot of it?”
Me: “No, not really, it’s more of an occasional thing for me.”
Quokka: “Oh”
Me: “…”
Quokka: “…”
Me: “Why?”
Quokka: “Well,” she pauses to gently poke my butt, “I thought maybe that’s what’s in here because they jiggle the same.”
I take a deep breath and swallow my need to tell them what they’ve said is hurtful – after all, if we love our bodies and admire their strength, then pointing out they’re less than firm shouldn’t hurt, right? Instead, we have a conversation about how our bodies work, the relation of body fat to health and female physiology, why other people might be offended if such a thing were said to them, and the fact that gravity works.
So please, before all the stuffing and cookies and New Year’s resolutions, know that dieting will not make you feel better about how you look. You may lose weight, maybe a lot of weight, you may fit into a smaller clothing size, but it will not necessarily make you happier or fix your body positivity issues.
If you do hear another woman disparaging her looks and find yourself thinking, “What the hell do you have to complain about, skinny bitch?” Consider that she wasn’t always thin. Consider that perhaps she was never thin enough for someone critical in her life. Consider that she was raised in a culture with whacked expectations in which retailers, men, and competitive women have a vested interest in destroying her self-esteem to manipulate her – and it’s very effective.
We need to be kind to each other and ourselves. We need to tear down all the unrealistic expectations piled on us by a toxic culture. We need to tell that ugly little voice whispering we’re not good enough to sit down and shut the hell up. We need to stop following and looking at digitally altered "fitspo" and "thinspo" accounts on Instagram. We need to teach ourselves and our children to identify digital photo editing. We need to accept a variety of bodies and give each other and ourselves the room to be real, whole, strong, healthy people. We need to talk to and about ourselves the way we would a dear friend – with love, compassion, and appreciation.
At a minimum, if you find you just can’t help yourself and you need to criticize the way you look, or complain about the weight you gained over the holidays, or talk about dieting to shrink your tummy or fluffy thighs, please make sure there’s no kids around because another generation doesn’t need to carry this toxic crap.
Here it is: Don’t go on a diet to feel better about how you look.
Really, don’t. It doesn’t work anyway.
I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t eat fruits and veggies, or exercise to avoid a blood clot in your leg. I’m not even saying dieting doesn’t work for weight loss – after all, we see success stories all the time in magazines.
It’s just that dieting until you’re raging hangry because you just know you’ll feel better about your thighs, or belly, or butt if only you could fit into size 6 pants…yeah, that might not turn out like you think.
Your…trouble spot will get smaller and the scale will show a lower number, and you will progressively fit into smaller clothes until you pull on those size 6 pants, but…you’ll still look in the mirror and see a thigh with too many dimples, or an upper arm that jiggles more than you’d like, or a tummy plumped with extra flesh and, possibly, scored by stretch marks. You’ll look different, but you’ll feel the same.
Your eyes are not, and have never been, telling you the truth. Making yourself smaller will not necessarily change your perception at all.
Yes, this is an ode to my poor self-esteem – but I’m not alone because every woman I know makes disparaging remarks about some part of her body.
And dieting won’t fix it
Really…I mean it.
 |
| I've never been this self assured |
A Tale of Two Thighs
I was not a thin or twiggy kid. I was solid, stocky. What some classmates called “fat” or “stumpy,” and rude adults referred to as “chunky.”
In addition to a well-developed musculature, and more “baby fat” than my sibling, I was a big-boned kid. My knee joints are twice the size of most women, and my wrists, shoulders, and rib cage contribute to an overall solid appearance. I have on more than one occasion been referred to as “freakishly strong.”
My mother was tall and thin – 5’ 8” and 120 pounds – with long legs, small bones, and a raging case of body dysmorphic disorder. She labeled herself and her offending body parts as, “huge, enormous, jiggly, and flabby.” She bemoaned the imagined heft of her thighs, her “fat” tummy, and “manly” shoulders. She watched the scale religiously and lamented every ounce gained.
She was a product of a culture that tells women they can never be thin or firm or perfect enough. Despite a physique that met the requirements of most modeling agencies, she was never anything but critical of her appearance and her weight.
If her pencil-thin legs were fat, what were mine? Gargantuan? Hideous? She had a two-inch thigh gap. I had heat rash from crotch to knee since my solid thighs were continually plastered together. Spontaneous combustion was a genuine fear every time I wore corduroy pants. In high school a classmate once remarked, “Why don’t you have long, thin legs like your mom and sister? Yours are so…huge.”
My mother’s legacy was perpetual dissatisfaction with our bodies, shame at our developing hips and thighs, embarrassment at every ripple, dimple, or bulge no matter how thin or fit or strong we were. She gave us the burden of unreasonable expectations and self-loathing that incites women to hate themselves, compete viciously with each other, and relentlessly criticize anyone who might be thinner or prettier.
She did try to encourage me – congratulating my successes in sports and vocally admiring how strong I was. Then she helpfully suggested I avoid wearing big sweatshirts and leggings because it, “makes you look chopped off and chunky.”
Thunder Thighs Save the Day
And then there was the week my thighs saved my life.
In May 2009 I had a miscarriage at 16 weeks. One minute I was carrying a baby and six pregnancy pounds, then suddenly the baby was gone.
By the end of August, I had managed to chisel off one pound of the baby-not-to-be weight. My pants helpfully reminded me by not fitting every time I tried to put them on, which made me cry.
This was the year of the swine flu epidemic. In the first week of September I developed a raging case of H1N1 influenza, with a fever that spiked to 105 F every two hours and never fell below 103. After five days the fever finally broke and I had lost eight pounds. This is not what you’d call a healthy weight loss plan – I looked sick, sunken, shriveled, wasted.
I’ve read studies about how people who are slightly overweight have a better chance of surviving a major illness than those who are underweight. I never thought I’d get to experience it up close and personal. All the fat and cellulite on my thighs that I’ve spent most of my life hating fueled an awesome fight and kicked H1N1 ass.
In that week I went from trying to lose weight to needing to gain some. I was grateful to my robust thighs for saving my life…but I still didn’t like the way they looked.
 |
| Strong, sturdy, useful, beat up |
But, Seriously. Don’t Diet.
Right now, I’m 60 pounds down from my heaviest weight, and I’ve managed to keep it that way, give-or-take five pounds, for a decade. Most men underestimate my weight by 10-20 pounds – which gives you an idea of how ludicrously thin most people think women should be.
I’m trying to raise three girls to be healthy, strong women, with good self-esteem in a culture where they are bombarded with negative messages about their bodies. Eating disorders are at an all-time high, social media is making the problem exponentially worse, and photoshopping women’s bodies is ubiquitous. Expensive, ludicrous, and harmful fad diets are everywhere, and my two older daughters were told they were “too fat” when they were in Kindergarten.
How can I protect them from the body hatred that is so much a part of my self-perception? How do I teach them that dieting, even with drastic weight loss, won’t fix a lifetime of shame about the way you look in shorts, and that anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something?
Oh, for Health’s Sake
I gained 64 pounds over five years, a marriage, and a baby. Then, after the second kid popped into the world, a health issue forced me to change what and how I was eating. Specifically, I had to eat less processed food with more – way more – fiber.
Two years later, I had a 40-point decline in my cholesterol, the health issue resolved, and I had dropped back to a weight I had not seen since high school.
And yet, 60 pounds and six pants sizes smaller, I still didn’t feel any different about my thighs. They don’t look any smaller or less dimpled to me.
It’s Not About How You Look
 |
| I want them to always feel good about the strong legs they inherited |
Objectively, I know my thighs are smaller. They do, after all, fit into smaller pants. However, they will always be short, stocky, and pitted by cellulite. They still jiggle when I walk, and when I jump they applaud my vigor…loudly.
I am aware that if I told another woman I feel chunky because of my fat legs, that I fight to ignore the voice whispering in my head, “maybe losing five pounds will finally fix those thighs,” that I’m embarrassed about the extra flesh bulging over the top of my knee, or I feel bad about the way my body looks, she’d want to slap me.
I struggle to keep my self-esteem issues strictly to myself because I don’t want to harm another woman struggling to deal with her own body issues. I refuse to participate in body-shame bonding where women take turns talking about their fat ass, tummy pouch, or baby weight.
This has not stopped other women from saying casually cutting things to me – including my favorite, “hey, you have mom calves” – because they assume that I have no body issues since I am fit and don’t complain about my own body in public.
Frankly, how I look shouldn’t really matter that much to anyone, but I haven’t worn shorts in 30 years.
Lift with Your Legs
I don’t love my thighs, but they take care of me, so I feed them enough to keep them strong, and I tell them I appreciate them whenever I find myself looking at them critically or wishing they were longer and less dimpled.
Most importantly, I never, ever, ever say anything bad about them, or any part of my body, in front of my kids. Which has not stopped them from saying things about my body – from the time my oldest compared my postpartum belly to a dead turkey, to this delightful exchange…
Quokka: “Mom, do you like jelly?”
Me: “I suppose I like it well enough.”
Quokka: “Oh, do you eat a lot of it?”
Me: “No, not really, it’s more of an occasional thing for me.”
Quokka: “Oh”
Me: “…”
Quokka: “…”
Me: “Why?”
Quokka: “Well,” she pauses to gently poke my butt, “I thought maybe that’s what’s in here because they jiggle the same.”
I take a deep breath and swallow my need to tell them what they’ve said is hurtful – after all, if we love our bodies and admire their strength, then pointing out they’re less than firm shouldn’t hurt, right? Instead, we have a conversation about how our bodies work, the relation of body fat to health and female physiology, why other people might be offended if such a thing were said to them, and the fact that gravity works.
DIEt
So please, before all the stuffing and cookies and New Year’s resolutions, know that dieting will not make you feel better about how you look. You may lose weight, maybe a lot of weight, you may fit into a smaller clothing size, but it will not necessarily make you happier or fix your body positivity issues.
If you do hear another woman disparaging her looks and find yourself thinking, “What the hell do you have to complain about, skinny bitch?” Consider that she wasn’t always thin. Consider that perhaps she was never thin enough for someone critical in her life. Consider that she was raised in a culture with whacked expectations in which retailers, men, and competitive women have a vested interest in destroying her self-esteem to manipulate her – and it’s very effective.
We need to be kind to each other and ourselves. We need to tear down all the unrealistic expectations piled on us by a toxic culture. We need to tell that ugly little voice whispering we’re not good enough to sit down and shut the hell up. We need to stop following and looking at digitally altered "fitspo" and "thinspo" accounts on Instagram. We need to teach ourselves and our children to identify digital photo editing. We need to accept a variety of bodies and give each other and ourselves the room to be real, whole, strong, healthy people. We need to talk to and about ourselves the way we would a dear friend – with love, compassion, and appreciation.
At a minimum, if you find you just can’t help yourself and you need to criticize the way you look, or complain about the weight you gained over the holidays, or talk about dieting to shrink your tummy or fluffy thighs, please make sure there’s no kids around because another generation doesn’t need to carry this toxic crap.
 |
| The attitude, the confidence, the sass...I want them to feel like this always |
